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Traffic Director Soderbergh Talks Drugs While the subject of drugs has been a constant in interviews for Steven Soderbergh's highly praised "war on drugs" drama, Traffic, the film's Berlin press conference was the first time the filmmaker had been asked to talk about his own personal experiences. When asked what drugs he had done - and if the crew was on anything while
making the multiple-story-line drama - an unfazed Soderbergh responded,
"I'll answer if you do." Soderbergh's comments followed last week's revelation in a New York Times interview by the film's Golden Globe-winning screenwriter, Stephen Gaghan, who for the first time went public with his own past history as a heroin addict. Gaghan talked about how it had not only affected his writing of Traffic, but also his creation of the character of Michael Douglas' daughter (played by Erika Christensen), who quickly descends from being the top student in her high school to being a junkie prostitute. Asked if he knew about Gaghan's history when they were collaborating on the script, Soderbergh said, "In the course of working with the screenplay, it was something he discussed, but only in the context of how to develop her character and how to make the point that achievers are as prone to this problem as anybody else. I think we were trying to show it was an issue that cut across all class and economic lines. We talked about his history, but only as to how it would relate to the screenplay." With Erin Brockovich and Traffic, Soderbergh has managed that rare one-two punch of fielding consecutive smash hits. "The good news is, I'm able to work more quickly. If there's a project I have in mind, usually instead of spending months trying to convince somebody, now it's a matter of weeks," says the director, who's only the second director to receive two nominations in one year from the Directors Guild of America (Francis Ford Coppola did the same in 1974). This week, as a matter of fact, he starts filming his "pretty radical reimagining" of the 1960 Rat Pack classic Ocean’s Eleven, with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, and Don Cheadle. The Rat Pack reference was lost on the Berlin crowd until Soderbergh mentioned the pack members by name: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.
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