Life in the fast lane; Steven Soderbergh shot to prominence with Sex,

Fewer than three years ago, Steven Soderbergh was considered to be, in his own words, "that guy who missed the boat". Close to incredible, isn't it? After his superb 1989 debut Sex, Lies and Videotape won the Cannes Palme D'Or, that young, hot director cooled the hubbub surrounding him with a series of obscure arthouse movies (Kafka, King Of The Hill, The Underneath), some of which were critically acclaimed and all of which, he chuckles, "nobody saw". It took Out Of Sight in 1998 to bring him back to the multiplex and then to fill it, the lethal combination of worthy message and Julia Roberts' cleavage in Erin Brockovich.

Suddenly Soderbergh is once more the darling of audiences, critics and bankable actors. This last category are now queuing up to feature in his inventive, intelligent films. His new epic, Traffic, examines the American drug trade, the ongoing battles between government agents and dealers, and the traumas of those caught in the crossfire. Along with Gladiator, it has been nominated for five awards at next week's Golden Globes, the precursors to the Oscars; meanwhile, Soderbergh himself has both Erin Brockovich and Traffic in the best film category. Two out of five ain't bad.

However, many feel Soderbergh may be competing with himself if Traffic is Oscar-nominated alongside (the inferior, but more award- friendly) Erin Brockovich. A riveting ensemble piece, which stealthily avoids taking sides in the issue, it boasts among its cast newly-weds Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Benicio Del Toro, Don Cheadle and Dennis Quaid. Yet this line-up is dwarfed by the one diving into his next project, Ocean's Eleven. Loosely based on the kitsch 1960 Rat Pack vehicle directed by Lewis Milestone, it will draw on the celebrity talents of a host of Hollywood A-listers. So who's signed up? "As of today," says Soderbergh, "George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Alan Arkin, Don Cheadle, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Julia Roberts and Bernie Mac." Nobody famous then? "Nah," he replies, dead serious. "We're still trying to get some names."

Soderbergh, bespectacled, balding, but bristling with rude health, is playful and articulate, even though it's early in the day and he arrived in London from the USA well after midnight. Visiting the UK gives him a chance to see his daughter.

But clearly the pressure of being perhaps the world's most wanted director - again - is weighing on his shoulders. "My mind is elsewhere. I've been prepping Ocean's Eleven, and trying to write a screenplay for my remake of Tarkovsky's Solaris, for which I've been chased down the street in New York by sci-fi fans telling me I should be ashamed of myself. But Ocean's Eleven is going well - we start shooting first week in February. But it's terrifying too."

Like Clooney, who has gone on record about how poor the original is, Soderbergh is under no illusions that he and his team are re- making a classic.

"The original movie is not very good," he says. "It's a movie which is fondly remembered by all who haven't seen it. But this script is great. What's scary is it's physically very complicated, on a level I've never attempted before. I'm panicked. But I keep reminding myself I have a good script and cast, and I just need to keep my eye on the ball. Making this movie is already a very public process, which I'm not accustomed to. With this excess level of expectation, you end up busting your ass just so people aren't disappointed. Nobody's ever gonna say, 'Oh, what a great job you did'. They'll just go, 'Well if you didn't make something good out of that, you oughtta be shot'. So it's a lose-lose situation. You never win. You just don't lose. But that's fine."

But with a cast like that he shouldn't lose: so how did the film- maker become the sweetheart of Hollywood's A-list box office draws? "I think it's just a sad reflection on the fact that a lot of directors don't know what to do with actors. They don't know how to talk to them, or understand their process, or want to. So when word circulates that there's someone who's empathetic to what actors go through, you start getting good phone calls."

Neither did Traffic's sensitive subject matter frighten off any demographic-conscious stars. "The opposite," says Soderbergh. "Everybody was pleased to be involved. I mean, I don't want to make it sound like an 'education' movie - we set out to make a dramatic thriller - but it's one of those movies where every day we were talking about 'the subject'. Everybody 'knows somebody' who's been exposed to drugs.

"I always go on my gut about what I want to see. I like grey areas, and this subject seemed to me to be one gigantic grey area, where all the good guys have flaws and the bad guys are interesting, and not just assholes. That appeals to actors too."

Traffic is loosely based on the 1989 Channel Four mini-series Traffik, optioned by Soderbergh's producer friend Laura Bickford. "I was interested in doing a movie about drugs," says the director, "but not just about addicts. The issue's very much in the air now. The series gave me a spine to work with, though we introduced new stories."

In fact, there are so many stories in Traffic - the whole of human life is there - that "the first cut was way too long. It was a tough process figuring out what we could lose." Yet just about every side of every argument on drug laws is subtly, pacily presented. It's a broad yet packed canvas.

"Well that's what I was going for. It's a complicated issue. Nobody on either side wants to see kids throwing their lives away on drugs, not even the decriminalisation people. The problem in the States is that nobody will talk about it. We just had two presidential candidates who by all accounts used drugs when they were in college who wouldn't talk about it. Or even about their feelings. So we're filling up the jails with non-violent users. Putting them in the worst place you could put them, where they can just get more drugs."

Soderbergh's personal views on drugs lead him to believe the problem should be seen as a health-care rather than a criminal issue. "Do you lock up people that get hooked on aspirin? No. Alcoholics? No. Then what are we doing? I don't understand Jesus Christ, I just read 11 people died from Ecstasy in the UK in 2000. Well, about 400 people have been killed by Viagra in the States. I promise you - if Viagra was made in some street corner lab, and was called Mr Woody, it'd be illegal. Popular, but illegal. The whole thing's so arbitrary."

WHEN Soderbergh looks back at the highs and lows of his own 11 years in Hollywood, he thinks he's been "really fortunate".

"In that Sex, Lies and Videotape found an audience, as that bought me the opportunity to make mistakes. Young film-makers don't get that any more. I'd hate to be coming up now. You're expected to emerge full-blown, out-of-the-gate, or people are mean and dismissive."

As well as working on Ocean's Eleven and Solaris, the crafty, cerebral-but-cool chameleon is even writing Son Of Schizopolis (a sequel to his 1998 abstract, comprehensively ignored, slice of surrealism), "which I know everybody wants to see".

"The best time of all is working on a new draft, because then it's all potential. That's the most fun. Then sometimes it turns out worse than you hoped, and sometimes better if, say, an actor does something you'd never have thought of, and you luckily have the camera turning. So it balances."

There is, however, one genre the director would never turn his hand to. "I was never a big Western guy. I doubt I'd ever do a Western. I like something psychological, pressurised. At least, it'd have to be a pretty weird Western."

He ponders a second. "You never know though, I don't have any rules."

Traffic is released on January 26 catch up Sex, Lies And Videotape catapulted Steven Soderbergh to fame in 1989 - the director then confounded critics for nine years with a succession of obscure, arthouse films. He returned to prominence with 1998's Out Of Sight, then Erin Brockovich and Traffic, which have both been nominated for awards at next week's Golden Globe awards.

Copyright 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.