Quote

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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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
Sometimes
Acting
Life
Learn
People
White
Switch
Black
Gray
True
Opposed
Thought
Necessarily
Persons
Spend
Person
Sides

More quotes by Sydney Pollack

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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.
Sydney Pollack
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I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.
Sydney Pollack
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Every single art form is involved in film, in a way.
Sydney Pollack
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I've produced my own films for twenty years now - it means I have to talk to less people.
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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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 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 personally have never made a movie in Hollywood, because I don't want to get up in my own bed and then go to the movie set, and then come home at night to my real life.
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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What I really want to do is produce. There isn’t much patience with a slow developing story line anymore.
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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Hollywood was set up by a bunch of businessmen. They do not see their job as being philanthropists. I don't think it's a contradiction in terms to attempt to be a good businessman and to also be liberal.
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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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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Film is a collective experience, as you know.
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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OK, I know this is going to disgust you, Michael, but a lot of people are in this business to make money.
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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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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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