Sydney Pollack (1934 - 2008)

Sydney Pollack passed away on May 26 2008. He was the recipient of one Best Director Oscar (for Out of Africa in 1986) and two further nominations (They Shoot Horses, Don't They? in 1970 and Tootsie in 1982.) He competed with honour at Berlin (Absence of Malice, 1981) and Cannes (Jeremiah Johnson, 1972). Moreover, down the years — just as he made use of his stage training to work as an occasional screen actor for the likes of Kubrick, Altman and Woody Allen — so Pollack translated his deep knowledge of filmmaking into the task of producing for other directors, so much so that his producing credits in the last decade of his career far exceeded the number of directorial assignments. Here, in an extract from an interview conducted in 2003 by Helen De Winter for her excellent compendium book What I Really Want To Do is Produce (Faber and Faber, 2006), Pollack describes how the producer's chair came to be an easier fit for him, and gives his own view on whether the prime years of his career — the 1970s — were also, as often argued, a 'golden age' in comparison to American film now.
HELEN DE WINTER: What is it about producing that has taken you away from directing?

SYDNEY POLLACK: Well, I would say it was mostly a mistake…or rather, I didn't ever intend for it to take me away from directing. But I'm a rather lazy director — I avoid directing for as long as I can. I am not somebody who thinks directing is a great song and dance. I envy those directors who just can't wait to get on the floor and direct something.
HDW: Even after all these years?

SP: Oh sure, sure. It's agony for me to direct. I get nervous about it and I always worry or think that I'm going to fail. It's a lot of pressure — though I think the pressure is a self-imposed one. But it's pressure nonetheless.

As a producer I think that I've been able to offer something to directors that often other producers can't, which is the experience of having been there myself. Most of my career has been directing. Other than producing my own films, which I have done for thirty-five years, I didn't start producing other people's films until 1985… My intention really was to feel more useful to myself and to the rest of the world. During the long periods of time I was taking to decide what I would direct next, I thought that, instead of coming to the office every day and feeling useless — because I was reading scripts and saying, 'No, no, no' — maybe I should produce a picture or two. So we started a very small company, Mirage. Previously, the first time I did any producing was when the singer Willie Nelson asked me to produce a movie. I gave Willie his first acting job in a movie called The Electric Horseman [1980] with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, and he had a project of his own, Honeysuckle Rose [1980], that he wanted me to direct. I didn't want to direct it so he asked me if I would oversee it instead. So I produced the film with Gene Taft, and Jerry Schatzberg directed.
HDW: And when you say you produced it — ?

SP: I didn't finance the movie, I was the creative supervisor, which meant having an opinion about the script, working a bit with the writer, talking to the director about the casting, looking at the dailies, commenting on them, looking at the edit, working through the cut and making suggestions. But with each movie the job depends on what is needed. Let's take Presumed Innocent [1990]. I got Warner to buy the book and then I developed the screenplay, working every day with the writer. Then I hired Alan J. Pakula… Well, Alan Pakula didn't need me to stand around on the set. Once he had said he would do it, there wasn't any sense in me doing anything except saying 'Bon voyage, and if you need me I'm here'. Until I saw the cut… and then I had some strong feelings about what I felt had been a mistake in departing from the book with a different ending. Alan had felt he couldn't get away with the book's ending, which, in a sense, lets the murderer off the hook. But for me that was precisely what was so powerful about the novel. So I got involved in that issue with Alan and talked him into trusting the book's ending and going with it.

But, overall, Alan was on a level where I had no value to him. Anthony Minghella doesn't need me either, but he wants to have me there just as I would want him to be around for me. I don't need a producer with me on set, but if I have Anthony standing around so I can talk to him, it's only going to help.
HDW: Do you think audiences have changed in the time that you have been making films?

SP: Yes. Back in the 1970s, on Friday or Saturday nights, college kids would watch foreign movies. Audiences were composed of all ages. Today most audiences are younger and they're watching special effects movies. Most films made today are geared for a demographic that provides repeat business. And that's 18 to 25 year olds. Many movies are sort of 'video game' movies. They go after your attention as fast and furiously and loudly as possible. There isn't much patience with a slowly developing narrative line. Things have to go quickly. The film-going experience is influenced by what happens at home with DVDs and VHSs — you eat, talk on the cell phone, comment out loud… It's an entirely different thing than it was in the seventies — or even the eighties.
HDW: Would Three Days of the Condor [1975] be green-lit today?

SP: I don't know. The climate has changed. At the time that film was critical of the CIA in a certain way, because that was the political climate of the US in the 1970s. Back then, we were outraged as we were learning stuff that we had done. But that's not the feeling today. In terms of my own pictures — well, a strange picture like Jeremiah Johnson [1972] wouldn't get made today because it doesn't fall into any clear genre. It's not a western… It had a lot of success in its day. But it's not a movie that would get made today. I wouldn't know how to pitch it. Or They Shoot Horses, Don't They? [1969], where at the end of the movie a woman ends up saying 'Please shoot me' and the guy does… You just wouldn't make those movies today.
HDW: Does that depress you?

SP: Well, yeah — except I try not to get depressed about stuff I can't do anything about. It's like the weather. Here's the thing — when I was a young director and I would meet great older directors, they were all depressed about what had happened to the movie business. And secretly I felt bad for them, because I kept saying to myself, 'I guess that's what happens when you get old — you lose touch and you think it was always better in your day.' So I have always been on guard about not wanting to get that way.

On the other hand, I know that there has been a real sea-change in the quality of American movies. And that is not an opinion, it's a fact. If you look at the movies that were made in this country between, say, 1965 and 1980, that was really the golden age of Hollywood — more than the 1930s and the 1940s, though they were great in their own way too. But look at the movies made during that period and it's extraordinary. All of us were doing serious stuff, and it wasn't about special effects or a $60 million opening weekend. Back then you didn't give a damn about that.