Steven Soderbergh

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

“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.”

“A lot of people get very misty-eyed about celluloid. When I think of the time that's wasted in sending it back to the lab and having it developed and brought back, it would make me insane. I love getting my hands on the stuff immediately. That doesn't work for everybody. It just works for me.”

“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.”

“You don't go make 'Schizopolis' if you're trying to protect some idea of yourself as a filmmaker.”

“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.”

“I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean's films.”

“In Full Frontal and K Street, I learned to take advantage of the mobility that digital provides.”

“When things go right it's hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it's really easy.”

“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 The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.”

“After making a lot more films, I realized that the movie and TV business is, for all its inefficiencies, one of the best-run big businesses we have.”

“מאט הוא שחקן מלא קסם ואופטימיות, שיודע להיטמע בתוך הדמות ולהיות אמין, הוא שחקן שרוצה להרחיב את תחום ההתנסויות שלו ככזה, וצריך לתת לו קרדיט על כך. בניגוד לשחקנים אחרים החוששים לדימוי ולמעמד שלהם, הוא לא מפחד לקחת סיכונים. מאט הוא חסר מנוחה מבחינה אינטלקטואלית ומפחד להיתקע, לכן הוא מחפש כל הזמן אתגרים.”

“במשך שנים אני שומע איך אנשים כותבים לאנשי התעשייה ומתלוננים שכל הסרטים מלאים באלימות, סקס וניבולי פה, ואיך אין סרטים שמדברים אל האדם הפשוט שרוצה לקחת את כל המשפחה שלו לקולנוע מבלי לחשוש ממה שיראה על המסך. אני מהדרום והבנתי על מה הם מדברים.”

“אם אתה מחפש הוגנות, אתה ביקום הלא נכון.”

“All I care about is the story and telling the story. I don't care how people ingest it.”

“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.”

“I try to focus on the stuff that I can control and let go of the other stuff.”

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

“I'm a big believer in volume. If I made three times as many movies as Stanley Kubrick, that must mean I'm three times as good.”

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