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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.

Sydney Pollack

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Sydney Pollack
Age: 73 †
Born: 1934
Born: July 1
Died: 2008
Died: May 26
Actor
Aircraft Pilot
Character Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Television Actor
Television Director
New York City
New York
Sydney Irwin Pollack
Happens
Play
Work
Essentially
Exists
Already
Movie
Art

More quotes by Sydney Pollack

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I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form.
Sydney Pollack
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Relationship films are political. If a woman is sitting in a waiting room in an office and a man walks in and sits down, it's a political situation. If he decides to smoke, does he ask her or does he just light up? If he lights up, what does she do? It's politics.
Sydney Pollack
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When you work without a script, you are in a sense working in a much more improvisational way than when you are prepared totally.
Sydney Pollack
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When you spend your life acting and being other people, as opposed to being the one person that you are, you learn that life is gray sometimes, not black and white. That what you thought was true isn't necessarily true if you switch sides.
Sydney Pollack
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With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art.
Sydney Pollack
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There isn't any question that Hollywood is profit driven. Anybody that thinks it isn't is a fool. It's a business. Hollywood was never philanthropy. The only purpose it had was making money the only purpose it still has is to make money.
Sydney Pollack
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You don't normally do another presentation of All About Eve. You do one All About Eve, and that's it.
Sydney Pollack
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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.
Sydney Pollack
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You can be moderate in a way and still intense in your views. It's the extremism that gets frightening religious fundamentalism and wacko-left liberalism is crazy.
Sydney Pollack
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By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that's led them into creating illusions, sound bites, focus groups that tell you what to do.
Sydney Pollack
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I'm not trying to push my political agenda on anybody. I'll do that like any other citizen by giving money to a party or candidate I believe in. I don't mind going out and endorsing somebody I believe in. But when we're talking about my films, I don't think my politics should have anything to do with it.
Sydney Pollack
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But, I've made films in Japan, in Yugoslavia, all over Europe, all over the United States, Mexico, but not Hollywood.
Sydney Pollack
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We talked about Tootsie, the idea in Tootsie is that a man becomes a better man for having been a woman.
Sydney Pollack
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I don't consider myself a teacher of moral and political positions. I don't want to be that. I can't help but have a point of view when I make a film, but my first job is to entertain you.
Sydney Pollack
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No, I never went to college. Always regretted it, always envied people who did.
Sydney Pollack
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I'm not going to be an interpreter at the U.N. I'm not going to live in Africa on a farm or whatever, but I am going to see the world through those eyes when I make those films.
Sydney Pollack
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Once I start to do a film, it has inferences. If a guy walks down a street and kicks a dog, you're saying something about that guy. A guy walks down the street and somebody's about to be run over and he shoves him out of his way and gets hit by the car himself, you're saying that guy's a hero. You can't avoid making certain statements.
Sydney Pollack
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Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.
Sydney Pollack
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I tend to be what I would call more progressive than conservative, but I think either extreme is excessive.
Sydney Pollack
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I mean, movies are like your kids or your fingers and toes or something, it's pretty hard to pick favorites.
Sydney Pollack