May
27
Obit: Sydney Pollack Dies; One of Hollywood Greats
Director Sydney Pollack died in Los Angeles Monday after a long bout with cancer. He was 73.
Pollack's cancer was inoperable because it riddled his entire body and the original site was never found.
Trained as an actor, Pollack enjoyed an unusually long and prolific career as a producer and director distinguished by his uncanny knack for delivering high quality, commercial films in just about any genre, often with notoriously demanding stars, from Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were) to Dustin Hoffman (Tootsie). He also made several films with Robert Redford (The Electric Horseman) and Harrison Ford (Sabrina). Always hard on himself, Pollack never assumed that he had scored a hit; he was in despair in the editing room before audiences fell in love with his Oscar-winning Out of Africa. And the same was true of the challengingly difficult Tootsie, in which he played one of many memorable supporting roles. Pollack also enjoyed acting in other directors' films, such as Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and most recently, Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton.
Crafting quality studio entertainment is a lot harder than it looks: at the end of his long career, Pollack boasts a number of films likely to be remembered as classics. And he is respected, admired and personally revered as one of the more gifted, capable and generous talents to come through Hollywood. He certainly has a place in my own pantheon of all-time Hollywood greats.
Pollack told The New York Times in 1982:"Stars are like thoroughbreds," he said. "Yes, it's a little more dangerous with them. They are more temperamental. You have to be careful because you can be thrown. But when they do what they do best -- whatever it is that's made them a star -- it's really exciting."
..."if you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form."
Pollack Classics:
The Way We Were
Tootsie
Out of Africa
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Three Days of the Condor
The Yakuza
UPDATE: Kris Tapley, interning at The Times of London, assembles Pollack obits.
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Just added 'Three Days of the Condor' to my Netflix list, I've a feeling it holds up.
Posted by: mitkid | May 27, 2008 at 04:08 AM
A minority opinion for sure but I would add his 1974 film The Yakuza with Robert Mitchum on that list of great Pollack films. The only film he made in the action genre but has a real film noirish sensibility to it with a running theme thoughtout about honor and loyality
Posted by: Sergio | May 27, 2008 at 07:15 AM
agreed; I'll add
Posted by: anne thompson | May 27, 2008 at 11:37 AM
GOODBYE, AND PEACE TO YOU MY FRIEND. THIS IS A GREAT LOSS, TO THE INDUSTRY,,,AND THOSE HE WOULD CALL AT 3AM TO TELL HIS JOKES TO. I WILL MISS HIM, HIS SENSE OF HUMOR, AND, HIS GIFTS OF KNOWLEDGE, KINDNESS, AND TALENT. SID, YOU WERE MY ADOPTED FATHER, AND FRIEND. BUT, GOD NEEDS THE LAUGH RIGHT NOW!!! I LOVE YOU!!!
EVE ST.CHARLES
Posted by: 3RD COAST PRODUCTIONS INC. | May 28, 2008 at 01:47 PM
FOR THOSE WHO DIDN'T KNOW HIM WELL, I'LL SHARE THIS SECRET. IT WAS SHORT FOR ''SERIOUSLY IN DENIAL'' [SID,] NOT SYD,, HE COULD JOKE EVEN ABOUT HIS ILLNESS.
TEARS CANNOT EXPRESS THE PAIN...OF LOSING SUCH A SWEET SOUL. GOD BLESS YOU. AND, THANK YOU!!!
Posted by: 3RD COAST PRODUCTIONS INC. | May 28, 2008 at 02:04 PM
My wife Yvette and I met Sydney Pollack briefly at the Toronto Film Festival some years ago. He was leaving the Sutton Place Hotel when he noticed that we recognized him. He stopped and chatted with us for a little while. We have met and talked with many directors and stars that we admire before, but those minutes with Sydney Pollack were truly unforgettable. Naturally we admired him for his talent and for his work, but when we met him we were amazed at the kindness and human quality of this man. A giant in every sense of the word and in any language. This is truly a terrible loss. We envy the people who had a chance to work with him. We are very saddened about his death, but his work and example as both an artist and a human being lives and grows. Sydney Pollack will be in our hearts forever...
Luis and Yvette Archundia
Posted by: LUIS ARCHUNDIA | May 28, 2008 at 11:04 PM
What sad news that this storyteller has left our world. A great portrayer of romance. Thank you Mr Pollack for your gift.
Posted by: Angela | May 28, 2008 at 11:31 PM
Was shocked when, a few days ago, visited various listserves and blogs, to find a lot of abuse hurled in the direction of Pollack, citing his "middlebrow" talents as if that was the greatest sin against mankind. Pauline Kael once said (a propos CHARLY) that some people have been educated beyond their own tastes. Since when have people become so highbrow that they haven't liked some example of good old Hollywood entertainment? No one pops out of the womb with such exquisite taste that they immediately love Bresson's DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST and Dreyer's PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (and i say this as the person who helped curate the first Bresson retrospective at the ripe old age of 16). For the rest of us, Pollack was an example of the vigorous days when Hollywood still found a way to craft solid, literate entertainments.
Pollack's career was nothing to sneer at, and he also had a healthy appreciation for talent. In his later years, he and his producing partner Lindsay Doran took many chances, as when they agreed to meet with James Schamus and Ang Lee to discuss the possibility of Schamus and Lee working on SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. (A very successful meeting, as it turned out.) He and the late Anthony Minghella had also set up a company to help produce films for independent filmmakers.
Sydney Pollack also had a healthy interest in other filmmakers' work, and that was one reason he agreed to act in other director's films (such as Woody Allen's HUSBANDS AND WIVES and Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT). From all accounts, he was a decent and hardworking man, and a true Hollywood professional. The one time i met him was at a special screening of THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN: he was honest, and admitted that the attempt was to create a modern version of a Capra film (MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN), with Redford as the idealistic innocent and Jane Fonda as the wised-up girl reporter (in this case, TV reporter), but he thought the film hadn't found the right mix.
As this summer season is upon us, it's hard to remember that there was a time when Hollywood's idea of a broad-based entertainment was something like TOOTSIE or THE WAY WE WERE or OUT OF AFRICA, big movies with great star performances and literate scripts and exceptional craft in the technical departments. Yes, it was machine-tooled and not as "personal" as the films of Ingmar Bergman or Antonioni, but these were the types of movies that we all went to see, and those directors who emerged from the Golden Age of Television (Martin Ritt, John Frankenheimer, Robert Mulligan, Blake Edwards, Alan Pakula, Sidney Lumet, Pollack) worked for a general audience in a way that is increasingly rare.
And it's especially sad because Pollack had become one of those people who, as he aged, devoted his energies to producing and acting, and remained committed to that type of entertainment (MICHAEL CLAYTON is a clear example).
(And i'm one of those people who has a fondness for some of Pollack's early films, like THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, which makes a hash of Tennessee Williams, but Natalie Wood never looked more beautiful, or THE SLENDER THREAD, because Anne Bancroft got to emote like an old-time movie star.)
Posted by: Daryl Chin | May 31, 2008 at 10:43 AM