Robert Redford's Activist Role
GQ, 1981
Robert Redford, whose own education was spotty—ranging from his baseball scholarship at the University of Colorado (from which he subsequently dropped out), to studying art at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute to attending New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts—recently stepped to the head of the class at Yale, addressing students on “The Actor as Political Activist.” The session could just as well have been called “Introduction to Redford.”
While he’s very much an actor, Redford is neither very political nor much of an activist. But he wasn’t in New Haven on false pretenses; his efforts on behalf of solar energy in particular and environmentalism in general certainly validate his status as an activist performer. Nevertheless, he isn’t in the same league, ideologically or in terms of fervor, as the Jane Fonda-Warren Beatty school of celebrity-activists. At Yale, he evinced minimal interest in foreign affairs and, with the exception of environmental topics, little concern about domestic issues.
To his credit, however, he never represented himself as more than he actually is. Redford was consistently intelligent, forthright and unpretentious in everything he discussed, while candidly admitting being insufficiently aware of such matters as draft registration and the MX missile. Liberal on most, but certainly not all, subjects, he also possesses the fierce independence of a Westerner. He can be a hard-nosed realist at one moment, idealistic and optimistic the next. Ultimately, he’s a composite of numerous, not entirely compatible, impulses: frontier skepticism and individualism; populism; traditional American pragmatism; and humane liberalism and fair play. Robert Redford seems to reflect the moods of the entire nation.
His negative feelings about politics have deep personal roots: “I was always pretty much antipolitical as a kid growing up in California; I viewed politics as the pits. Politicians were pounding tables and talking to rooms full of people, but not really saying anything. Politicians were so contradictory that I never trusted any of them.”
As a teenager, he had what he calls an “interesting experience” with then-Senator Richard Nixon, from whom Redford was to receive an athletic award: “I had no pre-judged attitude toward the man. But when the award was presented, he shook my hand and said a few words to me. It was almost chilling how hollow it was, and I never forgot it. That had a lot to do with my attitude toward politics.”
Like millions of other Americans, he became politically active during the late Sixties, but for his own reasons. “What started me was that the highway department was going to put an unnecessary eight-lane road in a canyon where I lived. We got together with a group of people, fought the highway department and won—we won legally and we won emotionally. It showed me how one person can matter and that it does make a difference. One thing led to another and I got more and more active.”
As for Vietnam, at the beginning, “I was quite ignorant because I was busy developing my career, earning a living and feeding my family. My antiwar activities began just around the time the war was ending.”
His family obviously isn’t in much danger of starving these days, but politics still isn’t his top priority; work continues to come first. Redford spent this past summer editing ‘Ordinary People,’ the film of Judith Guest’s best-selling novel with which he makes his directorial debut.
Even if he wanted to be more actively involved, Redford feels that his celebrity status imposes certain liabilities and limitations. As he sees it, Americans, orator-resistant to begin with, are even more skeptical when preached to by celebrities: “A lot of the public wants you to stay on the screen. Step off it and there’s a resistance to what you have to say, so therefore I think there’s a credibility problem.”
One of the questions addressed to him at Yale concerned the speed with which he divests himself of his fictional roles. He replied that he sheds them quickly, usually in a few days.
“As far as playing heroes, I have mixed feelings. I don’t think America really trusts pure heroes. We have a tendency to tear them down, so I have a reluctance to play them. But we’re ambivalent—we want to tear them down, but we also want them. It’s pretty complicated. I don’t like the idea of being tagged a hero.”
Is a public role completely ruled out for Redford? It isn’t, but he believes he can be most effective as an actor and film maker. Among other endeavors; he recently spent two years as executive producer of ‘The Solar Film,’ an eight-minute documentary, and “hopefully, that film will reach more people than I ever could going from city to city.” He would, however, “go into a community on a practical level and tell them how my solar-powered house works and why I believe in passive solar energy. But I wouldn’t do anything nationwide.”
Redford feels that relevant fictional films can be politically effective, but only if they’re entertaining rather than propagandistic. His most recent picture, ‘Brubaker,’ would seem to represent the kind of cinematic activism Redford prefers. In its depiction of a reformist prison warden entangled in state politics, the film has moral and political import but is more concerned with entertaining than instructing—although the movie isn’t entirely free of sermonizing. Redford believes the best way to cinematically deliver a political message is to “disguise” it in the form of a diverting narrative.
‘Ordinary People,’ scheduled for October release, stars Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore, whom Redford praises for her exceptional handling of a “difficult and demanding role.” The novel appealed to him because it centers on the family and on the country’s changing mores.
It also intrigued him as a fledgling director, because it would be a difficult picture to make. Redford purposely avoided relatively easy films, such as those containing physical action, which he felt he could manage handily.
Although he refrains from making extravagant or even modestly positive claims about the film, Redford sounds like a director who successfully solved his major problems. He cites one example: “How do you introduce Mary Tyler Moore without stopping the movie? The audience is going to say, ‘Oh, that’s Mary Tyler Moore,’ and you’ve got to let them get it out of their system. So we used a long, elaborately designed dolly shot showing her going upstairs, going into and then coming out of a room, deciding on a dress to wear that evening. It gives the audience time to register that this is Mary Tyler Moore, and also to realize that she isn’t playing Mary Richards.”
Redford’s handling of the film is generally free of other directors’ influence: “I didn’t have much formal education, and I had no film-school training. Maybe that was lucky for me, because I learned through experience. The only ‘model’ I ever had in anything was [baseball’s] Ted Williams.”
Redford decided to turn to directing during a long, reflective, self-imposed layoff from acting. For one thing, he was exhausted from making ‘All the President’s Men.’ In fact, he maintains he was so numb he derived no enjoyment or fulfillment from the film’s success. When people who congratulated him were wearing the expressions of satisfaction that should have been on his face, he realized that he was in “real trouble.”
In addition, he was nearing his 40th birthday, and it was time for him to form an overview of his life and career, to look not only at what he had accomplished, but also at what to do in the future.
The past, of course, saw him become a smash success in Broadway’s ‘Barefoot in the Park’ at 26, after having made his film debut in 1962 in a little-seen low-budget effort, ‘War Hunt.’ Next came four other pictures, followed by a movie version of ‘Barefoot.’ Two years later, Redford reached stardom in 1969’s ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’ On its heels, he appeared in the likes of ‘Downhill Racer,’ ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ and ‘The Candidate,’ then, in 1973, cemented his star status with ‘The Way We Were’ and ‘The Sting.’ “I didn’t know ‘The Sting’ would have the impact it did,” he said at Yale. “I didn’t even know what the plot was. Paul Newman didn’t, either.”
As the nation’s number-one box office star from 1974 through 1976, he made several films greeted by varying degrees of success—’The Great Gatsby,’ ‘The Great Waldo Pepper’ and ‘Three Days of the Condor’—then, once again, had a winner in ‘All the President’s Men.’ Since 1958, he’s been wed to Lola Van Wagenen, with whom he lives in Utah’s Wasatch mountains; they’re the parents of son Jamie, now 18, and daughters Shauna, 19, and Amy, 9.
As to the future, he wanted to make a film that, “as much as was possible in a collaborative medium,” would bear his distinctive stamp. Redford, who admits to being chronically incapable of enjoying success, confessed that directing brought him a “thrill and excitement” he hadn’t anticipated.
Directing obviously shielded him, temporarily at least, from some of the harsher aspects of being an outspoken celebrity. He’s “become something of a target; any little slip or misstatement is magnified.” He wryly observes that his press conferences on ecological issues are poorly attended, but should he “try to get in and out of a restaurant without being seen, it’s in all the papers.”
Complaining about the negative aspects of stardom—of being unable to lead a normal life—he observes that “in being treated like an object, you begin to act like one; and the ultimate danger is becoming one—and it worries me.” To some, this may sound like sour grapes or vacuous jargon, but after listening to him at Yale, students came away believing that his honesty and sincerity are beyond dispute. And if his triumphs and splendors are worthy of our attention, so too is his pain.
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