Legal Law

Spatial Relations by Steven Soderbergh

Why did the creative force behind such pragmatic vehicles as “Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Ché,” “Good Night and Good Luck,” “Syriana” and Ocean’s Trilogy flirt with the paranormal in his financial flop “Solaris”? ?

Simply put, the film was Steven Soderbergh’s hymn to his heritage. Earthly logic on the other hand, the temporary shift of his creative visions towards spirits and space was preordained.

The son of mystics, he spent his childhood tiptoeing around 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, often leading workshops at regional retreats of the Spiritual Frontiers Fraternity, a loose collection of mediums, channels, and spiritual healers. The couple’s joint experience at doors to new dimensions was well received in 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 baseball career. At the time, Charlottesville was a center for spiritual development. UVA’s division of parapsychology boasted 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 taking place at Duke University and the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto. The hierarchy of the University of Virginia, 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 Louisiana State University faculty 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 for a stab wound in Hollywood.

In the meantime, my introduction to Dr. Soderbergh’s calling was through his article, “Russell H. Conwell and the Spirit World, 1910-1925,” now in the Conwellan-Temple Collection at the Library of Temple University. The contents of this, one of his earliest works 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 academia, mysticism, American theater, the Marine Corps, and popular music. His services 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 Historic 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 flew at half-staff. The Baton Rouge Advocate’s 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 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 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 articles tracking the impact of psychic sciences on education. During one of our phone conversations, Dr. Soderberg mentioned that his son had taken some summer film courses while in high school and planned to write screenplays. He predicted that brilliant minds would lead Steven in the right direction, his ultimate success a certainty.

Confirmation of that prediction came when Steven’s first feature film, “Sex, Lies, and Videotapes,” won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989. He 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 unwelcome 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 were responsible for endowing America’s Founding Fathers with a quality he called “Faculty X,” the supreme 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 awe and whispers. Dr. Soderbergh’s UVA colleagues recognized her as a true psychic.

After her 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 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 release scheduled for January 1993. While refusing to name the “top movie star” that had been secured to play the title role, Midge emphasized that the project required about a thousand actors and crew, most hired from among the Biloxi-area residents.

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 happened have a lot to do with our children and the future of their survival.”

Contrary to expectations raised by the press release, the project died. Perhaps the Walsh Production Company, responsible for casting and filming the film, never raised the necessary funds. This type of failure is typical within the film industry. Despite his 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 about the development of the occult fields by the end of the 20th century. His answers ran the gamut from better understanding of the higher mind to universal telepathy and psychic healing. Although the common man has not yet mastered these skills, Dr. Soderbergh was a dreamer and optimist to the end.

In his “Bicentennial Tribute to 200 Years of Occultization,” published in the July 1976 issue of Psychic World, he gloated 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 indeed rare,” he wrote, “to find a man, woman, or child who is not familiar to some degree with the occult language and/or symbology.” The following year, his “UFO Tribute” in the same publication expressed confidence that “plenty of Saucerian-level action” will occur in the years to come.

Since the gift of seeing beyond the present was a family trait, it’s no surprise that Steven Soderbergh was drawn to the “Solaris” script and the concept of Kelvin’s visits to his late wife. The approach of his 40th birthday indicated that the time had come 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 her female characters named Midge may represent strong characteristics that she sees in her mother. When he assumes the role of cinematographer, he is credited as Peter Andrew, his father’s first and middle names. Other pseudonyms that mask personal relationships include 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 even though 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 advanced lighting heritage.

Did it presage a deeper spiritual journey to come?

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