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.
— Steven Soderbergh
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 came out of 'Che' a different filmmaker.
The reverberation of the freedom of making 'Schizopolis' absolutely resulted in 'Out of Sight' and everything that followed.
I'm trying to develop an approach to putting out a movie in wide release that makes some kind of economic sense for the filmmakers and the people that have a participation in the movie.
There's something really fun about watching people really good at something.
All I care about is the story and telling the story. I don't care how people ingest it.
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.
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 The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.
When things go right it's hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it's really easy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.
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.
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.
It's really easy to make a movie that five people understand. It's really hard to make something that a lot of people understand and yet is not obvious, still has subtlety and ambiguity, and leaves you with something to do as a viewer.
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.
You don't go make 'Schizopolis' if you're trying to protect some idea of yourself as a filmmaker.
When people say that moviegoing is dead, I go, 'OK, so the makers of 'Get Out' should've sold that movie to a platform? Then they don't have this insane, crazy success theatrically all over the world.'
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.
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.
One of the reasons why I think virtual reality, as a narrative format, is never going to go beyond the short-form immersion space is because the bedrock of visual storytelling is the reverse angle. If you can't look into the eyes of the protagonist, you cannot hold people's attention for more than 15 minutes.
I'm of the minority opinion that presidents should be given more power for less time.
I like to make all kinds of movies. I'd do 'Ocean's Thirteen' with the right script.
When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.
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.
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.
Maybe I'll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that.
In Full Frontal and K Street, I learned to take advantage of the mobility that digital provides.
I love caper films.
I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that's the most fun.
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.
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.
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.
The key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes.
Getting upset about Netflix, to me, is like getting upset about the weather. It's just something that's happening, and we have to decide what we feel about it.
'Logan Lucky' is an experiment. The problem that I think needs to be addressed is, what has happened to movies for grown-ups made by people who are still interested in the idea of cinema?
I try to focus on the stuff that I can control and let go of the other stuff.
I watch a lot of true crime on TV.
If you can find interesting ways to be clear, you're really onto something.
When you're sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can't.
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.
To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.
The key is, if you're not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.
Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it.
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.
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.
I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean's films.
