Why did the creative power of pragmatic machines like Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Chi, Goodnight and Good Luck, Siriana and Ocean Trilogy flirt with the paranormal on his financial flop Solaris?
Quite simply, the film was Stephen Soderberg in his legacy. Earth logic, on the contrary, predetermined a temporary shift of his creative views on spirits and the cosmos.
The son of mystics, he spent his childhood on tiptoe around the outer limits of reality. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 14, 1963, to Dr. Peter A. Soderbergh, a professor of education, and Meads Soderbergh, a parapsychologist.
Soderbergs left the Catholic Church a few years ago, finding more consolation in the breakthroughs in other worlds. While Peter advocated resourceful teaching methods in the classroom, Midge dealt with less thematic topics, often leading seminars on regional retreats for the Spiritual Brotherhood, a free collection of mediums, channels and spiritual healers. Joint examination of the pair on the doorways in the new dimensions was welcomed at meetings of both scientists and esoteric.
While his father was an assistant dean in student and student affairs at the University of Virginia (1973–1976), Stephen began to deceive his identity and dream of a career in baseball. At that time, Charlottesville was the center of spiritual development. The UVA Department of Parapsychology had the ability of capable scientists, whose research provided a zorka of academic respectability for the scientist Dr. Soderbergh with secrecy. His brief possession was marked by his own prolific edition of articles on the spiritual world, over 50 over several years.
At the same time, competitive parapsychology research was conducted at Duke University and the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto. The University of Virginia hierarchy, striving to succeed at the forefront of the virgin field, has condoned and supported many of Dr. Soderbergh’s lectures at conferences on the mental arts and sciences.
Shortly after Dr. Soderberg joined the faculty of the State University of Louisiana in 1976, he inserted Stephen into an animation class on campus. At the age of 15, Stephen made his first short film, and his parents thought about separation. These circumstances raised Stephen’s decision to drop the college for a hit in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, my introduction to Dr. Soderberg was through his article “Russell H. Conwell and the World of Spirit, 1910-1925,” now published in the Conwellana-Templana library of the University’s Temple Library. The content of this, one of his early works on parapsychology, could well have been discussed around the family dinner table in the presence of the young Stephen. Conwell, the Baptist minister and founder of the university, justified his “Acre of Diamonds” as the culmination of a vision. His experience is close to Leland Stanford, who founded Stanford University after receiving what he believes is a telepathic message from his dead son.
Dr. Soderbergh's passion included academies, mysticism, American theater, Marine Corps and popular music. His service in the Korean War as a captain of the United States Marine Corps spurred his two books on the history of women in the Marine Corps. Later he was appointed to the board of directors of the Foundation for the Historical Center of the US Marine Corps in Washington.
After his death from cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 69 on February 17, 1998, the camps of the Leningrad State University flew half the personnel. The obituary attorney Baton Rouge quotes his role as a professor and dean at the College of Education and director of the Bureau of Academic Development of Leningrad State University. His numerous awards include an outstanding teacher, awarded by the Association of Students-Students of Leningrad State University in 1993. A volunteer from the community, he helped Special Olympics and local crisis and intervention centers. Using the alias Dr. Record, he organized a radio show on WBRH (Baton Rouge), playing records from his private collection of popular music.
While he was at the UVA faculty, psychiatrist Jackie Altisi, a frequent SFF workshop manager with connections at NASA and the United Nations, encouraged me to contact him about his articles on the impact of psychic science on education. During one of our telephone conversations, Dr. Soderberg announced that his son had spent several summer cinema courses in high school and was planning to write on-screen games. He predicted that high minds would lead Steven in the right direction, his ultimate success - certainty.
This precedent was confirmed when Stephen’s first feature film, Sex, Lies and Videos, won the prestigious Palm or Country award at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. Subsequently, she won an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay and Stephen was awarded the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. Did he get to old-fashioned twisting and sand? Or did this success justify the courtesy of invisible advisers that his father had announced?
The writings of Dr. Soderberg do not speak of the burden of undesirable phenomena, mischievous - often evil spirits, accused over the centuries for countless human shortcomings. Instead, he focused on the highest forms of contact with other plans, which he considered responsible for providing America’s founding fathers with quality, which he called “Faculty X”, the ultimate psychic feeling. He called these people "the Illuminati of the highest genre" for their universal qualities, extraordinary fraternity and extraordinary foresight and sensitivity.
The optimistic and innate “Faculty X” Dr. Soderberg gave his talented son a talented son, but half of the filmmaker’s mental capacity. Although Midge Soderberg did not imitate the academic influence that her husband had on university campuses, her presence was accompanied by a reverent and quiet voice. Dr. Soderberg's UVA collections have recognized her true psyche.
After the divorce, Midge plunged into even deeper mental issues and soon learned of his presence through the Baton Rouge community. In the early 1980s, she held a regular ten-minute program on a local television station for several years. By July 25, 1992, Midge went to another enterprise. An article by Ken Fink, published in State Times / Morning Advocate magazine that day, announced that Midge was preparing to release a film about the abduction of two people from Biloxi, Mississippi, using an alien ship.
Tentatively titled “Snatched,” a $ 10 million film was supposed to be based on a UFO: “Contact At Pascagoula,” a book by Charles Hixon and William Mendes, published in 1983. Filming will begin on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in early September 1992, and release is scheduled for January 1993. Noting the name of the "main movie star" she provided to play the main role, Midge stressed that the project requires about a thousand actors and crew members, most of whom will be hired from among the residents of the Biloxi region.
During the interview, Finka Midge Soderberg admitted that she herself had witnessed magnetic anomalies and unexplained lights associated with a UFO, but had never been stolen. She warned that "some of the (Hickson) meetings and how they happened have a lot in common with our children and their future survival."
Contrary to the expectations of the press release, the project is dead. Sometimes Walsh's production company, responsible for casting and filming, never raised the necessary funds. Such a failure is typical in the film industry. With his own success, her son learned that most film projects face several obstacles between idea and execution. The exceptions are those who reach the public.
In 1976, Dr. Peter Soderberg submitted a questionnaire to selected psychics across the country asking them to submit their predictions for the development of occult fields by the end of the 20th century. Their answers came from a range, from a better understanding of the higher mind to universal telepathy and mental healing. Although an ordinary person has not yet mastered these abilities, Dr. Soderberg was a dreamer and an optimist to the end.
In his Bicentennial Tribute to the 200th Anniversary of the Occult, published in the July issue of The Mental World in July 1976, he exults in his conviction that the United States is in an advanced state of occulturation. He based his conclusion on the open participation of millions in esoteric art. “Rarely,” he wrote, “meet a man, a woman, or a child who is not to some extent familiar with occult language and / or symbolism.” The following year, his "Tribute to UFOs" in the same publication expressed confidence that in the coming years, "a lot of action at the saucers will take place."
Since the present to see outside of the present was a family trait, it is not surprising that Stephen Soderberg was drawn to the Solaris scenario and the concept of Kelvin’s visits with his dead wife. The approach of his 40th birthday meant that it was time to think about his own mortality, revising the stories that he heard at home about unexplained events and contacts. Until his father came to him in a dream, Stephen Soderberg rejected the concept of consciousness after death. During a conversation about "Solaris" with the British journalist Suzy Mackenzie, he stated that the night incident had determined the theme of the film about reconciliation, the hope that spiritual intercourse could be achieved between the living and the dead.
In more than 25 films, performed or previously in production, Soderberg’s admiration for his parents and the lessons they have about actions in the worlds, both real and imaginary brilliance. A striking example of an apprentice with many talents, he emulates his work ethic, acting as a producer, director, writer, filmmaker, editor, actor, composer and sound faculty as needed.
Some of his female characters named Midge can represent the strong characteristics that he sees in his mother. When he asserts the role of a photo director, he appears in credits like Peter Andrew, his first and middle names for his father. Other pseudonyms that mask personal relationships are Sam Lowry and Mary Ann Bernard, editor of the film Solaris, whose last name is his mother's maiden name.
As his father predicted, Stephen Soderberg was educated in all aspects of his career, although his formal education ended in high school. Today more than any of his films, Solaris, provided that he uses and respects his legacy of advanced education.
Did this foreshadow another spiritual journey of the deer?
