Robert Redford has come down from his mountain, and he’s agitated. The Sundance founder usually spends most of the film festival up at the Sundance Institute, a filmmakers’ laboratory and resort about 40 miles southeast of Park City, but this year he’s been a strong presence in the ski resort town that hosts the bulk of the events.
Redford, pointedly, is talking a lot. For those who have had any dealings with him, this isn’t news: The man habitually speaks in long paragraphs, not easy sound bites.
But this year, he’s broadened his scope from the standard “Sundance is for the filmmakers” spiel he gives each year on opening night (including this year) to a harsh critique of what’s happening in our culture — and how the filmmakers that his institute and festival promote can make a difference.
“It seems to me like a totally great time to be really getting out there with some risky, bold statements about the times we’re living in,” said Redford, looking fit as ever in a black T-shirt and blue jeans –though his face can’t hide the impact of 65 years in the sun — as he sat in a hotel function room looking out on the Park City ski slopes.
“One of the reasons I’m speaking at this festival was that I felt it was worth talking about the value of freedom of expression and how that might be threatened in the time to come and what independent films’ relationship with that issue would be,” he said.
“What I’ve noticed over the years is that there is a direct correlation between the political climate of the time and the product.”
Too early to tell
Mind you, that direct correlation cannot be seen in this festival’s lineup of films. The truth is that most movies, particularly those by fledgling filmmakers who typically struggle to secure funding, take years to produce, so you can’t necessarily expect the post-Sept. 11 world to be reflected in the work yet.
At the same time, there’s an insular quality to many of the dramatic features, which have focused far more often on troubled families and dicey romances than larger societal forces. Perhaps the most biting feature to screen so far has been Gregor Jordan’s “Buffalo Soldiers,” about American soldiers based in Germany in 1989 who are so bored that they deal weapons and drugs. This darkly comic film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 8, 2001, was bought by Miramax two days later and has been sitting on the shelf ever since.
The trend carries over to documentaries. As festival director Geoffrey Gilmore noted, many of this year’s American documentaries are social-historical examinations of past events or personal tales, while the world-documentary category films tend to be more political.
“There will always be the Barbara Kopples and the Michael Moores,” Redford said, referring to the politically provocative documentarians behind “Harlan County, USA” and “Bowling for Columbine.” “But are there enough? Between you and I, I’d like to see more.
“What is currently going on in the country is so extreme politically on so many fronts,” he added. “There are so many areas for independent filmmakers to be touched on a personal level. There’s families, as they relate to job loss. There’s the environment. There’s education. There’s the prospect of war.
“Depending on the next six to eight weeks, [the world situation] is either going to explode in some massive way that disrupts just about every system we’ve got — it certainly throws our freedoms into a whole different light — or we’re going to be just coasting, going on the edge for another six months. Who knows? But I believe films will reflect whatever the situation is.”
Aside from his Sundance work, Redford is doing his part by preparing a sequel to his 1972 political satire “The Candidate.” He said “M*A*S*H” TV writer Larry Gelbart, who also wrote “Mastergate,” a satirical play about the Iran-contra scandal that became a 1993 Showtime movie, is due to send him a “Candidate” script next week.
“I never would have considered that, because I’m anti-sequel,” Redford said.
“I think there are too many stories to be told, and you repeat yourself with a remake or a sequel. But in this particular one? There was something that just clicked for me. I thought, wait a minute, this could be interesting being that character 30 years later in a different climate.
“We looked at that climate in 1970 and felt that we were making a new bold statement about how people get elected in this country, and we were saying it was cosmetics and using me as the sacrificial lamb. . . . The climate [now], is it worse? Is he part of what’s worse?”
Redford’s recent films as an actor and director have been closer to Hollywood than Sundance in spirit, but “The Candidate” sequel, if it comes off, could be seen as his return to producing topical movies — as he did starting with 1969’s “Downhill Racer” through “The Candidate,” “All the President’s Men” (1975) and “Three Days of the Condor” (1975).
“Those were directly relating to issues of journalism, government control, the CIA, the political system,” he said. “Now I don’t know if those things could get made today.”
Redford’s “All the President’s Men” co-star Dustin Hoffman, attending the festival with his new caper film, “Confidence, was similarly dubious. “[`All the President’s Men’] almost didn’t get made then,” Hoffman said. “Almost every studio turned it down, if I remember correctly. And if it was that hard then, it definitely wouldn’t get made now.”
Where’s the bold reporting?
Redford looks back on “All the President’s Men” with particular wistfulness. “That was a statement about how grateful I was personally and how many others should be for the First Amendment being kept alive by the courage of a couple of reporters and the paper’s willingness to support them,” he said, adding with dismay that such bold reporting has become a rarity. “That was before anybody could foresee the business affairs taking over [the print and television media].”
Redford even took a shot at the man he portrayed. “Right now, when I read Bob Woodward’s books, I go, `Aw, come on. Where’s your own personal interpretation of all this stuff? All this secret information that you’re relying on us to believe? I guess you were there when Kissinger got on his knees and cried with Nixon [as described in “The Final Days”]? Who told you that one, Kissinger? I sure trust that source.'”
Now Redford worries that no one is asking the tough questions.
“You would think after Sept. 11 we would join the global world in terms of heartache and sorrow, that we would have had a wakeup,” he said. “I remember hearing at that time, `Is this going to be a wakeup call that we adhere to, or is this going to just pass in time, and we’re going to back to business as usual, wanting to be entertained, focusing on celebrity, going into denial?’ It’s pretty well speaking for itself right now, isn’t it?”
He added: “Boy, is this a healthy time for some cynicism because we’re sure being given a lot of it from the [Bush] administration. Therefore what are we going to do with it? Are we going to take it and become cynical? Or are we going to convert it to some good use artistically? Maybe I’m optimistic.”
Festival to start new film series
During Sundance, Robert Redford announced that the festival will launch a new theatrical film series this fall, presenting four dramatic features and/or documentaries in at least 10 U.S. markets, including Chicago.
The Sundance Film Series will run in Loews theaters and the films will be acquired by the Sundance Channel, which in a sense will be competing with the shallower-pocketed distributors for product.
“We’re basically going to take a version of our festival to the public, but that would include, as much as possible, the interactivity between the artist and the audience,” Redford said. “We are going to bring the filmmakers live into those cities to appear with those films.”
Redford said the goal is to improve the filmgoing experience, while fostering the kind of enthusiasm for independent works that exists at the festival. “I do believe this response that you get here can be re-created in the marketplace to a degree,” he said. “If you treat those audiences in a certain way and make them feel a part of it, like it’s a community thing, who knows that you might not see a change?”
A Sundance plan to open its own brand of national theaters fizzled a few years ago when its partnership with the now-defunct General Cinema chain collapsed.
— Mark Caro
