I agree with the blurb on What Would Tyler Durden Do? about this - my grandpa lived the definition of a "working class" lifestyle and still managed to make it to 83, so the fact that Sydney Pollack died a decade younger than him seems really off somehow.

For those who don't know who Pollack is, welcome to movies. As as director and as a producer, he brought audiences a number of genuinely outstanding fucking films that actually deserved the multiple Academy Awards that they won - the fact that he directed both Tootsie and Out of Africa, both of which scored Oscars, should give you some idea of the guy's fucking range - and as an actor, he's notable for a number of cameo roles in which he's managed to outperform the holy living shit out of top-billed fuckholes like Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck, simply by sharing a screen with them for increments of less than 15 minutes apiece.

He was one of the last holdouts, the guys who told the big studios to go pound sand up their own asses in the '70s and '80s, and movies are measurably poorer without guys like him around.

What I especially like about Sydney Pollack (and not Sydney Poitier, as I first read the headline for some reason) is that he was such a natural character actor. I love character actors... and I love it when they hit things big and get their just rewards. It's hard to say if Pollack was an actor who tried directing, a director who tried acting, or what... he moved so seamlessly between the sides of the camera.

A shame to see him go.