{"id":11314,"date":"2024-07-01T16:21:03","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T16:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11314"},"modified":"2024-07-01T16:21:03","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T16:21:03","slug":"sydney-pollack-a-filmmaker-with-a-great-sense-of-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11314","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Pollack – a filmmaker with a great sense of music"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

Music has been an intrinsic element of filmmaking since the silent era but not all filmmakers have had a full grasp of how to blend it successfully into a production. Sydney Pollack, who would have turned 90 on July 1, was one who did.<\/p>\n

\u2018I try to be hands-on in terms music,\u2019 he told me when I interviewed him in 2000. \u2018I always want to hear what the composer hears but I have a habit that’s sometimes annoying to composers and that is, I usually temp-track a picture.\u2019<\/p>\n

He was not alone in that. Many directors like to put a temporary music track behind scenes to help them.\u00a0\u2018Some composers don’t like that,\u2019 he said, \u2018because it puts them in a little bit of a box. Some composers say that directors get used to the temp score and then they’re not open to a new score. Directors say in their own defence that they get hooked on the temp score because the temp score works. Somewhere in the middle, I guess, is the truth, depending on what it is the director is trying to do.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pollack said he tried to choose music to use as shorthand to communicate to the composer what he meant to achieve with a scene: \u2018I try to say, this is what I saw; this is the feeling I’m going after; this is what I think the scene is emotionally.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He always chose his temp music himself. \u2018I have a big record library, discs and now CDs,\u2019 he told me. \u2018I have lots of scores of films and I listen to music all the time. The problem is that sometimes I can’t tell if a scene is working or is too long until I get a piece of music. I wouldn’t know how to edit a film without any music because I wouldn’t be able to tell sometimes about certain scenes, particularly scenes that are just visual.\u2019<\/p>\n

One example was a scene from his 1985 epic \u2018Out of Africa\u2019, based on Danish author Karen Blixen\u2019s memoir starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, which was scored by British composer John Barry. \u2018In the scene where Redford takes her on a plane ride over Africa, there’s not a word of dialogue,\u2019 he noted. \u2018There isn’t any way to know if that scene’s really working until you get music to it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Barry, a no-nonsense Yorkshireman, told me he had a terrific time working with Pollack on that film and it worked out well for both them. \u2018Out of Africa\u2019 was an international hit winning seven Academy Awards including best picture, best director and best score for Barry, one of five Oscars he won over his career.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pollack\u2019s longest collaboration with a composer was with Colorado-born keyboard jazz man\u00a0Dave Grusin He played and recorded with top artists and worked as an arranger and musical director before providing the music for TV series including \u2018The Farmer\u2019s Daughter\u2019, \u2018Gidget\u2019 and \u2018The Girl From UNCLE\u2019 plus movies such as \u2018Waterhole Three\u2019, \u2018Candy\u2019 and \u2018Winning\u2019.<\/p>\n

Grusin\u2019s score to Robert Ellis Miller\u2019s 1968 film \u2018The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,\u2019 starring Alan Arkin as a deaf-mute, was one of the first of his to catch Pollack\u2019s ear. \u2018I heard his melodies and they were always memorable,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

As a result, the director hired the composer to score his 1975 picture, \u2018The Yakuza\u2019, about gangsters in Japan starring Robert Mitchum and Keira Kishi (above). \u2018It was an odd sort of movie, a romantic action picture,\u2019 Pollack said. \u2018I was just knocked out by how he was able to make the music have an ethnic feel of Japanese music but not seem strange to a Western ear. He was able to write melodically and lyrically. If you’re doing a Japanese film in Japan, you obviously don’t want it to sound like American pop. You have to find the flavor of Japan that works. But yet pure Japanese music to the Western ear is not always pleasant. You don’t want to go too far because it’s atonal to us. Dave\u2019s ability to catch those feelings was really extraordinary. He was such a pleasure to work with that I just sort of stuck with him through a whole string of pictures then.\u2019<\/p>\n

Their next film was \u2018Three Days of the Condor\u2019, a 1975 espionage thriller\u00a0with Robert Redford. \u2018Dave did an extraordinary score to that picture, kind of a jazz thriller score with a very bluesy love theme done on a saxophone, as I remember. He always got great players,\u2019 Pollack said. \u2018That score was unique. As a matter of fact, it gets stolen a lot on public television and radio; it gets used over and over and over.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After that, they collaborated on \u2018Bobby Deerfield\u2019, a racing drama with Al Pacino and Marthe Heller in 1977; \u2018The Electric Horseman\u2019, about a rodeo rider played by Robert Redford and Jane Fonda with Willie Nelson (pictured with Redford, left) in 1979; \u2018Absence of Malice\u2019, a newspaper courtroom drama with Paul Newman and Sally Field in 1981; \u2018Tootsie\u2019, a comedy about a cross-dressing actor with Dustin Hoffman (with Pollack top picture), Jessica Lange, Teri Garr and Bill Murray in 1982; \u2018Havana\u2019, a drama set during the Cuban revolution with Redford and Lena Olin in 1990; \u2018The Firm\u2019, a legal thriller with Tom Cruise, Jeanne Triplehorn and Gene Hackman in 1993 and \u2018Random Hearts\u2019, a romantic comedy starring Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas and Greg Kinnear in 1999.<\/p>\n

Pollack also produced two films with other directors that used Grusin scores \u2026 \u2018Honeysuckle Rose\u2019, a country music romance with Willie Nelson, Dyan Cannon and Amy Irving directed by Jerry Schatzberg in 1980 and \u2018The Fabulous Baker Boys\u2019, a romantic drama about competing musical brothers with Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer (below) directed by Steve Kloves in 1989.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Grusin also worked with other filmmakers including Warren Beatty on \u2018Heaven Can Wait\u2019 in 1978 and Robert Redford on \u2018The Milagro Beanfield War\u2019 for which he won the Academy Award for best score in 1988.<\/p>\n

\u2018The thing about Dave Grusin, and I think it’s his blessing and in today’s streamlined world, perhaps part of his curse, is that as a composer he’s a chameleon, he can do anything,\u201d Pollack told me. \u2018He really can do jazz; he can do classical, he can do extremely melodic stuff; he can do stuff that’s ethnic. His score for\u00a0\u201cHeaven Can Wait\u201d, that was a Brechtian score. It had that kind of Kurt Weill sound to it. And then “Milagro” had that incredible Latin magical sound to it. And then, for me, he got Japanese, or he’ll get jazzy on “Condor,” or extremely melancholy on “Dearfield,” or symphonic in “Havana.” His range is enormous. \u201cHavana” was a great score that got nominated.It\u2019s a beautiful, beautiful symphonic score that I still play today. As a matter of fact, I was listening to a track of it this morning, just testing out some clip-on speakers on my laptop and I saw the disc sitting there and I put the big symphonic cue that he did.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pollack said Grusin also was extraordinary in terms of his willingness to try to satisfy what he thought a director’s intention was. \u2018He will often come in with a whole new concept and it’s usually gonna be better than what you had on the temp,\u2019 the director said. \u2018Every once in a while, I get hung up on a temp piece and then I will talk about it and he’ll find a way to try to incorporate what it is about the temp piece that I like. There are certain chase scenes in the films I’ve done with Dave, or certain love scenes, where I’ve really had to put something in temporarily. Sometimes, I’ve been lucky and Dave has written me a bit of a theme before I’ve been in the editing room.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was not always possible. \u2019It’s wonderful but usually it’s impractical, unfortunately,\u2019 Pollack said. \u2018It’s hard to get somebody to come on a film that early. The most popular of the film composers are busy; they go from one score to another; they’re doing concerts, or in Dave’s case he’s had a record company to run. He is a soloist, an instrumentalist and a conductor who does tours.\u2019<\/p>\n

The director was able to get Grusin into the filmmaking process quite early on \u2018Tootsie\u2019, \u2018Bobbie Dearfield\u2019, \u2018Random Hearts\u2019 and \u2018The Firm\u2019 (starring Tom Cruise, pictured with Hal Holbrook below), which had a very different kind of score, one that also was Oscar-nominated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018That’s an amazing score,\u2019 Pollack said. \u2018What happened was, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn\u2019t sure I was gonna use Dave. I was thinking about him. I went to Memphis and down into the blues areas and I thought this should be Dave because Memphis is a big blues town. Then I started thinking: But I can’t hear a sound to this picture. Usually I can.<\/p>\n

\u2018All I kept thinking was that I didn’t want one of those conventional straight-ahead thriller scores. Because Dave is such a splendid musician, I brought him down to the Cayman Islands while I was shooting. I sat on a weekend with him on the piano at the hotel and just had him play blues, just little blues things.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u2018I thought that one of the things that would make it unique was if we were to try doing the whole thing with piano only. That would be a very audacious thing and the only guy in the world I thought could do it was Dave. Scott Rudin, who was a producer with me on the picture, thought that was a terrific idea and he supported me totally on it. I think the studio was a little bit leery because they had a very commercial hot property in the book and suddenly this sounded a little bit weird. But then when they heard it, they all loved it. What he did was amazing because there is nothing but Dave and nothing but a piano in that entire score. There’s a lot of music in that picture.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pollack\u2019s\u00a0 good instincts regarding music were evident from the start in 1965 when he hired Quincy Jones to write the score for his directorial debut, \u2018The Slender Thread\u2019, a drama about a suicide hotline starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. Jones went on to become a music legend producing major artists and scoring dozens of films with six Academy Award musical nominations.<\/p>\n

Elmer Bernstein, whose career also spanned many decades with fourteen Oscar nominations, scored Pollack\u2019s second film, \u2018The Scalphunters\u2019,\u00a0 starring Burt Lancaster in 1967. That same year, Bernstein won his only Oscar, for \u2018Thoroughly Modern Millie\u2019, a musical starring Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore.<\/p>\n

Over his four decades as director and producer, Pollack hired more Oscar-winning composers including Michel Legrand for the surrealistic war picture \u2018Castle Keep\u2019 with Burt Lancaster in 1969 and John Williams for the romantic drama \u2018Sabrina\u2019, with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond in 1995.<\/p>\n

Legrand landed five Academy Award nominations over his career with wins for best song, \u2018The Windmills of Your Mind\u2019 in \u2018The Thomas Crown Affair\u2019 in 1968 and best score for \u2018Summer of ’42\u2019 in 1971 and Barbra Streisand’s \u2018Yentl\u2019 in 1983. Williams, of course, is the acknowledged dean of film composers with almost fifty Oscar nominations and five wins for \u2018Fiddler on the Rood\u2019 in 1972, \u2018E.T. the Extra Terrestrial\u2019 in 1973, \u2018Jaws\u2019 in 1976, \u2018, \u2018E.T. the Extra Terrestrial\u2019 in 1973, \u2018Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope\u2019 in 1978 and \u2018Schindler\u2019s List\u2019 in 1995.<\/p>\n

For his fifth outing as a feature film director, \u2018They Shoot Horses, Don\u2019t They\u2019 with Jane Fonda and Gig Young in 1969, Pollack selected composer Johnny Green, who had won Oscars for \u2018West Side Story\u2019 in 1962 and \u2018Oliver!\u2019 in 1969. Green picked up another Academy Award nomination for Pollack\u2019s film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pollack admitted that he was ambivalent about using songs in movies. \u2018Normally, to me, songs take you out of the story but that’s the new style, so that’s what we do,\u2019 he said. \u2018It depends on the picture. Certain kinds of movies, you can do it and it works. If you’re doing a very hip kind of contemporary thing, you’re very able to do it well. It depends.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He did make pictures where he felt that a song was truly merited. One was \u2018The Way We Were\u2019 in 1973, starring Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford. Composer Marvin Hamlisch won the Oscar for best score and he along with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman won the award for best song for the title number.<\/p>\n

He used songs in \u2018Electric Horseman; because he had Willie Nelson. \u2019It seemed a shame to have Willie and not use him,\u2019 he said, \u2018particularly since I was doing a picture about a horse out West. It just seemed ridiculous not to do it. But Dave Grusin did all those orchestrations. We went to Nashville and recorded most of eight songs.\u2019 Nelson was Oscar-nominated one year later for the song \u2018On the Road Again\u2019 in \u2018Honeysuckle Rose\u2019, which Pollack produced.<\/p>\n

Grusin and lyricists the Bergmans were Oscar-nominated for the song \u2018It Might be You\u2019 sung by Stephen Bishop in \u2018Tootsie\u2019 and the song \u2018Moonlight\u2019 by John Williams and the Bergmans, sung by Michael Dees, was nominated for \u2018Sabrina\u2019. Anthony Minghella\u2019s \u2018Cold Mountain\u2019, which Pollack produced, nabbed Oscar noms for composer Gabriel Yared while the songs \u2019Scarlet Tide\u2019 by T-Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello and \u2018You Will Be My Ain True Love\u2019 by Sting also were nominated.<\/p>\n

Sydney Pollack died on May 26 2008 aged 73.<\/p>\n

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By Ray Bennett Music has been an intrinsic element of filmmaking since the silent era but not all filmmakers have had a full grasp of how to blend it successfully into a production. Sydney Pollack, who would have turned 90 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,8,2257],"tags":[365,3163,487,1735,4892,710,4529,5231,1747,1132,1765],"class_list":["post-11314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-music","category-recalling","tag-barbra-streisand","tag-beau-bridges","tag-dave-grusin","tag-dustin-hoffman","tag-jeff-bridges","tag-john-barry","tag-michelle-pfeiffer","tag-robert-mitchum","tag-robert-redford","tag-sydney-pollack","tag-tom-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11314"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11328,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11314\/revisions\/11328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}