Sydney Pollack: the Mirage years

Producer from 1975 — Mirage Enterprises, 1985–2008

The director's second career: Sydney Pollack was raised in South Bend — born in Lafayette on 1 July 1934, a South Bend High School graduate of 1952 — and his directing life, Out of Africa and Tootsie at its head, stands in the Famous People record. What belongs here is the producing, which by the end was the larger half of his work. The credit record carries him as a producer from 1975 — on his own films first, Three Days of the Condor among them, and Tootsie (1982) and Out of Africa (1985) after — and in 1985, just before Out of Africa's release, he founded his own company, Mirage Enterprises, naming it, as a pilot, after an airplane. Through Mirage he began producing other directors' films: Bright Lights, Big City (1988); The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989, executive producer); Presumed Innocent (1990); Dead Again (1991, executive producer); Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993, executive producer); Sense and Sensibility (1995); Sliding Doors (1998); The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999); Iris (2001); The Quiet American (2002, executive producer); and Cold Mountain (2003).

In 2001 the director Anthony Minghella joined Mirage as an equal partner, and in December 2003 Miramax signed the company to a three-year first-look deal covering both men's production work. The late credits ran to the spring of his death: producer of Minghella's Breaking and Entering (2006); executive producer of Catch a Fire (2006); producer of Michael Clayton (2007), in which he also acted; executive producer of Leatherheads (2008); and producer of The Reader (2008) and of Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, filmed in 2005 and released in 2011. For television he was an executive producer of HBO's Recount (2008), the docudrama of the 2000 Florida recount, which he had been set to direct and withdrew from because of his illness. The Academy's record of the producing is carried in the Awards chapter — Best Picture nominations for Michael Clayton and The Reader stand to him as producer, beside the Picture and Director awards of Out of Africa — and the Television Academy's record carries the Recount Emmy. Time, at his death on 26 May 2008, took the measure of the second career: he had become "a much more prolific producer, with the pictures he made through his Mirage company tending to be smaller in scale, more eccentric, more personal than his studio pictures had been," and he "enjoyed godfathering them." Both of the company's partners died within ten weeks of each other that spring, Minghella in March and Pollack in May, and Mirage's production record closes with them.

Sources:

1. AFI Catalog, Sydney Pollack person record — the producer filmography at credit level: producer credits from 1975, executive-producer credits from 1980, running through producer credits of 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2011.
2. Mirage Enterprises company record — founded by Pollack in 1985, just before Out of Africa; named for an airplane; Minghella an equal partner from 2001; the Mirage titles The Fabulous Baker Boys, Sense and Sensibility, Sliding Doors, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Iris, and Cold Mountain.
3. Screen Daily, December 2003 — the Miramax three-year first-look deal with Pollack and Minghella's Mirage, the relationship begun with Sliding Doors (1998); and Screen Daily on Mirage UK — Pollack identified as "The Talented Mr Ripley producer."
4. Emanuel Levy, obituary record of Pollack (May 26, 2008), from the trade coverage — producer of Michael Clayton; executive producer of Recount, withdrawn as its director through illness; executive producer of Leatherheads; producer on The Reader and Margaret; the Mirage list and the Time assessment quoted.
5. Credit listings (TV Insider / Rotten Tomatoes records) — Bright Lights, Big City (1988), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Presumed Innocent (1990), Dead Again (1991), Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), and Sense and Sensibility (1995) as Mirage productions under Pollack; Michael Clayton producer (2007), Breaking and Entering producer (2006), Catch a Fire executive producer (2006), Cold Mountain producer (2003).
6. The Awards chapter of this record — the Academy and Television Academy records: Best Picture nominations as producer for Michael Clayton (2007) and The Reader (2008); the Recount Emmy, 2008.