Parenting & Family Quote by Sydney Pollack

Pollack’s line works because it refuses the neat, promotional soundbite the industry is always trying to extract from its artists. The setup is casual, even a little slippery: “I mean” and “or something” signal a man backing away from the interview trap as he speaks, sanding down the authority of his own statement. That self-effacing shrug is the point. He’s not performing the genius auteur who ranks his masterpieces; he’s performing the working director who remembers what each one cost.

The metaphor does double duty. “Kids” suggests love, responsibility, and the impossibility of choosing without sounding monstrous. “Fingers and toes” adds something tougher: craft. These aren’t just beloved creations; they’re functional parts of a body. A director’s filmography is how he works, reaches, holds on, lets go. Pick a favorite finger and you’ve already misunderstood the organism.

The subtext is also defensive, in a revealing way. Pollack made a career out of prestige craft that still had mass appeal, bouncing between romances, thrillers, and political anxiety. Asking for a favorite is often code for asking which identity he’d like to be pinned to: the serious filmmaker, the crowd-pleaser, the awards guy. His refusal protects the messy truth that movies are collaborative, contingent, and haunted by what you couldn’t fix on the day.

It’s a gentle rebuke to our ranking culture, too: the urge to reduce a life’s work to a listicle, when the real story is accumulation, not hierarchy.