The Architect

Sydney Pollack was in town the other day to pimp the first documentary in his decades-long career that spans from early TV to latter-day Nicole Kidman-Sean Penn duds, and I asked him whether he'd ever want to be the subject of a movie like his own that probes the personal and professional life of architect Frank Gehry. "God, no," he said, insisting he's too fragile to withstand another filmmaker's poking and prodding, which is a bit disingenuous; the man's as much a subject of Sketches of Frank Gehry as Gehry himself, and in almost as many frames thanks to the coverage footage that casts a net over both artists. The subject's Gehry, see, but also the reconciliation a moviemaker and building designer must make when he's trying to please himself and the rest of the world; how, in other words, do you play their game when you’re following only your own rules? Gehry and his equally famous peers and pals try to answer it by talk-talk-talking to the digital camera Pollack bought at a Best Buy, while Pollack answers it with the movie itself, the most intimate and lasting thing he’s done since getting Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway into bed and Dustin Hoffman into a dress. Sketches of Frank Gehry screens as part of The Magnolia at the Modern series Friday through Sunday at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St. Visit themodern.org/educ_magnolia.html.
June 23-25