Sydney Pollack : Consummate Insider’s Views on the Industry, MPAA and Movies

In Hollywood, where the creative and business communities are often at odds, director and producer Sydney Pollack is that rare filmmaker who is a respected player on both sides. So the addition of his name to a recent petition urging the Motion Picture Assn. of America to revamp its movie-ratings system carried enormous weight.

After months of discussions, the MPAA last week did away with its X rating and substituted a new category, NC-17 (no children under 17 allowed). It will be trademarked to prevent pornographers from adopting it, as they did with the X. The change is expected to clear the way for American directors to make stronger, adult-themed films without being branded pornographers.

The MPAA’s decision is only one of the many wrenching changes that the genial 56-year-old Pollack has seen during his long career as one of the country’s top directors. In the fickle world of Hollywood, Pollack is part of an elite minority of filmmakers who consistently make movies popular with both critics and audiences. As a result, he enjoys more creative freedom than almost any other director in the business. Yet, he is troubled by the current pressures on Hollywood’s creative community.

By his own admission, Pollack is not a guerrilla filmmaker. His movies--”The Way We Were,” “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” “Three Days of the Condor,” “Absence of Malice,” “Tootsie”--are mainstream fare featuring such big-name stars as Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Sally Field. All told, Pollack’s films have earned 43 Academy Award nominations, including four for Best Picture. Pollack himself has been nominated three times, and won in 1985, for that year’s Best Picture, “Out of Africa.”

Pollack’s “Havana,” due out at Christmas, stars Robert Redford as an American gambler who meets the wife of a Cuban revolutionary (Lena Olin) on the Miami-to-Havana ferry just days before Fulgencio Batista’s overthrow in 1959. “It’s not a political film,” says Pollack. “The revolution really serves as a canvas and a background for the love story.” But then, Pollack sees all his movies as love stories.

Given his stature in the film community, Pollack is often looked to for a stamp of respectability on Hollywood issues. It is not a position he is comfortable with. In conversation, Pollack is expansive and candid when discussing his own work, but when the talk shifts to controversial industry issues, he becomes more cautious. After the interview, Pollack confessed that he had to think long and hard before signing the ratings petition.

Question: You were among several directors who signed a petition asking the Motion Picture Assn. of America to reconsider its rating system after Wayne Wang’s “Life is Cheap . . . But Toilet Paper is Expensive” got an X. This was the latest in a series of independent films to receive the dreaded X. What concerns did you have about the ratings?

Answer: Let me answer that by first saying that I was probably not as angry as many of my colleagues--only because I feel the goals of the rating system are admirable goals, and that the idea of having some way to tell uninitiated people what they’re going to see is not, in and of itself, a bad idea. For many years, it worked rather well. There were quite good films that were released with X ratings at one time-- “Midnight Cowboy” and “Last Tango in Paris,” for example. If you run those films today, they’re still good films. There is art in them. There is a real aspiration to clarify human issues.

But the X rating has gotten confused over the years with out-and-out pornography. That places a very unfair stigma on people who are trying to depict aspects of life that are very human. I felt--not having seen Mr. Wang’s picture by the way--that as a filmmaker I can’t help but feel worried. It’s very, very hard to make a judgment on what is art and what isn’t art.

Q: Last week the MPAA revised its ratings system. What do you think of this solution to the controversy?

A: It was what we asked. I think it’s a constructive step in trying to become more realistic than we’ve been about this very real problem.

Q: Can we expect to see a slew of more sexually graphic films now?

A: Unfortunately, I think we will. That’s the sad and depressing part of any kind of leniency. There’s going to be a whole slew of people who will take advantage of this. But that’s the price we have to pay for instituting a system with more fairness.

Q: Hollywood’s writers and directors have pushed for a legal protection called “moral rights”--embodied in the 104-year-old international Berne Convention--giving them the ability to sue anyone who alters their work in a way that harms their reputations. But wouldn’t giving artists this kind of power turn the American notion of copyright law on its head? As Ted Turner said when he was criticized for colorizing films: “I think they look better in color, and they’re my movies.”

A: If somebody takes “Tootsie” and time-compresses it, pulls the middle out and changes the music, they’re raping something--never mind how valuable it is or isn’t. It’s the only commodity I have to sell as a filmmaker. So they’re doing damage to me in some way, and I have a right to protest. That, I believe, is what the Berne Convention is about: You do harm to someone’s reputation when that is their means of livelihood.

We had no illusions when we went to Washington (to lobby for “moral rights”) that we would suddenly convince a country that is a free-market society, that is fueled by economics, to change its whole philosophy about who has ownership rights in a movie. This country is rooted in economics and we know that the person who owns the copyright is going to be the person with the muscle. That’s always going to be true. Maybe some day it won’t be true. So we were happy that we made inroads.

Q: But most would agree that 98% of the movies are just commercial product, that maybe 2% could legitimately be considered art. Does that 98% deserve the same kind of artistic protection as the other 2%?

A: Well, first of all, I would probably say 99.99999%. Art is rare. I can think of maybe four or five films that are real art in the last 20 years. And the rest are commercial product. But oddly enough, it’s often very difficult to judge instantly what will be art. That’s No. 1.

On the issue of MPAA ratings, I don’t think it’s hard to judge. Let’s just take the issue of violence and sex. I don’t think you have to be terribly smart to know whether what’s being depicted on a screen is in the service of an idea or not. I really don’t think it is that hard to judge. You can turn it into a big philosophical argument, but I don’t think it is. You’re either trying to explore some idea, or some kind of relationship. . . . You may be making films that are a commercial product, and you are trying to entertain people, and reach the maximum number possible. But you are either doing it with honest intentions--and therefore it is a genuine exploration of an issue--or you’re not.

Q: Is it really that clear?

A: It’s not clear whether it’s art or not. But it’s certainly clear what the intentions are. I may be being oversimplistic about this, but I would feel very confident about being able to judge the intentions of a movie. Whether it’s art, that’s a cloudy issue: I wouldn’t wade into that issue for all the money in the world, because I don’t think it’s something that gets decided that quickly. Sometimes, time makes that distinction. . . .

Q: With the debate over the ratings system and the National Endowment for the Art’s anti-obscenity efforts, there’s been tremendous controversy about outside pressures effectively censoring artists. But aren’t there pressures inside the business that combine to limit your artistic choices?

A: Well, it seems to me that we are in a real crisis in terms of the economics of film. Two things have happened. One is the demand for higher and higher box-office grosses--which has partially come from the movie studios being acquired by larger corporations that need to show continual profit rises. Also, with marketing costs being what they are, and production costs being what they are, the investment is so huge. The cost of opening a picture for a week is between $34 million and $36 million. Here I’m talking about mainstream movies with stars.

All of that has conspired to absolutely annihilate the middle market of movies--which is where the bulk of the great movies came from in the past. Now you’re left with these megahits, or megaflops. It makes it extremely difficult every time you go to bat--because a medium success is out of the question now. Personally I feel less and less like a director, and more and more like a surgeon at a train wreck.

Q: How so?

A: You’re always trying to stem the flow of blood. You’re constantly paying more attention to crisis management than you are to directing a picture. The first day of shooting starts, and before you know it, the clock is ticking so fast, and costs are getting so high that you begin to feel you are dividing your time equally between trying to worry about what’s aesthetically interesting or adventuresome and what’s sound business policy.

Now, other people will read this and say, well, that’s my fault. And in a way it is--because it’s a certain kind of picture that I’ve done out of habit or laziness, or whatever, that are mainstream studio pictures with stars in them, and those are the ones where the costs have escalated.

Q: It sounds like a lot of the fun is gone.

A: I find it much less fun than it used to be, much less fun. But that’s as much my fault as anybody’s. There are alternative ways of making films. There’s this sort of guerrilla approach, which is looking more and more interesting to me every day.

Q: What are past films of yours that you think couldn’t be made today?

A: I don’t think any of the films that I made before 1970 would be made today--”The Scalphunters,” “Castle Keep,” “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” I don’t think anybody would make those films. “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” for example, is a depressing, downbeat kind of claustrophobic story that has small potential for upside. I like the film very much. I think it was a good film. But I think I would have a hell of a time going around peddling it to the studios today.

Q: So do you think the ‘60s and ‘70s were more artistically daring times for you?

A: I think so. Now, there’s always the danger when you look back and talk about the good old days, or romanticizing in retrospect. But it seems to me, in all objectivity, that there was a market for what you might call the B movie, which is where I think all of the best movies have come from, since the beginning. “Casablanca” and all of those were B movies. That market doesn’t exist anymore. . . . Studios look at movies now on the basis of their potential to be runaway hits.

Q: But every once in a while, a small film does break out.

A: That’s the irony. Some of the most successful films--certainly some of the most recognized films, whether at the box office or the Academy Awards--have been these sorts of non-studio kinds of movies, whether it’s “Driving Miss Daisy,” or “Platoon” or “Children of a Lesser God.” That’s the healthy part of this business: There’s always the chance that in through the crack in the door will sneak the exception to the rule.

Q: Are there also cultural constraints that make it difficult for you to make movies that connect with American audiences in the 1990s?

A: For some reason, I have always done love stories. And the love stories I’ve done are usually ones that examine the arguments between people who are of disparate beliefs or cultures, or philosophic or moral convictions. In a sense, I think all classical love stories have been tragic love stories--that is, they’ve been love stories in which the obstacle is too great to finally be overcome. Whether it’s Romeo and Juliet, or whatever.

But as we’ve gotten more and more adventurous as a society, and our morals have changed, the obstacles have lessened. It’s harder and harder to do a love story. I mean, “Brief Encounter” (David Lean’s 1946 film about an extramarital affair) was a great love story when it was made. But you couldn’t make it today, because adultery isn’t an obstacle today. Nobody would take it seriously.

Fifty, 40, 30 years ago, it was absolutely electrifying that a man and a woman who were both married to other people would rendezvous somewhere. Never mind what was happening in life, and in the real world. But as far as movies were concerned, that was a real clear obstacle. Race was a clear obstacle. Cultural differences were obstacles.

But it’s becoming a global community now. We speak the same language. Television shows go all over the world. Movies go all over the world. There’s a commonality of understanding. So it’s more difficult to find legitimate obstacles two people can use as a separation between them, yet the effort to overcome the barrier is the best fuel in a love story.

Q: You created an interesting barrier in “Tootsie” by turning Dustin Hoffman into actor posing as a woman who falls in love with Jessica Lange.

A: That’s how desperate I’ve gotten.