Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" It would be a great vacation to act in a movie if I weren't directing it. But to do it while you're directing interferes with your concentration, and I wouldn't do that again. "

Related Quotes:

" Even with 'Three Days of the Condor,' I wanted to do a thriller. But I was still concentrating on the Faye Dunaway-Robert Redford relationship in that film. "

Sydney Pollack

Days

Film

Relationship

" There are very few Westerns that have ever made really giant money. "

" When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea. "

" Even in 'Victor/Victoria,' there was talk about what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man. You didn't get that in the old days, in 'Charley's Aunt' or 'Some Like It Hot.' "

" You are not an active creator of the film. "

" 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. "

" I always go for the craft first because, to me, that's like an oil well - you either hit the oil or you don't. "

Sydney Pollack

Always

Craft

" This thing called chemistry, which I can't define and wouldn't know how to, either works or it doesn't. Sometimes a love story can involve very talented actors, but we are not invested emotionally in whether they end up together. "

" There aren't rules in a romance, so they can be played any number of ways. "

" I guess all my films are about resolving conflicts - and they're all love stories. If they weren't, I couldn't make them. "

" I do have a responsibility, but I would make the most boring films in the world if I woke up every morning worrying about my social responsibility. "

" Every time I am directing, I question why in God's name I'm doing it again. It's like hitting yourself in the forehead with a hammer. "

" It was a different time in the 1970s. Movies didn't have to make as much money. "

" 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. "

" It's hard for me to fall in love with a piece of material enough to want to direct it. "

" I fly an aeroplane, and I think a lot about how much I do not want ever to run into an optimistic air traffic controller. I just don't. I want a guy down there who's just waiting for the worst crash possible and petrified that it's going to happen on his watch. And then I feel safe flying into his territory. "

" Beginnings and endings are not interesting; audiences want the high point, which means you've got to get to it and get to it now - get the gun out fast, the clothes off quick. "

" Audiences want to feel something intense, quickly, without wasting a lot of time. "

" People ask me over and over how is it that I work with stars. How do you work with Barbra Streisand, with Paul Newman, with Al Pacino, with Sally Field, Jane Fonda, you work with all these people. Isn't this a problem? And it isn't a problem at all. It's terrific. It's great fun. And I don't know what the answer is. "

Sydney Pollack

Fun

Great

" You hope that the responsibility of making movies will fall into the hands of essentially moral people. "

" I don't care much about acting. "

" It's my job to motivate the audience to believe. I have to get them to suspend their judgment in favor of involvement. "

" 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. "

" The terrible tragedy for every director is to watch an actor do what you want and not have the camera rolling - and never get it back again. So I always try to roll the camera before anybody's really ready. "

" The marketing of anything is full of exploitation and lies and hype. "

" 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. "

" By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that's led them into creating illusions, sound bites, focus groups that tell you what to do. "

" Before I saw 'Tootsie' with an audience, I thought, 'No one is going to believe this could convince anyone he's a woman.' "

" 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. "

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