You Were a Tomato! (R.I.P. Sydney Pollack)

Sydney Pollack's feature directorial debut was directing the other great Sydney, Poitier in 1965's The Slender Thread. He went on to direct 20 more films before he passed away on May 26, 2008. A lot has already been said this past week by colleagues and journalists, particularly that he was "an actor's director." So often, this moniker is bantered about, but rarely does it truly apply. Pollack was one of those rare directors who was also a damn good actor. Though he may have started his life in showbiz as an performer, he was not a Redford or a Costner who became a star first, then jumped into the director's chair. He was a director first, and a damn good actor second.

That said, it's only fair that The Mung Hour allow some of the very characters he directed to speak directly about the man.

Dorothy Michaels - from 1982's Tootsie: "He was relentlessly pushing me to be sexier, as if to say that the woman I was wasn't good enough for him to begin with. Well, if that were true, you macho shithead, then why did you have me in this sexist pic to begin? Shame on you, Sydney Pollack. If I had a cattle prod, I'd zap your balls in front of your wife and kids. That would curl that Brillo pad head of yours. Shame on you!"

Katie Morofsky - from 1973's The Way We Were: "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were old? Then we could say we survived all this. Everything thing would be uncomplicated, the way it was when we were young? Then Sydney, you would still be alive."

Attorney Michael Colin Gallagher - from 1981's Absence of Malice: "You know something? When you kill yourself, it's a homicide, so they do an autopsy. They'll get a knife. They start here. They're gonna split her open. Up here they use shears. Shears, for Christ's sake! Don't let them do that to you, Sydney!!"

Mitch McDeere - from 1992's The Firm: "Hey Sydney, wouldn't it be funny if I went to Hollywood, you went to jail, and we both ended up surrounded by crooks?"