Sydney Pollack Quotes

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

You are not an active creator of the film.

We talked about Tootsie, the idea in Tootsie is that a man becomes a better man for having been a woman.

When you work without a script, you are in a sense working in a much more improvisational way than when you are prepared totally.

Film is a collective experience, as you know.

I'm not a very good predictor in any area of art, particularly my own. I don't know how to evaluate that.

Making films is much more difficult than people imagine, and so the experience of actually directing them is not one I've ever relished.

The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure.

Burt Lancaster was largely responsible for me becoming a director.

The essence of acting is seeing the world from another point of view. That's what acting is.

I mean, the truth of the matter is, I like the failures as much as I like the successes, it's only the world that doesn't like the failures.

One wants to be able to experience being other people, remaking a reality, remaking a life, remaking a certain world.

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.

I've produced my own films for twenty years now - it means I have to talk to less people.

You don't normally do another presentation of All About Eve. You do one All About Eve, and that's it.

The dance that happens, between actor and director, is a very delicate thing ... it's why people tend to work together on many films over and over.

OK, I know this is going to disgust you, Michael, but a lot of people are in this business to make money.

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

Well, there's no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie.

But, I've made films in Japan, in Yugoslavia, all over Europe, all over the United States, Mexico, but not Hollywood.

What I really want to do is produce. There isn't much patience with a slow developing story line anymore.

You mustn't regret decisions that you make. Because the decisions are made out of your gut in a way and you have to stick with them.

Well, the wonderful thing about making movies, oddly enough, is that they're sort of highly motivated graduate studies in one or another field.

And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.

I didn't grow up thinking of movies as film, or art, but as movies, something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

It's always interesting to play people different from yourself, it would be boring for me to play myself.

Every single art form is involved in film, in a way.

I didn't believe that I'd ever be lucky enough to be able to make a living as an actor.

I tend to be what I would call more progressive than conservative, but I think either extreme is excessive.

You know, essentially when you do a play you're reinterpreting a work of art that already exists. That's not what happens with a movie.

No, I never went to college. Always regretted it, always envied people who did.

I mean, movies are like your kids or your fingers and toes or something, it's pretty hard to pick favorites.

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

If we were a primitive society, movie stars would be gods.

Most human beings who are accustomed to attempting to see the world from various points of view tend to be more liberal than conservative.

Obviously its a good feeling to know that something you've done has lasted.