Pollack Quotes & Sayings

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

Marion: What is all this? What's going on?
Clint: The same thing that's always going on. The end of the world. — Rachel Pollack

Small streams of hatred can quickly lead to unstoppable, horrific things, so [people] should stand up to any type of persecution or discrimination, whether bullying or malicious gossip. — Susan Pollack

We need to act for the sake of a redemption that will be a mystery until it unfolds before us. — Rachel Pollack

Life is water dancing to the tune of solids." Without that dance, there could be no life. — Gerald H. Pollack

OK, I know this is going to disgust you, Michael, but a lot of people are in this business to make money. — Sydney Pollack

If we were a primitive society, movie stars would be gods. — Sydney Pollack

I love having made a film and watching it when it affects audiences in a positive way. It was always fun for me to hide in the back of a theater and watch Tootsie with an audience and hear them laugh. And it's gratifying 20 years later to imagine that they still can find it amusing. — Sydney Pollack

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

If you're making love to a man of God, then God must endorse your lovemaking. — Eileen Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

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

Well Sid Pollack was ... He was I would say probably, probably the most influential on me. — Dabney Coleman

To learn to play seriously is one of the great secrets of spiritual exploration. — Rachel Pollack

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

The freedom to make and admit mistakes is at the core of the scientific process. If we are asked to forswear error, or worse, to say that error means fraud, then we cannot function as scientists. — Robert Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

Film is a collective experience, as you know. — Sydney Pollack

[Stanley] Kubrick was a fascinating, larger than life guy who had been a friend for many years prior to our working together on that film. I found the best part of working with him to be the long conversations we had between set-ups. — Sydney Pollack

Science differs from politics or religion, in precisely this one discipline: we agree in advance to simply reject our own findings when they have been shown to be in error. — Robert Pollack

Finally, when someone asked [Pollack] how he knew when a painting was finished, he replied, How do you know when you've finished making love? — Ross Wetzsteon

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

The truth is often found in humour. — Nick Pollack

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

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

And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing. — Sydney Pollack

When 'Tracks' first came out, I was courted by Sydney Pollack. I had lunch with him, and he opened the conversation with, 'Honey, you ain't gonna like what I'm gonna do to your book.' I really liked him, but I turned him down, because - well, I was stupid. I also turned down a great deal of money. — Robyn Davidson

I don't know about liberal bias, but people of a liberal mentality are probably attracted in greater numbers to the arts than people of a conservative mentality. — Sydney Pollack

We tend to misunderstand the colour black, seeing it as evil, or negation of life. Rather, black means all things being possible, infinite energy of life before consciousness has constructed any boundaries. When we fear blackness or darkness we fear the deep unconscious source of life itself. — Rachel Pollack

Once I start to do a film, it has inferences. If a guy walks down a street and kicks a dog, you're saying something about that guy. A guy walks down the street and somebody's about to be run over and he shoves him out of his way and gets hit by the car himself, you're saying that guy's a hero. You can't avoid making certain statements. — Sydney Pollack

Television characters live inside our minds as though they're actual people. In fact, we know more about them than we do about most people in our physical lives. — Neal Pollack

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

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

God, in these pages, becomes a way to express our universal desire to know and to comprehend the sacred. — Rachel Pollack

I don't rehearse with my actors ... the first rehearsal is the first time we turn the camera on ... Sydney Pollack never rehearsed his actors, and I found out that's allowed ... so you film reactions; you don't create them. — Ira Sachs

The transmission of excitation energies between molecules through electromagnetic coupling is not a mere matter of speculation."2 These energies flow through water channels inside the body since over 99 percent of the molecules inside the body are water molecules and the body is two-thirds water by volume. Every protein, whether constituting bone, sinews, or any other tissue, exists in a hydrated form. When the water content of the body decreases to less than 50 percent, we die. Protons and electrons separate along membranes to create charged layers analogous to a tiny battery as the revolutionary work of Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington has recently shown.3 In this inner electrical environment of our bodies, the magic of life unfolds and this environment is also able to be influenced in a powerful manner through sound vibrations. — Eileen Day McKusick

I tend to be what I would call more progressive than conservative, but I think either extreme is excessive. — Sydney Pollack

I'm not big on the Beavers right now, I know David Pollack is big on the Beavers, he's sipping that Beaver juice. — Desmond Howard

What to do with daughters has always been something of a problem, unless they are so pretty or so passive or so wealthy that they are snatched up as brides as soon as the come of marriageable age.
- THE COLLECTORS: DR. CLARIBEL AND MISS ETTA CONE — Barbara Pollack

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

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

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

But that (My brother's first science fair) project changed my life. — Eileen Pollack

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

I do not paint nature. I am nature. — Jackson Pollack

The ancients could communicate with the gods in two ways. First, it was (and is) possible to go into a trance and visit the gods in their celestial retreats, as the great shamans have always done. More easily, and less dangerously, they could let the gods speak through code, that is, divination, using dice, entrails, bird patterns, yarrow sticks, cards. — Rachel Pollack

Violence cannot destroy the body of the Goddess, for Her body is the world itself. — Rachel Pollack

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

You can't get sentimental about houses. Or bodies. They're just, I don't know, the Tupperware of the soul. — Eileen Pollack

Most human beings who are accustomed to attempting to see the world from various points of view tend to be more liberal than conservative. — Sydney Pollack

Well, I was born and raised in the Midwest, in Indiana specifically, and my childhood was full of weekend movies, you know, the Saturday and Sunday popcorn movies. — Sydney Pollack

I found it all very scary. This fairytale gets built around you - as if you've been walking through the streets and then Sydney Pollack sees you and goes, 'I'll put you in something!' — Julia Ormond

I didn't believe that I'd ever be lucky enough to be able to make a living as an actor. — Sydney Pollack

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

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea. — Sydney Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

I make films, and I hope that people come to see them. If they don't, I pay a big price. But I can't make decisions where I would change my own standards or my own taste in order to court the public in some way. — Sydney Pollack

I want to give my compliments to Australia. Ever since your government paid a few million dollars for a Jackson Pollack painting, I figure that it must be a marvellous country. — Morton Feldman

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

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

Burt Lancaster was largely responsible for me becoming a director. — Sydney Pollack

After a couple of rehearsals and a couple of takes, Sydney Pollack says, "Come here. Why are you not nervous?" And I [say], "Do you think it would be better if I was nervous?" And he says, "No, it's just I can't understand it - how you would be first time on a set, you're acting, when he flubs his line you make up a new line. It's very interesting." It's not that I think I'm great; that's what I knew I wanted to do. — Geena Davis

The (Boy) code is a set of behaviors, rules of conduct, cultural shibboleths, and even a lexicon, that is inculcated into boys by our society- from the very beginning of a boy's life. In effect we hold up a mirror to our boys that reflects back a distorted and outmoded image of the ideal boy- an image that our boys feel under great pressure to emulate. — William S. Pollack

Most fan fiction is terrible. — Neal Pollack

It took Sydney Pollack a long time to get me to do Tootsie. I asked myself if I wanted to play some frothy, ditzy character after I had just done Frances. Obviously, I'm thrilled that I did. — Jessica Lange

We talked about Tootsie, the idea in Tootsie is that a man becomes a better man for having been a woman. — Sydney Pollack

I personally have never made a movie in Hollywood, because I don't want to get up in my own bed and then go to the movie set, and then come home at night to my real life. — Sydney Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

My morale has never been higher than since I stopped asking for grants to keep my lab going. — Robert Pollack

Each time a girl opens a book and finds a womanless history, she learns she is worth less. — Myra Pollack Sadker

The essence of acting is seeing the world from another point of view. That's what acting is. — Sydney Pollack

You pulled one story from your head, and another story popped up in its place, like tissues from a box. — Eileen Pollack

I don't make the rules, I just make it up. — L. Davyd Pollack

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

He sometimes felt that life was something that had already risen, and all of this, the Jackson Pollack of spring, summer, and fall, the vague refrigeration and tinfoiled sky of wintertime, was just a falling, really, originward, in a kind of correction, as if by spritual gravity, towards the wiser consciousness
or consciousnessless, maybe; could gravity trick itself like that?
of death. It was a kind of movement both very slow and very fast; there was both too much and not enough time to think. — Tao Lin

Hollywood was set up by a bunch of businessmen. They do not see their job as being philanthropists. I don't think it's a contradiction in terms to attempt to be a good businessman and to also be liberal. — Sydney Pollack

The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure. — Sydney Pollack

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

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. — Sydney Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

Hans then asked him about painting from nature; Jackson ... bluntly offered a phrase that entered Village lore, I am nature. — Ross Wetzsteon

Language, be it remembered, is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. It permeates us all, the past as well as the present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect. - Walt Whitman — John Pollack

You are not an active creator of the film. — Sydney Pollack

Well, there's no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie. — Sydney Pollack

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

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

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

When you work without a script, you are in a sense working in a much more improvisational way than when you are prepared totally. — Sydney Pollack

It's not actually that hard to be an expert on Iran. You only need to know two phrases: "I don't know" and "it depends. — Kenneth Pollack

People aren't interested in paying $10 or $12 to go to the movies and to be lectured to politically. I'm not either. So I don't try to make those kinds of films. — Sydney Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

Obviously its a good feeling to know that something you've done has lasted. — Sydney Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

You don't normally do another presentation of All About Eve. You do one All About Eve, and that's it. — Sydney Pollack

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. — Sydney Pollack

I'm not trying to push my political agenda on anybody. I'll do that like any other citizen by giving money to a party or candidate I believe in. I don't mind going out and endorsing somebody I believe in. But when we're talking about my films, I don't think my politics should have anything to do with it. — Sydney Pollack

One does not have to be without sin to castigate someone else for being a rapist or murderer" (386). — Kenneth Pollack

I've produced my own films for twenty years now - it means I have to talk to less people. — Sydney Pollack

It's never as good as it looks and it's never as bad as it seems. — Tom Pollack