And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.
Sydney PollackRead
My strength is with actors. I think I'm good at working with them to get the best performances, at seeing what it is that they have and that the story needs.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Sydney Pollack emphasizes the importance of collaboration with actors to enhance storytelling through performance.
In this quote, Sydney Pollack reflects on his ability to connect with actors and draw out their best performances, highlighting how crucial this collaborative effort is in the realm of filmmaking. He believes that recognizing an actor's strengths and aligning them with the story's needs is essential for creating compelling narratives.
Themes
ActorsPerformanceStorytellingCollaborationArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a film workshop, discussing how to achieve meaningful performances from actors.
More from Sydney Pollack
All quotes →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.
Sydney PollackRead
It's my job to motivate the audience to believe. I have to get them to suspend their judgment in favor of involvement.
Sydney PollackRead
You hope that the responsibility of making movies will fall into the hands of essentially moral people.
Sydney PollackRead
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.
Sydney PollackRead
I think a lot of creative people are uncomfortable with therapy. Because you're basically trying to 'solve' the unconscious. And the unconscious is where it all comes from.
Sydney PollackRead
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