Sydney Pollack (1934-2008) – a Remembrance<\/p>\n
By Bruce Coughran<\/p>\n
I have been away at a meditation retreat center (Tassajara Zen Mountain Center) for the last two months and have not had any news from the world at large except for the occasional comment by one of the visitors.\u00a0 When I finally got back online for the first time the first thing I read was of the death of Sydney Pollack.\u00a0 My heart sank.\u00a0 Maybe the re-encounter with the larger world was part of it, but I was truly caught breathless.\u00a0 I hardly knew Sydney, but he was a big factor in my life as a filmmaker, not only as a role model and great artist, but also as a personal mentor.<\/p>\n
Like many people of my generation, I loved and was inspired by many of his films, probably \u2018Three Days of the Condor\u2019 and \u2018Tootsie\u2019 being my favorites.\u00a0 I started making films later in life, and when I first moved to LA one of my first encounters was with Sydney.\u00a0 I went to a screening of \u2018Three Days of the Condor\u2019 at the DGA and got to talk to him briefly afterward.\u00a0 I told him how much I loved the films and that I had just made my first short film at a program at UCLA and had some questions I would love to ask a seasoned director.\u00a0 He told me to call his assistant, and some time later he spent the better part of an hour on the phone with me.<\/p>\n
Now, at the time Sydney was extremely busy.\u00a0 He was still directing, producing and running Mirage Enterprises, which was quite active with literally dozens of projects going on, as well as doing the occasional acting turn (with other pretty-good directors like Woody Allen and Stanley Kubrick).\u00a0 Still, he took the time to talk to me, just some seemingly sincere, but otherwise random beginning director about directing actors.\u00a0 I told him about the troubles I had had with one of my actors and he told be about his experiences directing Harrison Ford.\u00a0 He spoke to me directly, as a peer, without the slightest trace of superiority or condescension.\u00a0 He said things like \u201cYou have to convince the actors to want to go on the ride with you.\u201d\u00a0 He had just directed \u2018Random Hearts\u2019 (which had not done well) and said \u201cEven I can make a bomb.\u201d\u00a0 He was truly gracious, generous, warm and giving.<\/p>\n
I kept in touch with him over the years, and had a chance to talk to him maybe four other times.\u00a0 The last time was at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in 2007.\u00a0 I was working at the festival running the panels and seminars, and Sydney was being honored for his body of work.\u00a0 I had asked his assistant the week before if I might be able to see him when he was in Palm Springs and she said he was just scheduled every moment.\u00a0 But as I was ending a panel on photographers, I ran into him on the street as he was walking to lunch.\u00a0 (I realized later he was probably going to lunch with Douglas Kirkland, one of my\u00a0 panelists, who was a close friend of his and had shot stills on several of his pictures including \u2018Out of Africa\u2019.)<\/p>\n
We talked for a few minutes.\u00a0 I told him again how much he had inspired me (I always feel dopey doing that, but it was really the truth) and how appreciative I had been for his counsel over the years.\u00a0 He was, as always, gracious and giving.\u00a0 Sydney obviously loved life.\u00a0 He traveled a lot (when I talked to him in Palm Springs he had just done a bicycle trip across Indonesia) and he was an avid pilot and loved to fly (even after his only son was killed in a small plane crash in 1993).\u00a0 He has an amazing body of work, but he also had a lot of humility.\u00a0 He was still vital and alive at 72 and I had to believe he had work still left to do.\u00a0 But that was not to be.\u00a0 When I heard he had cancer, I guess I hoped that it was not so.\u00a0 I really hardly knew him, but I feel like I have lost a dear friend.\u00a0 I think Sydney had that effect on people.<\/p>\n
I want to mention one other image of Sydney.\u00a0 Immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center there was a rash of attacks on artists.\u00a0 It was bizarre and vicious.\u00a0 (The most obvious was the attack on Bill Mahr for suggesting that such a deed may have required some courage on the part of the hijackers.\u00a0 This comment lead to his then very popular show being canceled in short order.)\u00a0\u00a0 There were also attacks on several projects that in some way showed the motivations of people who did terrible things.<\/p>\n
In this terrible, scary environment Sydney was one of the few voices that dared to speak out.\u00a0 (He is less well-known for his tireless work for artist\u2019s freedoms of expression and the rights of artists to not to have their works altered, but he was a major voice.)\u00a0 Sydney cut through all the hogwash that was spewing through the media at the time.\u00a0 He very eloquently made a point that was something like this:\u00a0 Art, especially storytelling art, is by its nature about looking at things from another point-of-view than your own.\u00a0 It is because we all have a limited range of experience, a few really close relationships, a few really powerful experiences, a few really important life transitions, which we look to stories about how other people are and live their lives and experience the world around them.\u00a0 This is the purpose of storytelling; not to tell us what we want to hear, but to tell us what will challenge us to see things differently, and to grow.<\/p>\n
To me, Sydney will always be the voice of a committed and thoughtful artist.\u00a0 He often told the story of his first directing job.\u00a0 An Indiana boy, he had gone to New York to become an actor and had been trained by legendary acting teacher Stanford Meisner.\u00a0 He stayed on after the two-year training and became Meisner\u2019s assistant.\u00a0 When he went to Hollywood, as he put it, \u201cno one was much impressed by my acting, but they were very impressed by the fact that I had been Sandy\u2019s assistant.\u201d\u00a0 He got a job on a Bert Lancaster film as the acting coach for the child actors.<\/p>\n
After the film, Lancaster called Sydney into his office at the studio and asked him what he wanted to do.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what he said, but to whatever it was Lancaster replied \u201cyou should be directing.\u201d\u00a0 He then (in \u201cOld Hollywood\u201d fashion) called the head of the studio with Sydney sitting there and said on the phone \u201cThis Sydney Pollack should be directing.\u00a0 Give him a picture to do.\u201d\u00a0 And that resulted in a change of career to being a director.\u00a0 And thank you Bert for that, we have a wonderful bunch of films thanks to you.<\/p>\n
But I think that Bert Lancaster saw in Sydney the same thing that I saw and I think was a common experience for people who met Sydney.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t bravado or seething \u201cpassion\u201d.\u00a0 Sydney respected material (he was known for his relentless work on the scripts he directed) and he respected actors.\u00a0 He was thoughtful and committed to the process, and to a rigorous search for excellence.\u00a0\u00a0 And he was genuine and warm and giving as a human being.\u00a0\u00a0 The world is a little less for his absence.\u00a0 And I will miss him.<\/p>\n
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(originally published in Film News and Views, July, 2008)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sydney Pollack (1934-2008) – a Remembrance By Bruce Coughran I have been away at a meditation retreat center (Tassajara Zen Mountain Center) for the last two months and have not had any news from the world at large except for … Continue reading