The Sheila Variations

Great post, Sheila. But one minor correction - I don't think Pollack directed "Rain Man."

Not so minor a correction, actually! He didn't direct it - that was Levinson! DOH. Thanks, jeff - I'll change. Let's replace it with Sabrina, which also I really disliked.

I also really liked his performance in Eyes Wide Shut. I just think he's wonderful as an actor: unselfconscious but also very meticulous - he is building these characters. I like him best in Husbands and Wives - where he can really strut his stuff. Judy Davis is a knock-out in the film but Pollack gives her a run for her money.

WTF? When did he die? I'm gutted!

I always loved him as Will's dad on Will & Grace. He had great comedic timing, and played really well off Eric McCormack.

He died yesterday. He had apparently been ill for some time.

i so agree that he had wonderful comic timing. I mean, that scene in Tootsie!!

"A TOMATO DOESN'T HAVE LOGIC!!!!!"

The first thing I thought of when I heard he died was that New Jersey line from Tootsie. I love this guy. RIP, sir.

Oh, I loved him! Actually more as an actor than a director I have to say. Always elevated everything he was in. I'm so sad about this.

He is so good in 'Eyes Wide Shut' that he makes Cruise look bad.

Now I'm not a big Cruise hater...when he's in the right thing he's great. But to watch Pollock be so natural and in his body next to Tom Cruise? Oddly it made Cruise look like an old fogey trying to play cowboys and indians with an uninhibited little kid.

Bren - yeah, he's just so so comfortable in his own skin. Even when he's being a total dousche!!

Love him!

Oh, and also love his continued involvement in the Actors Studio and his commitment there.

I have always thought his scene at the party in Husbands and Wives was one of the most uncomfortable things ever filmed. It makes me cringe and watch through my fingers every time I see it. It's excruciating. That kind of genius (acting, editing and directing) doesn't happen too often but when it does it's awe inspiring to see. Woody couldn't have picked a better actor for the part because Pollack never seemed like he was acting and if that scene is to work it must feel like a documentary with real people, and it does.

Terrible loss. I was pretty upset about this one. Great tribute Sheila. Sad, sad.

Jonathan - oh, absolutely you are so right - it totally does not look like acting, from that first Cassavetes-ish scene with the jumpcuts and the big announcement of the divorce - to the interviews at the end ...

This sounds condescending but it really really isnt: He was SO good at acting.

So good that it's nearly invisible!

"Tootsie" is the second-funniest movie of all-time. I haven't seen it in over fifteen years. I need to watch it again.

Doug - what's the first?? I'm dying to know your opinion!

Yes yes yes I LOVE Tootsie - just every single second of it.

I loved him, too, for his acting as much as his directing. Out of Africa is one of my all time favorites. Now I want to go rent Tootsie.

Hi,
I'm slumming from Sir James' (Wolcott's) site.
I'll add to early old favorites, both starring Redford at HIS best: "Jeremiah Johnson" and "Three Days of the Condor".
Check them out next time you're near a vid store.
You won't be disappointed.
Thanks for the great post/tribute.

Uncle Buck - I love Three Days of the Condor as well - but I'm not sure if I've ever seen Jeremiah Johnson ... putting it on the Netflix queue now. Thanks!

Loved the Husbands and Wives character as well. So perfectly depicts the subconscious tension: Upper class, educated, cultured New Yorkers don't have 'urges', so rather than aknowledge and then deal with his lust for a younger woman as such, he has to justify his satisfaction by ignoring the glaring incompatibilities by "falling in love".

The Woody Allen character goes through the same issue by his fawning over the Juliette Lewis character and her questionable writing talents: "apewscious: I made it up!"

So funny and so close to the bone.

Check out his performance as the doctor in "Death Becomes Her", it is the highpoint of the film and a great lesson in comedic acting.

I love Death Becomes Her, in general - but yes, his performance is a mini-masterpiece of great timing!

Superb tribute, Miss Sheila. You brought back Husbands and Wives so vividly that now I feel like I HAVE to see it again ... and The Way We Were. He always knew how to bring out the best in Redford.

"The Odd Couple." One of these days I'm going to have to write some more about it in my blog (which I hope to get back to one of these days).

Ironically, I went on a Sydney Pollack/Netflix spree shortly before his death. It was prompted by watching the new DVD version of "Tootsie", the 25th anniversay release with Extra Features (I'm a sucker for that stuff..). That movie is one of my all-time faves, and partly due to the fact that I had a very strong attraction to Pollack's character, this despite the fact that I am also madly attracted to Dabney Coleman (see, I own bootleg copies of all 325 episodes of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" on DVD, and Coleman's Merle Jeeter character is my favorite and my heart-throb).

Anyhoo, first on the Netflix was "Husbands and Wives", which was, of course, utterly devastating. God, watching that was so freaking fulfilling, not just for being gobsmacked by Pollack but also for all the other stuff in that great movie, Judy Davis and scrutinizing Mia Farrow for signs of her own personal torment at the time. Woody Allen drives me nuts - how can anyone who is apparently so self-obsessed and insular have such insight into other people, even if one can argue that the "other people" are a rather circumscribed subculture?

Then it was "Michael Clayton", and being blindsided and distracted by all the other performances, especially Tilda Swinton about whom I absolutely knew nothing other than superficial stuff. Wow. Then it was the final season of "The Sopranos", and aching from those scenes between Sydney's maybe-evil doctor prisoner character and dying Johnny Sac, who was so delicious to watch throughout that show. It was so brilliant of Pollack to accept that part; I read where he had been approached by the Sopranos people for the longest time to play "something", and he didn't want to do the lawyer or the executive, he'd done all those for too long.

Oh, and in the meantime I'm Googling him and reading all the interviews online, trying to find out about him, what's he like, what's he think of thisthattheother. Minor stalking.

"Three Days of the Condor". Yowza, and he was doing commentary. I had to watch it about four times before I made it to the end and got the big payoff, because when it started out I was moaning, "oh no, this is just a generic 70s big-screen mystery, and please spare me Faye Dunaway", and I really don't like mysteries, I don't like having to keep track of clues and that crap. But then it got to the end and there was the World Trade Center, and Cliff Robertson's speech about oil and commodities, and I realized it was worth it. And then, once I didn't feel cheated, I could go back and watch it again and appreciate Redford's performance and even Dunaway's.

"The Yakuza", another one with his commentary, and unfortunately that's all I could appreciate it for because I got way too distracted by the anachronism of it looking and sounding so dated. Not that I don't love just watching Mitchum doing anything, and it was pretty, but I have a peevish problem with being too distracted by petty things and also I have a hard time watching actors like Herb Edelman and Brian Keith, when I've mentally stereotyped them by having seen them too much in TV stuff.

"The Scalphunters" was just pure fun, a Western and Burt Lancaster and Ossie Davis. I like Westerns just because I like looking at all the props. I like thinking about the fact that Hollywood invested so many decades into making Westerns, and they accumulated all this STUFF for it, sets and props and trained extras and horses and conventions and the whole industry, and I love accoutrements, and also I wanted to see Dabney Coleman in a teeny role, and it's fun to have to watch something closely when you want to catch a glimpse of someone and you need to pay attention or you'll miss his one fleeting line.

"This Property is Condemned". OMG, it gave me a headache, I thought there was ZERO chemistry between Robert Redford and Natalie Wood, and even though I have a Southern fetish, this was just Too Much.

"War Hunt", this was interesting, black and white Korean War, Redford's first movie. I liked this, very spare, interesting to watch Pollack trying to play a "character". In his later acting career he was very good, but he played within a range, still very much from himself. This made me curious to think of what he must have been like as an acting teacher in the late 50s/ early 60s. He was supposed to be a legendary acting teacher, right? The assistant of Sanford Meisner. I'm not an actor, so I don't know enough about it to be able to see whether someone has that in them just from looking at them on screen.

Then it was a documentary, which I can't recall and can't seem to find now on his imdb page, where various Hollywood people discussed their "failures", and Pollack talked about how he'd made movies that had failed, but he loved them just as much as he loved the ones that were "successes", and it reminded me of some quotes I'd read. One where he said something along the lines of: whatever TV show or movie there is, even if you think it was terrible, there is at least one person out there for whom this was his/her favorite of all, and you should respect that and remember it. And another quote about how some people love the credits, that they would sit through them and really pay attention to the names in the credits, and how suprised he would be when fans would tell him that they saw a name in the credits, or didn't see a name there that they expected. And all these things endeared him to me because he was a "mensch" type, and I think he had empathy for the audience.

Then I lost steam, and sent back "Jeremiah Johnson" without having watched it, and went on to some other mental obsession, and then he died shortly thereafter.