Author Talk and Signing – Sydney Pollack: A Subliminal Existentialist

Grab your ticket for a backstage pass to learn more about Hoosier Hollywood legend Sydney Pollack with award-winning author, film historian and professor Wes D. Gehring.

From Lafayette to South Bend — and fast forward to Hollywood — Pollack’s early years in a Jewish immigrant family and his profound love of theater had quite an effect on him. He found early success as an actor, acting teacher, director and producer.

Author Wes Gehring captures Pollack’s career by examining what he considers Oscar-winner Pollack’s most telling pictures: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969); Jeremiah Johnson (1972); The Way We Were (1973); Three Days of the Condor (1975); Bobby Deerfield (1977); The Electric Horseman (1979); Absence of Malice (1981); Tootsie (1982); Out of Africa (1985); and Havana (1990).

Wes Gehring is a George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Media at Ball State University and media editor for USA Today Magazine, for which he also writes the column Reel World. Gehring is the author of more than 40 books. CNN and Forbes’s “Book Authority” recently ranked his Genre-Busting Dark Comedies of the 1970s at number 39 on their list of the “100 Best Comedy Books of All Time.” In 2017 and 2018, he was one of the onscreen scholars for Turner Classic Movie’s summer online classes. His writing has resulted in speaking engagements from the Paris-Sorbonne University to New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Program is included with Admission. Purchase the book in advance for the special price of $25.