Sydney Pollack RIP

Was only 73.

major :(

That's horrible! RIP.

what's your ref on this?

Top of nytimes.com

:(

sketches of frank gehry is really good

before the devil knows your dead - couldnt make a better swan song

oops.sorry Lumet for killing you

As the film — a comedy about a struggling actor who disguises himself as a woman to get a coveted television part — was being shot for Columbia Pictures, Mr. Pollack and Mr. Hoffman became embroiled in a semi-public feud, with Mr. Ovitz running shuttle diplomacy between them.

Mr. Hoffman, who had initiated the project, argued for a more broadly comic approach. But Mr. Pollack — who played Mr. Hoffman’s agent in the film — was drawn to the seemingly doomed romance between the cross-dressing Hoffman character and the actress played by Jessica Lange.

If Mr. Pollack did not prevail on all points, he tipped the film in his own direction. Meanwhile, the movie came in behind schedule, over budget and surrounded by bad buzz.

did not know that! tootsie rules.

Hahah, Pollack's anguished performance in said film made all the clearer.

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i134/dgoobl/Tootsie_at_the_Russian_Tea_Room.jpg

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-09/32558704.jpg

I honestly forgot how closely intertwined he was with Redford:

Pollack directed seven movies with Robert Redford, beginning with "This Property Is Condemned" (with Natalie Wood) in 1966.

The Pollack-Redford collaboration also produced "The Way We Were" (with Barbra Streisand), "Jeremiah Johnson," "Three Days of the Condor" (with Faye Dunaway), "The Electric Horseman" (with Fonda), "Out of Africa" (with Meryl Streep) and "Havana."

I'm crushed. Possibly my favorite male supporting actor of the last 30 years, and he should have acted more than directed.

"Nobody wants to pay $40 to see a play about people living next to chemical waste -- they can see that in New Jersey!"

Confirmnation.

ya he had such a great screen presence.

Hahaha! Probably my favorite line in the film still! (Along with Bill Murray's perfectly timed "...you SLUT.")

Actually his whole backstory is classic self-made-man plus a gift of luck stuff:

The son of a pharmacist, Pollack was born July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., and later moved with his family to South Bend.

"I think of it with great sadness," he said of his experiences in South Bend in a 1993 interview with the New York Times. "It was a real cultural desert. There weren't many Jews like us, and it was real anti-Semitic."

His parents divorced while he was growing up, and his mother, who "had emotional problems and became an alcoholic," died when Pollack was 16. Although his father envisioned him becoming a dentist, Pollack left home after graduating from high school and moved to New York to become an actor. After studying with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, Pollack became Meisner's assistant.

Pollack, whose career was interrupted by Army service from 1957 to 1959, had a small role in the 1955 Broadway comedy "The Dark Is Light Enough" and later appeared on "Playhouse 90" and "The United States Steel Hour," as well as series such as "The Twilight Zone" and "Have Gun Will Travel."

As an actor, however, he viewed teaching as his meal ticket.

"I knew I wasn't going to be any great shakes as an actor -- the way I looked I would play the soda jerk or the friend of a friend," he told the New York Times in 1993. "I taught. That's how I made my living."

Pollack's work as an actor on director John Frankenheimer's two-part adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" on "Playhouse 90," led Frankenheimer to ask him to work as a dialogue coach for two children in his "Playhouse 90" production of "Turn of the Screw."

That, in turn, led Pollack to do similar work in Hollywood on Frankenheimer's 1961 film "The Young Savages," starring Burt Lancaster.

"Lancaster told me to come to his office one day and said, 'You should be a director,' and I said that I didn't know anything about directing, so he introduced me to Lew Wasserman [then chairman of MCA, owner of Universal Pictures]," Pollack told the New York Times.

More to say later, but, wow, Pollack in Husbands and Wives is the best screen depiction of self-deluded, male middle-aged angst.

Michael Clayton was a nice way to go.

i had no idea he was even that old

Hahaha, yes, thank you YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnHqiipcw6g

Yeah, that scene is a master's class in comic acting.

That moment when he finally gives in and puts his head in his hands -- genius.

I use the line, "This is a coast too, George. New York is a coast."

all the time.

a tomato doesn't have logic

^ truth

great scene. tootsie soooo good

It's his only great film, to my mind.

http://www.msn101.com/content/emoticons/rip_2LDBBR.gif

# Random Hearts (1999)
# Sabrina (1995)
... aka Sabrina (Germany)
# The Firm (1993)
# Havana (1990/I)

pretty rough run :(

I'm with Alfred -- he made a slew of 'worthy' films and all, and as noted, terrible nineties for him. Tootsie made up for it all.

the gehry film was a little too lovey-dovey but was a fun, informative little puff piece. i just saw gehry interviewed in a more serious "art" documentary and i liked him less.

and an achievement like Tootsie's nothing to sneeze at either -- it's the best (last?) studio comedy of the last 30 years.

Joe Morganstern penned an affectionate portrait of Tootsie and the man, coinciding with the former's expanded DVD release a few months ago.

RIP

ah, damn

RIP

Ah, this sucks. I imagine him to be in more roles than he really was, just shows how strong and memorable he made the few he was in.

I see he also produced Talented Mr Ripley, Cold Mountain and Breaking and Entering. If I was Jude Law I'd be getting worried now.

Nobody mentioned how good he was in, um, Eyes Wide Shut. RIP.

Yeah, better actor than director. But a really good actor!

my wife's stepfather runs a skeet-shooting range, does woodworking in the basement and watches jeremiah johnson so often that they had to buy him a new copy of it after he wore the old one out.

Jesse, your post belongs in http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kpWzDqL9L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Aw man.. :( :( :(

One of my favorite episodes of the Sopranos is with Pollack and Johnny Sack in the cancer ward of prison...

"I killed my wife. Not that it's any excuse. I had reason to believe she was cheating on me at the time with her chiropractor. Granted, I was abusing cocaine at the time. And alcohol. But I came home one day, shot her four times. Twice in the head. I killed her aunt, too. I didn't know she was there. And the mailman. At that point, I had to fully commit."

great episode.

Billy and Elvis so OTM. Rest in peace, Sydney. Thanks for it all.

Always a treat to find him turning up in a film. RIP big man.

I forgot he was in "The Sopranos."

Made some very good films; super as Michael Dorsey's agent.

As for NPR calling him "iconic" this morning... uh...

The Poopsidedown Adventure

Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid

so many r-rated movies where i read the mad parody before i was old enough to see the movie - altered states comes to mind specifically

me too! where he turns into a sheep

i think a lot of my base '70s cinema knowledge came from my cousins' old mad magazines

I remember in the Orient Express parody, they had a panel of them all stabbing Richard Widmark, with Tony Perkins in his Psycho wig and Sidney Poitier in uniform saying "For the crew of the Bedford!"

altered states comes to mind specifically

Hahaha, yes, I remember that one as well!

OK, you guys are now counterintuiting yourselves into overrating him as an actor and underrating him as a director.

Everyone talking about how good his performances are /= overrated. But I'm wrong for not mentioning They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, a fantastically acted movie that's more ambitious than anything else Pollack helmed.

I need to read that book (Horace McCoy)

so many r-rated movies where i read the mad parody before i was old enough to see the movie - altered states comes to mind specifically

That was The Exorcist (a.k.a. "The Ecchorcist") for me

You know how long it took me to figure out that the protagonist in "Midnight Wowboy" wasn't really known for his kissing?

Three Days of the Condor is on TCM late tonight, btw

It's some kind of Faye Dunaway night, no? Little Big Man is on too, and maybe Network.

OK, just saw you revived the other thread.

oh, The Yakuza is a good, weird mesh of sensibilities (Mitchum, Schrader brothers, Pollack).

http://www.uvouch.com/video-Sydney-Pollack-in-cliches-for-Cingular-263597

i never knew he directed the swimmer!

I never could sit through the whole thing until the end to read the credits.

Although I suppose they told us at the beginning.

Pollack finished The Swimmer, uncredited, when Burt Lancaster "tired of Frank Perry," says Dave Kehr in his tribute:

If his work declined in the 90s, it was because the pool of viable stars was beginning to dry up — imagine beginning your career with Lancaster and Mitchum, and finishing it with Cruise and Ford.

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=31

that's some B.S. burt lancaster would not have made "random hearts" a rad movie.

I believe Kehr's point is that IN A WORLD with Burt, Random Hearts wd not have been a Pollack project.

Sydney Pollack, Filmmaker New and Old
By A. O. SCOTT

Sydney Pollack’s career as a director blossomed in the 1960s and ’70s, but in many ways he was a throwback to an earlier era in American movies.

The story of the New Hollywood, dominated by a wild bunch of ambitious, iconoclastic would-be auteurs, is by now overgrown with nostalgia and legend-mongering, but Mr. Pollack’s place in that legend suggests continuity rather than upheaval. The vitality of motion pictures has always been sustained by craftsmen with a modicum of business sense and the ability to tell a good story. Mr. Pollack, who died on Monday at 73, was never (and never claimed to be) a great innovator or a notable visual stylist. If he could be compared to a major figure from the Old Hollywood, it would not be to one of the great individualists like Howard Hawks or John Ford, who stamped their creative personalities onto every project, whatever the genre or the level of achievement. Mr. Pollack was more like William Wyler: highly competent, drawn to projects with a certain quality and prestige and able above all to harness the charisma of movie stars to great emotional and dramatic effect.

Just about any film by Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese, for instance, will be immediately and primarily identifiable as such, no matter who’s in it. But if you think of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” you’ll remember Jane Fonda, so desperate and defiant and sad as she pushes herself through a Depression-era dance marathon. “Tootsie” is Dustin Hoffman’s movie. “This Property Is Condemned” will conjure up Natalie Wood and Robert Redford, oddly cast but nonetheless generating Southern Gothic heat in an overripe Tennessee Williams scenario. And it is Mr. Redford who defines Mr. Pollack’s oeuvre nearly as much as the director himself. Over nearly 25 years, from “This Property Is Condemned” to “Havana,” they worked together on westerns (“Jeremiah Johnson,”); love stories both sweeping (“The Way We Were”) and intimate (“The Electric Horseman”); paranoid thrillers (“Three Days of the Condor”); and high-toned literary adaptations (“Out of Africa.”)

Those movies demonstrate both Mr. Redford’s consistency — he’s handsome, stoic, adjusting the mix of sensitivity and mischief depending on the role — and Mr. Pollack’s range. He was an exemplary mainstream filmmaker, which is not to say that he was a timid or unimaginative director. As a producer, he was certainly prolific and eclectic, putting his name on (and his energy and enthusiasm behind) projects as varied in scale and style as “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Forty Shades of Blue.” In both capacities he worked, comfortably and with conviction, within the parameters of the Hollywood “A picture” tradition, turning out high-quality commercial entertainments that did not shy away from ethical and political engagement.

His death is a reminder that things have changed, that the kind of movie he made, which used to be the kind of movie everyone wanted to make (and to see), may be slipping into obsolescence. His last completed feature, “The Interpreter,” with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn hashing out the traumas of postcolonial African politics at the United Nations, struggled to find the mix of topicality and high intrigue that had come so easily in the ’70s, but it mostly seemed forced and preposterous. The blend of big stars with meaty, serious themes; lavish production values; and unstinting professionalism that once would have seemed foolproof looked downright anachronistic.

The old A pictures, made for mass appeal and Oscar glory, no longer have the industry cachet or cultural impact they used to. The studios send their specialty divisions out in search of awards on the relative cheap, while action franchises, raunchy comedies and family-friendly animation bring in the big money and attract the heavy investments.

There are exceptions, from time to time, movies that try to steer between the art house and the lowest common denominator in the great Hollywood middle-brow tradition. Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton,” a tale of corporate malfeasance with a smart script, a few murders and George Clooney’s charisma, may be the best recent example. It’s hardly an accident that Mr. Pollack’s name appears in the credits twice, as a producer and as a member of the cast.

It would be nice if “Michael Clayton” turned out not to be an anomaly but rather a sign that the old mainstream has not entirely run dry. And I hope that there are at least aspiring filmmakers and producers out there who dream of being the next Sydney Pollack.

I believe Kehr's point is that IN A WORLD with Burt, Random Hearts wd not have been a Pollack project.

-- Dr Morbius, Wednesday, May 28, 2008 7:59 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

kind of a stupid point. i mean, iffy to even consider harrison ford as an example of diminished movie stardom.

i mean burt lancaster was in "airport" for christ's sake.

C'mon, it's not fair to cherrypick a potboiler!

How many watchable films has Ford done since turning 50? Lancaster did The Leopard, The Train, Seven Days in May, The Professionals, The Swimmer, Ulzana's Raid, Go Tell the Spartans, Atlantic City, Local Hero. All highly memorable.

how many watchable posts has dr morbius done since turning 50?

that might've been funny/sad in yr trademark hipster Ebonics

Nice James Wolcott obit

TCM will revise its primetime schedule on Monday, June 2nd in order to honor the late director Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?):

Here is the new lineup for Monday, June 2

8:00 PM The Slender Thread (’65) (his directorial debut)
10:00 PM Three Days of the Condor (’75)
12:00 AM Tootsie (’82)
2:00 AM Jeremiah Johnson (’72)

Watched and loved Sketches of Frank Gehry today. Didn't learn 'til watching the extras that Pollack used Errol Morris's editor. Interesting how the whole movie has these charming hyper-masculine guys, and the Gehry detractor (Hal Foster) is Michael Stipe's doppelganger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu9orvtStdY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu9orvtStdY

weird to see him w/ a producer credit on margaret

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/margaret/

I was worried that he'd be directing from the beyond

heh, i noticed that too johnny. that's how you know it's been on the shelf forever!

wow, that's actually coming out?

tot forgot his hilarious single-scene doctor in Death Becomes Her

dude was good for a memorable cameo

He's talky but on point on the Tootsie commentary track.

Watched a nice new DVD edition of 3 Days of the Condor at the weekend, which I'd not seen before. Uber 70s American cinema - jazz fusion score, New York locations photographed by Owen Roizman in his best French Connection/Pelham 123 style (the Twin Towers feature heavily), paranoid conspiracy vibes a la Parallax View or The Conversation, Max Von Sydow as an ice cool assassin, groovy computer font used for the credits over shots of 'state of the art' mainframes, people smoking all the time, etc etc. Film sags a little in the middle - there's a Stockholm Syndrome romance between Redford and Dunaway that's pretty ludicrous and slightly distasteful - but the freeze frame ending is suitably bleak and the motor of the plot ("It's all about oil") is still very timely. A pretty slick piece of entertainment.

too bad they killed that off rad Asian girl so soon

ditto about that Stockholm thingie. maybe kinky & shady avant la lettre.

yeah i remember that movie as being really good -- nothing profound, but very engrossing.

Saw two Pollack films this week (happenstance, no design): The Interpreter at home, a rep screening of Three Days of the Condor tonight. The Interpreter was a little better the second time--I'd say it's better than Lumet's last film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. (It was Pollack's last non-documentary.) Kidman's very good. Penn is the one thing I don't like--affectatious world-weariness. Always have the same reaction to Condor: Dunaway's great, ditto the ending, but I find the last third drags a bit. I swoon over Tina Chen.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/chen.jpg

I was thinking how interesting it was for Kubrick to cast Pollack in Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick must have liked him as a director--don't think he'd cast him otherwise. They're so different.

I think The Interpreter's also the only film I've ever seen that had Moby Grape on the soundtrack. Penn pulls the plug on them so he can play Lyle Lovett. Sounds about right.

he can be seen kinda frantically waving his arms at the camera crew during the Aretha doc

He gives himself about five minutes of screen-time in The Interpreter. (I didn't even realize he co-directed the Aretha film till a few days ago.)

I was thinking how interesting it was for Kubrick to cast Pollack in Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick must have liked him as a director--don't think he'd cast him otherwise. They're so different.

Harvey Keitel was originally cast in this role though. Keitel dropped out after shooting went on for too long and was replaced by Pollack.

https://scontent.fman2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/57485048_10218938139749034_2461046102040772608_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&_nc_eui2=AeHt54FYnF9o3bfAwKRy5Hi441LMlKRjWSUnOnDioLm05hJkOfh3HEpWJBdYyjfONxYAgNxEjzSU2hZV7U8A4X431anydCIsi5RScc0rOcDsyA&_nc_ht=scontent.fman2-1.fna&oh=59693db0b178a0b94fd20d02af667cd3&oe=5D38C26D

Sydney Pollack says he can do it in three... pic.twitter.com/DpZmIh1RPi

— Larry Karaszewski (@Karaszewski) April 18, 2019