That friend is Sydney Pollack, director of “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa,” and Pollack says that when Gehry approached him, he replied, “I don’t know anything about documentaries and I don’t know anything about architecture.” Gehry’s reply? “That’s why you’re perfect.”
The choice says a lot about Gehry, architect of flamboyant, exuberant buildings like the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Millennium Park in Chicago and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
Gehry loves control, so he chooses his own director and a director that admits ignorance about architecture. Gehry is now mainstream, unlikely as that may have seemed a dozen years ago, so he chooses a fairly mainstream director. But within that framework, Pollack and Gehry make a documentary that is non-traditional, like Gehry’s work.
Pollack spends a lot of time following Gehry through the office, at building sites and driving around L.A. and their moments together are extremely conversational. Loose, spirited and clearly meant to give the feel of open honesty (viewers also see a lot of Pollack on film).
But we know that this is Gehry’s film and that he’s telling us what he wants us to hear, despite that fact that he is smart enough to allow Pollack to include some interviews with naysayers.
Born in Canada as Ephraim Goldberg, Frank Gehry moved to Los Angeles as a youth and stumbled accidentally into architecture. He admits he could have easily have gone into flying as a career, too. He changed his name at the request of his first wife, he tells Pollack.
What’s most inspiring in the film is Gehry’s story about his moment of epiphany. At a dinner celebrating a new Santa Monica project, the client urges Gehry to follow his muse and that night, the two shook hands and canceled numerous projects already in the works, cutting off Gehry’s income, but swinging open the door to opportunity.
Gehry has since used that opportunity to assemble a skilled team which helps him create his distinctive buildings. He is quick to admit that the works are a team effort, to his credit.
Pollack tries to get a the root of how such a self-effacing, seemingly ego-less artist creates such boisterous, shouting buildings. And he does it at times as Gehry admits to a mix of egoism and self-doubt and as Pollack shows his friend as someone willing to take the advice of those around him and to keep working at perfecting ideas.
Along the way, Gehry’s analyst is interviewed, as are other architects like Phillip Johnson and famous clients like Dennis Hopper, Barry Diller and Michael Eisner.
The result is another Gehry success. He has led us into a project in which he created (by selecting his director) and we’ve come out amazed.
Incidentally, Milwaukeeans may recognize themselves and Santiago Calatrava in the segment about the impact of Gehry’s Guggenheim building on Bilbao’s self-image and its international profile.
“Sketches of Frank Gehry” opens Friday, June 23 at Landmark’s Downer Theatre.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
