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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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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
Film
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First
Moral
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Entertain
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Political
Teacher

More quotes by Sydney Pollack

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Three Days of the Condor is still an interesting film to watch not because it's political. It happens to be political. But that's not why the sales of the DVDs are as high as they are. It's because it's an entertaining thriller. In my opinion, Tootsie is a very political movie but truck drivers can go and laugh at 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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Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.
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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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'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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Every film I've made has a kind of frustrated love story in the center of it. They were people who saw life from opposing points of view, which has been in every film I've ever done. It had all the ingredients of the kinds of films I like to do.
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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Every single art form is involved in film, in a way.
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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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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I have to have a working knowledge of light, and optics, film emulsions and their properties, and lenses, otherwise I can't create the shoots that are the vocabulary of the films. But it is not necessary for me to be a cameraman, I can hire a cameraman.
Sydney Pollack
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The essence of acting is seeing the world from another point of view. That's what acting is.
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 make films, and I hope that people come to see them. If they don't, I pay a big price. But I can't make decisions where I would change my own standards or my own taste in order to court the public in some way.
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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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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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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I mean, movies are like your kids or your fingers and toes or something, it's pretty hard to pick favorites.
Sydney Pollack
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I mean, certainly writing, painting, photography, dance, architecture, there is an aspect of almost every art form that is useful and that merges into film in some way.
Sydney Pollack