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Robert
Redford cuts a fine figure at 71 in this interview to
promote the new movie he directed and stars in, Lions
for Lambs. The matinee gorgeousness is etched by
lines from outdoor living. His waist is trim. He still
rides horses, swats tennis balls and glides down slopes.
But none
of us is the way we were.
“I don’t
know where I’ll go, what I’ll do when I begin to lose
that ability, because I’ve lived on it all my life, and
it’s always been a retreat,” he says. “It’s been a
blessing. It’s been fun. I love to ski, and ski fast. I
don’t know whether I’ll go into a depression. Or it just
might fall into a natural place.”
One of
Hollywood’s most revered golden boys isn’t retreating
into the golden years just yet. He’s ready to reclaim
his primacy as a main player. He wants to act and direct
more, babysit Sundance less.
Still probing.
“My choice has
always been, if I’m raising an issue in a film, always
answer it with a question rather than an answer. You put
it to the audience and say, ‘How do you feel about this?
What do you think?’” says Redford, here on the set of
the upcoming Lions for Lambs, which he directed and
stars in.
He
declares that he’s cutting the apron strings from the
festival that he created, but not before he ordered it
to ditch its Tinseltown junket mode and return to its
indie ideals. “I had to step in and get kind of
hard-assed about it,” he says. “We’re going to open next
year with a documentary rather than a film that’s
already been picked up by Hollywood. That’s now who we
are. We’re here to support the guy that doesn’t have a
chance.”
He is
physically removed from the festival as well, living in
Napa Valley, California. “I realize I miss doing what I
started doing in the first place, which is being an
artist.”
Lions
for Lambs
marks the first time Redford has directed since 2000’s
The Legend of Bagger Vance and the first time he
has directed himself since 1998’s The Horse Whisperer.
(He won his only competition Oscar for directing
Ordinary People (1980). Lambs actor Michael
Peña says working under Redford was like a Miles Davis
improvisation compared to the opera of Oliver Stone.
In
Lambs, three interwoven stories examine America’s
war on terror: Tom Cruise’s Republican senator tries to
sell a new military strategy to Meryl Streep’s veteran
news hound; Redford’s hip professor seeks to ignite the
passion of an indifferent student; and two of the
professor’s former students become stranded Army Rangers
in the snowy mountains of Afghanistan as enemy soldiers
close in.
Redford has a long history of starring in so-called message movies.
He mentions two in particular: The Candidate
(1972), a cautionary tale about how the pursuit of power
corrupts, and All the President’s Men (1976), the
Watergate movie that, he says, celebrated the finest
moment in the history of American journalism. “None of
those films made any difference, but they were a
pleasure to make.”
So why
make another in the same vein?
“My
choice has always been, if I’m raising an issue in a
film, always answer it with a question rather than an
answer,” he replies. “You put it to the audience and
say, ‘How do you feel about this? What do you think?’”
He has
taken hits on the soapbox. His preservation efforts in
Utah and elsewhere had him “swift-boated” by oil
companies, he says. And despite his strong beliefs and
capacity for speechmaking, he doesn’t like to be called
a statesman, nor does he plan a run for office.
Let
other entertainers throw their hat in the ring. “They’re
certainly as capable,” he says. “Whoever is out there in
the Hollywood community I guarantee is as capable, if
not more, of what we have in office right now. At least
they’re better actors.”
He can
also forget any PR job with the MPAA. Asked to name one
good thing about mainstream filmmaking, he flashes his
Pepsodent smile and replies, “Can you give me a few
minutes? I’ll have to think for a while.” Finally, he
allows that the show-business machinery has at least had
the sense not to kill independent films.
Although
he is developing a new take on the Jackie Robinson story
in which he will portray Branch Rickey, Redford makes it
clear that he is an actor for hire. He cast himself in
Lambs as a liberal with ideals big enough to
crowd academia’s ivory towers, not a stretch for the
left-leaning actor. He insists he’d like to play a bad
guy for a change, but the scripts he reads feature
villains who are too obviously dark. His reddish-blond
hair graying on the sides, the bespectacled filmmaker
wears jeans and loafers without socks for this chat near
Boston Common. The conversation is leisurely, too. No
publicist hovers as the morning rolls by. This is old
school. He begins to interview the interviewer, and when
it is established that both of us hail from the San
Fernando Valley in Los Angeles (Redford was a classmate
of Don Drysdale at Van Nuys High School), he offers,
“There was nobody more glad to leave the valley than I
was. If I get anywhere near it, I break into a cold
sweat.”
The
subject turns to family. While he tries to effect change
in his career, Redford’s personal life is tethered to an
eight-year relationship with artist Sibylle Szaggars. He
has three grown children with ex-wife Lola Van Wagenen:
painter Shauna, 46; screenwriter James, 45; and actress
Amy, 37. He became a grandfather for the first time in
1991.
“They’re
just people I can love,” he says of his grandchildren.
“I have no responsibility the way I did my own kids. And
I don’t have the responsibility of disciplining, and
that’s really great.”
Asked if
he has made any concessions to old age, he harks back to
what got him here: acting, fatherhood, producing and
directing. “The progress developed an efficiency in me
that didn’t exist,” he says. “...The moves I made in my
life brought in responsibility and discipline.”
Redford stops himself and wonders aloud how boring that sounds. But
who’s going to tell Bob Redford that he didn’t exactly
tickle the quote-o-meter with that one?
Redford is a living legend, even if he won’t be able to blaze down a
mountain someday. In speaking for his generation of
thirtysomething actors, Lambs costar Peña says,
“Even if you tried not to be aware of Robert Redford,
you would be aware of Robert Redford.” |
