Sydney Pollack: I have to have a working knowledge of light, and optic...

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

Sydney Pollack

form editing writing

Every single art form is involved in film, in a way.

Sydney Pollack

gambling movie art

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

Sydney Pollack

nerd politics thinking

I have one life. I am a certain age. I'm married to one person. I have a certain number of children. I won't have another life other than that, but I do have many lives through the films.

Sydney Pollack

age numbers children

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.

Sydney Pollack

photography writing art

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.

Sydney Pollack

girl practice art

I mean, the truth of the matter is, I like the failures as much as I like the successes, it's only the world that doesn't like the failures.

Sydney Pollack

matter mean world

Making films is much more difficult than people imagine, and so the experience of actually directing them is not one I've ever relished.

Sydney Pollack

imagine film people

One wants to be able to experience being other people, remaking a reality, remaking a life, remaking a certain world.

Sydney Pollack

reality people world

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

Sydney Pollack

growing-up art thinking

Every film I've made has a kind of frustrated love story in the center of it. They were people who saw life from opposing points of view, which has been in every film I've ever done. It had all the ingredients of the kinds of films I like to do.

Sydney Pollack

frustrated views people

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.

Sydney Pollack

stars war mean

Relationship films are political. If a woman is sitting in a waiting room in an office and a man walks in and sits down, it's a political situation. If he decides to smoke, does he ask her or does he just light up? If he lights up, what does she do? It's politics.

Sydney Pollack

waiting-rooms light men

It's always interesting to play people different from yourself, it would be boring for me to play myself.

Sydney Pollack

play people interesting

I don't consider myself a teacher of moral and political positions. I don't want to be that. I can't help but have a point of view when I make a film, but my first job is to entertain you.

Sydney Pollack

views teacher jobs

Most human beings who are accustomed to attempting to see the world from various points of view tend to be more liberal than conservative. I have one life. I am a certain age. I'm married to one person. I have a certain number of children. I won't have another life other than that, but I do have many lives through the films. It's 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.

Sydney Pollack

girl children art

Three Days of the Condor is still an interesting film to watch not because it's political. It happens to be political. But that's not why the sales of the DVDs are as high as they are. It's because it's an entertaining thriller. In my opinion, Tootsie is a very political movie but truck drivers can go and laugh at it.

Sydney Pollack

dvds laughing interesting

When you spend your life acting and being other people, as opposed to being the one person that you are, you learn that life is gray sometimes, not black and white. That what you thought was true isn't necessarily true if you switch sides.

Sydney Pollack

black-and-white acting people

I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push. People talk about Three Days of the Condor as being anti-government but the last statement in that movie is the CIA guy saying to Robert Redford, "Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You want to know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!"

Sydney Pollack

government home running

You can be moderate in a way and still intense in your views. It's the extremism that gets frightening; religious fundamentalism and wacko-left liberalism is crazy.

Sydney Pollack

crazy religious views

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.