Remembering Anthony Minghellia and Sidney Pollack

News update: The content farm Helium to which I'd contributed some 150 articles between 2008 and 2010 announced that it is closing shop and deleting their sites from existence by December 2012. I think this is a great decision as it will allow its writers to find out their true worth and expand their content from something that pays them a few cents to someone that will pay them in dollars. It will also clean up the internet a little. The article-sphere is diluted by articles written to make (quite literally) nickels and dimes. In any case, I will share some of the articles that I wrote back in those days on this blog


As everyone was mourning Heath Ledger's death and considering the loss to future moviedom from pictures he never made, I found it curious that the Heath Ledger effect doesn't work for directors as well. Within the same four-month period, the two founders of Mirage died premature deaths this past year and while Sidney Pollack's funeral was one of the most widely attended events in Hollywood this past year, no one has had the discussion about whether there will be a loss to the world of movies that he won't be making any more pictures. I imagine Pollack might have had two or three films left in him. He was 74 when he died, which is pretty old, but Altman, Lumet and Scorsesee seem on course to make films into their 80s as does Eastwood.

Minghellia is an even more extreme case. At age 54, he could have done a dozen more films before his natural death and while Pollack could be uneven, Minghellia's films were usually Oscar-caliber. He won an Oscar as the director for the English Patient (1996), and earned a follow-up nomination for best writing on his next film, Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). His adaptation of the Charles Frazier novel, Cold Mountain (2003), was the most buzzed about film of its year, and earned Minghellia his highest box office take to date. In his subsequent film, he came very close to being nominated for a second directorial Oscar and earned Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for his directorial and writing work. Breaking and Entering (2006) was quiet and not widely viewed but it was well-received among those who had seen it. Minghellia usually tackled books and challenging adaptations and while they weren't necessarily topical, they had potential to be timeless.

Not only did Minghellia tackle books but he tackled the best: Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient and Cold Mountain had all earned accolades as novels and one has to surmise it was the scribe in Minghellia who loved the challenge of taking good source material and capturing the essence of a good novel.

One should also credit Minghellia and Pollack as producers for having an eye for good material. It's a tribute to them that their final picture before departing the planet, The Reader, upset the Dark Knight and Wall-E to grab an Oscar nomination. The credits are currently in dispute because I imagine they want someone who's alive to pick up the statue and represent the film at the Academy Awards Ceremony, but if Heath Ledger can be honored posthomously, it is my wish that Anthony Minghellia can be honored as well.

Update: Although "The Reader" lost to "Slumdog Millionaire", Syndey Pollack and Anthony Minghellia were credited as producers for their final film and had the honor of repeating as Academy Award nominees in the first Oscar ceremony since their deaths.

Articles form the Archives: Anthony Minghella's tragic death in 2008

Everyone was mourning Heath's death and talking about how the world is deprived of so many pictures becaues he died young. At the same time, I find it curious that the Heath Ledger effect doesn't work for directors as well. I find it curious that the 2 founders of Mirage died premature deaths this past year and while Sidney Pollack's funeral was one of the most widely attended events in Hollywood this past year, no one has felt it's a loss to the world of movies that he won't be making any more pictures. I don't know but I imagine Pollack might have had 2 or three films left in him. He was 74 when he died, which is pretty old, but Altman, Lumet and Scorsesee seem on course to make films into their 80s as does Eastwood.

Granted, Pollack was old, but Minghella died at age 54. He could have done a dozen more films before he died and while Pollack could be uneven, Minghella's films were usually Oscar caliber. He won an Oscar as the director for the English Patient (1996), and earned a follow-up nomination for best writing on his next film, Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). His adaptation of the Charles Frazier novel, Cold Mountain (2003), was the most buzzed about film of its year, and earned Minghellia his highest box office take to date. He came very close to being nominated for a second directorial Oscar and earned Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for his directorial and writing work. Breaking and Entering (2006) was quiet and not widely viewed but it was well-received among those who had seen it. Minghellia usually tackled booksand challenging adaptations which are a much more timeless and consistently reliable source material than what most films are made of, so it's a good bet he would have had many more memorable films within him.

Not only did Minghella tackle books but he tackled the best: Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient and Cold Mountain had all earned accolades as novels and one has to surmise it was the scribe in Minghella who loved the challenge of taking good source material and capturing the essence of a good novel. I also credit Minghella, the producer, for having an eye for good material, and Mingella, the director, for translating the essence of a good novel into cinematic terms.

Minghella was also said to be very active in selecting the music of his films and is credited on imdb.com as being the music producer of Cold Mountain and Talented Mr. Ripley and I think the poignant bluegrass score of Cold Mountain is a perfect example of everything a good score should be.

Lastly, Minghella was a producer of films and perhaps it's a tribute to him that his latest production, The Reader, just got nominated for an Oscar at the 2008 Academy Awards. The credits are currently in dispute because I imagine they want someone who's alive to pick up the statue and represent the filmat the Academy Awards Ceremony, but if Heath Ledger can be honored posthomously, it is my wish that Anthony Minghella can be honored as well.

Not one but 3 dead people are getting a shot at the Oscars!

There are 14,000 directors who are registered with the Directors Guild of America and only 30 living people among them have won the most prestigious award in directing: A best director oscar. Two of those 30 people died last year and despite the fact that one started his directing career in the 60's and one started his in his 90's, the two were good friends and professional partners. Anthony Minghellia and Sidney Pollack co-owned Mirage Productions in addition to their directing careers and produced films such as Michael Clayton and more recently, The Reader together. The Reader, a courtroom drama/holocaust film/story about a passionate love affair (it has Ralph Fiennes in it and all Ralph does is movies that involve passionate love affairs. This is Ralph's second film this year in which he plays someone involved in some sort of unholy and sinful romantic relationship for those keeping score), was somewhat of a surprise to be nominated for best picture (if but the great thing about it, is that the academy just decided to stretch the rules a little to allow both Sidney Pollack and Anthony Minghellia to get the nominations for best picture, so Heath Ledger isn't the only dead guy to be competing. Last year Sidney Pollack got nominated for Michael Clayton, but Minghellia being the junior partner got left out of the festivities.

A quick background on who these guys are:
Sidney Pollack is a director, producer, and pretty well-known as an actor as well. You might know him as Will's dad from "Will and Grace" or his role in the film Michael Clayton as Michael Clayton's boss/friend/confidant. He also starred in a great PSA that played before movies in 2007 where he harrassed a guy on a cell phone and said, "I'm sorry, is my directing interrupting you?" Pollack's most famous films included Tootsie, Out of Africa and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (which imdb describes as a film about a deadly dance marathon). His best films were thrillers such as 3 Days in the Condor, Absence of Malice and most recently, The Interpreter. He was also well-liked and his funeral was attended by pretty much everyone in Hollywood, from what I read. His most frequently used actor was Robert Redford who wrote a tribute to him that I couldn't find with a quick google search unfortunately.

Anthony Minghellia is much different in style and background. Whereas Pollack started out as an actor before transitioning to dialogue coach and then director, Minghellia was a writer and was voted most promising playwright in the London theater. With his string of films English Patient, Talented Mr. Ripley, and Cold Mountain, he turned three best-selling award-winning novels and translated them into Oscar-contenders. It's true that a lot of Oscar winning films are adapted from books, but it's considerably harder to acheive this feat when the book is highly popular (i.e. Da Vinci Code) because everyone is always comparing it to the book. Cold Mountain was my favorite film of its year and because the director that beat him out for his 4th nomination, Fernando Meirelles, was ineligible (City of God was a 2002 film), it's good to see Minghellia finally get nomination #4. Pollack was in his 70's but because Minghellia was only 53 and had such a good track record of quality in his films, one has to wonder what movies he would have made or produced if he would have lived longer. Minghellia's favorite actor to work with was Jude Law who wrote a tribute to him here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/14/jude-law-remembers-anthony-minghella

Recommended films:
They Shoot Horses, Don't They
The Slender Thread
Tootsie
The Firm
Out of Africa
The Way We Were
Jeremiah Johnson
Three Days in the Condor
The Interpreter
Anthony Minghellia:
Truly Madly Deeply
Breaking and Entering
The English Patient
Talented Mr. Ripley
Cold Mountain
Breaking and Entering
Arrested Development

Interesting that Anthony Minghellia isn't being mourned

So everyone's mourning Heath's death and talking about how the world is deprived of so many pictures becaues he died young. I think that's reasonable and Heath was on his way to being a great actor.

At the same time, I find it curious that the Heath Ledger effect doesn't work for directors as well. I find it curious that the 2 founders of Mirage died premature deaths this past year and while Sidney Pollack's funeral was one of the most widely attended events in Hollywood this past year, no one has felt it's a loss to the world of movies that he won't be making any more pictures. I don't know but I imagine Pollack might have had 2 or three films left in him. He was 74 when he died, which is pretty old, but Altman, Lumet and Scorsesee seem on course to make films into their 80s as does Eastwood.

Granted, Pollack was old, but Minghellia died at age 54. He could have done a dozen more films before he died and while Pollack could be uneven, Minghellia's films were usually Oscar caliber. Cold Mountain almost got nominated, Talented Mr Ripley got him a best director nomination, English Patient won best picture and recently placed #14 on a poll of best films of the 90s. Breaking and Entering was quiet and not widely received but well-received. Minghellia usually tackled books and challenging adaptations which are a much more timeless and consistently reliable source material than what most films are made of, so it's a good bet he would have had many more memorable films within him.