The genre Steven Soderbergh will never attempt: “I just don’t want to stand next to one”
It’s consternating to say which genre director Steven Soderbergh is famous for. His style is immediately recognizable—you can tell from a single shot that it’s him behind the scenes—but he hasn’t confined himself to a single taxonomic bracket in film. Heist films, thrillers, psychological or crime dramas are his specialty but he’s done screwball comedies and adrenalized action movies as well. But there are a few things he hasn’t, and claims he never will, attempt.
Soderbergh got his start with 1989’s Sex, Lies and Videotape where you can see his paranoic style of simulating a real-life panic attack starting to germinate. His films make you wish that you had a Xanax prescription; like you’re trying to run but getting your foot stuck in the mud. He had missteps along the way like 1991’s Kafka, starring Jeremy Irons as the infamous writer, even Soderbergh himself admits was a failure.
But since then, Soderbergh has enjoyed blockbuster success with the Oceans movies starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, remaking a 1960s Rat Pack movie about the dumbest and drunkest men to ever live trying to stage a robbery and failing. Soderbergh reimagined it as a high-stakes thriller with smirking dialogue—and made two sequels—all of which were more successful than their progenitor. And they didn’t have any dance numbers.
He directed Benicio del Toro as Che in the 2008 2-part biopic about Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentinian soldier and doctor most famous for his participation in the Cuban revolution. He did the Magic Mike movies, which dramatised the lives of male strippers and were funny and emotionally resonant when they didn’t have to be. You might know Soderbergh from Erin Brockovich, where Julia Roberts mainly gets mad at a gas and electricity company. That one got a handful of Oscars, fully solidifying Soderbergh’s reputation.
In recent memory, 2020’s No Sudden Move and 2022’s Kimi reminded everyone that he’s still an interesting director, capable of branching out into any form of cinema that interests him that year. It’s still recognizably Soderbergh in his shot composition, character writing and pulsating pace, but he’s working on gangster and horror movies now.
As much as this resume might suggest Soderbergh as an all-terrain director, he hasn’t done it all per se. There’s something he won’t do, something outside his repertoire. In an interview with Slant Magazine when asked if there was a “movie genre [he] wouldn’t attempt”, he replied “Western. I don’t like horses. I mean, I think they’re beautiful, I just don’t want to stand next to one.” And whether he’s being tongue-in-cheek is up for debate. But there are many, many stories about directors, actors and production teams finding horses impossible to manage on film sets.
The western is a pluralistic genre, with films ranging from the lowest of brows to the heights of cinema. It’s a pulp genre, so you could see Soderbergh elevating gunslinger roles beyond their modest formal constrictions—because that’s what he does—but he’s not interested. Blame the horses.
