Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Each time I make a movie, it's a little bit like taking another course in something because there's an argument between these people that I don't necessarily have an answer to. "

Sydney Pollack

People

Time

Related Quotes:

" From almost the first time I stepped on a stage, I knew that was what I wanted to do. "

" Making a movie is a network of decisions that keep multiplying as you go. You leave a trail of decisions behind you, and that's how you start to see the shape of what you've done. When you get far enough, you turn around and say, 'Ha, that's the movie.' It's only then that you find out if it's going to work or not. "

" Even if it's a thriller or a comedy, it's always a love story for me, and that's what I concentrate on, because the love stories are my surrogates for the argument: two people in conflict that see life differently. "

Sydney Pollack

Love

Life

" I do not have a good control of running sight gags. I laugh like hell when I see them, but I don't know how to invent those jokes. "

" There's no money in documentaries. "

Sydney Pollack

Documentaries

Money

" I learned that creativity is all about being frustrated. "

" For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would. "

" 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. "

" American movies are the most popular movies everywhere, and it is true that the quality is far from uniformly terrific. "

" I haven't broken any new ground in the form of a film. "

" I don't care much about acting. "

" I knew I wasn't going to be any great shakes as an actor - the way I looked, I would play the soda jerk or the friend of a friend. "

" I think a lot of creative people are uncomfortable with therapy. Because you're basically trying to 'solve' the unconscious. And the unconscious is where it all comes from. "

" I like thrillers a lot. There's a lot of discipline connected to them. You can't be as freewheeling as you are with character pieces. "

" At some point during the filmmaking process, you lose objectivity, and you need the eyes of someone who understands the process and has been in the trenches. "

" I am not a visual innovator. "

Sydney Pollack

I Am

Innovator

" The essence to me of all good drama is argument. "

" If I'm lucky, in my wildest dreams I can make a picture every three years. "

" There's nothing wrong with crooks having lawyers. Everyone is entitled to a lawyer. "

" When I work, I think mainly in terms of dramatic choices. "

" I've always thought of Denys Finch Hatton as a combination of Hubbell Gardner from 'The Way We Were' and Jeremiah Johnson. He is this ultimate individualist. "

Sydney Pollack

Always

Ultimate

" You're fighting a losing battle if you expect the people who own the studios to make moral choices. "

" 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. "

" When you're shooting a feature that costs $200,000 a day with a crew of 250, you don't want accidents; you want to know exactly what's going to happen. But with a documentary, you don't, so you have to be sensitive to accidents because that is where the gold is. "

" My strength is with actors. I think I'm good at working with them to get the best performances, at seeing what it is that they have and that the story needs. "

" When you rehearse a play, you spend four weeks with one goal in mind - to wean the actor away from you. You want the actor to become completely independent and to understand all the emotional and psychological moves within the character. "

" I learned everything, right or wrong, about honor and love, all those things, when I was a kid watching movies. I learned as much there as I did from my parents or my schooling or anything else. "

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

" I'm as much a victim of the romantic myth of 'getting away' as anyone else. My head tells me it's myth, but I don't want to believe it is. "

" 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. "