110+ Steven Soderbergh Quotes On Covid, Filmmaking And Sight

Steven Soderbergh is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and cinematographer. He is best known for directing the Ocean's Eleven franchise, as well as films such as Traffic, Erin Brockovich, and Magic Mike. He won an Academy Award for Best Director for Traffic in 2000. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Steven Soderbergh on leadership, love, life.

Top 10 Steven Soderbergh Quotes

1. I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.
2. When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.
3. There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.
4. The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.
5. 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.
6. When things go right it's hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it's really easy.
7. 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.
8. Never had a cup of coffee in my life. Dr Pepper is my caffeine delivery system of choice.
9. Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.
10. 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.

Steven Soderbergh Short Quotes

• Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.
• In Full Frontal and K Street, I learned to take advantage of the mobility that digital provides.
• I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean's films.
• There's a difference between failures and things that are bad.
• The traditional models for success are just also disappearing.
• I tend to be drawn more to people than pure story ideas.
• Nobody's talking about movies the way they're talking about their favorite TV shows.
• Castro, without question, is one of the smartest politicians that's ever walked.
• I'm very comfortable with failure. I'm very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people.
• A movie that costs only $1.6 million doesn't have to be a cultural event to turn a profit.

Steven Soderbergh Quotes About Love

I guess I just look at talent as a very subjective thing. I mean, if you never tried playing an oboe, how do you know you're not the most talented oboe player ever? The point is that if you don't love it, then it doesn't matter. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I love caper films. — Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh Quotes About Life

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I'm not going to spend two years of my life on something that I'm not excited about. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh Quotes About Filmmaking

I don't consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted. — Steven Soderbergh

I look at other filmmakers and see skills in them that I wish I had but I know that I don't. I feel like I have to work really hard to keep myself afloat, doing what I do. But I find it pleasurable. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh Quotes About Film

I'm in the process of working out an arrangement to make some very, very, very small films in the midst of all these films and maybe that will help. But you get tired of talking. You just want to do it. — Steven Soderbergh

Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it. — Steven Soderbergh

The muscle memory of filtering away all the wrong versions of what you're doing improves the more time you're on a film set. I feel like my problem-solving algorithm got kicked up a notch. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I guess why the Ocean's films are hard for me is because on the one hand you have to make sure the performances are there, but on the other hand it's a film that demands, to my mind, a very layered and complex visual scheme. That takes a lot of time to figure out. — Steven Soderbergh

I'm sure some people will say, 'Why do this?' And my response is, 'Why wouldn't you?' The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient. — Steven Soderbergh

It's pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn't. — Steven Soderbergh

Another thing that really excites me: I'd like to do multiple versions of the same film. — Steven Soderbergh

But my sense in talking to people when I travel is that the film business is not that dissimilar from a lot of other businesses. — Steven Soderbergh

My father, who was the one who really got me hooked on movies, liked all kinds of films, and I saw all kinds of films at a very young age. — Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh Quotes About People

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. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

It's a world in which people's motives are questionable and shadowy. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I want to form a political party that's based entirely on what music people listen to. To me, it's a much better barometer of what they think and feel than their political stance. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

What's great about things like Kickstarter is that it enables me, finally, and without any bad feeling at all, when people come up to me now saying, "I want to do this." I can just go, "There are no excuses anymore." — Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

There is sadness of when you're watching someone enjoy something that you think is substandard. The ineffable sadness when someone is happy and something is not as good as it should be. — Steven Soderbergh

Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will. — Steven Soderbergh

Any time I think out loud, 'I can't believe this is my job,' and remember I am a very lucky duck. Whether marshalling hundreds of zombies, doing crazy stunts or shooting big music numbers, I just feel fortunate to have made my passion my vocation. — Steven Soderbergh

I guess I didn't feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in certain directions or teach me certain things - not knowing what that would be. — Steven Soderbergh

I know why we can't have a frank discussion with our policymakers - if you're in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong. — Steven Soderbergh

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?" — Steven Soderbergh

You should never assume anything coming from a critical standpoint. You should go into everything assuming you're going to get crushed. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I think that music is a very difficult art form in which to be avant-garde. When we sit down to listen to a piece of music, I think our implicit hope is that we're going to find it beautiful, or at least emotional, on some level. — Steven Soderbergh

People are sort of numb to watching violence, but sexual activity is still as strong as it ever was in terms of generating response. — Steven Soderbergh

I never leave the writer behind, because you rewrite the movie in post, or at least I do. I always do, and I feel like anybody who doesn't at least explore that possibility is short-changing themselves. Editing is the most fun and most exciting part of the process. — Steven Soderbergh

The key is, how do you feel with the one asshole? They cannot be talked to. That's why they are assholes. — Steven Soderbergh

Men tend to define themselves by what they do, and so if you're dealing with a character who's trying to figure that out, or multiple characters, then there's something there for guys, too. — Steven Soderbergh

Surprisingly, I don't throw away that much. I don't move forward with a lot of things unless they're going somewhere. You also have to remember that when you're working with other artists, you have to be really careful about how you deal with that stuff. — Steven Soderbergh

Never done an explosion, but I have had explosive diarrhea, and that was very, very real. Good thing I have my trailer. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

If you're a painter and you want people to know who you are and recognize your work, you've got to build some long-term value. — Steven Soderbergh

People like Chris Nolan are shooting isolated sequences in IMAX. Those cameras are the size of a Volkswagen. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I like a lot of different kinds of movies, I like a lot of different kinds of paintings. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

It's become absolutely horrible the way the people with the money decide they can fart in the kitchen. — Steven Soderbergh

My first three movies, I didn't start editing until we were finished shooting. That's unthinkable to me now. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

Your take on things is what is either going to make you somebody people talk about or no. — Steven Soderbergh

I think '60s are appealing to creative people, because it seemed to be a time of endless possibilities, when the boundaries of what could be considered popular culture were being expanded almost by the week. It doesn't feel like that anymore. At times, I wish it were so. Radio is a perfect example; good God, I mean, back then the most interesting songs were also hits, and that's just not true anymore. It hasn't been true in a long time. — Steven Soderbergh

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

The art model of problem solving is incredibly efficient because ideology has no place there.There's only the thing and what the thing needs to be. — Steven Soderbergh

I think that it's fear. The musicians themselves don't seem to know enough about why they're in the positions they're in, so they're afraid to lose those positions. If you're 22 years old and you can't believe you're even in the position to have a career making music, the first thing you're going to think is: Maintain. Don't lose it. And that's precisely what causes you to lose everything. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

There's definitely a way of thinking and a way of being in the South that has its advantages and disadvantages. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

Truth and facts have to trump partisanship. There has to be something that's true regardless of what your angle is on it. — Steven Soderbergh

If you're not flying people around on wires, and you're only allowing them to do things that people can really do, it can't go on for very long, because eventually somebody gets the drop on the other person and then it's over. — Steven Soderbergh

I'm obviously really opinionated, but as a producer, you don't necessarily want the person you're working with to try to impress you - you want them to just be themselves. — Steven Soderbergh

"A meteor hits planet Earth" - that's a story idea but that doesn't give me any indication of what the character is. — Steven Soderbergh

I suppose I could try to be some avant-garde artist if I wanted to, but that doesn't interest me as much. — Steven Soderbergh

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people. — Steven Soderbergh

All human interaction, you can break it down to incentives. All relationships, at some level, are transactional. They're fascinated with incentives. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I stopped reading reviews about my own movies. I read stuff about other people's movies. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

[I watch] Fincher, Spielberg, Cameron, McTiernan. Just people who are good at staging action. I like to know where I am. I don't like the kind of cutting where you don't know where you are. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

The key is, if you're not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well. — Steven Soderbergh

I like to know where I am. I don't like the kind of cutting where you don't know where you are. — Steven Soderbergh

American movie audiences now just don’t seem to be very interested in any kind of ambiguity or any kind of real complexity of character or narrative - I’m talking in large numbers, there are always some, but enough to make hits out of movies that have those qualities. I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I have a friend whose theory is that you're from wherever you went to high school. I think that's mostly true. — Steven Soderbergh

Well, it's 15 years since Sex, Lies And Videotape, and if you hang around long enough you're having the same arguments with just a new set of people every few years and it gets boring. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die - if you are found wanting over a period of time, you've either got to change what you're doing or find something else to do. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

Anytime you've got something that can take you into the political realm then you've opened up the conversation a lot. — Steven Soderbergh

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. — Steven Soderbergh

I'm still very affected and moved by their music - maybe in a way that's different from someone who grew up around it. — Steven Soderbergh

A movie is something you see, cinema is something that’s made. — Steven Soderbergh

I just find it annoying that in these sequences [of the fight scenes], traditionally, there's music trying to pump you up. I don't like that, personally, as an audience member. This just reflects my taste. — Steven Soderbergh

I've tried to get better about weighing what I think the accessibility of an idea is against the cost of executing it. I've tried to be smarter about that, because if you're not smart about that, you're going to be unemployed. But I'm still mystified about what works for people. And I'm not talking about my movies, I'm talking in general. I'm mystified by the stuff that doesn't work. I'm mystified by what's going on in the critical side, too. — Steven Soderbergh

Maybe I'll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that. — Steven Soderbergh

When you're sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can't. — Steven Soderbergh

Life Lessons by Steven Soderbergh

1. Steven Soderbergh has taught us that hard work and dedication will always pay off, as he has achieved success in a wide range of genres and mediums.
2. He has also shown us the importance of taking risks and pushing boundaries, as he has consistently sought out new and innovative ways to tell stories.
3. Lastly, he has demonstrated the power of collaboration, as many of his greatest works have been the result of working with a talented team of actors, writers, and technicians.