1943-2020

Ivan Reitman Remembers Hollywood Dealmaker Tom Pollock

From Star Wars to Do the Right Thing and Ghostbusters, Pollock helped steer beloved films to the screen. He died on Saturday at 77.

By Ivan Reitman

August 3, 2020

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Tom Pollock was not a household name—but as a Hollywood lawyer, studio executive, and academic, he helped shepherd films that are known the world over. Filmmaker and producer Ivan Reitman remembers his friend and collaborator, who died on Saturday at age 77.

In 1976, I met a hippie lawyer from Ojai, California, named Tom Pollock. I was trying to produce a supposedly un-makable comedy called Animal House. He was unlike any attorney I’d ever met. For one thing, he had a genuine, deep sense of fairness, morality, and integrity. He also never wore socks.

We don’t talk a lot about lawyers, and we certainly don’t say many nice things when we do. Then again, most lawyers don’t end up running Universal Pictures and green-lighting Do the Right Thing when the rest of the business wouldn’t give Spike Lee the time of day.

Most lawyers don’t start their journey at the American Film Institute and wind up chairing the whole program. His first clients were film students. Rather than charge them unaffordable fees, he took a five percent interest in their future. An investment. This is now industry standard. It was Tom Pollock’s idea.

Most lawyers don’t read scripts, let alone offer notes. And hey, maybe that’s a good thing. However, Tom genuinely loved filmmakers and filmmaking. He cared deeply about their inherit stories and characters. A kind of passion that lead to an almost Buddhist approach to pliable negotiation. You know that deal where George Lucas got to keep control of the rights to the Star Wars toys and all the sequels? That was Tom Pollock.

During his tenure as the chairman of Universal, he brought Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, and myself under one roof. It was an unprecedented run including films like Jurassic Park and Apollo 13 as well as enviably daring choices like The Last Temptation of Christ and Schindler’s List.

After 10 years running a studio, when offered the traditional golden parachute of a producing deal with a fancy little bungalow and an expense account at the studio dining room, he turned it down. Instead, he chose to teach. He offered a cinema class of his own invention to the students of University of California, Santa Barbara that attempted to explain the kind of movies that came out of Hollywood. The name of the class: “What Were They Thinking?”

He eventually came back to filmmaking as my producing partner for the last 20 years. Together, we launched the careers of directors like Todd Phillips, went to the Oscars a couple of times, and even started making Ghostbusters movies again.

My heart aches today for the loss of my attorney, my studio head, my producing partner, and my dear friend of 45 years. He was not taken by COVID, but he was taken nonetheless and faster than I can fathom.

It’s a sad day, but perhaps a good day to watch a film made possible by Tom Pollock.