Sydney Pollack

Sydney Irwin Pollack (C.E.1934–2008), American film director, actor, and producer. Award (Oscars): My Africa
 * Best Director (C.E.1986)
 * Best Picture (C.E.1986)

Film lessons:

 * I've never had a mad desire to become director, nor have I had to lay siege to a producer to fulfill that desire. Simply, I have become a director. Better yet, I was a director, and I didn't know what it meant or what I had to do. For a long time I was a director without realizing that it was the realization of a childhood dream. (p. 194)
 * I have some radical theories about the difference between acting on stage and acting in front of the camera. [...] In a play the focal point – and the goal at all times – is to deprive the actor of dependence on his director, because the director is useless once the curtain rises. In the cinema it's the other way around. At the really important moment, it is the director who finds himself alone, with his reels, at the time of the final cut. [...] I don't think we can talk about a real performance of actors during filming. There are only repetitions, it's mechanical, fragmentary, because you can always redo it over and over again. (p. 195)
 * Redford is a very good collaborator, a kind of alter ego for me: he was that young prince who was blond in appearance, but who had a much darker interior. It was clearly a metaphor for America. And most of the stories we've done together have become love movies, romantic movies. In my opinion, he was the ideal prototype of this kind of event. We never got tired of working together. We've always been somewhat demanding of each other, trying to get the most out of each of us. And we didn't waste time knowing what would work or not. It was a great advantage: we knew each other perfectly. (p. 199)
 * Making a film, in America, is a combination of actors and directors doing belly dancing in front of the producers. (p. 199)

References:

 * Gilles Jacob et al., Lezioni di cinema, translated by Rosa Pavone, Milan, Editrice Il Castoro, C.E.2007. ISBN 9788880334286