There are those who credit Steven Soderbergh with creating the late 20th-century boom in independent filmmaking. Certainly there had been other directors working outside the studio system for many, many years, but after his small art-house film "sex, lies and videotape" won the 1989 Palme d'Or at Cannes, a flood of other indie moviemakers followed in his wake. (The role played by the Sundance Film Festival also cannot be overlooked.) Still, as the new millennium dawned, it was perhaps ironic that this stalwart non-Hollywood director had crossed over and become the darling of the mainstream and a prime contender for Oscar glory.
Born in Atlanta, Soderbergh spent his prime formative years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where his father served as Dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University. As a teenager, he cut his teeth making short Super-8mm films with equipment borrowed from LSU film students. Skipping college, Soderbergh endured a frustrating spell in Hollywood. To support himself, he worked as a game show scorer and cue card holder and eventually as a freelance film editor. Returning home, he further developed his craft and made several Super 8-shorts, including "Rapid Eye Movement" (about his time in Los Angeles) and "Winston", about sexual deception. His first break came in 1986 when the rock group Yes enlisted him to shoot concert footage which he eventually shaped into the Grammy-nominated video "9012Live.”
Soderbergh's first feature project was the finely crafted, low-budget ($1.2 million) drama, "sex, lies and videotape". Using events that occurred when he was 24 years old, the writer-director molded the piece into the modern film equivalent of a morality play, a small-scale drama of sexual intrigue and mendacity. After galvanizing the United States Film Festival (the forerunner of Sundance), "sex, lies and videotape" scored a double triumph at Cannes, winning the Palme d'Or for Soderbergh and the Best Actor award for James Spader. With the requisite buzz, the film opened in late summer and proved a box-office hit, later earning an Oscar nomination for its screenplay and establishing Soderbergh as one of the most promising young filmmakers of his generation.
His subsequent films have been an artistically mixed bag and it took nearly a decade before he had a success equal to his first effort. Soderbergh's almost inevitably disappointing follow-up was "Kafka" (1991), an interesting, though muddled existential thriller starring Jeremy Irons as the prince of paranoia. Mostly shot in black-and-white and evocative of German Expressionism, "Kafka" failed to develop a coherent story, with its crucial conflict unfolding slowly and rather murkily. Soderbergh rebounded from his sophomore slump with another study in emotional isolation, "King of the Hill" (1993), a sensitively wrought underappreciated gem that followed a Depression-era boy coping with poverty and neglect. The director developed another variation on the same theme with "The Underneath" (1995), a remake of Robert Siodmak's 1949 film noir "Criss Cross.” This heavily stylized film (the director attempted to use a chromatic palette to cue the audience), intricately told in fragmented scenes that include flashbacks and flash forwards, won some critical support but audiences generally agreed with the reviewers who felt the film lacked substance. Soderbergh scripted but did not direct the inferior English-language version of the Danish thriller "Nightwatch" (1997).
Finding himself in a rut after "The Underneath" and feeling the need for a refresher course in the joys of indie filmmaking, Soderbergh trekked home to Baton Rouge and shot "Schizopolis" (1997) for $250,000, employing used equipment, a bare-bones crew and casting himself in a dual lead role. Adding an element of psychodrama, he also cast his ex-wife, actress Betsy Brantley, in scenes that wickedly parodied their disintegrated five-year marriage. While editing "Schizopolis" in Baton Rouge, he took ten days to shoot "Gray's Anatomy" (1997), creating the most cinematic of the filmed Spalding Gray monologues. Batteries recharged, he returned to mainstream movies, directing the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Out of Sight" (1998), starring George Clooney as a charming thief who falls for a U.S. Marshall (a pre-JLo Jennifer Lopez) after taking her hostage during a prison break. Though not an enormous box office hit, “Out of Sight” was a critical darling and earned several major award nods, including Academy Awards for Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Back on a successful creative track, Soderbergh tackled "The Limey" (1999), a revenge drama about a British ex-con who travels to L.A. to avenge his daughter's death. Casting established stars like Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda in leading roles, the director tapped into their iconic screen presences which lent an extra layer to the story. (He even used clips of Stamp in Ken Loach's "Poor Cow" (1967) as flashbacks.) Soderbergh's visual panache and strong handle on the material took what could have been a run-of-the-mill gangster story and elevated to a work of art. His immediate follow-up, the highly commercial "Erin Brockovich" (2000), would on the surface seem to be an atypical project, yet the film's theme of the outsider runs through much of his work. Toplined by star Julia Roberts, impeccably acted by Albert Finney, Marg Helgenberger and others, and following a more linear story narrative, "Erin Brockovich" became the director's most successful picture, grossing over $125 million and earning Roberts an Oscar for Best Actress.
For that achievement alone, Soderbergh would have been lauded but he also directed and shot "Traffic" in 2000. Based on a 1989 British miniseries of the same name, "Traffic" was a cross between the director's commercial films and his experimental indie features. Acting as his own director of photography (but taking the credit as Peter Andrews), Soderbergh shot each of the film's three major storylines in a different color scheme— jaundiced yellow for a decaying Mexico, lush colors for affluent San Diego and a cold bluish hue for isolated Washington, D.C. With 110 speaking roles, this sprawling film traced the war on drugs from all sides—from Washington bureaucrats and low pay-grade Mexican police officers to the ruthless drug dealers and the upper middle-class white users—and was a critical triumph, as well as a box-office success. The one-two punch of “Traffic” and “Erin Brockovich” brought Soderbergh numerous end-of-the-year prizes and sparked talk of his becoming the first director since Michael Curtiz in 1938 to receive dual Academy Award nominations. He took the golden statue home for "Traffic,” finally crowning the indie king as a mainstream success.
Adding to his commercial resume, Soderbergh’s next project was the all-star remake of "Ocean's Eleven" (2001), featuring a new rat pack that included George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in a fun, stylish romp about a newly paroled thief (Clooney) who handpicks an 11-man team to rip-off over $150 million from three Las Vegas casinos owned by a classy, but ruthless entrepreneur (Andy Garcia). “Oceans Eleven” was another bona fide hit for Soderbergh, cementing the former artiste’s credentials as a highly viable and successful commercial filmmaker. But in 2002, Soderbergh took a different approach to his craft and directed the non-narrative "Full Frontal" starring Julia Roberts. The film was shot in 18 days, featured guerilla-style camera work and encouraged improvisation from the actors. The no-budget project, however, failed to congeal creatively and earned the director some well-deserved criticism. The critical drubbing continued when he attempted to remake the sci-fi cult classic "Solaris" (2003) with Clooney playing a psychologist who travels to a faraway space station to investigate the strange and unexplained behavior of a small group of scientists after their examination of a mysterious planet in this slow-moving and ultimately dull sci-fi thriller. Soderbergh's inventive, upbeat visual style was one of the few exciting elements of the lackluster—and sometimes downright lame—sequel "Ocean's Twelve" (2004).
The joint production company Section Eight owned by Soderbergh and Clooney began developing television, usually with one of the two principals operating behind the camera on individual episodes. The first, the Washington insider drama "K Street" (HBO, 2003), failed to make its mark, in large part because of its shaky narrative style—part scripted entertainment, part improvisation with real-life Washington politicos—that lead to some truly awkward moments onscreen. There was genuine comedy and pathos at the heart of Soderbergh’s HBO follow-up, the improvised "Unscripted" (2004-2005) which followed the ups and downs of a trio of struggling actors working their way through Hollywood with the tough-love guidance of their acting coach. Always game for a good filmmaking experiment, if only to cleanse the stench of commercialization from his creative pours, Soderbergh made his next film, “Bubble” (2006), an unlikely love triangle between three factory workers that eventually leads to murder, with non-actors from the small Ohio town of Belpre where the film was shot. On top of a small, six-figure budget and a crew of less than ten, “Bubble” was unusual for its theatrical release, which was followed the next day by a cable broadcast and DVD release two subsequent days later—typical of Soderbergh’s unconventional approach to the studio process.
With “The Good German” (2006), Soderbergh summoned the film noir style from Hollywood of yore, collaborating once again with Clooney, who starred as a U.S. war correspondent covering the Potsdam Peace Conference in Berlin following the defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich. After witnessing the murder of an American G.I. on the Russian side of the city, the reporter suddenly finds himself alone in finding the truth while confronting his pre-Berlin past in the form of his old lover (Cate Blachett), who has been irrevocably damaged by the war. “The Good German” demonstrated Soderbergh’s love of American noir and the German expressionism from which it was inspired, but his zealous attention to style and period detail sapped creative energy from elements where it was needed most—mainly story and character development. Meanwhile, Soderbergh decided to go back to the commercial well for a third—and probably last—go-round by committing to direct “Ocean’s 13” (2007), which was shot in late 2006.