This doesn't mean that the film was easy to make; it means that Soderbergh relies on what he knows rather than wandering off into what he doesn't.
Alexei Evangulov, the performance director of British Diving, says he has asked him to "break down the dives Daley already knows" rather than learn new, harder, ones.
Freud's knack for caricatural likeness gives his subjects, who tend to be people he knows, rather than professional models, enough hints of an interior life to offset the impression of a meat rack.
Mr. Putin also undoubtedly would prefer to deal with the devil he knows rather than the one he does not — the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, whom Mr. Putin has criticized for characterizing Russia as America's greatest geopolitical foe.
This owes everything to his ability to manipulate the complex electoral college that chooses the party president, and to take advantage of Congress's obsessive desire to opt for the devil it knows, rather than take even moderate risks.
He says he worries that people think he's got on because of who he knows, rather than his talents, that he's better known as a certain kind of starlet's gay bff than as a broadcaster.
