Robert Redford

by Callan, Michael Feeney

  “Sydney knew what lay ahead and had settled his mind on dealing with it, and I was just content that we were able to spend some time,” says Redford, “and to let him know how thankful I was for the friendship and the work.”

  In June, at the private memorial service for Pollack at an aviation hangar in Santa Monica, Redford carefully prepared notes for his eulogy. Dustin Hoffman was there, along with Al Pacino, George Clooney, Harrison Ford and a throng of leading Hollywood figures reflective of Pollack’s achievement. Redford found himself divided. He’d once written to Carol Rossen that L.A. remained forever uncomfortable for him, “still and always the gorilla in the living room.” Now, surrounded by the faces that emblematized the L.A. Pollack loved, he felt depressed by the gap between them. “I’ve no doubt [the depression] was in response to the special nature of our friendship. It’s hard to summarize such a complicated and devoted friendship in a handful of words, and it’s hard to share it.”

  In the end, bobbing on a sea of emotions, he cast away his notes and improvised. He told the gathered friends and family, “I think a part of you dies when someone you love dies.”

  It was, of course, finally about film, just film. The relative failure of the recent films he most cared about, An Unfinished Life and Lions for Lambs, was, in the greater scheme of things, unimportant. His movies had cumulatively earned almost $1 billion and he was still acknowledged, as he was at the millennium when Life selected him as a symbol of grace and glamour for the twentieth century. Reflecting on his oeuvre, he decided that Jeremiah Johnson was his favorite movie, because it was all about continuing. Johnson suffers the slings and arrows, but is uncowed. In the same spirit, he would go on, choosing two new movie projects that sprang from his interests in sports and society. With Lions for Lambs coproducer Tracy Falco, a recent executive appointee at Universal, he agreed to develop a film based on the story of the first African American Major League Baseball player, Jackie Robinson, in which he would play the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager, Branch Rickey. Given the new accent on national integration that came with Barack Obama’s election as president in 2008, the subject felt timely. But superseding it came The Conspirator, a script about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that crucially examined the role of John Wilkes Booth’s alleged collaborator Mary Surratt whose state execution, along with three other coconspirators, remains controversial. Redford’s film, finally greenlighted as a new directorial venture in the spring of 2010, was designed less as a historical piece than a polemic. Bob Woodward was thankful for his stubborn engagement with social issues in his films.“The gift he brought to me and Carl and All the President’s Men was the gift of an observer. He had a skill to hover above the project and cut to the key elements with amazing acuity,” says Woodward. “That degree of analytical skill enhances everything he does, and we need it in all divisions of our society.”

  It was this observational obsession that ultimately explains his appetite for storytelling and his ongoing quest for characters to play. As with Chaucer and Dickens, who charted their worlds with scorn and affection in equal measure, his urge remained to shine a light on his own. “I could never stop acting,” he told Jamie, “because it would be like removing curiosity and, to me, that would be like removing life itself.” Acting and stardom, of course, were different matters. Acting he was compelled to; stardom was a gift, something to be grateful for, and proud of. Proud not in vainglory, but because he knew what he’d achieved in transferring its power into something concretely separate—Sundance—where others could engage and experiment with their own art. What remained, beyond the challenge of age, was the problem of how to hold on to the magical province he had created.

  The Sundance Group, in its high-flight ambition, was dead. But the Sundance Institute, the arts principle, was intact—though still under threat because of the failure of the business umbrella. Redford remained committed to restoring its vitality and was heartened when Bylle’s art opened a door. IMG Artists was launching an inaugural California version of its well-established Tuscan Sun Festival. The IMG format combined concerts performed by the world’s most acclaimed musical artists with literary, culinary and visual art exhibitions. Barrett Wissman, IMG Artists’ chief executive, wanted to showcase Bylle’s work as a local artist. Wissman met Redford and told him of his plans to explore cross-cultural events globally. Already there were Sun Festivals in Asia and Europe, and Wissman saw an important new opportunity in the Middle East, where Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan of the United Arab Emirates was developing Abu Dhabi with unprecedented focus on the arts. Wissman suggested bringing Sundance to Abu Dhabi, which was an idea that immediately appealed to Redford’s vision of constant evolution. In July, the sheikh sent his private Gulfstream jet to collect Redford for a visit to his desert kingdom. There Redford proposed the Middle Eastern Sundance Institute. Several prominent Sundance board members opposed Redford’s plan, but he was adamant: “Sundance was always about risk and exploration. I saw this as a wonderful opportunity to engage new voices across the globe and I determined to pursue it.”

  Redford dismisses the idea of involvement in Middle East politics but acknowledges the potency of film emerging from the nexus of modern Arabia. He was well aware of the contrary opinions of the Emirates’ society, aware of the implications of association with a cultural tradition infamous for its downgrading of women, where, even today, women are airbrushed from newspaper photographs. “Articulating opinions, disseminating, debating: that’s what film is about for me. Today the whole region of the Middle East is the crucible. Much of the future—all our futures—will be decided in this area.”

  Back in the Sundance boardroom, skepticism prevailed, and Redford buckled down for a fight. “My sense is that the resistance will go on. Sundance needs nourishment.”

  Sundance, of course, was more than an arts principle. It was a place. In his diary, speculating on the importance of the canyon, he wrote: “For years I searched for a religious concept that would fit. Nothing ever did. All concepts, even though momentarily satisfying, fell victim to resistance. And resistance became reality. Then, some thirty years ago, I realized it had been underfoot all the while: it was nature. It contains no politics and no corruption of power. It is constant.”

  Not long before, to consecrate its continuance, Redford had instructed Julie Mack to survey all the Sundance holdings, which spread over more than six thousand acres of meadow oakbrush, chokecherry and aspen forest, to define a conservation easement of almost one thousand acres, which would be the Redford Family Nature and Wildlife Preserve, entrusted to the nation in perpetuity. This symbolic gesture, perceived as a tax break maneuver by the cynical, was as solid a marker as the Promontory Summit transcontinental railroad golden spike. At the dedication ceremony held at the high vantage of Smith Corner, Jamie told the assembled friends and supporters: “I know that I speak for my sisters when I say that of all the things [my father] provided to us, the most important are these values of conservation. We hope to carry them and pass them on to our children. Any of you who knew me as a teenager, tearing up the canyon on my motorcycle, putting my guitar amp on the deck, trying to see if people could hear me across the other side of the mountain, might have wondered what was going to happen to these lands. Well, I’m here to tell you some good news: nothing is going to happen to them, absolutely nothing other than what geological time and nature have in store.”

  The fact that the family’s affection for Sundance had never wavered was the source of greatest pride of all to Redford. Shauna visited less, but her heart was still there. Jamie had a voice in management, always ready to engage in boardroom disputes and come down on the side of continuance. Amy spent Christmas in the A-frame with Matt and her new baby. “So much of our childhood and, I suppose, our shared dreams are in this place,” says Amy. “My memories are ones of compassion and unity and all that could be achieved by staying in harmony with the elements. But it has changed. Once, Sundance was a place of meditation and retreat.
Now it is the forefront of a mission.”

  Growing up, Jamie says, his father often seemed to him like a spirit tethered by the longest, thinnest thread to planet Earth. Still, in the force of his tenacity, he had become Jamie’s greatest influence: “In my darkest days on the transplant waiting list anticipating death, my father’s courage kept me going.” Ironically, Jamie was now his father’s role model. “I love all my children equally, but Jamie has carried me forward,” says Redford. “I write to him when I’m in distress. I tell him my woes and he shows me the way. His journey has been farther than any of ours. He’s seen more of the darkness and more of the light.”

  In July 2009 Redford married Bylle in a quiet ceremony at the Louis C. Jacob Hotel in Hamburg, confounding those who believed he would never settle. The union is tighter and more secure than any he has enjoyed in his life, but in many ways the doubters are right. Redford remains peripatetic, shifting with the seasons from New York to Santa Fe, from Sundance to St. Helena. Jamie remains in Fairfax, where they often meet. “I try to slow him down,” says Jamie. “I tell him to go back to Sundance, that that’s his destiny, that’s the final frontier.”

  Redford well knows it, and to recognize a frontier, as Heidegger says, is to have gone beyond it.

  Acknowledgments

  It is impossible to adequately thank the many people who gave this book life. What started as a modest project became a ten-year one, reflective of the broad ground covered. Patience and belief became the cornerstones I depended on, and I am grateful to those who stayed true.

  I could not have written the book without the input of my children, Corey Callan and Paris Callan, both drama and film students who will, I’ve no doubt, make their marks. Corey’s wisdom and scholarship color every page (especially the annotations). Paris was an equally ingenious adviser, giving me insight and understanding from the beaches of Oahu to the darkest nights in Dublin. I was a distracted father far too often during these years, and I wrap my thanks in sincerest apology. The next one, I promise, will be easier.

  The initiator of the book died before it saw the light of day. Susan Hill was an exceptional editor. She was also a loved friend. We worked together on three books, but that was the least of it. It was her conviction that Robert Redford was undervalued, and I hope herein I’ve answered some of her questions about him. Another key contributor who passed away during the writing was the author Francis Xavier Feighan, the best buddy, who took me around the San Fernando Valley of Redford’s boyhood. I’m indebted to him for establishing the network of contacts in Los Angeles and for supplying the linguistic riddles (words were his thing) that made his in-the-field reports so joyfully sustaining. Francis conducted a number of important interviews for this book and opened thirty years of his movie files to me. I miss our afternoons at Jerry’s Deli on Ventura Boulevard.

  Thanks to William Armstrong for green-lighting this work to begin with and for publishing my work for so many years. Thanks, also, to the writers John McGahern, Brian Clemens and Anthony Shaffer, who variously edited me, encouraged me and pushed me onward. Also to Philip Hinchcliffe and Chris Menaul, who grounded me in London way back and opened the drama doors at the BBC and elsewhere that were foundational in building this book. I also must acknowledge the early directors of my own dramas, Briann MacLochlainn, Michael O’Herlihy and Martin Campbell, who taught me most of what I know about filmmaking.

  Since research for this book spanned two continents, my appreciation goes to a number of people on both sides of the Atlantic who built the bridges. Where I could, I visited every homestead, grave site or movie studio, the better to understand my subject’s journey. Gerald M. Cruthers and Marilyn Cruthers worked tirelessly in Connecticut and Rhode Island to assemble genealogical details and catalog all the residences of the New England Redfords. In Austin and San Marcos, Peggy Tombs scoured the Texan history. At the same time, Karen Cook and Judith Moore worked in Scotland, Birmingham and Manchester, tracing the Redfords of yore. In England, Michael Herbert, deputy registrar of the Manchester Register Office, was immensely helpful. In Los Angeles, Sheila Winston and Lisa Thornberg provided further document research and support and transport when I and my family were in town. In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, John J. Slonaker, chief of the Historical Reference Branch at the Department of the Army, was very helpful. Orla McEvoy, Lia O’Sullivan, Emer Ghee, Shirely Connell, Jeni McConnell, Paul Melrose, Colette Colfer, Catherine Barry and Fiona O’Dwyer collated library research and made sense of a mountain of often contradictory files, spanning centuries. In Utah, I relied on the trojans of Sundance, often Jean Bair Davis. Also at Sundance, Michelle Satter, Mike Washburn, Nicole Guillemet, Geoff Gilmore and Joyce Deep were greatly supportive. I owe a special thanks to Julie Mack for her determination to explain the workings of Utah life and politics, and for making me feel welcome.

  The Los Angeles participants were crucial. Marcella Scott Krisel, a close friend of Martha and Charlie Redford’s from the Santa Monica days, was the first person to introduce me to the Redfords’ old neighborhood. Carol Eve Rossen was a sound navigator over transatlantic midnight phone calls. I am also indebted to Bill and Lucrecia Coomber, Pat Ader, Lala Brady, George Menard, Vivian Christensen, Margaret Mitchell Clayton, Nina Gallagher, Steve Bernhardt, Jan and Bob and Tom Holman Peterson, Bill Chertok, Jim Collis, Kit Andrews, Sheila Andrews, Joanne Ward, Betty Webb, Tissie Keissig, Terry Drinkwater, Dave Ryan, Dave Stein, Don Leonard, Robert Nairin, Bill Van Atta, Alan Jackson, Andy Dowdy and Cal Vincent. Bob Brigham, Dick Guttman, Jack and Frances Stovall, Lionel Krisel and Bob Enrietto of the Hawaii Film Commission were also supportive. Shirley Story Ackroyd opened the doors for us in Van Nuys. Thereafter, at Van Nuys High School, I must thank Diane Sharrer. Judy Anderson at Laser Disc Association supplied me with transcripts of Paul Newman’s commentaries on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which were useful. At Wildwood Enterprises in Los Angeles, the patient and fastidious Donna Kail kept it all moving in Los Angeles, and Sarah Mendleson and—especially—Connie Wethington kept me smiling.

  In New York, Meg McSweeney of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts went beyond the call of duty as archivist and prompter, and I’m thankful for our friendship. The former president of the academy, George Cuttingham, also assisted in analyzing the academy’s history and Redford’s tenure. At the Shubert Archive, Mark E. Schwartz supplied many documents. Martha Wilson, Garson Kanin’s assistant, was also hugely supportive. Also in New York I was helped by the late Harryetta Peterka, Kevin Scott and Dale Zaklad at the Museum of Radio and Television (now the Paley Center for Media), and the great theatrical sleuth, Jay Stein. At Architectural Digest, Josie Haskin kindly supplied copies of the 1975 layout of the Redfords’ Fifth Avenue home. At the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, the academic advisement director, Beverly Warmath, was a terrific help. Donaldson Brown and Carla Cogan of Wildwood’s New York office were kind and efficient at every turn. I wish to make a special note of Ginny Burns Kelly. The time I spent with her in New York and the stories she shared were inspirational.

  In London, this marathon work was nurtured at various stages by Helen Gummer, Allegra Houston, Ian Chapman and Ian Macmillan. It was Jeremy Trevathan who saw the need for an American center of operations and introduced Knopf into the equation.

  In all, I met, interviewed and corresponded with more than three hundred players in Robert Redford’s world. They gave me courtesy, debate, hospitality, memorabilia and time. Among them, I express special appreciation to Sydney Pollack (who took time out from shooting a movie at Paramount to open his script files and assist me), George Roy Hill (who provided a day of unforgettable reminiscences in his New York home), Michael Ritchie, Barbra Streisand, Alan J. Pakula (“the shrink”), Jane Fonda (thank you, Jan), Arthur Penn, Bob Woodward, Stuart Rosenberg, Hume Cronyn, Paul Newman (special thanks to Dorese, in Paul Newman’s office), Paul Burke, Tom Skerritt, Mike Connors, Patrick Markey, John Saxon, Sondra Lee, Jack Clayton, Liam Clancy, Julie Harris, Bradford Dillman, Hugh Hall, Mary Tyler
Moore, Barry Levinson, Chick Vennera, Mike Nichols, Jeremy Larner, David Ward, Stephanie Phillips, Mike Dowd, Mike Frankfurt, Steve Frankfurt, Richard Altman, Michael Phillips, Julia Phillips, Garson Kanin, Tom DiCillo, Ken Brecher, Brent Beck, Fae Beck, Alex Beck, Jerry Hill, Mike Moder, Gary Beer, Richard Friedenberg, John Landis, David Cronenberg, Frank R. Pierson, Jeremy Kagan, Reg Gipson, Stuart Craig, Karen Tenkhoff, Susan Harmon, Hank Corwin, Tom Rolf, Freeman Davies, Thomas Newman, Gavin Lambert, Dan Melnick, Walter Coblenz, Chris Soldel, Manny Azenberg, Bryan Lourd, James Grady, Joanna Lumley, Gordon Bowen, Bob Crawford, Marion Dougherty, Harry Mastrogeorge, John Pierce, Pete Masterson, Carlin Masterson, John Adams of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Michael Nozik, Damon Pennington, Rubén Blades, Richard Ayres, Jack Brendlinger, Stan Collins, Mary Alice Collins, Conrad Hall, Cynthia Burke, David Rayfiel, Bernie Pollack, Gary Liddiard, Bunny Parker, Ian Calderon, Sherman Labby, Richard Schickel, Sterling Van Wagenen, Wayne Van Wagenen, Bill Bradley, Ted Wilson, George Peppard, James Coburn, Monique James, Rob Morrow, Debbie Slyne, Michael J. Reilly, Lou Marks, Marjorie Bird, Buddy Hoffman, Ben Young, Jo Sanchez, Robert Altman, Leslie Halliwell, Eric Gertz, Richard Brooks, Ron Greene, Jake Eberts, Ed Brown, Michael Daves, Bill Carver, Joan Claybrook, Jon Avnet, Ted Zachary, Rod Taylor, Penny Fuller and Yoko Ono.