Sydney Pollack Quotes

Well, the wonderful thing about making movies, oddly enough, is that they're sort of highly motivated graduate studies in one or another field.

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.

There's a religious basis to their [Bush and Chaney] kind of conservatism. It's rooted in a kind of fundamentalism. I'm afraid of that. I don't like that idea. I think all extremism is suspect.

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

What I really want to do is produce. There isn’t much patience with a slow developing story line anymore.

You are not an active creator of the film.

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.

Burt Lancaster was largely responsible for me becoming a director.

The dance that happens, between actor and director, is a very delicate thing...it's why people tend to work together on many films over and over.

I didn't grow up thinking of movies as film, or art, but as movies, something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

I'm not a very good predictor in any area of art, particularly my own. I don't know how to evaluate that.

All films are political, whether they mean to be or not. Star Wars is political. As soon as you have conflict, which is the key to most films, you have politics. It's just that some are more artful with the handling of politics than others.

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.

I see my job as trying to entertain you, to be balanced in some way, and morally responsible. I don't want to glorify a killer. I don't want to glorify a rapist. I don't want to do those things, but on the other hand I don't want to lecture to you, either.

My films ought to be judged on whether they're entertaining or good as films, but not on the political view necessarily. I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push.

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.

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.

Making a film is a way for me to understand what it's like to be a murderer, to confess, to be a beaten wife, to be a minority, to be a victor, to get the girl, to lose the girl. I can do all of that through the practice of an art form.

I mean, movies are like your kids or your fingers and toes or something, it's pretty hard to pick favorites.