Today I pay tribute to film legend Robert Redford.
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The word legend gets thrown around a lot in entertainment. It's a natural bit of hyperbole we like to use to express the awe of someone's talent or breadth of their impact. But there's really no other word to describe Robert Redford. He was a film legend.
As an actor, Redford racked up a number of respectable TV and movie roles, including an episode of The Twilight Zone, before his breakout year 1969. That was the year that he starred with Paul Newman in the gigantic hit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and earned critical acclaim for his performance in Downhill Racer (which was more important that most people might realize).
And from there if you wanted to make a movie featuring a man seemingly made of easy-going charisma, Redford was your guy, whether it was pairing up with Paul Newman again for The Sting, playing journalist Bob Woodward in All the President's Men or an aging man given a shot at sports glory in The Natural.
What's amazing to think about is how often Redford films relied on the presumptive appeal of him as a performer or as a personality. In the erotic thriller boom of the early nineties, here's Redford to star as our businessman who offers up a million dollars for a night with a man's wife. Creepy in almost every other context, box office smash with Redford as the star. Or how two movies in 2001 used his presumed authority as a film presence leading the next generation of stars in The Last Castle and Spy Game.
Hell that's why his villain reveal in Winter Soldier hurts so much. You brought in movie legend Robert Redford and you got him to play a bad guy? How dare you.
And it's wild in an acting career that includes films that make all time greats lists like: Butch Cassidy, All the President's Men, The Sting, Out of Africa, The Natural, Three Days of the Condor and A Bridge Too Far, let alone under the radar favorites like Sneakers and The Horse Whisperer, that was only one facet of Redford's film impact.
Because in 1980 he got behind the camera for the first time for Ordinary People.
And no big deal there, it only got six Oscar nominations, won four (including Best Picture and Best Director), while getting Mary Tyler Moore to play completely against type, jump-started Timothy Hutton's acting career, made Judd Hirsch a known entity in movies, while crushing with critics and the box office.
Yes Redford's only non-honorary Academy Award was for directing.
And while Redford wasn't a prolific director, he put a respectable filmography including gems like A River Runs Through It and Quiz Show.
That has to be it right? Nope because Redford also lent his voice to a number of documentaries about nature and indigenous American struggles against the United States government, including the incisive Incident at Oglala.
Gotta be it right? Well...remember when I said Butch Cassidy and Downhill Racer would come back? Using the money from those movies, Redford bought a ski property in Utah and renamed it Sundance.
In 1978, almost a decade later, Redford would then use the same name for a film festival to highlight American independent film: The Sundance Film Festival.
A festival that has shaped and continues to shape the movie world to this day, allowing new directors like Quentin Tarantino, James Wan and Jane Schoebrun to catch the eyes of studios, if not outright jump start their careers.
Redford's impact is everywhere.
Hell, even the meme that everyone thinks is Zack Galifinakis (the bearded guy nodding) is actually Redford in Jeremiah Johnson like on location on his property at Sundance.
It makes condensing his work down into a digestible nugget feel absolutely impossible.
But I'll do my best here.
In the late nineties I watched The Horse Whisperer with my mom, whom unbeknownst to me had a giant crush on Robert Redford. She lit up with him on screen. A few years later when I started getting into movies I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with my step-dad. And I got to watch him become a young man in the theater again, cackling at the jokes I had heard him reference including "Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya.!"
Around that same time I was watching Pulp Fiction, Dogma (two films directed by men who got their start through Sundance) having my mind opened about what movies could be.
My love and appreciation for film as an act form, as a means of connecting and often just as inspiring entertainment, was shaped, in no small part by Robert Redford. As a performer, as a director and even as an organizer.
Picking a favorite film or moment is a fool's errand because whether it's the tender end of the criminally underseen Our Souls at Night or the epic glory of The Natural's final game there's always one more.
Film is better thanks to Robert Redford, which is the best compliment I can give any artist.
Rest in Peace Mr. Redford. And thank you.
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