&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/28097?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Steven+Soderbergh%3A+%27I+need+a+break+to+recalibrate%27%3AArticle%3A1646655&amp;ch=From+the+Observer&amp;c3=Obs&amp;c4=Steven+Soderbergh+%28Film%29%2CFilm%2CFilm+industry+%28business%29%2CUS+politics&amp;c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CUS+Elections%2CFilm+Reviews&amp;c6=Jason+Solomons&amp;c7=11-Oct-16&amp;c8=1646655&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Interview%2CFeature&amp;c11=From+the+Observer&amp;c13=The+New+Review+Q+and+A+%28series%29&amp;c25=&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FFrom+the+Observer%2FSteven+Soderbergh&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;As Contagion, his all-star digital disaster film opens, the director talks politics, painting &ndash; and quitting the movie business&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has it been hard to make political films and satires from a liberal standpoint in America, yet also make cool blockbusters like the Ocean&#039;s films and your latest, &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Contagion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Liberal&quot; has become a dirty word in America. It&#039;s been demonised to a terrifying degree. That&#039;s the big problem with the left &ndash; they&#039;ve allowed this to happen, so they&#039;ve become just as frustrating as the right. How have they allowed the word &quot;liberal&quot; to become a pejorative? Progressive or liberal attitudes have changed the world for the better over the years, but now it&#039;s a label that can tar people and their ideas. It&#039;s an awful situation; it  means artists get smeared and dismissed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Art is about problem-solving and you need to be open-minded and have an imagination. So the movie business attracts these types, and now their films are being tarnished, even if it&#039;s the free-thinkers who always come up with the good shit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have US politics gone the same way?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Political conversation has gone through the floor. Right now, it&#039;s a scream-fest and attitudes shouldn&#039;t be this strident. It&#039;s all fear-based. This is not what the people who drew up the Constitution would have wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Contagion&lt;/em&gt; is based on fear, though?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sure, people in it are scared [of catching a deadly virus] but it isn&#039;t a metaphor. The virus at its heart is, you know, just a virus. It&#039;s not a zombie satire on consumerism or anything like that, nor a metaphor for man&#039;s folly, like &lt;em&gt;The Towering Inferno&lt;/em&gt; kind of is. It&#039;s just a deadly virus, and viruses don&#039;t have an ideology; you have an antagonist that can&#039;t speak and with whom you can&#039;t reason.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your film has eerie scenes of riots and looting which will chime with anyone who experienced the London riots.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I saw all that on the news and it&#039;s purely coincidence it&#039;s in &lt;em&gt;Contagion&lt;/em&gt;, which we obviously shot before the events happened. But I did want to convey the feeling that I get now all over the world that the fabric of society really is stretched thin. Behaviour has gotten totally irrational and it can spark off at any moment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did you like those 1970s disaster films, such as &lt;em&gt;The Towering Inferno&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Poseidon Adventure&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oh my god, I loved them. They&#039;re so grown-up compared with blockbusters now. Those films were for adults and the stars were in their 30s and 40s. No one at the studios was going: &quot;How are we gonna target the 16-year-old market?&quot; That culture wasn&#039;t endemic yet and so to go back and harp on about the 1970s movies is justified. They were carefree, not inhibited by fearing audiences would be turned off or bored, pretty free from product placement and all the tiresome crap we have to deal with now in every single meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you bored with making movies?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I still feel like I did when I was 17 &ndash; that&#039;s the age when you see the &quot;best thing you&#039;ve ever seen&quot;. So that&#039;s how I still make my movies, channelling the spirit of that teenager who was wide-eyed and blown away by what he was seeing for the first time, films such as &lt;em&gt;A Hard Day&#039;s Night&lt;/em&gt;. I can still feel the goosebumps I had the day I saw that film. It&#039;s so hard to get anything like that sanctioned now, that&#039;s what pisses me off. I&#039;m not bored, but I am frustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true you&#039;re giving up making films?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I need a break to recalibrate. It&#039;s actually nothing to do with the business, but I&#039;m hitting a wall of what I feel I&#039;m currently capable of. It&#039;s the tyranny of the narrative that I&#039;m finding an obstacle &ndash; trying to use cinema to the best of its ability, to tell stories in a way that no other art form can do. I just don&#039;t know what that is anymore, so I need a break.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I hear you&#039;re going to paint &ndash; I&#039;ve never seen your works&hellip;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nobody has. But I love doing them. I hope immersing myself in another art form will unwind and unblock something for me. It&#039;s not just painting, I&#039;ll do other visual media exploration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it difficult to pull yourself out of the film limelight?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not really &ndash; all I care about is making stuff and I&#039;m still going to be doing that. God, all I did was mention, drunkenly, to Matt Damon in a bar one night that I needed to reboot and stop making so many movies. Since he blurted that out, I&#039;m cast as a traitor to cinema. Business-wise, there are projects I&#039;ve started and I&#039;m going to finish those up, but yes, I&#039;ve been winding down, clearing the books.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#039;s been great turning down scripts. People say, &quot;can I send you scripts to read?&quot; and I say, &quot;no, sorry, I&#039;m not doing anything more now&quot;. I guess when I start to miss making films, maybe that&#039;s when I&#039;ll feel I&#039;m ready to step back in. Will they still let me back in? Huh. I&#039;ve not really thought about that, but if they don&#039;t, it&#039;ll be like starting again and I&#039;ll make films that are low-budget and under the radar and it&#039;ll be cool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You do your own cinematography and editing, but use different names. Why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cinematographers hate me. I&#039;ll never win an award from them, you know. I guess they feel I&#039;m taking a job away from them, but when a cinematographer becomes a director &ndash; and they always try it at least once &ndash; you don&#039;t hear of any directors protesting. My cameraman name is Peter Andrews, which are my dad&#039;s first and middle names, and I call my editor Mary Ann Bernard, which is my mum&#039;s maiden name. So it&#039;s kind of a shout out to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where did you grow up?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We moved around a lot, but mostly in the south, in Louisiana. My dad was a professor and was always getting promotions to new posts. He taught teachers and educators.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did he like your choice of career in cinema?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I got the bug from him, so he was thrilled for me. He died before I made the big commercial leap into &lt;em&gt;Out of Sight&lt;/em&gt;, but he saw me win the Palme d&#039;Or for &lt;em&gt;Sex, Lies, and Videotape&lt;/em&gt; at Cannes and that was a big deal for him. When he saw my picture on the front page of the &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; accepting the Palme d&#039;Or from Jane Fonda, I know his head was almost blown off with pride. I feel bad for people who aren&#039;t thrilled for others&#039; success. I just don&#039;t understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you Jewish?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am when it helps. No, actually, I&#039;m Swedish on my father&#039;s side and Italian on my mother&#039;s. I have a daughter who is 20 and she&#039;s much better adjusted than I was at her age. I just love seeing her getting hold of something that lights her up, you know, and I&#039;ve always told her she can do what she likes as long as she&#039;s as into it and turned on by it as I was about what I do. Or did.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/stevensoderbergh&quot;&gt;Steven Soderbergh&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/film-industry&quot;&gt;Film industry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-politics&quot;&gt;US politics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jasonsolomons&quot;&gt;Jason Solomons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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