A Quote by 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
Making films is much more difficult than people imagine, and so the experience of actually directing them is not one I've ever relished.
Being a father is like directing Alien or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's much more difficult than directing an episode of TV. Also, directing a show or movie lasts a few months at most, parenting lasts for decades.
Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the somber, the tragic. This is because sad endings are easy in comparison - happy endings aren't at all simple to earn, especially when writing to an audience jaded by them.
I'd love to make films in England, and I tried to. I think there's a wealth of amazing talent and astonishing writing over here; there just seems to be more of a culture of developing films than actually making them.
I think the problem I have with films is that, because there's so much hype around them, they become bigger than they should be, really. There are things that people do every day in their little workshops that they'll take to heaven with them. You've got to realise that it's not everything, making films.
Don't worry about this world; it is not broken. And don't worry about others. You worry more about them than they do. There are people waging war; there are people on the battlefield who are more alive than they've ever been before. Don't try to protect people from life; just let them have their experience while you focus upon your own experience.
It's a treat and daunting to be directing someone like Judi Dench, who's made more films than I'll ever make in my lifetime.
Well, I'm really interested in the idea of making genre films, but movies have a much more personal undercurrent to them and that look beautiful, and that's sort of the films I'm kind of interested in making.
I hope I'm always lucky enough to be able to work in theater, TV, and big films and small films. I think there's advantages and disadvantages to all of them. The fact that this was a small film without much money and without much time made it rich in energy and momentum and drive when we were actually making it 'cause that's all you've got. You've just got the story and the people.
To make a successful film from a successful play is probably much more difficult than making one from scratch, just as any carpenter will tell you that it is more difficult to restore an old house than to build a comparable new one.
First of all, directing was the most incredible experience. When you run a television show, directing is something that not many people actually get the time to do because you're so consumed with everything that's going on. You can't just disappear.
Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.
I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.
Directing non-actors is difficult. Directing actors in a foreign language is even more difficult. Directing non-actors in a language that you yourself don't understand is the craziest thing you can possibly think of.
Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh.
What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience.
I just feel that I enjoy the work more than I ever have... or just as much certainly... I enjoy making films behind the camera equally to making them in front of the camera on all those years. I just enjoy it, that's all. I've been lucky enough to work in a profession that I have really liked and so I figured I'd just continue until someone hits me over the head and says "get out".
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