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Karma pays off for Soderbergh Steven Soderbergh, perhaps the most European of U.S. filmmakers, hangs out in a limbo world of his own making. It is situated somewhere between art house cinema and Hollywood and is rarely reflected in the Top 10 box office. "Certainly, between Sex, Lies and Videotape and Out Of Sight, I wasn't setting any records at the box office," Soderbergh offers on a recent Toronto visit. "But I had a reputation for being a responsible, reasonable person and someone who dealt well with people - and that has paid off." He is referring specifically to his chance to make The Limey, an edgy thriller opening here tomorrow with Terence Stamp starring as a Cockney hitman investigating the suspicious death of his daughter in L.A. after her affair with Peter Fonda. It created a stir at the Toronto film fest last month. Soderbergh is also talking generally about making any of the films he wants to make, whether it was directing Kafka, King Of The Hill, The Underneath, Schizopolis and Gray's Anatomy or producing Pleasantville and The Daytrippers. "If I had been a titanic a--hole I don't think that any opportunity like this (The Limey) would have come up, because I would have fallen into the 'life's-too-short' category," Soderbergh tells me, grinning at the thought. The 36-year-old, Georgia-born, Louisiana-raised filmmaker is careful not to say: "The a--hole from Titanic." Director James Cameron has a reputation for being a megalomaniac. Titanic earned more than $1 billion worldwide. Jerks work in the movies, says Soderbergh, but not indefinitely. "As long as you are successful, people will tolerate that behaviour. When you're not, they're happy to get rid of you." Savvy Soderbergh knows his reputation is positive. "Maybe I'm talking about karma. Maybe it's that people know I'm not a chore or a horrorshow to work with. So my outlook and my method of working and my point of view has really paid off." The good karma was rewarded this time when a former executive at Universal Pictures, who worked with and respected Soderbergh at the studio, steered the script for The Limey to the director and helped him set up an indie production deal. Driven by character development "It was really one of those things that just fell together," says Soderbergh. As usual, the new movie is driven by character development, not by action, even though it's a thriller. The plot is layered and complex, the characters ambiguous. In his world, filmmakers have no excuse for making shallow movies because French director Jean-Luc Godard showed all filmmakers how to do it right, Soderbergh says. "There are more ideas in 10 minutes of Alphaville [Godard's 1965 sci-fi police thriller] than in all of 10 movies you could have seen in the past year - and it's inspiring. "But, first of all, you have to want to do it. I tend to like characters that are somewhat ambiguous and certainly complicated and have internal conflicts that are sometimes hard for an audience to reconcile. That seems like life to me.”
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