Steven Soderbergh’s new film “Contagion” depicts a scenario where a deadly virus breaks out across the globe, inspiring fear and paranoia among even close friends and relatives. In spite of the film’s portrayal of the threat, which is as deadly as it is invisible as it is ubiquitous, several of the members of the cast and crew, including Soderbergh, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Ehle, and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns seemed unafraid to sit down next to one another at a recent Los Angeles press day. That said, Soderbergh admitted that he was more conscious of the potential threat of germs having made a film about their imminent danger.
“I don’t know if my behavior has changed, but I’m just really aware of it now,” Soderbergh said. “I’m aware of the fact that all of you have touched all of these recorders that are in front of us, and somebody set up this microphone. That I was handed some lip balm by one of the makeup people, which I took a Kleenex and cleaned off, but who knows if that worked. So don’t get near my mouth. It was fun during the preview to watch the lights come up and four hundred people realize that they’re next to a bunch of strangers and that they’ve touched everything. You could tell they weren’t happy.”
Soderbergh’s developing germophobia was but one of the subjects he and the cast discussed at the press day for “Contagion.” Meanwhile, check out our review from the Venice Film Festival this past weekend.
Steven Soderbergh: Gwyneth is a trooper, we got into that room and we had an actual medical examiner there who does this sort of thing all the time. We asked her to walk us through the steps in which someone has died under these circumstances. And when she got to the part where she said, ‘Well, we cut here and we peel the skin over the front of the face,’ I immediately turned to Greg and said, ‘Okay, we need to find a flap of something that looks like pizza up on one end without the sauce, that we could attach some wig hair to so that we could do this.’ And so we scrambled around and we found we were able to do that. And while it took about forty minutes of having Gwyneth in that position, Greg actually ended up being the person who put the skin flap over. And she was stalk still and didn’t say a word.
She asked the medical examiner, ‘Talk to me about the rest of my face. What about my mouth?’ And the women said, ‘Okay, your tongue would be extruded just a little bit.’ She said, ‘You’ll have some sort of yellowish fluid coming out of your nose.’ And she wanted it to be exactly right. I think she had a feeling this was going to be some sort of weird iconic image somehow. There were no tricks there, no freeze frame, no high speed frame rate. That was just her being stalk still with some really good effects.
You cast Jennifer Ehle because of her performance in Michael Clayton (which in the end was cut). What did you see in that that made you want to cast her?
Steven Soderbergh: That was an amazing performance and so… that sounds horrible, I had known who Jennifer was for a long time, and honestly this didn’t take a lot of thought. I have a long, somewhat long, list of people that I’ve seen in the course of my career and thought, ‘Wow, they would be great to work with.’ And I did know from Tony Gilroy that they had really good experience and I wasn’t in any danger. So I’m just glad that worked out, and of course now she’s re-teamed with George Clooney in ‘The Ides of March,’ so it’s all happening this year.
Was there something that made her right for that role in particular?
Steven Soderbergh: I knew that by her saying yes she was willing to take a run at some very complex language. I mean, one of the most difficult scenes in terms of the language in the movie is the explanation and when she says, ‘Okay, we know what it is now. The green part is this. The red is that,’ Scott had written it in sort of general terms and then Dr Ian Lipkin was on the set and we wrote it right there. It’s not really fair to throw dialogue like that at someone at the last minute. I was hoping the fear of having to say it would translate as excitement and the high emotional stakes for the world, because it was a lot. It’s hard, It looked hard.
Jennifer Ehle: Well, I just have to say ’Contagion’ came out of the blue for me. I usually have to audition and sort of jump through hoops and I didn’t for this. It completely blew me away to be asked to do it, for somebody that I admire as much as Steven Soderbergh to have that kind of faith that I could do it. I also took it assuming that, the same way I took the part in ‘Michael Clayton,’ assuming that probably it would be cut, but that I would have a wonderful experience meanwhile doing it, and that didn’t happen this time.
Steven Andrew Soderbergh, born January 14, 1963 is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less conventional and commercialized works such as Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Schizopolis, Bubble, and Che.
Early life and career
Soderbergh was born in Atlanta, the son of Mary Ann (née Bernard) and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, who was a university administrator and educator. He is of Swedish ancestry (the family's original surname in Swedish, Söderberg, was changed to Soderbergh when they immigrated to the United States). When he was a child, his family moved from Atlanta to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father became Dean of Education at Louisiana State University (LSU). There he discovered filmmaking as a teenager, directing short Super 8 mm films with equipment borrowed from LSU students.
His primary high school education was at Louisiana State University Laboratory School, a K-12 school that is directed by the University. While still taking classes there around the age of fifteen, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16 mm films with secondhand equipment.
Career
Rise to prominence: Sex, Lies, and Videotape
It wasn't until Soderbergh came back to Baton Rouge that he conceived the idea for Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), which he wrote in eight days. The independent film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, became a worldwide commercial success and greatly contributed to the 1990s independent film revolution. At age 26, Soderbergh became the youngest director to win the festival's top award. Movie critic Roger Ebert dubbed Soderbergh the "poster boy of the Sundance generation".
1993 to 1998
Sex, Lies, and Videotape was followed by a series of low-budget box-office disappointments: Kafka, a biopic mixing fact and Kafka's own fiction (notably The Castle and The Trial), written by Lem Dobbs and starring Jeremy Irons as Franz Kafka; King of the Hill (1993), a critically acclaimed Depression-era drama; The Underneath (1995), a remake of Robert Siodmak's 1949 film noir Criss Cross; and Schizopolis (1996), a comedy which he starred in, wrote, composed, and shot as well as directed. He also directed the Spalding Gray monologue film Gray's Anatomy in 1996.
1999 and 2000
Soderbergh followed up on the success of Out of Sight by making another crime caper, The Limey (1999), from an original screenplay by Lem Dobbs and starring veteran actors Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda. The film was well-received, but not as much as Erin Brockovich (2000), written by Susannah Grant and starring Julia Roberts in her Oscar-winning role as a single mother taking on industry in a civil action. Later that year, Soderbergh released Traffic, a social drama written by Stephen Gaghan and featuring an ensemble cast.
2001 to 2007
Ocean's Eleven (2001), a remake from a Rat Pack-movie from 1960, featuring an all-star cast and flashy aesthetics, is Soderbergh's highest grossing movie to date, grossing more than $183 million domestically and more than $450 million worldwide. The film's star, George Clooney, subsequently appeared in Solaris (2002), marking the third time the two have headlined a film. In the same year, Soderbergh made Full Frontal which was shot mostly on digital video in an improvisional style that deliberately blurred the line between which actors were playing characters and which were playing fictionized versions of themselves. A film within a film, the title is a film industry reference to an actor or actress appearing fully nude (a.k.a., "full frontal nudity"). Also in 2002, Soderbergh was elected First Vice President of the Directors Guild of America.
Following up Full Frontal stylistically was Soderbergh next project, K Street (2003), a ten-part political HBO series he co-produced with Clooney.
Latest work
In 2006, Soderbergh raised eyebrows with Bubble, a $1.6 million film featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors. It opened in selected theaters and HDNet simultaneously, and four days later on DVD. Industry heads were reportedly watching how the film performed, as its unusual release schedule could have implications for future feature films. Theater-owners, who at the time had been suffering from dropping attendance rates, did not welcome so-called "day-and-date" movies. National Association of Theatre Owners president and CEO John Fithian indirectly called the film's release model "the biggest threat to the viability of the cinema industry today." Soderbergh's response to such criticism: "I don't think it's going to destroy the movie-going experience any more than the ability to get takeout has destroyed the restaurant business." The film did poor business both at the box office and on the home video market. Nevertheless, Soderbergh is on contract to deliver five more day-and-date movies. In fall of 2006 he contributed a mini-essay on hotel pornography, along with an accompanying series of long-exposure photographs, to Anthem magazine's November/December issue.
His next directing effort was to be a 3-D live-action rock musical film based on Cleopatra's life entitled "Cleo", with Catherine Zeta-Jones in talks to play Cleopatra, and with music by the band Guided by Voices. Soderbergh and scriptwriter James Greer were said to be rewritting the lyrics of the songs to fit the story. Hugh Jackman was approached to play Mark Antony but withdrew. However, Soderbergh is no longer pursuing this film.
In 2009, Soderbergh directed a play titled Tot-Mom for the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney, Australia. The play is based on the real-life case of Caylee Anthony. Rehearsals commenced in early November 2009, and the production opened December 2009. Soderbergh also shot a small improvised film with the cast of the play, The Last Time I Saw Michael Gregg, a comedy about a theatre company staging Chekhov's Three Sisters. His next film is the virus thriller Contagion, which is based on a screenplay written by Scott Z. Burns.
On March 11, 2011, Soderbergh announced on the National Public Radio program Studio 360 that he would be retiring from the film industry after finishing production on the Matt Damon and Michael Douglas biopic Liberace and the George Clooney film The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He stated that "when you reach the point where you're saying, 'If I have to get into a van to do another scout, I'm just going to shoot myself,' it's time to let somebody who's still excited about getting in the van, get the van."[33] Soderbergh later confirmed that he would retire from filmmaking and begin to explore painting.[34]
[edit]Directorial style and collaborations
Soderbergh frequently works with actors on more than one occasion. The following is a list of notable collaborators (in order of first film appearance):
Peter Gallagher (sex, lies, and videotape and The Underneath)
Ron Vawter (sex, lies, and videotape and King of The Hill)
Jeroen Krabbe (Kafka, King of the Hill and Ocean's Twelve)
Spaulding Gray (King of the Hill, Gray's Anatomy and And Everything is Going Fine)
Eddie Jemison (Schizopolis, Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, and The Informant!)
Don Cheadle (Out of Sight, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen)
George Clooney (Out of Sight, Ocean's Eleven, Solaris, Ocean's Twelve, The Good German, Ocean's Thirteen and The Man from U.N.C.L.E)
Viola Davis (Out of Sight, Traffic and Solaris)
Luis Guzmán (Out of Sight, The Limey, and Traffic)
Catherine Keener (Out of Sight and Full Frontal)
Terrence Stamp (The Limey and Full Frontal)
Albert Finney (Erin Brokovich, Traffic and Ocean's Twelve)
Julia Roberts (Erin Brokovich, Ocean's Eleven, Full Frontal and Ocean's Twelve)
Michael Douglas (Traffic, Haywire and Liberace)
Topher Grace (Traffic, Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve)
Benicio del Toro (Traffic and Che)
Catherine Zeta-Jones (Traffic and Ocean's Twelve)
Matt Damon (Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Che Part 2: Guerrilla, The Informant!, Contagion and Liberace)
Elliott Gould (Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen and Contagion)
Brad Pitt (Ocean's Eleven, Full Frontal, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen)
Channing Tatum (Haywire and Magic Mike)
"I've always gotten along with them," says Soderbergh of actors, "I try and make sure they're OK, and when they're in the zone, I leave them alone. I don't get in their way." His non-intrusive directorial style has attracted repeat performances by many high-profile movie stars.[35] Julia Roberts had supporting roles in Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, and Full Frontal, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her lead in Erin Brockovich. Benicio del Toro, who also won an Academy Award for his work in a Soderbergh film (Traffic), later starred in Guerrilla and The Argentine. Catherine Zeta-Jones won a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Helena in Traffic (2000) and reteamed with him for box-office hit Ocean's Twelve (2004). They're currently working together for the musical Cleo (2011), with Zeta-Jones in the title role. But the actor who played the leading role in no fewer than six of his films is George Clooney, with whom he co-owns the film production company, Section Eight Productions. Section Eight produced the critical hits Far From Heaven, Insomnia, and Syriana as well as the Clooney-directed films Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck.
Soderbergh often acts as his own director of photography under the alias of Peter Andrews and occasionally as his own editor under the alias of Mary Ann Bernard. While shooting Traffic, Soderbergh wanted a credit of "Photographed and Directed by". The Writer's Guild (WGA) wouldn't allow another credit ahead of the writer. Because Soderbergh didn't want his name used more than once, he adopted a pseudonym, Peter Andrews, his father's first and middle names.
Soderbergh often utilizes Cliff Martinez to construct/compose the soundtracks to his movies, and when not cutting his own films, he relies on editor Stephen Mirrione.
[edit]Aesthetics
Soderbergh has made big-budget Hollywood films as well as art-house independent films; works with above-the-title movie stars and unknowns; directs adaptations and original material, both of which written by himself as well as other screenwriters.[36] His versatility is also apparent with the genres which he chooses to film and his trades as a filmmaker behind the scenes. Traffic screenwriter and Syriana director Stephen Gaghan named Soderbergh "the Michael Jordan of filmmaking" for his ability to assume so many distinct roles in film production.
Soderbergh has, nonetheless, been dubbed a stylistic chameleon by Anne Thompson of Premiere Magazine. Drew Morton has extensively researched Soderbergh and has tied him to a modern movement much like the French New Wave.
Soderbergh also has a track record of honorable contributions in the cinematic arts; when the papers of Terry Southern were potentially in limbo following his untimely death in 1995, Soderbergh purchased and then donated the papers to the New York Public Library. Naqoyqatsi, the final chapter of the Qatsi trilogy, was completed after a delay of more than 10 years, only after Soderbergh stepped in to provide the necessary funding.
Views
Soderbergh is not a fan of possessory credits, and prefers not to have his name front and center at the start of a film. "The fact that I'm not an identifiable brand is very freeing," says Soderbergh, "because people get tired of brands and they switch brands. I've never had a desire to be out in front of anything, which is why I don't take a possessory credit.
On Monday, April 5, 2009, Soderbergh appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, and "cited the French initiative in asking lawmakers to deputize the American film industry to pursue copyright pirates", indicating he supports anti-piracy laws and internet regulation.
Personal life
Soderbergh is married to writer/journalist Jules Asner whom he often credits for influencing his female characters. Soderbergh claims he no longer reads reviews of his movies. "After Traffic I just stopped completely", says the director. "After winning the LA and New York film critics awards, I really felt like, this can only get worse". Stephen has a daughter, Sarah Soderbergh with his first wife, Betsy Brantley. He also has a daughter, Pearl Button Anderson, born August 2010, from an extramarital affair with Australian Frances Anderson.
Soderbergh, lives in New York City. He is an atheist. Soderbergh is also an avid fan of Austin musician Jon Dishon.
Filmography
Director
2000 Erin Brockovich 5 (incl. Best Director) 1
Traffic 5 (incl. Best Director) 4 (incl. Best Director)
2001 Ocean's Eleven
2002 Full Frontal
Solaris
2004 Ocean's Twelve
2005 Bubble
2006 The Good German 1
2007 Ocean's Thirteen
2008 Che
2009 The Girlfriend Experience
The Informant!
2010 And Everything is Going Fine
2011 Contagion
2012 Haywire
Screenwriter
1995: The Underneath as Sam Lowry
1996: Schizopolis
1997: Nightwatch
2002: Solaris
2004: Eros – the segment "Equilibrium"
Cinematographer
1996: Schizopolis
2000: Traffic – as Peter Andrews
2001: Ocean's Eleven – as Peter Andrews
2002: Full Frontal – as Peter Andrews
2002: Solaris – as Peter Andrews
2004: Ocean's Twelve – as Peter Andrews
2004: Eros – the segment "Equilibrium"
2006: Bubble – as Peter Andrews
2006: The Good German – as Peter Andrews
2007: Ocean's Thirteen – as Peter Andrews
2008: Che – as Peter Andrews
2009: The Girlfriend Experience – as Peter Andrews
2009: The Informant! – as Peter Andrews
2011: Haywire - as Peter Andrews
Jennifer Ehle, born December 29, 1969 is a British-American actress of stage and screen. She is known for her BAFTA winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice.
Early life
Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to English actress Rosemary Harris and American author John Ehle, Ehle made her stage debut as a toddler in a 1973 Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which her mother played Blanche Dubois.[citation needed] She spent her childhood between the UK and US, attending 18 different schools including the Interlochen Arts Academy. Her drama training was split between the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Career
In 1992, Peter Hall cast her as Calypso in a television adaptation of Mary Wesley's novel The Camomile Lawn, in which she and her mother played the same character at different ages. This story, produced by UK's Channel 4, was a five part miniseries about the lives and loves of a family of cousins from 1939 to the present. The two would later reprise this different age portrayal of a character as Valerie in István Szabó's 1999 movie Sunshine.
Her performance as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC/A&E Network 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice gained her a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award. After a stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she gained her first major feature film role in Paradise Road. She continued pursuing a career both on stage and screen. In 2000, she earned further critical acclaim for her Broadway debut as Annie in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing; winning both a Theatre World Award and the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. Her mother was also nominated for the same award that year for Waiting in the Wings. After a hiatus, she returned to the stage in 2005 in The Philadelphia Story at the Old Vic opposite Kevin Spacey. The following year, she played Lady Macbeth in Macbeth as part of the Shakespeare in the Park. She won her second Tony award for portraying three characters in Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia triptych, which ran from October 2006 until May 2007.
Her more recent film work includes Before the Rains, an Indian-US co-production directed by Santosh Sivan, and Pride and Glory with Edward Norton and Colin Farrell. In 2008, she was featured in a CBS telefilm, The Russell Girl.
In 2010, Ehle starred alongside John Lithgow in the production of Mr. & Mrs. Fitch presented by Second Stage Theatre.[6] She played Myrtle Logue, wife of King George VI's speech therapist Lionel Logue, in The King's Speech. George VI was played by her Pride and Prejudice co-star, Colin Firth.
Personal life
During the filming of Pride and Prejudice, Ehle began a brief relationship with co-star Colin Firth. She married writer Michael Ryan in December 2001 and they have two children, a son, George, and a daughter, Talulah.
Awards and nominations
Awards
2000: Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play – The Real Thing (play)
2000: Variety Club Award – The Real Thing (play)
2001: Golden Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Drama – Sunshine
2007: Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play – The Coast of Utopia (play)
2010: Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture – The King's Speech
Nominations
1997: BAFTA Film Award – Wilde
2000: Outer Critics Circle Award – The Real Thing (play)
2000: Genie Award nomination – Sunshine
2000: Laurence Olivier Theatre Award – The Real Thing (play)
2007: Outer Critics Circle – The Coast of Utopia (play)
Work
Filmography
The Ides of March (2011)
Contagion (2011) as Ally Hextall
The Adjustment Bureau (2011) as Brooklyn Ice House Bartender
The King's Speech (2010) as Myrtle Logue
Pride and Glory (2008) as Abby Tierney
The Russell Girl (2008) as Lorraine Morrissey
This Year's Love (1999) as Sophie
Bedrooms and Hallways (1998) as Sally
Paradise Road (1997) as Rosemary Leighton-Jones
Wilde (1997) as Constance Lloyd Wilde
Backbeat (1994) as Cynthia Powell
[edit]Television
A Gifted Man (2011) as Anna Lindberg
Melissa (1997) as Melissa
Pride and Prejudice (1995) as Elizabeth Bennet
The Camomile Lawn (1992) as Young Calypso
Theatre
Mr. and Mrs. Fitch (January 2010-April 2010) Second Stage Theatre
The Coast of Utopia (November 2006-May 2007) Vivian Beaumont Theater
Voyage- Liubov Bakunin (opened November 2006)
Shipwrecked- Natalie Herzen (opened December 2006)
Salvage- Malwida von Meysenbug (opened February 2007)
Macbeth (June 2006) Delacorte Theater,Shakespeare in the Park- Lady Macbeth
The Philadelphia Story (May 3-July 23, 2005) Old Vic - Tracy Lord
Design for Livin (February 2001) American Airlines Theatre/Roundabout Theatre Company - Gilda
Richard III (1995–96) Royal Shakespeare Company - Lady Anne
Painter of Dishonour (1995–96) Royal Shakespeare Company - Serafina
The Relapse (1995–96) Royal Shakespeare Company - Amanda
Breaking the Code (1992) Triumph Productions tour - Pat Green
Tartuffe (1991) Peter Hall Company - Elmire
1959 Pink Thunderbird Edinburgh Festival
Laundry and Bourbon Edinburgh Festival
