I must admit that I was a fan of the director and his acting. His performance in Woody Allen's Husband and Wives stays was masterly and I think because of it, it is one of Woody's best post-Annie hall films. His films always struck me as well made and interesting, Absence of Malice was one that I used in class when I taught journalism, Tootsie, a classic comedy deserves another look, Three Days of the Condor is a classic thriller, and so on...Slate's Dana Stevens gives hims a good send off:
Sydney Pollack's best movies tended to share this polemical element, the crossing of swords between evenly matched equals. Take, for example, an early scene in Tootsie where Pollack, playing Dustin Hoffman's beleaguered agent George Fields, gravely informs his client that "no one will work with you." Hoffman's character, the unemployable Michael Dorsey, truly is (as Fields believes) an insufferable pain in the ass, and also (as Dorsey himself insists) a brilliant actor who deserves the role of a lifetime. (The fact that Hoffman and Pollack famously butted heads during the filming of Tootsie, with Hoffman wanting to play the character for broader farce than Pollack would allow, no doubt adds to the dialogue's satisfying crackle.) "The essence to me of all good drama is argument. I can't say that either side is a thousand percent right," Pollack once said. In another interview, he elaborated: "Even if it's a thriller or a comedy, it's always a love story for me and that's what I concentrate on, because the love stories are my surrogates for the argument; two people in conflict that see life differently."
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