Just interviewed Sam Raimi for my Popcorn show on ABC News NOW. We hadn't met in all the years from his low rent Evil Dead movies to the Spider-Man trilogy. So it was a kick to finally greet him at the Manhattan studio and ask him if indeed the rumor is true: that he appears regularly on the set of all his movies dressed in a suit and tie even if the film was a scarefest like Drag Me to Hell. As luck would have it, Raimi was dressed formally for our interview while I took the slob route by leaving the tie at home. "You shame me," I told him. He smiled politely but seemed to agree. That was my chance to ask if he stood on ceremony out of respect for his directing hero, master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. His answer was surprising:
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Suddenly, whatever Indy 4 grossed or what DVDs come out today seem not to matter in light of the passing yesterday of the gifted director and actor Sydney Pollack, one of true gents in a movie industry notable for the absence of what Sydney had—humor, warmth and a non-showy way of letting his talent out. Sure, he won an Oscar for directing Out of Africa, and his 1982 Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman in a dress deserved that year's Best Picture golden boy way more than the solemn, self-important winner, Gandhi. But the open secret about Sydney Pollack was that he was the go-to guy in Hollywood for a filmmaker in a bind. Pollack and his Mirage Enterprises producing partner Anthony Minghella—both dead from cancer within two months of each other—were always there to help other directors realize their vision.
The sudden death yesterday in London of Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella is, of course, a grievous loss to the film world. At 54, with only seven features to his credit, including The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain, Minghella had so much more to show us about ourselves and the curves life throws at us. But the loss is greater for his family and friends. Minghella, to paraphrase the author John O’Hara, was “a gentleman in a world that has no more use for gentleman.” To know him was to be in the presence of a man with an elegant regard for the romance of film. Talking to me, a critic, he’d want to know what I didn’t like about a movie, his or someone else’s. His arguments, fiery but never hostile, were filled with joy in the discussion. Joy, however, was the last thing he was feeling on the day we first met. It was the first New York screening of The English Patient
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