Sydney Pollack -- Director, Producer, Actor -- 1934 - 2008
This is sad for me. For some reason, although I never met the man, I have always had an outsized amount of affection for Sydney Pollack, who passed last night after a long battle with cancer.
Pollack began as an actor, but soon realized that he wanted to be behind the camera, according to this report from Howard Movshovitz at NPR:
(I)n 1961, he was on the set of The Young Savages as a dialogue coach for three young actors, and his work attracted the attention of the film's veteran star, Burt Lancaster. In a 1990 interview with WHYY's Fresh Air, Pollack remembered being called into Lancaster's office.
"He said, 'You know, you ought to be a director. You really should. What do you want to be told what to do when you ought to be telling people what to do?' That was the way he put it. And he picked up the phone and he called Lew Wasserman, and said, 'Lew, I got a kid here, I don't know if he can direct, but he's talented and I want you to talk to him.' I'm quoting verbatim how. He said 'In any case, he can't be any worse than those bums you got workin' for you now.' "
Wasserman, the head of Universal Pictures, put Pollack under the wing of a producer, and before long Pollack was directing TV. He made his first feature film, The Slender Thread, in 1965. Film historian Patricia Erens says he followed it with many more that ran the gamut of genres.
Of course, recently you have seen Pollack on the small screen on Will & Grace (I'm trying to get a personal remembrance from the set for you later this week), has provided voicing for King of the Hill and appeared on The Sopranos.
Everyone in my family has their favorite Sydney Pollack film. My dad loves The Electric Horseman. My mom and sis adore Out of Africa, and he directed, produced and acted in my fave, Tootsie, and I have a clip after the jump, the "Michael Dorsey is a name when you want to send back a steak," scene. It's a great scene, the dialog snaps and he and Hoffman were perfect.
My condolences to his family and loved ones.
