Because nobody wants to produce a play about a couple that moved back to Love Canal.


Sydney Pollack
(1934-2008)

Sydney Pollack died of cancer yesterday. A lot of movies he directed I haven't seen, but know to be iconic, such as They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Three Days of the Condor, The Way We Were, and Out of Africa.

However, I will always remember him primarily as the director of one of my very favorite movies Tootsie, one of the rare comedies to be nominated for Best Picture. (Annie Hall being the only one I can think of that ever won.)

I often think of the montage at the beginning of Tootsie, when Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) is teaching an acting class, and going on ill-fated auditions, and we see that his little apartment is filled with such acting shibboleths as fake blood and spirit gum. Something about that opening captures for me what's exciting about acting, including its noble financial futility.

My other special memory about Sydney Pollack is his acting. Though known for directing, I remember his small parts in his films and other people's. I always relished those. He had this naturalness, the kind that tends not to be noticed, that I find so much more appealing than the more affected styles that tend to get noticed. I remember him as the agent in Tootsie, and in Eyes Wide Shut, Michael Clayton, and Woody Allen's Husbands And Wives. The naturalness was probably not an accident, considering that he studied acting under the legendary Sanford Meisner.

And I see on Wikipedia that he's from Indiana! Hey, there's hope for us all.