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Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” was one of the best films of 2011, but, for reasons that continue to not make a good deal of sense to me, Warner Bros. did not run a vigorous awards campaign for it in what wound up being an unusually uncompetitive year (which is how uninspired tripe like “The Artist” wins the Oscar for Best Picture). The film’s baffling lack of a prestige play that year was underscored nine years later when, while in Covid lockdown, people the world over discovered that Matt Damon starred in a movie about a pandemic that was disquietingly true to our then situation. This was a great, prescient piece of work from a master filmmaker. It shouldn’t have taken a real-life catastrophe to drive this home.
People are still catching up with “Contagion” three years after the first round of vaccines brought back a sense of semi-normalcy to the world, and, as they do, they might do a double take when they hear they’re introduced to Damon’s father character, Mitch Emhoff. Emhoff isn’t a super-common last name, so people immediately seize on the fact that the current Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, is married to former entertainment lawyer Douglas Emhoff.
Given that line of work, it’s possible that Soderbergh might’ve had some dealings with Mr. Emhoff, no? Close. It was actually screenwriter Scott Z. Burns.
How the Emhoff name made its way into Contagion
On a recent episode of the “Hollywood Gold” podcast, Burns, who produced the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” (though not its sequel, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”) revealed that, when he used to direct commercials, his executive producer was Kerstin Emhoff.
For Burns, this was just a neat way to pay tribute to his collaborator. He couldn’t predict that the name would take on greater significance in the years to come. As Burns told Hollywood Gold, “They got divorced and, as we now know, Doug Emhoff is married to Kamala Harris, which is just a bizarre coincidence.”
If you’ve been watching the 2024 presidential race closely, you’ve probably seen Kerstin’s children Ella and Cole. They were briefly all the rage at the Democratic National Convention in August, and Kerstin couldn’t have been prouder to see them get their time in the spotlight. Here’s hoping we’ll get to see more of the Emhoff’s children when Kamala Harris beats Donald J. Trump to become the 47th President of the United States.
And if you somehow haven’t caught up with “Contagion” yet, it’s available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray. It’s also available to rent at a variety of outlets to which you might subscribe!
