Sydney Pollack

“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.'”

“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.”

“I'm 47 years old, and I have to accept the fact that I'm probably not going to set the world on fire... If I was going to do that, I would have done it by now.”

“Like a lot of New Yorkers, I assumed that I knew all about the U.N. I was shocked to find out it's not like anything I had in mind. There are only six languages accepted there. It's considered international territory.”

“If I want to make people moved or cry in a film, I figure out what the room looks like, what the people are wearing, what time of day it is, what the light is, how to photograph it, where to put the camera. It involves optics and costume design and set design and architecture.”

“When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.”

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

“What makes architecture extraordinary is that you're looking at the building, but your peripheral vision is also seeing how it fits within a space. And it's seeing more than one part of the building at one time.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“But, I've made films in Japan, in Yugoslavia, all over Europe, all over the United States, Mexico, but not Hollywood.”

“I hate to say it as a pejorative term, but I work for the Hollywood system for the most part.”

“Compliments aren't really a journalistic angle.”

“If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.”

“For reasons which I can't logically explain, in all of the films I've done, I've ended up doing love stories of one kind or another, and it seems to me that love stories are extremely dependent on the obstacles you can place between the lovers. There is no love story without it.”

“It's a terrible mistake when it gets to be a contest of egos. The actor is always going to win. If a director gets into a control situation and is overbearing, it's deadly.”

“What's overwhelmingly clear is 'Havana' didn't work for people, but why it didn't work I don't feel I can put my finger on in a way I can learn from.”

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

“I really think that people never go wrong by telling the truth.”