Sydney Pollack Dies; Actor and Actor’s Director
Sydney Pollack helped make a sex symbol of Robert Redford, an Oscar-caliber star of Jane Fonda and a woman of Dustin Hoffman.
Pollack, the quintessential actor’s director of Tootsie, The Way We Were and more, who seemed most comfortable in the company of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and vice versa, died tonight of cancer at his Los Angeles home.
The filmmaker, a two-time Oscar-winner, was 73.
“Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better,” George Clooney said in a statement. “A tip of the hat to a class act. He’ll be missed terribly.”
Pollack recently worked with Clooney on Michael Clayton, which Pollack acted in and helped produce, and Leatherheads, which he executive produced.
Michael Clayton, a Best Picture contender at this past February’s Oscars, brought Pollack his sixth career nomination. He won his pair of statuettes for directing and producing the 1985 Best Picture winner, Out of Africa.
He also earned nominations for directing and producing Tootsie, the beloved cross-dressing 1982 comedy, and for directing the 1969 dance-marathon drama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.
A former acting teacher who became an in-demand character actor, Pollack had memorable on-screen turns in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives and his own Tootsie, in which he played Hoffman’s exasperated acting agent.
Indicative of a career that seemed as vital as ever, Pollack can currently be seen in theaters as Patrick Dempsey’s father in the comedy Made of Honor.
Pollack, the producer, likewise was busy. He had a number of films in the offing, including The Reader, an upcoming Ralph Fiennes-Kate Winslet romantic drama, from the production company he founded with Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning writer-director who died suddenly in March.
With its central love story, The Reader seems a prototypical Pollack production. As the filmmaker told Online in 2000, “I have never done a film without a love story.”
And, he could have added, he never did a film without an A-list actor, either.
Hoffman, Tom Cruise (The Firm), Meryl Streep (Out of Africa), Paul Newman and Sally Field (Absence of Malice), and Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn (The Interpreter) all worked with Pollack, the director.
Harrison Ford made two movies with PollackRandom Hearts and Sabrina.
Robert Redford made sevenHavana, Out of Africa, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor, The Way We Were, Jeremiah Johnson and This Property Is Condemned.
A star on a Pollack film, especially a Pollack film of the 1970s and 1980s, could almost bet on two things: the film selling a lot of tickets, and the film netting a lot of Oscar nominations. Actors who earned Academy Award nominations in Pollack films include Hoffman, Newman, Streep, Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were) and Holly Hunter (The Firm).
While Pollack was known for deftly and successfully working with Hollywood giants, he also had a knack for discovering talent. Or, maybe it’s better put, he had a knack for recasting talent.
He spotted Greg Kinnear on E!’s Talk Soup, cast him as Ford’s younger brother in Sabrina and set the TV host onto an Oscar-nominated acting career.
He directed the post-Barbarella Jane Fonda, not then noted as a serious actress, to her first Oscar nomination in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.
And he directed Jessica Lange, also not yet then noted as a serious actress, to her first Oscar-winning performance as Hoffman’s insecure love interest in Tootsie.
Of all the stars he worked with, Pollack was most associated with Redford. This Property Is Condemned, released in 1966, was Pollack’s second feature as director, and one of Redford’s first as a leading man. The two went on to work together on one of the biggest box-office hits of the 1970s, the love-song-inspiring The Way We Were, to one of the more notorious busts of the 1990s, the bad-review-inspiring Havana.
“I’ll tell you something,” Pollack said of Havana to the New York Times. “If I had to do it again, I’d do it. I loved that character that Redford played.”
Pollack was biased. He saw in Redford “the quintessential American hero,” he told Online, and “the loner, the guy who wanted to make his own rules, the guy who learns to become a real human being through the love of a woman,” he expounded on to the Times.
A man who becomes a better man by becoming a woman was the premise of Tootsie, arguably Pollack’s greatest success as director, Oscar wins notwithstanding, and his only film to make the American Film Institute’s list honoring the 100 best U.S.-made movies.
Tootsie, in which difficult actor Michael Dorsey (Hoffman) becomes a soap star by pretending to be spunky actress Dorothy Michaels (also Hoffman), earned 10 Academy Award nominations, and reignited Pollack’s left-for-dead acting career.
According to the filmmaker, Hoffman suggestedno, demandedthat Pollack play Michael Dorsey’s agent, instead of Dabney Coleman, who’d been cast.
“Dustin was very fond of Dabney, but he felt he was a colleague and a peer,” Pollack told Online. “He said, ’If a peer says to me, ’You’re never going to work again,’ I’m not gonna put on a dress. If you say to me, ’You’re never gonna work again,’ then maybe I’ll put on a dress.”
Coleman ended up playing the movie’s boorish soap director; Pollack ended up on other directors’ call sheets.
He played the midlife-crisis-suffering husband in Allen’s Husbands and Wives. He played the tony Long Islander with a penchant for clothing-optional costume parties in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. He played Clooney’s law-firm boss in Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton.
Pollack also did a good amount of TV, including stops on The Sopranos, Frasier and Will & Grace, where he occasionally appeared as Eric McCormack’s prime-time father.
Born July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., Pollack once said of his childhood to the Times, “I think of it with great sadness. It was a real cultural desert.”
Pollack found a home in New York City, where acting class kept him busy as both student and teacher. Of his teaching career, Pollack said it only came about because he couldn’t find work as an actor.
The turning point came in 1959 when John Frankenheimer, a prolific director of the era’s live TV dramas who would later helm such films as the original Manchurian Candidate, hired Pollack as an acting coach. The gig led to TV directing gigs, which led to his first feature, The Slender Thread, a 1965 suicide hotline drama with, as would become Pollack’s way, two stars, Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.
Pollack’s last dramatic film as director was the United Nations-set The Interpreter, which was released in 2005, the same year as his lone documentary as a filmmaker, Sketches of Frank Gehry, about the noted architect.
A prolific producer and executive producer, Pollack helped make high-profile Oscar fare (Minghella’s Cold Mountain and The Talented Mr. Ripley), smallish films (Sliding Doors, Searching for Bobby Fischer) and even a John Goodman vehicle (King Ralph).
In the end, Pollack was defined by big stars and big movies. He knew it. And embraced it.
“Not all those big movies are good for you. I suppose there’s a lot of bad onesI’m sure people would say I’ve made some of them,” Pollack once told National Public Radio. “But the good ones do move you.”
Sydney Pollack Dies; Actor and Actor’s Director
Sydney Pollack helped make a sex symbol of Robert Redford, an Oscar-caliber star of Jane Fonda and a woman of Dustin Hoffman.
Pollack, the quintessential actor’s director of Tootsie, The Way We Were and more, who seemed most comfortable in the company of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and vice versa, died tonight of cancer at his Los Angeles home.
The filmmaker, a two-time Oscar-winner, was 73.
“Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better,” George Clooney said in a statement. “A tip of the hat to a class act. He’ll be missed terribly.”
Pollack recently worked with Clooney on Michael Clayton, which Pollack acted in and helped produce, and Leatherheads, which he executive produced.
Michael Clayton, a Best Picture contender at this past February’s Oscars, brought Pollack his sixth career nomination. He won his pair of statuettes for directing and producing the 1985 Best Picture winner, Out of Africa.
He also earned nominations for directing and producing Tootsie, the beloved cross-dressing 1982 comedy, and for directing the 1969 dance-marathon drama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.
A former acting teacher who became an in-demand character actor, Pollack had memorable on-screen turns in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives and his own Tootsie, in which he played Hoffman’s exasperated acting agent.
Indicative of a career that seemed as vital as ever, Pollack can currently be seen in theaters as Patrick Dempsey’s father in the comedy Made of Honor.
Pollack, the producer, likewise was busy. He had a number of films in the offing, including The Reader, an upcoming Ralph Fiennes-Kate Winslet romantic drama, from the production company he founded with Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning writer-director who died suddenly in March.
With its central love story, The Reader seems a prototypical Pollack production. As the filmmaker told Online in 2000, “I have never done a film without a love story.”
And, he could have added, he never did a film without an A-list actor, either.
Hoffman, Tom Cruise (The Firm), Meryl Streep (Out of Africa), Paul Newman and Sally Field (Absence of Malice), and Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn (The Interpreter) all worked with Pollack, the director.
Harrison Ford made two movies with PollackRandom Hearts and Sabrina.
Robert Redford made sevenHavana, Out of Africa, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor, The Way We Were, Jeremiah Johnson and This Property Is Condemned.
A star on a Pollack film, especially a Pollack film of the 1970s and 1980s, could almost bet on two things: the film selling a lot of tickets, and the film netting a lot of Oscar nominations. Actors who earned Academy Award nominations in Pollack films include Hoffman, Newman, Streep, Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were) and Holly Hunter (The Firm).
While Pollack was known for deftly and successfully working with Hollywood giants, he also had a knack for discovering talent. Or, maybe it’s better put, he had a knack for recasting talent.
He spotted Greg Kinnear on E!’s Talk Soup, cast him as Ford’s younger brother in Sabrina and set the TV host onto an Oscar-nominated acting career.
He directed the post-Barbarella Jane Fonda, not then noted as a serious actress, to her first Oscar nomination in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.
And he directed Jessica Lange, also not yet then noted as a serious actress, to her first Oscar-winning performance as Hoffman’s insecure love interest in Tootsie.
Of all the stars he worked with, Pollack was most associated with Redford. This Property Is Condemned, released in 1966, was Pollack’s second feature as director, and one of Redford’s first as a leading man. The two went on to work together on one of the biggest box-office hits of the 1970s, the love-song-inspiring The Way We Were, to one of the more notorious busts of the 1990s, the bad-review-inspiring Havana.
“I’ll tell you something,” Pollack said of Havana to the New York Times. “If I had to do it again, I’d do it. I loved that character that Redford played.”
Pollack was biased. He saw in Redford “the quintessential American hero,” he told Online, and “the loner, the guy who wanted to make his own rules, the guy who learns to become a real human being through the love of a woman,” he expounded on to the Times.
A man who becomes a better man by becoming a woman was the premise of Tootsie, arguably Pollack’s greatest success as director, Oscar wins notwithstanding, and his only film to make the American Film Institute’s list honoring the 100 best U.S.-made movies.
Tootsie, in which difficult actor Michael Dorsey (Hoffman) becomes a soap star by pretending to be spunky actress Dorothy Michaels (also Hoffman), earned 10 Academy Award nominations, and reignited Pollack’s left-for-dead acting career.
According to the filmmaker, Hoffman suggestedno, demandedthat Pollack play Michael Dorsey’s agent, instead of Dabney Coleman, who’d been cast.
“Dustin was very fond of Dabney, but he felt he was a colleague and a peer,” Pollack told Online. “He said, ’If a peer says to me, ’You’re never going to work again,’ I’m not gonna put on a dress. If you say to me, ’You’re never gonna work again,’ then maybe I’ll put on a dress.”
Coleman ended up playing the movie’s boorish soap director; Pollack ended up on other directors’ call sheets.
He played the midlife-crisis-suffering husband in Allen’s Husbands and Wives. He played the tony Long Islander with a penchant for clothing-optional costume parties in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. He played Clooney’s law-firm boss in Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton.
Pollack also did a good amount of TV, including stops on The Sopranos, Frasier and Will & Grace, where he occasionally appeared as Eric McCormack’s prime-time father.
Born July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., Pollack once said of his childhood to the Times, “I think of it with great sadness. It was a real cultural desert.”
Pollack found a home in New York City, where acting class kept him busy as both student and teacher. Of his teaching career, Pollack said it only came about because he couldn’t find work as an actor.
The turning point came in 1959 when John Frankenheimer, a prolific director of the era’s live TV dramas who would later helm such films as the original Manchurian Candidate, hired Pollack as an acting coach. The gig led to TV directing gigs, which led to his first feature, The Slender Thread, a 1965 suicide hotline drama with, as would become Pollack’s way, two stars, Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.
Pollack’s last dramatic film as director was the United Nations-set The Interpreter, which was released in 2005, the same year as his lone documentary as a filmmaker, Sketches of Frank Gehry, about the noted architect.
A prolific producer and executive producer, Pollack helped make high-profile Oscar fare (Minghella’s Cold Mountain and The Talented Mr. Ripley), smallish films (Sliding Doors, Searching for Bobby Fischer) and even a John Goodman vehicle (King Ralph).
In the end, Pollack was defined by big stars and big movies. He knew it. And embraced it.
“Not all those big movies are good for you. I suppose there’s a lot of bad onesI’m sure people would say I’ve made some of them,” Pollack once told National Public Radio. “But the good ones do move you.”
Mongol Movie Trailer
Exceeding all expectations and boldly showing up Hollywood on how to craft a stunning, historical battleground epic with tasteful violence and, sure, sweeping romance, Mongol was one of my top 10 films of 2007. And while it’s valid to make the argument for those films notoriously left out of the category, Mongol deserves to win this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. The American critics who are not gushing over it, simply have not seen it and are dismissing for shades of the some reason that many will dismiss it after viewing this trailer: it’s being marketed like 300 meets The Last Samurai meets Hero.
Instead, the soon-to-be signature effort from Russian director Sergei Bodrov conjures the hushed, bewitching appreciation for the existential qualities of nature and landscapes seen in Andrew Dominik and Roger Deakins’s The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, the Oscar-caliber clashes of Braveheart, and the universal, R-rated, crowd pleasing paternal tale of John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian. Believe it. You feel the small warmth of the campfires burning under majestic China night skies in this film, and you are transported into the main character’s sprawling travels from boy to man of ye gods. The first of three planned films about the life of Genghis Khan aka Temudjin, played with stoic depth by indie Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano (Ichi the Killer), Mongol is the convincing introductory piece to what might become one of the great trilogies in all of modern cinema.
Watch the trailer. Mongol will be released in the United States on June 8 by Picturehouse Entertainment.
Friday Box Office: Resident Evil $22M 3-day; Eastern Promises strong; Into The Wild huge
As expected, RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION will easily win the weekend topping GOOD LUCK CHUCK. David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES has expanded strongly, and Sean Penn’s INTO THE WILD has opened huge. THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES… had a so-so opening, and THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB is a disappointment.
The third and, reportedly, final chapter of the RESIDENT EVIL Trilogy will coast to an easy weekend win. After grabbing $8.8M on opening day, it will likely finish the frame with $22M, which is in line with industry expectations. Sony’s RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION will easily surpass the original 2002 film, which opened to $17.7M, but it will probably fall short of 2004’s RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE, which enjoyed a $23M opening.
Despite unbelievably bad reviews, GOOD LUCK CHUCK (Lionsgate) has grabbed a respectable $4.4M, and thanks to Jessica Alba’s body and Dane Cook’s MySpace friends, it should finish with an estimated $12.54M. THE BRAVE ONE (Warner Bros) added $2.3M on Friday, putting it just shy of $20M for its first 8 days of release. The Jodie Foster thriller is headed for a $7.47M 2nd weekend.
The critically-acclaimed David Cronenberg film EASTERN PROMISES (Focus Features) has expanded powerfully to 1,440 locations, churning up $1.9M in Friday ticket sales. That’s 4th for the day, but it will likely finish at #5 for the 3-day. The Russian mob yarn starring Viggo Mortensen is on its way to a $6M weekend and a 3-day PTA of $4,330. Meanwhile, 3:10 TO YUMA (Lionsgate) picked up another $1.8M to start the weekend, but it should edge PROMISES for #4 for the 3-day with approximately $6.12M.
The other wide new release, SYDNEY WHITE (Universal) starring Amanda Bynes, is a non-starter with just $1.75M on opening day. It’ll wrangle less than $5M worth of tweens and teens for the weekend.
3 more Oscar caliber specialty films arrived in limited release today, and the big winner is Sean Penn’s INTO THE WILD (Paramount Vantage). Based on Jon Krakauer’s bestseller of the same name, INTO THE WILD opened at 4 locations Friday with an astounding $13,850 Per Theatre Average. Featuring a remarkable performance by Emile Hirsch, the adventure film will wrap up the weekend with nearly $175,000 or $43,600 per. The news was not as good for 2 other entries into the Oscar derby.
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (Warner Bros), a movie that has sharply divided critics and moviegoers, managed a Friday PTA of just $8,364 at its 5 locations for just under $42,000. Starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck in the title roles, ASSASSINATION will manage a weekend take of only $130,000 for a 3-day PTA of $26,000 or so.
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB (Sony Classics) is off to an underwhelming start. With a nice ensemble cast including Maria Bello and Emily Blunt, Sony Classics has been hoping for a mainstream hit, but it managed only the 6th-best Per Theatre Average on Friday, and it’s headed for a disappointing $139,000 on its 25 screens for the 3-day. That would mean a PTA of just over $5,500.
Julie Taymor’s ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (Universal) expanded to 276 locations, and the Beatles-inspired musical generated $570,000 in Friday sales. It should reach $1.5M for the weekend, finishing just outside the top 10. IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH (Warner Independent) expanded with less success. The Iraq War-themed drama managed only $270,000 Friday at its 317 locations for a PTA of only $850. ELAH appears to be headed for just under $900,000 for the weekend for a 3-day PTA of just $2,811.
Finally, TRANSFORMERS is back in the Top 10 for Per Theatre Average thanks to the addition of IMAX locations from coast-to-coast. The Michael Bay-directed, Hasbro-inspired action pic scored a $928 PTA on Friday, and it’ll grab another $1.3M or so this weekend, driving its domestic cume to $313.4M.
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