Robert Redford Dies at 89

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Robert Redford has died at the age of 89.

Writes Brooks Barnes in the NY Times:

His death, in the mountains outside Provo, was announced in a statement by Cindi Berger, the chief executive of the publicity firm Rogers & Cowan PMK. She said he had died in his sleep but did not provide a specific cause. He was in “the place he loved surrounded by those he loved,” the statement said.

With a distaste for Hollywood’s dumb-it-down approach to moviemaking, Mr. Redford typically demanded that his films carry cultural weight, in many cases making serious topics like grief and political corruption resonate with audiences, in no small part because of his immense star power.

Robert Redford, for a time, was a symbol of American movies. He represented the best Hollywood had to offer. The camera loved him. He was never satisfied with just that and always sought to deepen his relationship with audiences by making movies about himself.

His three films, Ordinary People, Quiz Show, and A River Runs Through It, explore the duality of a sensitive individual living in the shadow of a golden boy. Redford was both. He was the golden boy to all of us. He was the sensitive person in the background of real life. He lived a quiet life, mostly out of the spotlight. To his credit, he didn’t do the “dog and pony show” to win an Oscar in his later years for All Is Lost, much to my own frustration and that of his publicist, the great David Pollick.

I met him only once because David forced me to. I was way too shy, up there with all of the specials at the Patron’s Brunch in Telluride. In walked Frances Ford Coppola and Robert Redford. I lost my mind and began snapping photos of them when David pulled me aside and said, protectively, “This is not that movie!”

I did shake Redford’s hand. He was gracious. I was an idiot. Do Oscar bloggers know how they come off? Like what people actually think of them (us, me formerly)? They know what it is because they know the game. The bloggers aren’t even journalists – they’re sycophants because they, we, are also film fans, and I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

That’s Redford above chatting with Pete Hammond and director JC Chandor back in 2013. So much has changed since then, it’s hard to even fathom it sometimes. This is a Fourth Turning, after all, and the Baby Boomers are on their way out and the Millennials are on their way in. No one exemplified the Boomers like Redford, that’s for sure. He was technically of the “Silent” era but he was also a symbol of the Boomer era (1960s, 1970s).

Here he was winning Best Director for Ordinary People:

Here he was talking about his life:

As a filmmaker, Redford was especially good with endings. That’s how you win Best Picture, by the way. Here is the ending of Ordinary People, who can forget it?:

And here is one of the most beautiful endings he ever made:

These lines, read by Redford in voice-over, could be his eulogy, peacefully, with a large and unforgettable footprint behind him. Oh, how I wish we still had movies like this.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”

What Robert Redford took with him was a Hollywood that was everybody, or at least the majority. He gave back so much more than he took. He was a movie star – maybe THE movie star. But his filmmaking is what has stayed with me all of these years. He made movies that penetrated. I always say, “It’s like that scene in…” All of his movies have that scene that stays with you.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Redford.

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