sketches of frank gehry

at dglass's suggestion we went to the sunshine theater on friday night to see sydney pollack's new documentary/portrait of one of the world's most famous architects, "sketches of frank gehry." the verdict: this is an excellent film filled with smart, funny, pointed ruminations on the creative process, on art and architecture, on fear and ego and ambition, on the struggle between perfectionism and letting go.

loosely structured as a conversation between pollack and gehry, and punctuated with talking-head commentary both amusing and insightful (artists ed ruscha and chuck arnoldi, critics herbert muschamp and hal foster) as well as somewhat pointless and fawning (bob geldoff, michael ovitz), the film has many moments that have been playing around in my head these past few days. among our favorites:

• gehry discussing the horror that strikes him before starting every project ("i don't know how to make a building!!"), and the growing confidence he feels as he walks through the fear;
• gehry revealing that he felt "embarrased" the first time he saw his seminal guggenheim-bilbao... like: "they let me do THAT?!";
• syndey pollack saying how for years he felt like he was "pretending" to be a director, until one day he realized that, in fact, he actually was a director;
• gehry's story about his moment of creative clarity, when with a slight nudge from an unlikely source, he decided scrap everything he was working on and follow his artistic instincts, likening the experience to falling off a cliff--terrifying, exhilarating, free.

yes, gehry comes across as very appealing (no surprise... he and pollack are long-time buddies), but whether you like the man or not, "sketches" offers a too-rare, nice long look at the creative thinking, the actual process and the end results of one of the most groundbreaking, influential artists of our time.