Why did the creative force behind such pragmatic vehicles as “Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Che,” “Good Night and Good Luck,” “Syriana,” and Ocean’s Trilogy flirt with the paranormal in her financial flop “Solaris”? ?
Simply put, the film was Steven Soderbergh’s paean to his heritage. Earthly logic on the contrary, the temporary shift of his creative visions towards spirits and space was predestined.
The son of mystics, he spent his childhood tiptoeing to the outer limits of reality. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 14, 1963, the son of Dr. Peter A. Soderbergh, a professor of education, and Midge Soderbergh, a parapsychologist.
The Soderberghs had left the Catholic Church some years earlier, finding greater solace in plumbing advances to other worlds. While Peter championed inventive methods of teaching in the classroom, Midge tackled less tangible topics and frequently led workshops at regional retreats for the Spiritual Frontiers Fraternity, a loose collection of mediums, channels, and spiritual healers. The couple’s joint experience at doors to new dimensions was welcomed at both academic and esoteric gatherings.
While his father was Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Affairs at the University of Virginia (1973-1976), Steven began searching for his own identity and dreaming of a career in baseball. At the time, Charlottesville was a center of spiritual development. UVA’s division of parapsychology had a faculty of credible scientists whose research provided an umbrella of academic respectability for Dr. Soderbergh’s fascination with the arcane. His brief tenure there was marked by his own prolific output of articles on the spirit world, more than 50 in a few years.
At the same time, competitive parapsychology research was underway at Duke University and the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto. The University of Virginia hierarchy, eager to stand out at the forefront of a virgin field, condoned and supported Dr. Soderbergh’s many lectures at conferences devoted to the psychic arts and sciences.
Shortly after Dr. Soderbergh joined the faculty at Louisiana State University in 1976, he enrolled Steven in an animation class on campus. At the age of 15, Steven had made his first short film and his parents were thinking of separating. Those circumstances prompted Steven’s decision to drop out of college over a stabbing in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, my introduction to Dr. Soderbergh’s calling was through his article, “Russell H. Conwell and the Spirit World, 1910-1925,” which is now in the Conwellana-Templar Collection of the Library of Temple University. The content of this, one of his first papers on parapsychology, may well have been discussed at the family table in the presence of young Steven. Conwell, a Baptist minister and founder of the university, justified his “Acres of Diamonds” as the culmination of a vision. His experiences paralleled those of Leland Stanford, who established Stanford University after receiving what he believed to be a telepathic message from his dead son.
Dr. Soderbergh’s passions spanned academics, mysticism, American theater, the Marine Corps, and popular music. His service in the Korean War as a captain in the US Marine Corps prompted her two books on the history of women in the Marine Corps. Later, he was appointed to the board of directors of the US Marine Corps Historical Center Foundation in Washington.
Following his death from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 69 on February 17, 1998, the flags on the LSU campus were flown at half mast. The Baton Rouge Advocate obituary cites his role as professor and dean of the College of Education and director of LSU’s Office of Academic Development. His many awards include Outstanding Teacher from the LSU Student Government Association in 1993. A community volunteer, he helped support Special Olympics and local crisis and intervention centers. Using the pseudonym Dr. Record, he hosted a radio show on WBRH (Baton Rouge) playing records from his private collection of popular music.
While on the faculty at UVA, psychic Jackie Altisi, a frequent SFF workshop leader with connections at NASA and the United Nations, urged me to contact him about his papers tracing the impact of the psychic sciences on education. During one of our phone conversations, Dr. Soderberg mentioned that his daughter had taken some summer film courses while in high school and was planning to write screenplays. He predicted that brilliant minds would lead Steven in the right direction, his ultimate success is a certainty.
Confirmation of that prediction came when Steven’s first feature, “Sex, Lies, and Videotapes,” won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989. It subsequently earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay and Steven was honored with the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. Did he get there through old-fashioned courage and determination? Or did this success materialize courtesy of the unseen advisers heralded by his father?
Dr. Soderbergh’s writings do not focus on the responsibility of unwanted apparitions, the mischievous, often evil spirits blamed over the centuries for countless human failings. He focused instead on the higher forms of contact from other planes, entities he believed responsible for endowing America’s Founding Fathers with a quality he called “Faculty X,” the ultimate psychic sense. He called these men “Enlightened Ones of the Highest Kind” for their universal qualities, uncommon brotherhood, and extraordinary prescience and sensitivity.
The optimism and innate “Faculty X” that Dr. Soderbergh transferred to his talented son represents only half of the filmmaker’s psychic potential. Although Midge Soderbergh did not emulate the academic influence her husband wielded on college campuses, her very presence inspired wonder and whispers. Dr. Soderbergh’s UVA colleagues recognized her as a true psychic.
After their divorce, Midge dove even deeper into psychic matters and soon made her presence known throughout the Baton Rouge community. She hosted a regular ten-minute show on a local television station for several years in the early 1980s. On July 25, 1992, Midge had embarked on another venture. An article by Ken Fink that appeared that day in the State Times/Morning Advocate announced that Midge was preparing to produce a film about the abduction of two men from Biloxi, Mississippi, by an alien spacecraft.
Tentatively titled “Snatched,” the $10 million feature film would be based on UFO: Contact At Pascagoula, a book by Charles Hickson and William Mendez published in 1983. Filming would begin along the Gulf Coast in early September 1992 with the scheduled release of January 1993. While declining to name the “major movie star” who had been secured to play the title role, Midge emphasized that the project required around a thousand actors and crew, most recruited from residents of the Biloxi area.
During Fink’s interview, Midge Soderbergh confessed that she herself had witnessed magnetic anomalies and unexplained lights associated with UFOs, but had never been abducted. She cautioned that “some of (Hickson’s) encounters and how they occurred have a lot to do with our children and the future of their survival.”
Contrary to the expectations raised by the press release, the project died. Perhaps the Walsh Production Company, responsible for the film’s casting and filming, never raised the necessary funds. This type of failure is typical within the film industry. Despite her notable successes, his son has learned that most film projects face multiple barriers between idea and execution. Those that reach the public are the exception.
In 1976, Dr. Peter Soderbergh mailed a questionnaire to selected psychics across the country requesting their predictions for the development of occult fields by the end of the 20th century. His responses ran the gamut, from a better understanding of the higher mind to universal telepathy and psychic healing. While the common man has not yet mastered these skills, Dr. Soderbergh was a dreamer and optimist to the very end.
In his “Bicentennial Tribute to 200 Years of Occulturization,” published in the July 1976 issue of Psychic World, he rejoiced in his belief that America is in an advanced state of occultization. He based his conclusion on the open participation of millions in the esoteric arts. “It is truly rare,” he wrote, “to find a man, woman, or child unfamiliar to some degree with occult language and/or symbology.” The following year, his “UFO Tribute” in the same publication expressed confidence that “a lot of Saucerian-level action” will happen in the years to come.
Since the gift of seeing beyond the present was a family trait, it’s not surprising that Steven Soderbergh was drawn to the “Solaris” script and the concept of Kelvin’s visits with his late wife. The proximity of his 40th birthday indicated that it was time for him to reflect on his own mortality by reviewing stories heard at home about unexplained events and contacts. Until his father appeared to him in a dream, Steven Soderbergh had rejected the concept of consciousness after death. During a conversation about “Solaris” with British journalist Suzie Mackenzie, he stated that the nightly incident determined the theme of the film, reconciliation, the hope that spiritual communication between the living and the dead can be achieved.
In more than 25 films completed or currently in production, Soderbergh’s admiration for his parents and the lessons they taught him about operating in worlds both real and imagined shine through. A prime example of a multi-talented officer, he emulates his work ethic, acting as producer, director, writer, cinematographer, editor, actor, composer, and sound department as needed.
Several of his female characters named Midge may represent strong characteristics that he sees in his mother. When he assumes the role of cinematographer, he is credited as Peter Andrew, the first and middle names of his father. Other pseudonyms that mask personal relationships are Sam Lowry and Mary Ann Bernard, the editor of the movie “Solaris” whose last name is her mother’s maiden name.
As his father predicted, Steven Soderbergh has educated himself in all facets of his career despite the fact that his formal education ended when he graduated from high school. More than any of his films to date, “Solaris” demonstrated that he uses and respects his heritage of advanced lighting.
Did it herald a deeper spiritual journey to come?