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ABOUT
THE PRODUCTION
 Director
Steven Soderbergh's creative impulses, most recently on display
in the blockbuster "Ocean's Eleven" and the independent
comedy "Full Frontal," had not yet led him to the realm
of science fiction. "I hadn't ever come near sci fi before,
mostly because the hardware aspects of the genre don't really interest
me," he explains. "I'm not interested in making a film
about what technology is going to be like a few decades from now."
The
road to Soderbergh taking on his first science-fiction project began
when a Twentieth Century Fox executive asked the director if he
was interested in the genre. Soderbergh's less than enthusiastic
response led to the executive querying him about the kind of science-fiction
project that could entice him. "I said, 'Solaris,' which I'd
seen a long time ago and then read the novel," Soderbergh remembers.
As
fate would have it, Lightstorm Entertainment, which has a deal at
Fox, held the rights to the seminal works. Lightstorm's James Cameron,
Rae Sanchini and Jon Landau had spent five years securing deals
with both the author and the Russian governmental organization Mosfilm,
which owns the 1972 Russian film based on the novel, directed by
Andrei Tarkovsky.
For
James Cameron, turning Solaris into a film was a dream project.
Cameron had seen Andrei Tarkovsky's film, finding much to admire
in its imagery and ideas. Stanislaw Lem's novel intrigued him even
more. "It had a whole other dimension," notes Cameron.
"It's a very personal story. Much of it takes place in the
mind and in the memory, so you could find many different ways to
interpret it."
Cameron
was thrilled when Soderbergh expressed interest in directing SOLARIS.
"It was like a godsend when we heard that Steven wanted to
make this film," Cameron says. "I knew he could take this
material and turn it into a film that people could talk about for
a long time after they've seen it, because there are some fascinating
ambiguities. Steven could give audiences lots of handles to grab
onto, to become involved in.
"Steven's
films are very, very different and unique from one another in the
way that Kubrick's films are different from each other," Cameron
adds. "He is extremely chameleon-like in that way so I thought,
'Wouldn't you like to see Steven tackle this kind of dense, complex
material?'"
Soderbergh
met with Cameron, Landau and Sanchini over dinner to discuss SOLARIS.
"I told them I had an idea of how to do this," Soderbergh
recalls, "but I wanted to write the screenplay on spec; I didn't
want to make a deal to do it. I explained my approach and what I
wanted to focus on and the ways in which I thought it would be different
from the book and from Tarkovsky's movie."
As
Soderbergh was completing work on "Traffic," he turned
in a first draft of SOLARIS to Lightstorm. Another draft followed,
after which Soderbergh and Lightstorm were ready to approach Twentieth
Century Fox and make the movie.
"This
was Steven's ballgame from the get-go," says Cameron. "I
felt I've learned more from Steven than he's learned from me on
this film. He went off and wrote the script, essentially in a vacuum.
We didn't tell him what we thought it should be. We didn't sit down
and talk about whether it should be an effects film, or not. We
just waited to see what he came back with. His initial script blew
us away.
"We
all had to be experts on what Steven was trying to do. It was a
question of learning the movie that Steven wanted to make, and being
his sounding board within a framework that was meaningful to him."
While
Soderbergh had a specific vision for the film, he readily embraced
Cameron's input. "Jim Cameron knows narrative backwards and
forwards," Soderbergh notes. "He really understands how
to set up and pay off a story. I would meet with him about SOLARIS
and we would have three-hour conversations about the story, about
technology, about what the future is going to be like, about space
travel, and issues like isolation and sensory deprivation, because
he's studied all of it. I would tape record our conversations and
transcribe them and highlight things that I thought could find their
way into the film, whether it was a sentence or an idea - anything
I thought might stick."
"There
were a hundred different versions of SOLARIS we could have legitimately
told, but what was critical to us was that the central themes remain
intact," adds Rae Sanchini. "Our entire focus throughout
development and production has been to make sure that we never lose
sight of the essence of the story."
ASSEMBLING
THE TEAM
 From
the beginning, Soderbergh felt that George Clooney should play Chris
Kelvin. The challenges of portraying the emotionally complex psychologist
who, light years away from home, faces the return of someone he
loved and thought long dead, were formidable. "I knew George
had the capability as an actor to play the role," says the
director. "I just wasn't sure if he felt he was ready. It's
so unlike anything George has ever done and it's such a demanding
part. The role requires difficult, abstract emotions and actions
that are hard to pull off."
Clooney,
who had starred in two earlier Soderbergh films - "Out of Sight"
and "Ocean's Eleven," and who is partnered with the filmmaker
in the production company Section Eight - jumped at the chance to
tackle the role of Chris Kelvin. "I actually lobbied for this
job," laughs Clooney. "After I read the script, I sent
Steven a letter and said 'I don't know if I can do it, but I'd like
to take a crack at it.'
"This
is really an actor's piece and it's the most difficult and scariest
thing I've ever done by far," continues Clooney. "As an
actor, if you're going to go way out on a limb, you're going to
want to do that with Steven. He's good at being very specific, which
is what good directors do; there's always a point of view."
Clooney
immersed himself in the role, bringing unexpected dimension to Chris
Kelvin. "When you see somebody that you know well and that
you've worked with do something that surprises you almost every
day, it's pretty thrilling," says Soderbergh. "George
would keep pushing his performance and taking it further. I live
for working with actors, so watching that was incredibly exciting.
His complete willingness to jump off a cliff every day was inspiring."
Like
his director, Clooney embraced the story's themes. "What makes
SOLARIS relevant today," he states, "is that it deals
with the basic issues we constantly question and wonder about: love,
death, after-life. The things we don't have any answers to. We want
to define things and those things we can't define, terrify us. We
want to know how high is up, how old is eternity. Everything we
know as humans has limits - a beginning, middle and an end. No one
in this story has answers, they just have really good, smart questions."
The
film's small ensemble - there are only five characters - presented
casting challenges. "The trick was to find people who are distinctive
and strong," Soderbergh notes. "You have to feel the tension
because the characters are at loggerheads about what they think
is going on in the space station and what to do about it. And if
the actors interacting with George aren't as strong as he is, then
you don't have a movie."
 Kelvin's
wife Rheya, whose suicide had torn Kelvin's life apart, somehow
has turned up on Prometheus. As the story unfolds, she undergoes
a journey of self-discovery, evolving from a woman brought into
the world of the Prometheus without any real history or memories
that she's certain are her own.
When
it came time to cast the role, which demanded an inherent intelligence
mixed with the vulnerability, Soderbergh remembered the performance
of Natascha McElhone in the 1996 film "Surviving Picasso."
"She reminded me of the great European actresses of the sixties
and seventies, like Jeanne Moreau and Dominique Sanda," says
Soderbergh. "They were smart, sexy, complicated women. Not
girls - women."
McElhone
clinched the part during a reading with Clooney and an improvisation
with the director. Remembers Soderbergh: "I asked Natascha
questions in character about her relationship with her husband,
what had happened. She had no idea that I was going to ask her any
of this, and she was not only quick, she was consistent and thorough.
Here answers were well thought out and interesting. I felt she had
a real handle on the character."
Rheya
is full of anxiety and sadness, the origins of which are explored
through a series of flashbacks centering on her passionate but troubled
relationship with Kelvin. "They meet at a party and sparks
fly; they're clearly attracted to one another," McElhone explains.
"They fall in love and marry, and, as what happens in many
relationships, they are faced with conflicts that threaten their
happiness, despite their efforts to keep it together.
"There
are elements to their love story that are very beautiful, and there
are elements which are very destructive," adds the actress.
"It's very real in so many ways."
In
addition to trying to comprehend the sudden reappearance of his
wife, Kelvin must also solve the mystery behind the strange behavior
of the crew of the Prometheus. Among them is a brilliant young scientist,
Snow, played by Jeremy Davies.
Soderbergh
admits to having had a difficult time picturing Snow when he was
writing the role. "There were many ways I could go and it was
our casting director, Debra Zane who said one day, 'I've been thinking
of Jeremy Davies.' As soon as she said that I thought, 'There you
go.'
"I
needed someone who could generate a stratospherically weird performance.
His energy is so unusual and it was so much fun to watch him interact
with George, Natascha and Viola."
Davies
appreciated the film's unique approach to the genre. "I loved
that this was such a low-tech science fiction film," he says.
"In place of gadgets, there is character dimension and communication
and an actual story. I would actually categorize this film as 'psyche
science fiction.' It's a psychological sci-fi love story, a cross-pollination
of a lot of different genres. It's definitely a different animal
than what most people expect from sci-fi.
 Snow's
counterpart and fellow scientist is Dr. Helen Gordon. Soderbergh
was intent on casting a woman in the role. "I didn't want this
to be a movie where these issues and discussions and situations
were only being dealt with by guys," he says. "I felt
it was important that there be a woman in the midst of this. The
world has long had female astronauts, and I thought casting a woman
as Gordon would be a way of keeping SOLARIS from being a boy's club."
Viola
Davis, who had worked with Soderbergh twice previously, landed the
role. "I immediately thought of Viola because she is so strong,"
says the director. "Viola has incredible integrity on screen.
When she says something, you believe it. There's a sense that you
might not win an argument or even a fight with her. I needed somebody
that powerful, and formidably intelligent."
"Gordon
is a straight-shooter, the voice of reason aboard the Prometheus,"
says Davis. "She doesn't believe the crew should embrace these
'visitors' or give in to whatever it is that Solaris is doing to
them psychologically and emotionally. She's found a way to fight
it, whereas everyone else seems to be in the planet's thrall."
The
impetus for Kelvin's voyage to the Prometheus is a video journal
in which his good friend Gibarian, the mission's commander, appears
distracted, frightened and distraught. Later, Kelvin discovers a
series of video tapes in which Gibarian cryptically "explains"
what has been happening on the space station.
The
fact that the character is delineated largely through videotaped
messages, led Soderbergh to ask Tukur for an audition tape. Soderbergh
was both startled and impressed by Tukur's audition. "What
I saw was Ulrich sitting at a piano looking at the camera,"
recalls Soderbergh. "He started his monologue while accompanying
himself on the piano. His second mono-logue was a close-up of his
dog listening to him talk with a really odd expression on his face.
It was so bizarre. Just the way Ulrich's mind worked sold me on
him. There was a danger that Gibarian was going to become a very
heavy, lethargic character because of his long monologues. The character
was almost dry on the page and needed a twinkle, which is what Ulrich
gives him.
"Because
Ulrich's tapes were so interesting," continues Soderbergh,
"I literally turned him loose with the camera in Gibarian's
room and said 'I'm not going to come in and direct you. You have
your own thing going, so just go in and start.' Every time Gibarian
appears in these video journal entries, it was just Ulrich alone
in Gibarian's room doing these monologues to a video camera."
Although
Gibarian has died under strange circumstances prior to Kelvin's
arrival on the Prometheus, the character is integral to the story,
and Soderbergh's vision for the film gave the actor a lot to work
with. "Steven has created a spooky, eerie, everything-devouring
atmosphere without many digital or technical effects," says
Tukur. "You feel a constant threat and the action is very suspenseful
so the audience will be pulled fully into this really bizarre love
story."
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