FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: OCT 24,2018
LEGENDARY ACTOR XANDER BERKELEY TO RECIEVE AEG DIVERSITY AWARDS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT SYDNEY POLLACK LEGACY AWARD IN 2019
The AEG Diversity Awards has decided to establish a special, prestigious award for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment, The President of the AEG wanted it to bear an internationally recognized and respected name and he decided to put in honor of his mentor the late film Director Producer & Actor Sydney Pollack,
The chosen recipient of the AEG Lifetime Sydney Pollack Legacy Award is an honorary AEG Award for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment”.
The AEG Diversity Awards which will have its next event which will move to a new location and take place in Los Angeles California in early 2019 D.T.B.A for the first time will also be adding new categories for outstanding performances and fan favorites submitted by the fans for who they think is the best in film tv & social media chosen with pre-nominations chosen by the fans and judged by AEG board of directors and determined by the number of final votes.
SYDNEY POLLACK
Few people in Hollywood have had such a reputation as Sydney Pollack. He was a gifted actor, director, and producer. And a nice man – no one had anything bad to say about him. In an industry of inflated egos and backstabbing, his life and career had a definite absence of malice! He was an artist, a pilot, a gourmet cook.
Sydney Pollack who has died of cancer aged 73, entered Hollywood as dialogue director on John Frankenheimer’s The Young Stranger. He was just 25, and within a few years was on course to be one of the most influential players in the history of Tinseltown, as a prolific producer, an Oscar-winning director, and an actor in many of his own movies, alongside those by Woody Allen, Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick.
His biggest success was Tootsie (1982), which earned him a reputed $14m within a year of its release. He later told fellow director John Boorman that he would return every cent, “If I could get back the 18 months of my life spent making it, which were total misery.” By then he was an integral part of Hollywood’s fabric, working with the elite of his profession, fine technicians and popular actors, notably Robert Redford on seven occasions.
As a producer, he moved from control of his own films to numerous projects. including The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Quiet American (2002), Cold Mountain (2003) and Michael Clayton (2007)
Pollack became the prime example of producer as director, with an extraordinary talent for choosing sympathetic collaborators (with the notable exception of Tootsie). “It is like being a surgeon at a train wreck, except that I am trying to stop a hemorrhage of money.
Born in Lafayette, Indiana, to first-generation Russian-American parents, he went to high school in South Bend, where he fell in love with theatre. Rather than going to college, he went straight to the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the theatre in New York – the great rapport he always had with actors stemmed from that early experience. He paid his debt to his mentor there with his 1984 documentary, Sanford Meisner – The Theatre’s Best Kept Secret.
Army service interrupted his youthful career, including a modest Broadway debut, but he returned to teach drama and began acting in the burgeoning television market of the 1950s, also directing episodes of Ben Casey, The Defenders, Dr Kildare, and The Fugitive. He graduated to the big screen with War Hunt (1962), which fortuitously marked Redford’s debut, playing an army private to his future director’s sergeant. Co-acting with Redford and the film’s equally handsome lead, John Saxon, may have influenced Pollack’s career as he realized that fame and fortune was better assured behind the camera, rather than as a character actor.
His first feature, The Slender Thread (1965) was a two-hander with Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft on the phone to each other as, respectively, a social worker and a potential suicide. The factually based story moved at a brisk pace, often lacking in Pollack’s later movies. Its successor, This Property is Condemned (1966), derived from a playlet by Tennessee Williams. With James Wong Howe’s fine cinematography it set a precedent – works that were easy on the eye. Pollack was called in to shoot a section of The Swimmer (1968), an oddity about a man (Burt Lancaster) “swimming home”, via the Los Angeles pools of his friends. This led to an enjoyable western, The Scalphunters (1968), an uncharacteristically lighthearted work which led to a flop – the pretentious second world war drama Castle Keep, one of many films of the period influenced by European art cinema.
Pollack compounded the trend with They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (also 1969). Set within a depression era dance marathon, it was let down by a superficial recreation of the period but salvaged by the cast and a melodramatic energy that ensured international success.
Two more Redford collaborations followed. The handsome, leisurely docu-western Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and the massive box office hit, The Way We Were (1974). That unlikely romance starred Barbra Streisand as a gawky, Jewish leftwinger colliding with a conservative, handsome gentile. The theme song, engaging leads and glossy veneer made it popular and years later it came ninth in an audience poll of the Top 100 Movies – four above Pollack’s Out Of Africa.
Two intelligent thrillers followed. The Yakuza marked his first work as producer-director and Paul Schrader’s screenplay suited his contemplative style. It was dominated by Robert Mitchum’s sleepy-eyed performance, in fine balance to the edgy one from Ken Takamura. Despite a mesmerizing climax, it was not as commercially successful as the political thriller Three Days Of The Condor (also 1975), with Redford wrong-footed and unwittingly drawn into a world of murder and CIA intrigue. It made demands on its blandly self-conscious star as he battled against unseen forces and quirky action, turning it into a minor classic of the genre.
On the back of that hit, Pollack produced and directed another European-influenced drama, Bobby Deerfield (1977) with Pacino’s moody and reckless racing driver in love with an unsurprisingly mournful Marthe Keller, as a terminally ill heiress. The theme of imminent death did not appeal to audiences or critics despite Pollack’s skillful race track work and the attractive scenery.
He returned to the practiced charms of Redford as a rodeo rider in The Electric Horseman (1979), then moved to a social drama, Absence Of Malice (1981), with Paul Newman as a dodgy businessman pursued by investigative reporter Sally Field. The director, marooned in ho-hum land, bounded free with Tootsie, which received 10 Oscar nominations and came second to ET at the box office. Dustin Hoffman’s pleasingly over-the-top performance as a frustrated actor who successfully poses as a woman to get a job in a television soap was a tour de force. The actor allegedly demanded that Pollack take the supportive role as his agent – one which he fulfilled with wry brilliance.
Three years later Pollack won two Oscars – best director and best film – for Out Of Africa, starring Redford opposite a strenuously accented Meryl Streep as the Danish author Karen Blixen. It was exactly the style of handsome, overtly serious movie that the Academy loved and Pollack’s status allowed him to put muscle behind Presumed Innocent, White Palace, King Ralph, and Sliding Doors, among other productions, before he returned to direction with Havana (1990).
Despite a stunning recreation of Cuba during the 1958 revolution, the blend of old-fashioned Hollywood romance and politics failed to ignite. It proved an expensive flop and his last movie with Redford. He moved to safer ground with a gripping version of John Grisham’s thriller The Firm (1993), starring Tom Cruise as a young lawyer seduced into working for a Memphis law firm, murderously in bed with the Mafia.
The film was dominated by fine ensemble playing, but Pollack frequently proved himself a match for his actors, including cameos in his own movies. Notably, he took over when Harvey Keitel exited Stanley Kubrick’s old-fashioned piece of erotica Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He was even better as the wayward husband in Woody Allen’s Husbands And Wives, and in Robert Altman’s The Player (both 1992). With seemingly tireless enthusiasm he moved increasingly to production, including Cold Mountain, directed by Anthony Minghella, his partner at Mirage Films, Iris (2001) and even a television series, Fallen Angels. He was equally energetic in promoting his films and his craft in numerous documentaries and television programmes and turned up in television series such as Will And Grace.
As a director, he shot a redundant remake of Billy Wilder’s Sabrina Fair where only the title Sabrina (1995) was snappier than the original. He stalled again with the little-seen Random Hearts (1999), despite Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas.
Commercially, at least, he was on form with The Interpreter (2005) – harking back to his most successful genre, the political thriller. The less than credible plot line was compensated for with twists and turns to the narrative and a characteristically stylish surface – utilizing New York locations – and the formidable talent of Sean Penn.
Although then into his 70s, Pollack showed little sign of giving up as a Hollywood force, even if the style of film which he had made his own – Three Days of the Condor, for example – was by then less fashionable. He continued to use his considerable muscle to help other talented directors continue working.
TESTIMONIALS:
David Hare writes:
I started writing the film of Bernard Schlink’s best-known novel early last year for Stephen Daldry to direct. Our three producers were Scott Rudin, Anthony Minghella, and Sydney Pollack. Two of the three are now dead.
For the eight years since publication, The Reader had been Minghella’s pet project, so it was generous of him to hand it over. At script meetings, Anthony was courteous, fluent and analytical. By contrast, Sydney spoke very little, belying his reputation as a self-described “script Nazi”. He wrapped up most of our meetings by directing our attention to what he correctly identified as the single most important problem of the day. The rest, he would say, “You guys will sort it out.
D-Teflon writes:
It’s rare to meet any one of Sydney’s intelligence, discernment, or taste in the film industry. I met him when I was 18yrs old when I was just an intern trying to break into the industry and he took a chance on a black kid who he didn’t really have to I from young had seen his work and admired the fact that he was involved in so many things Actor Producer Director and my first jump into l.a he gave me a job at his company as an intern than an assistant,
I told him from the start and it may have been the reason he gave me a chance I said I don’t want you to pay me with $$ I want you to pay me with knowledge as I knew I could learn so much from his experience but I earned more than just a teacher a boss I earned his respect and his friendship he was so much like a father figure to me and I will always credit him that if there was no Sydney Pollack there would be no me in this biz.
Sydney when I meant him and me just getting my feet wet as an actor he was Already a brilliant actor, he developed his third life as a producer at Mirage purely because he thought his experience could help other people. He was right. He was utterly devoid of what Ingmar Bergman called “the hoopla and the malice”. His documentary about the architect Frank Gehry is all the more moving for the identification of the film-maker with the subject: two artists doing personal things in a public form.,He was a legend and his work and everything he taught me about character in this industry full of sharks will last a lifetime.
—Trish Deitch writes:
In the nineties, I worked for Sydney Pollack as a story editor. When Sydney, who died on Monday at the age of seventy-three, read a film script, he’d look for one word that would become what he called “the spine” of the story. The word that made up the spine of “Out of Africa,” he told me, was “home.” “Home” was the secret meaning of “Out of Africa”—its magnetic north, the direction towards which all compass points could, and would, slide when the film’s writers, actors, or director lost their creative way.
Finding the spine of a story like “Out of Africa” was important to Sydney for many reasons, the most important of which was that it led to what he called “the ache.” The ache is self-explanatory if you’ve seen Sydney’s films. It is the ache of having one chance at deep love in a lifetime of shallow loves, and losing it too early. It is the ache of perfect, private union destroyed by terrible, worldly circumstance. For Sydney, the ache was about the way that the things we hold most dear always elude us.
One day, Sydney asked me to read Norman Mailer’s gigantic C.I.A. novel, “Harlot’s Ghost,” to see if it contained the ache. I put the huge manuscript on my desk and read all day long, taking occasional breaks for tea and white rice, which were always on offer in the kitchen. (Sydney said you shouldn’t eat rice with a fork, because something about the metal ruined the taste.) Every hour or so, Sydney would come into my office and sit down on my couch, or stand in the doorway, his fingers curled around the molding above the door, and say, smiling, “Well?” And every hour, I told him what was happening in the book. Sydney went out and came back with some tea, which he liked to drink in a glass. He wanted to spend some time talking about what made Mailer great. Then he’d slap my door, give a little wave and head down the hall, promising to be back in time for the next plot twist.
In a tree-shaded little bungalow on the Universal lot, my colleagues and I searched high and low for screenplays and novels with the ache, and rarely found them. And yet Sydney persevered, and while he persevered, we had the opportunity to persevere alongside him. Though Sydney named his production company Mirage Enterprises after an airplane he admired (he was a pilot, and loved to fly), the meaning comes through: You see it there, it’s what you want more than anything, and yet when you go to finally put your hand on it, it’s gone.
In his case, a final directorial credit was also a labor of love. A documentary – his only sortie into the genre – about the famed architect Frank Gehry, which was shot over an extended period and released in 2007 and the The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (2008); Michael Clayton, in which Pollack gave one of his characteristically forceful cameos as Marty Bach; and Clooney’s most recent directorial effort, Leatherheads (2007).
His death from cancer while still so active robs the American movie industry of a seemingly tireless creator, whose role as director, producer, and actor was complemented by scores of television and film documentary appearances discussing his work and that of his fellow actors and directors.
Inevitably he will best be remembered as the director of Tootsie, a movie oddly dubbed as the “second funniest film of all time” but it is certainly just one great credit among dozens.
Pollack married Claire Griswold in 1958 and they had three children: Steven, who was killed in an air crash in 1993, Rebecca and Rachel
Sydney Irwin Pollack, film producer, director, and actor, born July 1, 1934; died May 26, 2008.
