00:00Thus, tributes have been pouring in for Robert Redford, one of the biggest film stars of all time, who's died at the age of 89.
00:07The Hollywood icon rose to global fame with blockbusters like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, as well as all the president's men.
00:14President Donald Trump has hailed the actor as great, while Meryl Streep, one of his former co-stars, said,
00:20One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace, my lovely friend.
00:24Well, after 20 years in front of the camera, Redford began his directing career before becoming a champion of independent film, as well as founding the Sundance Film Festival.
00:36Let's talk more about The Hollywood Greats with Stephen Galloway, who is a dean of Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.
00:45And he was for many years the executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter.
00:49Stephen, thank you so much for joining us on the program. It's great to have you.
00:53Of course, many of our viewers will know Robert Redford from those classics I mentioned there, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, as well as All the President's Men.
01:02Talk to us about how iconic those films were and Robert Redford's roles in those films.
01:09They're extraordinary films, and I think he was underestimated in them.
01:13You know, he was often associated with Paul Newman, often viewed as a kind of golden boy of Hollywood.
01:19And he was a much more complicated actor, much more complicated artist.
01:24He was enormously important in creating the Sundance Film Festival, which was interesting because that was indie film.
01:31And until late in his life, he never made indie films.
01:34He always made big studio films.
01:36I think he made it look so easy at times that people forgot the artistry.
01:42And, you know, a friend of mine produced his film, Indecent Proposal, which is all about this billionaire offering a million dollars for a woman to sleep with him.
01:51She said she was there when it was filmed, expecting him to make it a big thing.
01:54I will give you a million bucks.
01:56And he just did it as a toss-away line that was such clever acting, but you wouldn't know it.
02:04In real life, he was complicated, like most movie stars.
02:07I interviewed him, did a profile of him a few years ago.
02:12And I was a bit worried because he was famously late.
02:15I mean, massively late, but not this time.
02:20And I remember him saying to me, I was born with a dark eye.
02:25I said, what do you mean?
02:26He said, I could see what was wrong with things.
02:29So it was always interesting that this man who seemed like the classic California kid was actually, in some ways, the opposite deep down.
02:40And, of course, walked away from California.
02:42He lived in other states.
02:44And I think that other side of him came out more in the directing.
02:50Ordinary People is a film about a very dark, troubled family.
02:54He would never do that in his acting, or rarely, let's say.
03:01Even as he got older, he would tend to want to cling on to that romantic image, which I think is a shame because I think he had enormous talent.
03:08But, look, the legacy is incredible.
03:12For sure.
03:13I mean, just going back of what you said there, he was hypercritical of the world, constantly, as you said, looking at what's wrong with the world.
03:23For a lot of us, film and cinema is very much a form of escapism.
03:26But Robert Redford really wanted film to actually be as close to reality as possible, didn't he, in some cases?
03:34Well, he did.
03:35I mean, Hollywood filming had a kind of sheen to it.
03:38You know, it looks good.
03:40It sounds good.
03:41The actors are beautiful.
03:42I was talking this morning to one of the leading Hollywood screenwriters about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
03:49And the director knew he had the most gorgeous faces that ever lived.
03:54So let's see them in close-up on a gigantic screen.
03:58But then he makes something like All the President's Men, which is my favorite Redford film,
04:02which is about the two journalists, legendary journalists in America, Woodward and Bernstein,
04:09who uncovered Watergate and the corruption that President Nixon was involved in.
04:15That was a risky film.
04:16And it's not an upbeat film.
04:18And it ends with just ticker tape saying Nixon resigned, which was a sort of downbeat ending.
04:26So he wasn't averse to that.
04:29And he would play a great role in developing the scripts and thinking about what the film should be.
04:35I think his legacy would be greater than people realized during his career.
04:41You know, he won an honorary Oscar.
04:44He won a directing Oscar.
04:45He never won an acting Oscar, partly because he was the romantic personification of what a movie star should be.
04:55But he had many, many more layers than that.
04:57You mentioned there his looks.
05:00I mean, he was seen as some sort of a sex symbol back in the US President Donald Trump, you know,
05:07in his tribute today said that he was one of the hottest that lived.
05:12He didn't like people concentrating so much on his looks, though.
05:16He famously said that he felt that that hindered his career, that it kept him in some sort of a cage.
05:21It did, but he also was a bit afraid to escape from that cage at certain times.
05:30For instance, there was a film called The Verdict, a great film with Paul Newman as this alcoholic lawyer.
05:37It was meant to be Redford.
05:39And Redford spent months and months, if not years, working on it with a studio.
05:43And then can never quite bring himself to play this dark, alcoholic figure.
05:50So I think, and by the way, this is the problem with being a movie star.
05:53That a movie star is not an actor.
05:56And a movie star is a brand, is an image.
05:59You know, we expect certain things of Tom Cruise.
06:02We expect certain things of Redford.
06:04So to preserve your movie stardom, you often don't want to shatter that image.
06:10I think if he had done, he would have come across as a greater actor.
06:16Because within what he did, he did it so well.
06:20And he made it look so easy.
06:22And making it look easy is the art.
06:24And you just assume this is who he is, but it's not who he was.
06:27He was not the Sundance Kid, you know.
06:31He was a richer character than that.
06:34Well, Stephen, briefly, I do want to ask you about the many lives that he lived.
06:37You know, you mentioned there that he was an actor.
06:39He was a director.
06:40But he also was an environmental campaigner as well.
06:44And he had many wins in that part of his life, didn't he?
06:48Oh, absolutely.
06:49He was very committed to that.
06:51By the way, don't forget, his dream was to be an artist.
06:55And he spent, you know, a long time with his youth down and out in France, actually.
06:59You know, sort of ironic that before Butch Cassidy launched him to fame, two years earlier, he'd been, you know, living in the hallway in a hotel, I think in the south of France, you know, struggling to survive.
07:13I think that was always his dream.
07:16And I think he realized that he should use his fame and position to do something else.
07:24And he did.
07:25And this year, ironically, is the very last year that the Sundance Film Festival will be held in Park City, Utah.
07:34There will surely be a massive tribute because that was one of the things he did, environmentalism, independent film.
07:42Let me use my position to do more.
07:45And then also direct.
07:47So I admire that about him very much.
07:50When I interviewed him, when I did a profile with him, we had lunch in New York, he was very direct.
07:56I was shocked he wasn't putting on an image when he said, I was born with a dark eye.
08:02I thought, wow, what an interesting thing for the golden boy to say.
08:07Wow.
08:08An incredible interview.
08:09Fantastic that you got to speak to him on such a close level.
08:13Stephen, thank you so much for joining us on the program.
08:15Really great to have you talking about it.
08:16Thank you so much.
08:17I love your show.
08:18Watch it every day.
08:19Oh, that's amazing.
08:20Thank you so much for that.
08:21Stephen Galloway there.
08:22In Los Angeles.
08:23I love it.
08:23In Los Angeles.
08:24Bye-bye.
08:24Thank you so much.
08:25Bye-bye.
08:25Have a great day.
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