Steven Soderbergh
I like a lot of different kinds of movies, I like a lot of different kinds of paintings.Collection: Different
Every time you make something that somebody likes, your impulse is to remind them that if you hadn't made some of these other things that they hated, you wouldn't have been able to make the thing that they liked.Collection: Able
I'm mystified by the stuff that doesn't work. I'm mystified by what's going on in the critical side, too. Stuff I like is getting trashed and stuff that is being praised I think is terrible. I don't really feel in sync with what's happening, but at the same time, what I think keeps me afloat is that I try not to be, and don't want to be, very indulgent. I try to make the films as lean as possible, and to not spend a lot of time crawling up my own ass creatively.Collection: Thinking
I've never been a snob. It [movie] is just about stories. And I've never felt just because it's a big screen and you plop down your eight bucks that gives it a special meaning. It's just "Are you good at telling a story?"Collection: Eight
Everybody, including me, has to submit to what it needs to be. The thing is at the top of the pyramid, the best version of the thing; we all have to serve that. You forget that at your own risk. And I think movies are too long, in general.Collection: Thinking
I'm not precious about anything. The effort it took to get something means nothing to me in post.And it means nothing to the audience. I'll chop limbs off. I'll put an arm where a leg should be. I'll do anything.Collection: Mean
I come from a generation that was surrounded by popular music, but I don't know if anybody's ever going to move the ball forward as far and as fast as the Beatles did.Collection: Moving
That's why my attitude, even on my larger-scale movies, is to make them cheap. The less these things cost, the better for everybody.Collection: Attitude
The key is, if youre not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.Collection: Keys
A real explosion is not only much more fun to shoot, it also helps the actors and creates an energy on set and ultimately in the scene.Collection: Fun
We all get outraged by things and there are things that make us angry and maybe for a while we get angry enough to actually go do something about it.Collection: Enough
If I'm a director and I read a script and I say yeah I really want to do this, I would never walk away because the deal wasn't very good - that I wasn't getting paid very much or that the chances that I would see anything on the back end were remote because of the financial waterfall and the way it's structured. I would never use that as a reason not to do something.Collection: Directors
I'm a big believer that if there's something you really want to do, don't walk away because of the deal.Collection: Want
I think there are only two times that I've ever ended up paying somebody their quote. Like what they actually were worth in the marketplace.Collection: Thinking
Sometimes I might feel like [a movie] is kind of a weird idea and if I'm going to get enough money to execute it properly I've got to get somebody in it that is going to justify the expense.Collection: Ideas
I'm not a snob. If I feel like there's a star that's the best person for that role, then that's who I get.Collection: Stars
If you think that because you're Che, when you go into Bolivia, when people find out it's you, that they're going to have the same kind of reaction that the Cubans had to Castro, then you're high.Collection: Thinking
If you're not smart enough to know what Fidel meant during the Cuban revolution, that - when they were on the Granma - Fidel was already a rock star in Cuba, and how important that was to the indigenous population, then you're not paying attention.Collection: Stars
My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen. So you're constantly calibrating to play to their strengths. And the key is to never ask them to do things that are beyond their abilities or are really far away from who they are at their core.Collection: Keys
It's become absolutely horrible the way the people with the money decide they can fart in the kitchen.Collection: People
Jude [Law] is really good at playing an obsessive. He has a very watchable quality when he's on a quest for something.Collection: Law
The brief flashbacks are sun-kissed, summery and optimistic. It's the only place in the movie you will see red, yellow, orange, or any vibrant colors.Collection: Optimistic
I actually didn't find out about a lot of music until I was older. Some people have been listening to the Beatles their whole lives; I didn't discover them until I was 18 years old.Collection: Years
Everything had been done long before I started making movies. I mean, there's nothing that Godard hasn't already done. You can't do a single thing that Godard hasn't already thought of. And so you struggle to do something that is not predictable.Collection: Struggle
I was lucky that I was getting exposed to a lot of different kinds of films, and I was liking them all. So it seemed logical to me that you could - as in the style of the studio directors of the 30s and 40s - jump from one genre to the next, with the same satisfaction.Collection: Style
When we look at what's going on in the world and we see the immense level of conflict that seems to always be happening - you can always trace it back to competing narratives.Collection: Looks
I think about art a lot only in two contexts. One is narrative... The other thing that I'm interested in, which is tangential, but not unrelated... All art to me is about problem solving.Collection: Art
My working life is me doing what I want to do. This is that. I've made movies that people don't go to see.Collection: People
I'm always a little unnerved when I see a show that's set in the past that implies in any way that things were nicer then.Collection: Past
I don't have any kind of ideology that precludes me from moving in one direction or another. I just want creative autonomy and I want at least an opportunity that it's going to be seen.Collection: Moving
It's a weird thing to say, but it would appear to me axiomatic that if you understood fully what I was doing and appreciated it, you would like it.Collection: Appreciated
I grew up mostly in the South, and there's definitely something about the South that's different from the North. When people ask me where I'm from, I say Louisiana. I spent more years there than anywhere else.Collection: Years
I have a friend whose theory is that you're from wherever you went to high school. I think that's mostly true.Collection: School
There's definitely a way of thinking and a way of being in the South that has its advantages and disadvantages.Collection: Thinking
I feel I need to really think about whether there's a way to use what skill I have to address things that outrage me, like the 13 year old girl getting stoned to death. Because I don't think making a movie is going to help that, or change that.Collection: Girl