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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The process of filmmaking involves a series of interconnected decisions, leading to a final product that reveals its true form over time.
In this quote, Sydney Pollack emphasizes the complex and evolving nature of movie-making. It highlights that each decision made during the production contributes to the overall shape and essence of the film, and often it is only after reviewing the completed work that one can ascertain its effectiveness and impact. This illustrates the intricate balance between creativity and decision-making in the artistic process.
Themes
FilmmakingDecisionsCreativityArtProduction
In practice
Example use cases
During a film class, a professor can use this quote to illustrate the importance of decision-making in the creative process.
More from Sydney Pollack
All quotes βAnd I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.
Sydney PollackRead
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
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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