Legend: An Interview With Robert Redford
By: R. Burke |
Friday September 30, 2005 |
| Legendary actor, director, and Sundance founder still finds magic in doing what he truly loves. |
| You had a previous bad incident with a grizzly and you had sworn never
to work with grizzlies again. Can you talk about that and can you talk
about your decision to do it again this time?
Years ago, I was making a film called Jeremiah Johnson and the scene called for me to be chased by a bear. Scene got out of hand and the camera had a malfunction and I had to keep running around a tree and the bear got all excited and pretty soon, he was really chasing me. Then I had to jump into the tree to save my neck. I made it, but I said I'm never gonna do this again. So now, I'm doing it again. And why am I doing it again? Cause I get paid to do it. How was it this time working with the bear? Bear was tame; so they said. Did you meet him before the shoot? Did you have any interaction before shooting that scene again? Not very much. I don't subscribe to the idea of wild animals being tame. I don't feel they're ever really tame. They can be tame for periods of time, but I would never take for granted a wild animal. So... You did it because you were paid to. How many things do you do now because - just for the pay? Do you really have to act right now, with all the other things you are doing? I've never done anything for the pay, and won't. I was kidding. I did it because I liked the script and I did think a lot about the bear when I did it. The movie is basically about forgiveness I was wondering what's been the toughest forgiveness for you to give? A long list. Somebody had treated me very - this is just one small example; there are others, but I don't want to waste time thinking here. There was a critic that I became friendly with early in life and he and I were friends and I always wondered if that was dangerous - to have a friendship with a critic. Because what would happen if that critic were to ever review your films? I thought about it and I worried about it but, I didn't do anything about it. And then later on, the critic began to review my films and I thought that would not be a good idea and I told him, don't you think it would be not such a good idea; it would be a conflict? And he said, "No, no problem at all." And then he and I had a falling out as friends. Our families had a falling out. And from that time, I got savaged in the reviews and the abuse was so great; I mean it was so extreme, his punishing me in print. I had no defense. So I had to forgive it. And I eventually did, but it took a long time. Are you friends with him right now? No. I just forgave him, that's all. That's as far as I could go. Morgan Freeman so often plays the voice of conscious in a film What is it about Morgan Freeman, do you think, that makes him so perfect for that kind of a role? The voice of God? I guess it's wishful thinking on his part. Um, I just think that Morgan has something about him that is very soulful. It has to do with the way he looks. It has to do with his skill as an actor and the depth of his life experience and his career. You put it all together and you have a man that emits a great deal of soul in his work and I think that's the reason. I was wondering why you think Lasse Hallstrom made such a good director for this project. What does he bring to it? Well, Lasse brings to the film his own sensibility, which has a very definite style and rhythm to it which I like. I liked a lot of his films and I like them because he allows a film to breathe. He allows a film to develop on its own natural way. And I think films like that, at least for me, they become more and more appealing as the industry has moved more and more towards fast-paced, in-your-face, high velocity type of filmmaking, with a lot of cutting, fancy tricks with a camera. The way the film business has moved more and more towards the effects of high technology and animation and commercials and movie videos and so forth, all those elements have affected the movie-making business. And so the films that are more - that give you a little bit more time to feel things or to digest things, have sort of been pushed a little bit aside. I'm drawn to filmmakers who can still have the courage to make those kinds of films. He (Lasse) does and he has a good sensibility and he has a European sensibility which means that he has a very strong attachment to the humanistic side of things. Those are the reasons. This film is also about facing your fears. I wondered if you had any fears or you've overcome any fears or are you scared of anything? Sure. Probably not afraid of the things you might think. I'm not going to go into a personal thing here, but I'm afraid of certain types of people who are not straight, who have an agenda other than the one they're talking about. And the agenda they have is one that's highly immoral or maybe sometimes even criminal, but it's disguised by a performance and you have to work hard to figure that out. When you can't figure it out, but you sense it's there, it's frightening. I'm not frightened of the dark. I'm not frightened of the unknown. I'm attracted to the unknown. I don't want to be a prisoner to what is known so I'm - I like not knowing certain things. I like mystery. I'm frightened by, sometimes, my children. They scare me to death. Well, just because they've become the children I wanted them to be, independent, and so when they're independent, sometimes it scares me, take chances and things of that sort. So as a parent, you get frightened for them. Letting go, then? Yeah. I get frightened by forces that take things in my world or my life or my country that are beyond my control, take it down a dark path, which is what I feel is happening now, and I have no ability to have a voice in it - well, a little voice - but it doesn't mean much. When I can see something that I value highly being taken down into a destructive road because of either ignorance or lack of experience or limitations or over-exercise ideology, it frightens me because I know they don't get it and they're not likely to change. That's frightening, particularly when you can see what the results are, so that right now, I'm frightened for my country. Were you frightened of the bear on the day of shooting? You're going back to the bear, huh? You're real - do you have a bear thing? Yeah, I have a bear thing. Sure. As I said, I would never take a wild animal like a bear, particularly a bear, for granted. I would always be cautious and careful. Even though there might be a trainer there and even though the bear is comfortable, I'm remembering what happened to Siegfried and Roy in Las Vegas after a lifetime of being comfortable with animals, doing all kinds of things. I'm aware of people who've worked with grizzlies and had long years of experience working with grizzlies, suddenly being turned on and attacked. Um, so I don't take any wild animal for granted. So, therefore, when I had to work with a bear, I was very cautious and, at a certain point, you have to throw caution to the wind and just do it, which means you have to trust both the bear and the trainer. It's not the most comfortable place to be when there's a nine-foot grizzly coming at you, you know. What are you going to do? Say wait a minute? Mr. Freeman's character, Mitch, certainly was the conscience in the film and it seemed to have quite a lot of influence on Einar, on your character, always carefully sowing some seeds for him to think about and discreetly and indiscreetly encouraging him, um, to sort of put the past behind him. Is there a Mitch in your life and, if so, who is that? I think that my kids occupy some of that. My significant other occupies some of that. My own conscience occupies some of that. My own desire to always be willing to change opens me up to criticism. I like criticism. Contrary to certain people we know that are in office right now, I invite criticism. I think it's healthy and it's a chance for me to grow. However, there's no one soul. I don't know that there ever has been one person that embodied the kind of wisdom that Morgan has in the film. But on the other hand, the character that I play in the film is a very limited character. He's had no experience. He doesn't know much other than what he feels related to the world he's lived in. At first glance, one would think that the title of this film is referring to your character's son, but towards the end I really kind of got the feeling that it was more aptly describing your character. What are your thoughts about that? I think you're right. I think that on the surface, it would appear to apply to the problem in the film, which was the loss that started me on the road to anger and bitterness. But it's much deeper and broader than that and it ends up applying to just about everybody in the film. There's something or someone that everyone in the film has to forgive in order to come together or move on so that they can have a better chance to complete their life. So, yes, it starts out being strictly literal, but it moves more to a deeper place having to do with the power and the strength of forgiveness which is, I think, a topic that in one way or another probably affects all of us at one time in our lives. We're going to be facing something that we've been hurt by or damaged by that we can either sit with the wound and sort of decay with it, with anger and frustration. And we can't get past it because perhaps the person that abused you, if it was a person, or the situation that abused you, is gone and you can't fight it. So, you have to forgive it in absentia or it's a situation or a person that's still there that's very hard for you to forgive but you have to do it. You either do it or you don't. But if you don't and you stay with blame, then you will probably erode because it's a negative thing. So I think it's a pretty strong issue. Paul Newman was quoted lately, not for the first time, saying that he would like to quit the industry, but first he'd like to make a last movie with you. Have you started already working on this, uh, project? Well, we're talking about it. I mean, that's true. Yeah, I would think Paul and I are probably alike in that we're probably reluctant to talk about something that, is not real yet. But we are talking about something. Have you been thinking about doing something for years? Well, I don't think we really spent a lot of energy. I think it was very surprising that nothing came to us in 20 years considering Hollywood's penchant for doing sequels and remakes and things like that; that they could never find a script that might suit us but, excuse me, the stuff that came to us wasn't any good. It was, do you do a sequel to The Sting? No. You leave that one alone. That was a good movie and is what it was and don't try to milk it. Leave it alone. What about a sequel to Butch Cassidy? And I said, "well, the guys died. You know, what is it going to be? A spiritual film, or...?" And, uh, well how about a prequel? And I said, "Oh, no thanks. That's pretty desperate." No, we don't want to do a - we did it, that's it. Let it stand for what it is. And then all these years went by and nobody ever came up with any ideas or anything but corny or kind of low grade... Um, so we just decided that probably that wasn't gonna happen. But now there's something rolling around that we're talking about. And the real question is whether he can remember his lines or not. I mean that's gonna be the real question. Do you understand his desire? Well, I share it. No, that he wants to quit. Do you? Oh, he wants to quit? I can certainly understand that feeling. Yeah. Well, with Paul, I think he's got other things in his life. He's of an age where he doesn't have to work. Um, he can work or not work. It's his choice. And if he's gotten to a place where the business has changed so far away from the business he likes to be in, and he's got other things in his life that he's happy with, why shouldn't he? I understand that. It's just interesting. You've been quoted many times saying how much you dislike many elements of the life in Hollywood. So how do you manage to not be engaged in this life as opposed to the other actors, like your costar in the movie, Jennifer Lopez? Well, I think that, first of all, I was born and raised there, in Los Angeles, not in Hollywood. I was born and raised in Los Angeles. Movies for me, as a kid, was not a - I saw behind the screen. I mean I saw the fake props and things like that. That wasn't something that interested me. It was mildly fascinating, but it wasn't anything that drew me to it like maybe somebody from Nebraska or some other part of the country where they see Hollywood as something magical. It wasn't magical to me. Is New York magical? I mean to me, New York was magical, absolutely. I saw going to New York maybe in the same way other people see coming to Los Angeles. That's one thing. Secondly, since there was no magic in the glamour, glory of that, I kind of had a lot of that when I was young, y'know, a lot of partying and things of that sort. I'd kind of done that and when I settled down to have a family, and I wanted to be in New York, that's where I settled out my life and I liked it that way. I saw Hollywood as a place that could be very dangerous if you didn't hold onto something; if you didn't have a pretty strong underpinning for yourself, so I figured the better way for me to do that would be to live in a place I really wanted to live and Los Angeles, as a place to live, was no longer a place that interested me as it was during the second World War when I was a kid. It was a great place. But once the war ended and all the money returned to the country, L.A. kind of slid into the sea. It became concrete and too much this and too much that. Too much traffic, too many people and it went out of control with no master plan. It was no longer the city that I used to really like and so I didn't want to be there any more. So, I decided I'd rather live somewhere else and I wanted to live in New York which is, I thought, the best city and the strongest and the toughest. And I wanted to live in the wilderness; semi-wilderness. I wanted to have a life that was divided between two loves, the heartbeat of a good, tough city and the wilderness area where you can enjoy nature. That's where I decided to live my life and there was no reason to go to Los Angeles or Hollywood. It wasn't that I was anti-Hollywood. Hollywood's just a business. I mean, it's nothing more and as it is, that's fine. It's just not a place I choose to live. It holds no attraction for me but I'm not anti-Hollywood. Where do you now spend most of our time? Where do I spend most of my time? Well, I live in Napa Valley now. I live in northern California, which I really love. To me, that's the California that I feel at home with. Um, and the Sierras - and then, Utah of course, because I built Sundance there and what's been built there means a lot to me. New York City, I will always love New York City. I love Europe. I like spending time in Europe because I think the greatest impact in my life as a young man happened when I was in Europe as an artist. I was 18 years old and I was not happy living in the environment I lived in and I wanted different experiences and I wanted to meet and know Europeans. And so I went there at 18, kind of on the bum, and went to art school in France and Italy, but traveled a lot around strange places in Spain and Italy and met a lot of people, and that, to me, is where I think my education really began, when I went to Europe. That carried impact for me. But that's where I choose to live, those places I mentioned. Not Los Angeles. What is your opinion about Jennifer Lopez' performance and how did you feel with her on the set given the fact that her audience is quite different from yours? Well, I didn't think about that because we were in Canada in a very remote place. We were there working as actors and she was just Jennifer and I was Bob, you know. We were playing parts in a movie and she didn't bring with her any of the business stuff, the other stuff. It didn't enter the picture, so I never thought about it. I never dealt with it. That was never an issue to be dealt with, so it didn't happen. She's a talented actor, so I just enjoyed her. But I never thought about her audience or anything like that. Do you like her music? I think she's talented. Yeah, I do. I think she's talented. Do you have her albums? I have some, yes. You have had long life and career, so what is your life lesson, something you will tell your kids how to live well? Pay attention. Whatever you do, pay attention and take time because it may be that the world, the way it's developing with the new technology driving everything, that it's not going to allow us to have time to digest the information we're being given. I think with new technology, like any good thing, there's always another side, a darker side. To me, the darker side is that we're not developing the ability to digest the information we're given, so we just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We're sped through information. And the films, a lot of the films today, reflect that. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So you're not given time to stop and think and reflect about what it is you're supposed to be feeling about something. I think that's dangerous because that can build a shallow mind; a quick mind, a fancy mind, but a shallow one and I think that'd be a dangerous place for this country to go to. Can you also talk about - little bit about Sundance Film, first of all, how it has changed during the years and how do you see the future of American Independent films? I don't know what the future is for American Independent film. I didn't know what it was when I started Sundance. I only had hoped what it could achieve, which was that by creating a mechanism for - a place for new artists to come and work, free of the confines of money or competition, and to be supporting new voices in art, led to having them have a place to go does not exist because the mainstream of the business would not allow for independent film. No one had any faith in it. And the category itself was kind of dead. It was reduced to government grants like NEH and NEA, National Endowment of the Arts. But they weren't going much beyond just classrooms. I felt it was a category that the movie mainstream industry was moving more and more towards youth product, which is okay but at the expense of the films that I thought were important like the more humanistic side of things. I focused on the category of independent film and tried to feed it from the process that we started at Sundance. Once that clicked, after about maybe seven or eight years, then it was a question, what do you do with it? And there was no place for the artists to go with their work. Their work was getting better because of our process at Sundance and we were giving new people a chance who would not get a chance but then where could they go? So that led to the festival, to create a showcase but make it exclusive for independent film because there was none that existed in the world anywhere. It was new and that was exciting to me to create something new and run the risk. I was told it wouldn't work because it was not commercial and I said, "No, but what we would be doing was - was working for diversity," that the festival would be diverse and that audiences were probably not getting the diversity they deserved and maybe they would come for that reason and they did. And then that grew and then once everything came together after about 12 or 14 years, suddenly there was a category called independent film and it was a place where artists who were dissatisfied with just having no choice but to get blown up in the big blockbuster would have a place to work in the more humanistic side of films and you've got artists coming into that category. So the whole thing began to develop and, sure, I was very pleased about that because that's what I hoped would happen. I didn't know it would get that big. I'm not disappointed. In this film you're a rancher and, um, you seem very comfortable in that role. Um, being as you are a nature lover and a person worried about the environment, um, is this film also a tribute to those men? Do you still believe in that lifestyle? Yes, I believe in that lifestyle. I think it's on its way out, which is sad. Uh, just because of evolution, evolution has changed the - that industry doesn't exist any more the way it did. It's sadly on its way out, but the people who are tied to that industry, who've lived that their whole lives and had generations before them, and before them, living it, that's a dying breed and there's something sad and strong about it as a story. I feel for those people. I feel for the land because I think the - when farmers and ranchers lived on the land hand to hand instead of putting chemicals or big machinery on the land to make things go easier and quicker and bigger, it was a perfect balance of nature and human development. Now that's all crazy. What I think is the biggest blight on the land is real estate, development for second homes that goes into wilderness area or vast areas and digs it all up; puts ranchers out of business; puts farmers out of business, dairy farmers, out of business, because they can't compete with the tax increase. Then they go out and second home comes in so you have farming villas, you know, or you have fishing estates or something like that and it's about second homes. It has no depth or real value to me. The film deals with that a little bit, takes a look at that. But that's not the real point of the film, but in a subtle way, it looks at that and what it was like when a person had to work the land by hand and it wasn't easy and it shows that as well. So in a way, it's an homage to a way of life that is going out. |
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