Sydney Pollack Quotes

Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan--that is the rule.

I'm amazed that movies ever get finished at all - much less come out good once in a while. It's an awful lot of work and it can go wrong a thousand different ways.

I think any filmmaker looks back and thinks, 'Boy, if we only had four hours more on that day when the sun was going down,' or, 'If we only spent more time and went back.'

I try to learn from both, from features and documentaries. In both cases you have to find a way to make the camera as discreet as possible, and flexible enough to be able to capture the moment when it happens. I know from documentary how to not have a preconceived idea of what the scene could be.

Most people don't really understand what it takes to get a film made, and the struggles .I think anyone who makes a film goes through their own set of struggles.

No matter how much I plan the overall arc of the character, you get there day one on the film and you shooting certain scenes first, and it goes completely different to anything you ever thought of, and then it's done.

With TV, you have so much to get done during the day that you don't really have a lot of time to feel your way through it. I know before I walk on the set exactly what I'm going to do. With film you can kind of find your way in it a little more, play with it some.

You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain.

I've always worked very efficiently on small budgets, both in documentaries and in features.

It's very important to understand that we never do the same thing twice; each of our projects is unique. We'll never do another 'Gates.' Each project is a unique image. We do not know in advance how the work will look. I do preparatory drawings, but they are only projections of our vision.

I never had a plan. I have to say, I'm very shocked when people start a company and say, 'In five years I want to launch a perfume, or in 10 years I want to have this.' How can you know?

I'm not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there's going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what's going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.

In the music world, concerts unfold strictly according to plan. But, as I'd been finding out, in the book world, things keep changing by the second.

Sometimes they keep us in the dark, but it's TV, so sometimes they keep us in the dark because even they don't know yet. You know what I mean? So, it sort of develops as it goes along and according to various needs that arise.

No dance has ever turned out the way I thought it would, because I trust enough that I can start something with some ideas and then it takes itself somewhere.

Just getting movies made is difficult because it takes a lot of money; I mean, it costs more money to make one movie than most bands will spend on every single record of their entire career; it's a huge undertaking.

You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.

I've never been one of those guys who storyboards every frame, because that would take away some of the mystery and some of the fun.

When you're making a movie, you have those days that you really look forward to, and it's a little bit like Murphy's law. The days you look forward to become your hell days. The days you're dreading become these amazing days.

Shooting should not be about delivering something I've prepared; it should be a live process of finding things out. When things happen that you haven't planned, that's when the film comes alive.

In the course of my movies, the financing and the releasing were always the tough part. Because I loved the creative; I loved the writing. I loved the making of it. Because, I guess, I never had the giant blockbuster, I never got that sort of ease for the next one.

It's hard. It's hard to get a film made properly.

There's really powerful and potentially dominating forces when you make a film that can harm it if you're incapable of orchestrating things.

I like shooting locations just because too much control on the stage can be a bad thing.

I have been working on one film at a time. One film recovers a little cost and that helps me move on to the next one.