Gaghan was really behind the project because of the idea of multiple narratives and took the idea back to Zwick, who agreed to combine the projects. In adapting the mammoth in length work, Stephen Gaghan took the liberty of updating it to modern times, the present, with the mention of little things such as CD writers, and transferring the locale from Europe and Pakistan to America and Mexico. As someone else already inferred, location is of little importance since the war on drugs is pretty much the same everywhere. The stories are far from groundbreakingly novel, but also as many others have astutely observed, it s the style in which they are told that is. Soderbergh is the new it director for good reason.
Traffic is probably the most ambitious epic ever made on the war on drugs.
It contains 135 speaking parts, was filmed in over 110 locations in 8 different cities, and the dialogue is in two different languages. Soderbergh told Ebert, I tried to come up with visual schemes that reflected the way I felt when I was in those various locations. The Mexico stuff is very bleached and has this sort of tobacco patina. The East Coast is very cool. I pushed those looks to more of an extreme, since I was the cinematographer.