In 2001, film director Steven Soderbergh reached a career milestone that few before him had ever achieved: members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated two of his films for best-director honors. Traffic, his gritty look at the illicit North American drug trade, beat out Erin Brockovich, which starred Julia Roberts as an unlikely environmental crusader. Soderbergh's feat was all the more remarkable given the relatively short span of his career to date: he first attracted enthusiastic praise for a 1989 low-budget independent film called sex, lies and videotape, a "dazzling little psychodrama that kicked the American independent film movement into high gear," according to Entertainment Weekly writer Owen Gleiberman.

Over the years, Soderbergh has been called "arguably America's most innovative and versatile director," wrote Brian D. Johnson for Maclean's. A writer for Interview, Graham Fuller, described him as "one of the toughest filmmakers to nail--he's a...