The TV Zone

I have searched high and I have searched low for clips of the one appearance of the great Sydney Pollack on "The Sopranos" - almost exactly a year ago, which was perhaps his last TV acting appearance.

But alas, no luck. It was a wonderful performance, this: Pollack as the homicidal oncologist serving a life sentence for a triple murder, who blithely advises a cancer-riddled Johnny Sac to fugetaboutit - you've got five years to live so go ahead and enjoy yourself! Have a cigarette! (He was overly optimistic - by about four years and eleven months...)

Pollack's Warren Feldman also had an interesting backstory, relayed in a classic "Sopranos" line. Said he to Johnny about the dispatch of his wife: "I killed her aunt too, I didn't know she was there... And the mailman. At that point, I had to fully commit."

I called up Terence Winter, the brilliant "Sopranos" scribe and executive producer, who wrote this particular episode ("Stage 5," airdate: April 15, 2007.)

[And by the way, some big Winter news: He just turned in an HBO pilot based on Nelson Johnson's book about Atlantic City, "Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City;" Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi are attached. It's about AC in the '20s and - of course - Winter's treatment is a fictional one...]

Here's what Terry told me about this amazing cameo:

"Yeah, it was a dream come true working with him. He was sort of the definitive character I had in mind when I wrote that, thinking, I wonder if we could actually get him [Pollack]? I asked Georgianne Walken ['Sopranos' famed casting director] and [she said,], 'why NOT Sydney Pollack?' I said, if you think you can get him, then by all means.

"Georgianne called and he told her he loved the show, wanted to do it. David and I were ecstatic. He really WAS that guy [Feldman] - he brought a combination of strength, intelligence, warm, a natural likability but he was also a tough guy. He brought all of that to the role.

"He flew in his own place [to New York] from Los Angeles, and I can't believe that at that point he was 71, but he seemed like he was a fifty year old, just so sharp, so youthful in every possible way, and not just physically, but in terms of [his knowledge base.] He was showing me the stuff he had on his computer, and was so much on top of every new change and development in the computer world. He was so computer savvy...He was also learning how to fly, and was learning it on the computer...He had spent a week in flight simulation which he said was exactly the same as flying the plane, and he had all these [training] programs [on his laptop].

"We couldn't wait for lighting and set changes just so we could sit and talk to him and pick his brain about Hollywood history. He had such a wealth of stories. I was really reluctant to ask him questions but he was completely open about Redford and Stanley Kubrick...It was great, you'd ask and he'd start to talk and the circle around him just got bigger and bigger as he'd regale us with these great stories - all solicited by us.

"He only worked with us a couple days and he had to learn how to make a hospital bed, which is a something hospital nurses can do with their eyes shut, and he was saying, 'I don't know if I can do this' but [on camera] he looked like he'd been doing it a hundred years.

Said Winter, "he was just a lovely,lovely guy."

(Above: Photo from the U.K.'s Guardian.)