Steven Soderbergh, who either is or isn't retiring from filmmaking depending on what day of the week he's asked the question, directs an all-star cast in Contagion, a thriller about the spread of a lethal airborne virus that sets off a worldwide panic. Working from a script by Scott Z Burns (The Informant!), Soderbergh directs his big-name ensemble cast through a story in which simple everyday contact - shaking hands, hugs, simply touching another human being - could lead to death.

Joining Soderbergh for a press conference in LA to discuss the dramatic film, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle discussed the appeal of Contagion, the subject matter, and the research process.

Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, and Jennifer Ehle Contagion Press Conference

Why was the timing for this type of outbreak movie sort of perfect for Contagion?

Steven Soderbergh: "Well, I guess we’re going to see if the timing is perfect or not. I guess the only thing that would indicate that the timing might be good is my reaction to Scott [Z. Burns] purposing this, the reaction on the part of the participants when we went to them to float the idea of developing it, the reaction from Warner Brothers when we presented them the script. Everyone felt there was a place for an ultra-realistic film about this subject. Nobody hesitated. It all happened very quickly, uncharacteristically quickly actually considering what the business is right now for adult dramas. So, that made me feel like maybe we’re on to something, you know?"

Jennifer, Laurence, and Matt, when you read the script what was your reaction? How did the script persuade you into doing the project?

Jennifer Ehle: "It was just a wonderful page-turner and that doesn’t happen that often. I was just thrilled to be asked to be a part of it."

Laurence Fishburne: "I was kind of blown away by how smart it was, because a lot of what is being made now is kind of stupid. So I was really, really very honored to be asked to be a part of it, because it’s a really, really smart movie."

Matt Damon: "Yeah, I had a similar reaction. Actually we were getting ready to do something else, another project that we are still going to do, and Steven called and said, ‘I got this other thing and we really got to make it now because it’s really timely.’ And he said, ‘I think it’s the best thing Scott’s written,’ which is saying quite a bit, and I obviously think a lot of Scott. So he sent it over to me with a note saying, ‘Read this and then wash your hands.’"

"I read it and I had the same reaction that Jennifer and Laurence did. 'I just really want to be in this movie.' It’s just a terrific, riveting, really fast read, and really exciting, and really horrifying, but managed to be kind of touching too."

Would you be the guy who is extra prepared and overprotective or let loose, in terms of an outbreak like in the movie?

Matt Damon: "You know, I think with kids I’m probably more protective than I’ve ever been now that I have children. I try not to be. I mean my wife’s name for me is ‘Red Alert.’ I sometimes just check to see if the kids are breathing. But no, no...I think it’s a tendency to be a little overprotective without trying to be a helicopter parent."

Do you have a stockpile of supplies?

Matt Damon: "No. After the Northridge quake I put the flashlight by my bed for like two week, and then forgot about it."

The message of the movie seems to be "trust the government but get a gun." What about the gun control aspect of the film?

Steven Soderbergh: "What, because he finds a gun across the street? I think under those circumstances that’s understandable. I don’t view that as any kind of statement. I think four weeks into an event like this, a truly cataclysmic event in which you’re alone and your neighborhood has got cop cars and military blowing through it... He’s not going there looking for a gun. He’s going over there looking for help and for food. I mean, that’s the way I read it, and he finds a gun. I would have taken it, absolutely. How many people in here have a gun? Yeah."

Matt Damon: "I also was very aware that in the second act, I haven’t seen the final film yet, but that’s about where this is taking place. You know that would be about where the zombies would come, and you’re going to want a gun for that. I don’t care who you are. That’s not a political statement at all."

Has your behavior changed after doing this movie? And Steven, could you address the rumors that you are retiring in a few years?

Matt Damon: "I said that."

Steven Soderbergh: "Well, the good news is that we have the man who started all this."

Matt Damon: "I don’t know. I’m not going to comment, Steven."

Steven Soderbergh: "He’s got total recall when he’s drunk, really alarming."

Matt Damon: "Do you tell me things just expecting that I won’t remember them?"

Steven Soderbergh: "Yeah. Anyways, Matt started that."

"I don’t know if my behavior has changed. I’m just really aware of it now. I’m aware of it. I'm aware of the fact that all of you have touched all of these recorders that are in front of us, somebody set up this microphone, I was handed some lip balm by one of the makeup people - which I took a Kleenex and cleaned off, but who knows if that worked. So don’t get near my mouth. Having gone through it I’m always going to be conscious of it now. It was fun during the preview to watch the lights come up and 400 people realize that they’re next to a bunch of strangers and that they’ve touched everything. You could tell they weren’t happy."

Was there a list of things that you were definitely not going to do in this film?

Steven Soderbergh: "Yeah, the one rule that we had was we can’t go anywhere where one of our characters hasn’t been. We can’t cut to a city or a group of extras that we’ve never been to, that we don’t know personally. That was our rule. And that’s a pretty significant rule to adhere to in a movie in which you’re trying to give a sense of something that’s happening on a large scale. But we felt that all of the elements that we had issues with prior when we see any kind of disaster film we’re sort of centered around that idea, that suddenly you cut to Paris where you’ve never been and something happens and it’s a bunch of people you have no emotional engagement with. We were trying to have it be epic and also intimate at the same time. So that was rule number one."

Jennifer, what kind of research did you do for your role?

Jennifer Ehle: "Well, I had two really fascinating mornings with Dr. Ian Lipkin and his team up at Columbia in New York at his lab doing experiments. Basically they gave me a crash course, and I did all sorts of extraordinary things, pigs brains with encephalitis, growing bacteria, growing viruses, and doing finding the DNA sequences from a sample. It was really an extraordinary couple of days, and then at the end I got a certificate that said I was now qualified as a microbiologist to practice absolutely nowhere. It was wonderful. [...] And then he was very, very present during the shoot, and very hands on. So the research was kind of ongoing while we were shooting."

Can you tell us how you managed the epic and intimate scenes of the movie?

Steven Soderbergh: "Honestly I was just trying to keep it very, very simple. And that meant the entire film is shot with two lenses, basically, and when I would look at a scene I would try to figure out how few shots I needed as opposed to how many. I really wanted it to be, in terms of style, one of the simplest movies that I have ever made. Often that can require more thought than just walking in saying, 'I’m just going to cover the hell out of this and figure it out later.' When you’re going in saying, 'I really want to keep this simple, and I want every shot to have a purpose, and I want every cut to have a purpose. I don’t want any waste.' If you pulled one shot out it meant something would be diminished. That was my approach. So that was really it: eye level, no crane shots, no like throwing the camera around. Just keep it simple so that all that you were paying attention to were the performances."

Laurence, can you talk about the complexities of your character?

Laurence Fishburne: "Well it wasn’t really that complex for me once I talked to Dr. Lipkin who had really strong opinions about how all this sh-t should sort of play out. He was with us every day, and he really, as Jennifer said, he is really committed to what he does. He loves what he does. So we’d be on, we’d be working and he’d be on his phone and he’ll go, ‘Let me show you this.’ And it would be like something that could potentially be an outbreak almost every day. He has some sort of new disease that the CDC is tracking and kind of keeping an eye on. So it became really easy to sort of go, ‘Oh right, so the stakes for this thing that you do are always here.’"

"The personal stuff that I have as Ellis Cheever was telling my fiancé, soon to be wife, Sanaa Lathan, to get out of town, to leave, to pack up, to not talk. That’s really easy. Any human being in that situation is going to do that, I think. "

Matt, how did you relate to your character?

Matt Damon: "I thought a lot was kind of easy to relate to. It was just kind of on the page. Working with Steven is very different from working with anybody else. To give you kind of an example of a day, we go and we shoot. We’d talk about what we were going to do, we’d figure it out, we’d kind of execute the plan, and then we’d go back to the hotel and go to the bar. And in the back room of the bar they’d deliver the footage, and Steven and Scott and I, and Greg Jacobs our other producer, and A.D., and Michael and Stacy, and we’d just kind of sit there and talk while Steven put on headphones and opened up his laptop and just kind of sat in the corner for 45 minutes or an hour, and then at the end he’d take his headphones off and he’d turn the computer around and he’d show us what we shot that day cut. So it’s a really - when you’re working that way - it’s kind of like making a movie in your backyard with your friends. It’s like the body is kind of out on the operating table and kind of wide open and you talk about it, ‘All right, what else do we need?’"

"It’s very different from kind of going off on my own and doing three months of research and showing up. It just feels more like...I don’t know...the kind of hocus pocus is taken out of the experience. Like, one of my favorite scenes that we did was this scene that I find out that my wife is dead, you know, very early on in the movie. And I went to Steven and I said, ‘Look, I don’t know what to do.’ You know, 'How do you do this scene?' It’s five minutes into the movie. We’re not invested in me or her. We don’t care. 'How do you...? You can’t have this big...see, I mean, do I do?' and Steven goes, ‘The Slump?’ You know everybody knows the slump. You’re down in the hall and just see that guy slump down.' And I’m like, 'Sh-t, I don’t know. I mean what do you do? We’ve got to find some shorthand to do. You can’t dwell on this thing. We’re five minutes into the movie, you know?'"

"We had a guy there who had done this a lot and we talked to him - this doctor who delivered this news. We asked for certain trends. Like, 'What happens?' And he said, ‘Yeah, sometimes people fall apart, but there is this other reaction that we get just as much.’ And I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘Well, it depends on what kind of death it is. Is it the kind of death where you’re not expecting somebody to be dead?’ And I said, ‘Right, exactly.’ And he goes, ‘Oh what you get a lot is [...]it’s just too much.’ So they have this specific way that they put it, and Scott had written it. It was close. He just kind of intuited it and it was close, but he had written words like, ‘She had passed away.’ And the guy says, ‘No no no. She did die.’ Like, you have to be completely specific and look at the person and you have the social worker with you. There’s a whole script that that they go on, and they expect you to not even get it. They expect you to go like, ‘Okay, can I go talk to her?’ because that’s the reaction that people have. They literally don’t [grasp it]."

"So, it’s like working with these guys. I get up in the morning and I’m freaking out about how the hell I’m going to do this scene, and I end up going to work and getting this scene that’s really interesting. I’ve never seen it done that way and I totally believe that that’s the way. And these doctors who actually do it say, ‘Yeah, that’s actually how it goes down a lot of the time.’ It’s a very long-winded answer to a very short question."

Matt, can you talk about your new look?

Matt Damon: "Well inspiration can strike at any time. About shaving my head? Well, it’s for a movie. I’m doing a movie with Neill Blomkamp, the director of District 9, and this is what the guy looks like, the character. And I did shave my head once when I did The Brothers Grimm. I had a wig just so I didn’t have to...it was easier to get the wig on than lacquering my hair down. I just shaved my head. So I walk around in my regular life like this and I love it. I can see why these guys rock the look. It’s great in the summer time, really easy getting out of the shower."

Steven Soderbergh: "Out of solidarity I expect Jennifer to pull off her wig now."

Jennifer Ehle: "I did shave my head once. It’s my favorite haircuts I’ve ever had."

What about Gwyneth Paltrow’s autopsy scene?

Steven Soderbergh: "Well, Gwyneth is a trooper because we got into that room and we had an actual medical examiner there who does this sort of thing all the time. We asked her to walk us through the steps in which someone has died under these circumstances. And when she got to the part where she said, ‘Well, we cut here and we peel the skin over the front of the face,' I immediately turned to Greg and said, ‘Okay, we need to find a flap of something that looks like pizza up on one end without the sauce, that we could attach some wig hair to so that we could do this.’ And we scrambled around and we found we were able to do that. And while it took about 40 minutes of having Gwyneth in that position, Greg actually ended up being the person who put the skin flap over. And she was stalk still and didn’t say a word."

"She asked the medical examiner, ‘Talk to me about the rest of my face. What about my mouth?’ And the women said, ‘Okay, your tongue would be extruded just a little bit.’ She said, ‘You’ll have some sort of yellowish fluid coming out of your nose.’ And she wanted it to be exactly right. I think she had a feeling this was going to be some sort of weird iconic image somehow."

Matt Damon: "And she was right."

Steven Soderbergh: "Yeah, it’s kind of jarring. There were no tricks there. No freeze frame. No high speed frame rate. That was just her being stalk still with some really good effects."

Steven, you cast Jennifer because of her performance in Michael Clayton. What did you see in that that made you want to cast her?

Steven Soderbergh: "That was an amazing performance and so... that sounds horrible. I had known who Jennifer was for a long time, and this didn’t take a lot of thought, honestly. I have a long - somewhat long - list of people that I’ve seen in the course of my career and thought, ‘Wow, they would be great to work with.’ And I did know from Tony [Gilroy] that they had really good experience and I wasn’t in any danger. So I’m just glad that worked out, and of course now she’s re-teamed with George [Clooney] in The Ides of March, so it’s all happening this year."

Was there something that made her right for that role in particular?

Steven Soderbergh: "I knew that by her saying yes she was willing to take a run at some very complex language. I mean, one of the most difficult scenes in terms of the language in the movie is the explanation and when she says, ‘Okay, we know what it is now. The green part is this. The red is that,’ Scott had written it in sort of general terms and then Ian Lipkin was on the set and we wrote it right there. It’s not really fair to throw dialogue like that at someone at the last minute. I was hoping the fear of having to say it would translate as excitement and the high emotional stakes for the world, because it was a lot. It’s hard. It looked hard."

Jennifer Ehle: "Well, I just have to say this came out of the blue for me. I usually have to audition and sort of jump through hoops and I didn’t for this. It completely blew me away to be asked to do it, for somebody that I admire as much as Steven to have that kind of faith that I could do it. I also took it assuming that, the same way I took the part in Michael Clayton, assuming that probably it would be cut but that I would have a wonderful experience meanwhile doing it, and that didn’t happen this time."

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Contagion hits theaters on September 9, 2011.