Sydney Pollack, David Milch, Shane Black Memorable Characters and the Language of Storytelling This week on Austin Film Festival's On Story Podcast, Memorable Characters and the Language of Storytelling with Sydney Pollack, David Milch and Shane Black. Actor, producer, and director Sydney Pollack has over one hundred film credits spanning six decades. He directed a number of memorable films such as Tootsie, The Firm, and Out Of Africa, which won him an Academy Award for Best Director. In addition to working on sixty-nine episodes of Hill Street Blues, Writer/Producer David Milch also created the shows, Deadwood, NYPD Blue, Luck, The Big Apple, and John from Cincinnati. Writer director Shane Black redefined the buddy movie genre in the late 1980's with the screenplay for Lethal Weapon. He later became known for creating memorable and complex characters not usually associated with the action genre and in his own distinct cinematic voice, gave us the screenplays to The Last Boyscout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight, as well as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3, both of which he also directed. All three were awarded at the 2006 Austin Film Festival & Conference. Audio from a panel featuring all three was used for this On Story Podcast. Hear them discuss finding the spine of the story, the source of their characters, and the value of style. Black, Pollack, and Milch all divulge what it takes to create memorable characters and their different approaches to writing.