Sydney Pollack, RIP

Sydney Pollack died yesterday and while the obits all not his achievements as a director and actor, one point should be noted: He was great at playing rich and powerful men. Even in a dog like "Made of Honor," the Patrick Dempsey vehicle which was his last role, he was a rich man with a penchant for younger wives. Perhaps his best two roles as rich men were in Michael Clayton, the head of the evil law firm employing George Clooney and in Eyes Wide Shut where he may or may not have had one of his mistresses killed. In any of the roles, he was simultaneously creepy and charming, a mix of menschy but also mysterious. There's a Yiddish word--Hamish--meaning cozy, familiar. Pollack could convey that at the same time being a boardroom sonofabitch in his roles. In lesser parts, as a political consultant in the dreadful Random Hearts, Pollack could be a bastard but he was best as the charming but merciless executive. The closest I've seen to this is the great Jerry Adler who played Herman "Hesh" Rabkin on the Sopranos. (He was also the main suspect in Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery.) But Hesh, a one time music industry goniff--thief--who made off with the profits of his black R&B singers is gentle by the time of the Sopranos, content to lie about Morris County, New Jersey with his horses and girlfriend. Pollack's energy was more raw, and less retiring. In the past, films portrayed rich people as Thurston Howell caricatures or Stetson wearing Texans. Pollack personified, and as a Bar Mitzvah boy I feel freer to say this, the rich Jewish executive you'd see at the Short Hills mall sweetly playing with his kids but you know he's a bastard at work. Pollack was never explicitly Jewish in his roles.In fact most of the wealthy characters he played, as in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shot, were not explicitly Jewish. But Poillack was and his audience knew it and it was etched in his face which showed not a trace of WASP gentility. Of course, by all accounts, Pollack was a lovely guy. But nobody played a better bastard.