Contagion

At the age of 26, Steven Soderbergh permanently altered the face of independent cinema when he became the youngest-ever winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival for sex, lies and videotape, his feature-film directorial debut. A simmering exploration of the nature of modern relationships and the links between sexuality and voyeurism, the film was an international sensation that established its director as one of the golden boys of world cinema. Born in Georgia on January 14, 1963, Soderbergh grew up in Baton Rouge, LA, where his father was the Dean of Louisiana State University’s College of Education. While still in high school, Soderbergh enrolled in the university’s film animation class and began making short 16 mm films with second-hand equipment. After he graduated from high school, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor. Soderbergh’s time in Hollywood was brief, and he soon returned home, where he continued making short films and writing scripts. One of his films, a documentary about the rock group Yes, earned him an assignment to direct a full-length concert film for the band. The finished product, 9012 Live, was nominated for a 1986 Grammy.

Following this achievement, Soderbergh filmed the short subject Winston, a study of sexual gamesmanship that he would expand into sex, lies and videotape. In the wake of the 1989 film’s great success, Soderbergh made Kafka, a darkly comic fictional account of the author’s life. The austere film turned out to be something of a disappointment, as did the modest King of the Hill, Soderbergh’s 1993 portrait of a young boy’s coming-of-age during the Depression. The Underneath, his 1995 film, was a post-noir crime drama that offered further existential meditation and an exploration of the destructive effects of sexuality: unfortunately, like Soderbergh’s previous two efforts, it remained mired in relative obscurity. The same could be said of Schizopolis and Gray’s Anatomy (both 1996), the former a loopy, inventive look at the intricacies of communication that Soderbergh termed an “artistic wake-up call” to himself, the latter a filmed performance of one of Spalding Gray’s monologues. In 1998, Soderbergh made good on his “wake-up call” with Out of Sight, his most critically and commercially successful film since sex, lies and videotape. Adapted from the novel by Elmore Leonard, it was an irreverent, enjoyable affair that remained true to the book’s spirit and featured believable chemistry between leads George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The following year, Soderbergh continued on his critical winning streak with The Limey, the generally well-received tale of an ex-con (Terence Stamp) bent on revenge for his daughter’s mysterious death. He earned even greater plaudits in 2000 as the director of Erin Brockovich; starring Julia Roberts as its eponymous secretary-heroine who uncovers a major environmental scandal, the film was enthusiastically embraced by audiences and critics alike.

Later that same year, Soderbergh raised the bar on issue-oriented drama with Traffic, a multi-layered, multi-character look at the United States’ “War on Drugs.” Easily Soderbergh’s most ambitious effort, the 50 million-dollar production boasted a seven-city shooting schedule with over 100 speaking parts; almost a third of which were spoken completely in Spanish. What’s more, the director insisted on serving as cinematographer for the primarily hand-held, naturally lit film. The gamble paid off, both critically and commercially. Soderbergh’s touch with actors yielded best-yet performances from Catherine Zeta-Jones, Miguel Ferrer, and Benicio Del Toro, the latter of whom walked away with a slew of year-end critics awards, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. The film itself shared a berth with Brockovich when the Academy Awards nominations were announced, and Soderbergh made it into the history books as the first person to be doubly nominated for Best Director for two films that were also both nominated for Best Picture. When the winners were finally announced, Traffic earned four Oscars including a Best Director statue for Soderbergh; his work on Brockovich helped snag a long-awaited Best Actress Oscar for Roberts. Meanwhile, on the profits side, Traffic became the most successful film yet produced by USA, a company previously known for highly praised and little-seen mid-budget films.

Soderbergh then plunged headlong into two big-budget adaptations of classic films, both starring his Out of Sight muse George Clooney: 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven and 2002’s Solaris. The former, a star-laden update of 1960’s Rat Pack favorite, garnered favorable reviews and a box-office total of more than $180 million, the director’s biggest take yet. The latter marked Soderbergh’s return to screenwriting: Encouraged by producer James Cameron to adapt Stanislaw Lem’s philosophical sci-fi short story, Soderbergh also signed on to direct in the wake of his 2000 Oscar win. Rather than tamper with director Andrei Tarkovsky’s acclaimed 1972 adaptation of Solaris, Soderbergh promised his version would be closer in spirit to the source material. Despite an economical editing job and generally-encouraging reviews, Solaris proved baffling to audiences, who let the moody, psychological sci-fi film die a quick death. Between these high-profile projects, the director even managed to sandwich in a $2 million ensemble piece, shot mostly on digital video in less than three weeks. 2002’s Full Frontal reunited him for the third time with Julia Roberts, but Soderbergh’s grungy, esoteric take on the discord between movie life and “real” life was generally reviled by critics and completely ignored at the box office. The director would retreat to safer waters in 2004 with the successful sequel Ocean’s Twelve, a more self-reflexive, globe-trotting take on the first film that reunited most of the original cast.

A string of almost deliberately obscure work followed. On HBO, Soderbergh and Clooney satisfied their political leanings with K Street, a gritty, fly-on-the-wall soap that attempted to meld fiction with documentary as it charted the lives of two high-powered lobbyists. The drab Midwestern anti-thriller Bubble boasted a unique releasing scheme, in which it premiered on pay-per-view cable, in art-house theaters and on DVD at the same time in early 2006. Critical notices for the shot-on-video, non-professionally cast film were positive if not overwhelmingly so, and Bubble saw brisker business on DVD than it might have otherwise. A less-happy fate befell The Good German later that year. A considerably higher-budgeted tale of romantic intrigue set in post-WWII Berlin starring Clooney and Cate Blanchett, the material called to mind Casablanca, The Third Man and other wartime noirs so strongly, Soderbergh decided to shoot the film using cameras and techniques from its era. The resulting black-and-white prestige pic divided critics who found it either enthrallingly retro or needlessly opaque and austere; whatever their opinions, the film failed to catch on with audiences after a meager awards-season release from Warner Bros. Once again, Soderbergh licked his wounds by providing the company with another installment of its profitable Ocean’s franchise in summer 2007. In addition to his directorial work, Soderbergh has also served as a producer and screenwriter for other directors’ projects; he first made major headway into the world of producing when he and Clooney opened up an exclusive, first-look deal to develop projects under the shingle Section Eight in late 2001. Among Section Eight’s first endeavors were pictures helmed by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), and Christopher Nolan (Insomnia); though the shingle rarely produced runaway hits, through it, Soderbergh was able to show support for micro-budgeted debuts not unlike his own. —allmovie guide