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While all Fame Audits are primarily designed to assess someone's fame at a particular moment in time, some audits have a secondary agenda. For example, when we declare that Giancarlo Esposito is less famous than he should be, it's partly in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will start casting him in movies. And when we declare that Whoopi Goldberg is much more famous than she should be, it's mostly in the hopes that everyone, everywhere, will stop casting her in movies. And sometimes -- well, okay, this time -- we declare someone just as famous as he should be, the celebrity equivalent of the third pot of porridge, largely in the hopes that we can freeze him in amber to ensure that everything that is good about him isn't corrupted by his escalating renown.
That said, everything that I personally know about Steven Soderbergh (which, admittedly, is not very much; it's not like we're next-door neighbours or anything) suggests that he has a good head on his shoulders and that none of us should be worried. We should simply be happy that, after a decade and in a most improbable manner, he's finally getting the kind of recognition we felt he always deserved.
You see, I've been a big fan of Mr. Soderbergh ever since his breakout film, 1989's sex, lies, and videotape, which, I felt, did a much better job of dissecting the relationship between emotional dislocation and technology than any of the later, noisier, similarly-intentioned efforts like, say, Strange Days. I was also quite taken with Soderbergh's diary of the s, l & v experience, which was published along with the film's screenplay and which, unlike most filmmaker's diaries, is open and earnest and insightful and actually traces his strange ride from complete unknown to Palm D'Or-winning wunderkind. I liked it so much, in fact, that I've seen pretty much every single one of his movies since, with the exception of Gray's Anatomy. I even stood in line for passes to an advance screening of The Underneath, not realizing at the time that the people in the queue would constitute a full 21% of the film's national theatrical audience. (I should also admit that I fell asleep while watching Schizopolis on video; I was tired, I'm sorry, and I swear I'll rent it again to give it another chance.)
While Soderbergh seemed to lose his way a bit after the media storm around sex, lies, his films have been consistently engaging and thoughtful, if, at times, langorously paced. So no one was happier than I with the spate of "guess who's back?" articles that greeted the release of Out of Sight, a really fine piece of Hollywood entertainment with a lot of ingenious touches. When he followed it up with The Limey and then Erin Brockovich, it appeared that, a decade after his splashy breakthrough, Soderbergh had finally figured out a way to co-exist with Hollywood: alternate his own inspired visions with solid, if mainstream, crowd-pleasing fare.
Great, good, everybody's happy. Except for that fact that, thanks to his dual Best Director nominations and surprising Oscar win, now everyone in America knows the name "Steven Soderbergh." Which means that he's become a Name-Brand Director, like Steven Spielberg or Ron Howard or Oliver Stone. And in case you haven't noticed, they don't usually let Name-Brand Directors make small, inspired visions, let alone something whacked-out like Schizopolis. Couple all this with the fact that, thanks to his well-deserved reputation as an actor's director -- two of the four main acting Oscars went to Soderbergh-directed roles -- now every warm body in Hollywood wants to be in his next film.
We're all for remakes of Rat-Pack classics, and we have no doubt that Ocean's Eleven will be first-class, high-gloss Hollywood fun. But is Steven Soderbergh ever going to get to make another Limey, and, if so, will it have to star Sean Connery and Penélope Cruz? Success and fame in Hollywood are supposed to bring increased freedom and clout, but sometimes the opposite is true. Of course, the good news is that Soderbergh's ridden this merry-go-round once already, and come out intact. And we're happy to see him get all the fame he deserves. But we think it's best to turn off the fame taps right now -- partly for his sake, but mostly for ours.
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