Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich) Erin Brockovich (2000)
Steven Soderbergh (born January 14, 1963, Atlanta, Georgia) directed Erin Brockovich (2000). He was thirty-six when he started shooting it and thirty-eight when he won the Academy Award for Best Director — for Traffic, the other film he made the same year. (wikipedia, imdb)
Soderbergh treated Erin Brockovich as the third leg of a deliberate stylistic reinvention
By 1999, Soderbergh had reset his career twice. sex, lies, and videotape (1989) had won the Palme d'Or when he was twenty-six and made him the face of American independent film. The next eight years — Kafka, King of the Hill, The Underneath, Schizopolis, Gray's Anatomy — had been a slow commercial decline. Out of Sight (1998) and The Limey (1999) were the rebound: stylistically dazzling, temporally fractured, critically beloved. Erin Brockovich was the third move — the studio picture that hides its style entirely.
"I'm going to shoot this like a Ken Loach film, really naturalistic." — Steven Soderbergh (via producer Stacey Sher), Hollywood Reporter (2020)
"It's rare to find human-sized heroes, and I was just captivated by her and her relationship with Ed and the fact that it was a story about people who made certain sacrifices and stood on certain principles without being a screed." — Steven Soderbergh, Wikipedia — Erin Brockovich (film) (2000)
Ken Loach himself visited the set in Los Angeles while Roberts was filming. Loach was preparing to shoot Bread and Roses in the same city. Soderbergh later described his completed film as "an aggressively linear reality-based drama about a twice-married mother of three living at a very low income level." (bfi sight and sound)
In 2000 Soderbergh became the third director ever nominated for two Best Director Oscars in the same year
The previous directors were Michael Curtiz (1938) and Steven Spielberg (1972). Soderbergh was nominated for both Erin Brockovich and Traffic at the 73rd Academy Awards. He won for Traffic. Erin Brockovich was the more conventional film and the bigger commercial hit; Traffic was the more formally adventurous one and the awards favorite. Both films had Julia Roberts (in Brockovich) and Benicio del Toro (in Traffic) at their center, both used cinematography as a structural device, and both were anchored by a director who had decided to make every shot serve the story's argument rather than its surface. (wikipedia, hollywood reporter)
"He has the soul of an artist and the brain of a businessman." — George Clooney (frequent collaborator), Vanity Fair (2013)
Soderbergh shot Erin Brockovich himself under his "Peter Andrews" pseudonym — but only on second unit here
Soderbergh has shot most of his own films since Traffic under the pseudonym Peter Andrews (his father's first and middle names). On Erin Brockovich, the credited cinematographer was Ed Lachman, with whom Soderbergh had worked before; Soderbergh handled some second-unit work himself. The naturalistic, available-light approach was a collaborative effort to make a $52 million studio picture feel like an independent film. (hollywood reporter)
Soderbergh's filmography is the broadest of any major American director of his generation
| Year | Film | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1989 | sex, lies, and videotape | Palme d'Or; Sundance breakthrough |
| 1991 | Kafka | Period drama; commercial failure |
| 1993 | King of the Hill | Depression-era boy's-eye-view |
| 1995 | The Underneath | Noir remake; Soderbergh disowned it |
| 1996 | Schizopolis | Self-financed experimental |
| 1998 | Out of Sight | Elmore Leonard adaptation; Clooney/Lopez |
| 1999 | The Limey | Terence Stamp; fractured timeline |
| 2000 | Erin Brockovich | Best Director nomination |
| 2000 | Traffic | Won Best Director |
| 2001 | Ocean's Eleven | Star vehicle; commercial reset |
| 2002 | Solaris | Tarkovsky remake |
| 2004 | Ocean's Twelve | Sequel |
| 2005 | Bubble | Day-and-date streaming experiment |
| 2007 | Ocean's Thirteen | Sequel |
| 2008 | Che (Parts One and Two) | Four-hour Cuban epic |
| 2009 | The Informant! | Damon comedy |
| 2011 | Contagion | Pandemic thriller (rediscovered 2020) |
| 2012 | Magic Mike | Channing Tatum |
| 2013 | Side Effects | "Retirement" feature |
| 2017 | Logan Lucky | Heist comedy |
| 2018 | Unsane | Shot entirely on iPhone |
| 2019 | The Laundromat | Panama Papers |
| 2021 | No Sudden Move | HBO Max ensemble |
| 2022 | Kimi | Surveillance thriller |
| 2023 | Magic Mike's Last Dance | Tatum trilogy closer |
| 2025 | Black Bag / Presence | Two films again |
Soderbergh announced retirement in 2013 and returned in 2017. He has never stopped making two or three films a year, often shooting and editing himself, and his career has alternated between studio pictures (Ocean's, Contagion) and formal experiments (Bubble, Unsane, Presence) without losing momentum on either side.
Soderbergh's approach to Erin Brockovich was structural, not stylistic
What distinguishes Erin Brockovich in the Soderbergh filmography is the absence of formal calling cards. There is no split-screen, no temporal scrambling, no color-coded sequences. The camera follows Roberts. The score, by Thomas Newman, is restrained. The cuts are conventional. Every choice is in service of keeping the audience inside Erin's perspective for two hours. The film's argument — that personal connection is the weapon no institution can replicate — is reinforced by a directorial method that effaces the director.
"I'm always trying to figure out what's the most efficient way to tell this story." — Steven Soderbergh, Filmmaker Magazine (book/general)