..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..RJ Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Sydney Pollack
1934-2008

Sydney Pollack, the man who directed Out of Africa, The Way We Were, and Three Days of the Condor, was one of those Hollywood professionals who seemed bullet-proof -- so versatile and ubiquitous, and so talented in all three of his movie professions (director, producer and actor) that it seemed no bilious critic or conniving executive would ever lay a glove on him.
    
They didn’t. Death apparently was the only adversary he couldn’t out-talk or outmaneuver. Pollack was a tough offbeat mix -- a Russian-Jewish-American from the heartland of Indiana -- and he was a working, excellent filmmaker almost up to the end. He had upcoming projects listed on the same IMDB item that reported his demise from cancer.
    
Pollack came from the ‘60s generation of TV directors, right after the exciting ‘50s class of John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet and Arthur Penn and among a group that also included Robert Altman and Sam Peckinpah. Like them, he made a successful switch to the bigger screen; unlike some of them, he was able to sidestep the perils of new eras, new regimes and old stupidities.
    
How? Easy -- or so it seemed.

The word “consummate“ was invented for guys like Pollack. He was a pro’s pro as a director and producer and, as an actor, he specialized in playing real pros: the slick, uneasy agent in Tootsie, the philandering hubby of Husbands and Wives, the enigmatic boss of Eyes Wide Shut, the glib boss lawyer of Michael Clayton. Acting for himself and others, he was adept at creating a perfect surface, and then at taking you beneath it. An expert technician himself, he could quickly reveal the flaws in his upper-echelon characters: their double-dealing, establishment slants and slick, smiling selfishness.

Like John Huston, Pollack built that new acting career later in life -- after abandoning acting for directing in 1962 -- but he built it with effortless success, winning plum parts from top colleagues like Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Robert Zemeckis and Altman. There is a "Sydney Pollack type" in the movies of the ‘80s and onward -- the smooth, casually tricky executive -- and nobody played it better than Pollack himself.

But, of course, it was only a movie role. As a producer, he was humane, hard-working, infallibly tasteful and expert, somebody who could pick smart and bring out the best in his colleagues. (I first realized that collegial side of Pollack, when Altman told me it was Pollack who was taking him around to the studios and trying to get Short Cuts made, at a time when that seemed impossible. "What a generous guy," I thought at the time. I didn’t know the half of it.)

One of the most estimable of those colleagues, of course was Robert Redford, who met Pollack when they acted together in 1962‘s War Hunt, and who later appeared in seven Pollack-directed movies, scoring some of his biggest hits and most memorable roles working for his buddy. When you think of a typical Redford movie of the ‘60s ‘70s and ‘80s, from This Property is Condemned through Havana, it’s usually one directed by Pollack. And when Redford started directing, you could tell what he’d learned on the sets.

Pollack-the-director was a master of a kind of film-making we almost all appreciate but often under-applaud. He was an “invisible” craftsman in the tradition of the great Golden Age Hollywood studio directors: the Howard Hawkses, John Fords, George Cukors, George Stevenses and William Wylers. As with most of those others, there isn’t a Pollack visual-dramatic style you can immediately latch onto and analyze. Instead, everything in his movies seems to be right on: smooth as silk, fully imagined, and (there’s that word again) consummately mounted.

He was a past-master at ironing out the wrinkles, eliminating the false steps and making everybody look good -- or better -- or the best they could be.

Sydney Pollack was also one of the great modern genre directors, though he’s often not recognized for it. (I told you: the guy could be invisible.) But, in his career, he directed two of the great romances (The Way We Were and Out of Africa), one of the great Westerns (Jeremiah Johnson) and one of the great romantic comedies (Tootsie). Three Days of the Condor is not only one of the great thrillers, but one of the most widely influential and endlessly imitated. Pollack also directed one of the best-ever gambling movies -- one I’ll bet most of you have missed: his superb, gripping 1965 TV drama about a deadly round of chemin de fer, The Game.

That’s what most of his movies are about: how the games are played, how the games are won or lost. The roles he so excelled at creating were the guys who played (and often won) the games. But he himself was no shallow opportunist caught up in the wheel and deal. Like all the best moviemakers, he could tell the story wonderfully well, thrill us and amuse us. But he could also see above it, see beyond it, and take us to better places.

I’ve known his movies for years, ever since I saw The Game on TV. I‘ve reviewed them ever since I wrote (favorably) about 1968’s The Scalphunters for my college paper. And I met and talked to him once, three years ago, when he was doing interviews for his 2005 documentary on his architect friend, Frank Gehry. Talking to him then, in his vigorous 70s, I would have sworn he’d live forever, work forever. I only wish he could. But those aren’t the rules of the game -- and nobody knew that better than Sydney Pollack.

- Michael Wilmington
May 27, 2008

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