Steven Soderbergh
I came out of 'Che' a different filmmaker.
A success, to me, is the ability to keep working. That's success. It has nothing to do with money; it's the ability to keep getting things made, period.
If you talk to any filmmaker, and if you said to them, 'I guarantee you x amount of money per month for the rest of your life, and it's not a big amount of money, but I can also guarantee that you will work continually, you will get to make what you want to make,' any filmmaker on the planet will make that kind of deal. I would have made it.
It would be nice if all people who saw movies had some sort of basic understanding of what they're looking at, but I don't think you can assume that.
As vocal as some people have been about how emotionally attached they've been to celluloid, I've been equally emotional in my stance that nothing is more valuable than this. Than being able to see the result of your work quickly.
Cinema is not about format, and it's not about venue. Cinema is an approach. Cinema is a state of mind on the part of the filmmaker. I've seen commercials that have cinema in them, and I've seen Oscar-winning movies that don't. I'm fine with this.
To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.Collection: Jobs
We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.Collection: People
If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.Collection: Thinking
I'm probably more character-driven than plot-driven. It's rare for me to attach myself to an idea for a story.Collection: Character
I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.Collection: Art
You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.Collection: Art
In the land of ideas, you are always renting.Collection: Land
There's a big difference between a movie about relationships and a movie in which people talk about relationships. It seems like a lot of people have confused the two.Collection: Confused
If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right for ten grand, if you have an idea.Collection: Ideas
In nature, if a cell gets too big, it divides. You can't come up with a set of rules that's going to work for 350 million people. You're just not.Collection: Cells
"A meteor hits planet Earth" - that's a story idea but that doesn't give me any indication of what the character is.Collection: Character
There's a difference between failures and things that are bad.Collection: Differences
I can make a movie about Lee Harvey Oswald and make you feel what he feels and make you understand why he believes what he believes. That doesn't mean I think you should go out and shoot JFK.Collection: Believe
Everything is the director's fault - you can quote me on that. There are no excuses.Collection: Directors
All human interaction, you can break it down to incentives. All relationships, at some level, are transactional. They're fascinated with incentives.Collection: Levels
We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes ... not looking at certain things. Everybody's got some blind spot.Collection: Morning
I've begun to believe more and more that movies are all about transitions, that the key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes. And not just how you get from one scene to the next, but where you leave a scene and where you come into a new scene. Those are some of the most important decisions that you make. It can be the difference between a movie that works and a movie that doesn't.Collection: Believe
There are people who are originals and the stuff they make really is new. It isn't based on anything else. But I've decided I'm not that-I was never that. My abilities are to synthesize a wide range of references and ideas into something that feels relatively unified and coherent.Collection: Ideas
What are the stories you want people to tell about you?Collection: People
We're all standing on the shoulders of what other people have done. But you're supposed to take that and add your own sauce. It can be intimidating, believe me.Collection: Believe
A real litmus test for me is how people treat someone who is waiting on them. That's a dealbreaker for me.If I were on the verge of getting into a serious relationship and I saw that person be mean to a waiter... I'm out.Collection: Real
You can create meaning where there was none, you can create feeling where there was none, you can create narrative where there was none. Two frames can be the difference between something that works and something that doesn't. It's fascinating.Collection: Feelings
Some filmmakers, you know, have their style and then they kind of go looking for the movie. I'm not like that. I don't have one style that I want to take from movie to movie.Collection: Style
You got to deal with reviews the same way you deal with your views, which I a long time ago stopped reading because the point is if you believe the good ones you have to believe the bad ones. It's kind of all or nothing.Collection: Believe
Nobody's talking about movies the way they're talking about their favorite TV shows.Collection: Talking
Your take on things is what is either going to make you somebody people talk about or no.Collection: People
I find myself in situations a lot where I have to say to someone, "This can be better," and it's hard to say that.Collection: Situation
I try to use other songs or bands as reference points - it seems like the easiest way to get across what are really differences of taste or opinion. If you know what kind of music somebody loves, then you can kind of figure out why they do what they do.Collection: Song
Ego is something that everybody, creative especially, has to grapple with. You need enough ego to keep going but not so much ego that you're deaf or blind, that you're making a mistake and can't fix the course.Collection: Mistake
The best set was probably 'Bloody Sunday.' We had no money for extras and gambled on months of outreach to persuade the people of Derry to turn out and march for us on one single afternoon. And they did. In their tens of thousands. Seeing them march, their patience and their dignity and their commitment, I knew the movie would have a quality of truth.Collection: Commitment
Whenever you experiment with something, it's very easy to take the emotion out of it. And going back and forth between wanting to be respected artistically and wanting to move people is its own challenge.Collection: Moving
Never had a cup of coffee in my life. Dr Pepper is my caffeine delivery system of choice.Collection: Coffee
I stopped reading reviews about my own movies. I read stuff about other people's movies.Collection: Reading
Once I had a potentially heart attack-inducing eight double espressos in one day. I think my assistant secretly swaps my coffees for decaf as she doesn't want me to die of caffeine overdose.Collection: Coffee
I think the feeling that we're going to work together again usually starts to come up before the first project's even done. The Black Keys and I have already talked about starting on something new.Collection: Thinking
Castro, without question, is one of the smartest politicians that's ever walked.Collection: Politician
Never done an explosion, but I have had explosive diarrhea, and that was very, very real. Good thing I have my trailer.Collection: Real
I tend to be drawn more to people than pure story ideas.Collection: Ideas
You can't change who you are, so I think that the only thing you can do is just never talk to people about stuff and then hope that maybe does something.Collection: Thinking
I make every movie like it's the last one. "If this was the last movie, what decision would I make?" That's how I make my decisions.Collection: Decision
You're being mean to someone who's helping you. What is that? Everyone knows who the assholes are, and I avoid them.Collection: Mean
I was thinking that people have to believe you're crazy in order to take you seriously as an artist. If you're wandering the streets, talking in gibberish, nobody ever asks you to change anything about your art because there's no context for people to look at what you do.Collection: Art
It takes one asshole to ruin the whole thing. That's it. One. The problem with the world is one asshole comes up with a really bad idea and now we're all taking our shoes off at the airport.Collection: Airports