It was a crowded cinema on Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Center (trying to use local spelling, forgive me) for a viewing of Sidney Pollack’s first documentary, ‘Sketches of Frank Gehry’. The two have been friends for years and Pollack is the only film-maker Gehry trusted enough to make the film. The architect’s Colombo-style scruffiness hides an intensely competitive and ambitious ego, but when it results in a building like the Guggenheim Bilbao, who’s complaining? At a Q&A session after the screening, Sidney Pollack confessed that he could find only one dissenting voice – belonging to an architecture scholar in Boston – prepared to publicly question Gehry’s work. The scholar’s main criticism of Gehry is that he thinks the building overpowers the purpose for which it was built – he is not convinced Bilbao serves the art displayed there.

On a more prosaic level, my question for Sidney Pollack – Apple Girl, asking Tootsie’s director a question, in New York! – related to the artist Julian Schnabel, who was featured in the documentary. Schnabel’s appearances always caused the audience to giggle because he chose to be filmed wearing a terry-towelling bathrobe and sunglasses, reclining on a deck chair and holding a brandy. Pollack disclosed that Schnabel had been fully dressed when the film-maker stopped by, but suggested changing into the outfit he was filmed in.

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