Sydney Pollack Was One of the Great Directors of His Generation — A New Book Breaks Down His Approach
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- "Sydney Pollack: Collected Interviews" by Patrick McGilligan and Paul Cronin assembles 21 interviews conducted from 1970 to 2017, published by University Press of Kentucky, and reads like an autobiography told in real time.
- Burt Lancaster launched Pollack's directing career in 1960 by recommending the then-acting teacher to Universal studio chief Lew Wasserman after watching him coach actors on "The Young Savages."
- Robert Redford starred in seven Pollack films, including "Out of Africa" — which earned multiple Oscars including Best Picture despite Redford and Meryl Streep sharing the screen for roughly 20 minutes of the 160-minute runtime.
- Pollack repeatedly approached actors with unfinished or nonexistent screenplays, a practice he used when offering "The Interpreter" to Sean Penn and "Tootsie" to Jessica Lange.
- Pollack was also a working actor in supporting roles, appearing in Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives" and Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" — both casting experiences are discussed in the book.
- Pollack's 19-feature career included rare misfires — a 1995 "Sabrina" remake and 1999's "Random Hearts" — that the book attributes to the same chaotic methods that produced his best work.
Why it matters: The book offers film scholars and directors a rare 50-year longitudinal look at a director who bridged the classical studio system and New Hollywood, with Pollack's interviews revealing an industry in transition. The piece itself concedes Pollack's script-light, improvisational methods may not translate to 2020s filmmaking, and notes that his 2005 final film "The Interpreter" arrived just as studios were pulling back from adult-oriented thrillers — making the book a document of a bygone era as much as a master class.
