They do say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and in the case of Steven Soderbergh that is certainly the case. Going on to carve an incredible career for himself with a slate of films including Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s Eleven, Magic Mike and Logan Lucky, the 21-year-old Soderbergh was keen to work for George Lucas, sending in a demo reel to Lucasfilm in April 1984.
In April 1984, Steven Soderbergh was a 21-year-old aspiring filmmaker. Soderbergh had skipped attending college at Louisiana State University in order to try and make it in Hollywood. Soderbergh worked as a game show scorer and a freelance film editor to make money, and one of his efforts to break big apparently included sending a demo reel to George Lucas at Lucasfilm. The young director spent his high school years making a handful of short films on Super 8mm.
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Unfortunately, whatever dreams Soderbergh had of getting into the Lucasfilm family were denied when he received a rejection letter returning the tape he sent in. “Please know our returning your tape is in no way a reflection upon its merits,” the letter reads, claiming the volume of videos and ideas Lucasfilm receives each day is so high it’s impossible for Lucas or any executive at the company to see them all. Soderbergh shared the rediscovered letter in a tweet that included the caption: “It just made me strong.”
Clearly no hard feelings here as everyone came up smelling of roses, but fascinating to see that a talent like Soderbergh was – and likely still is – every bit as enamoured with Lucasfilm as millions of us were around the world.
