“Wouldn’t it be lovely if we were old?” 

“We’d have survived all this. Everything would be easy and uncomplicated; the way it was when we were young.”

“It was never uncomplicated.”

“It was never uncomplicated… but it was lovely.” 

“Yes. It was lovely.” ~ from The Way we Were, my grandma’s favorite film as a Jewish lady.

~

Goodbye, Robert Redford—a dear mentor from afar.

A true iconoclast, as Sundance Channel would put it.

I met Robert Redford, one of my heroes, several times. I didn’t meet him, several times. I’ll explain.

He was perhaps my greatest hero in this life. That feels funny to say. He was a movie actor, after all, not—like most of my heroes, a writer, a politician, a world-changer-for-the-betterer…wait.

He did that.

He, like all my heroes, used his power for good. So many people accumulate power, and do bad things. Usually in a quest for more power, more money, more sex, more greed, more.

Redford, Murrow, King, Trungpa, Pema, Beto, Obama, Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, Goodall, Attenborough, Roosevelt, Kerouac, Fitzgerald, Newman…Redford. There are figures in this planet who don’t try to be popular, though they may become so despite or because of that. In a world greedy for fame, they become famous because they give voice to those longing to create a better, kinder, fairer, greener world.

I met Redford, once, in Boulder. I didn’t meet him. I saw him, at a political event, and then half of Boulder chased after him, crying “Mr Redford, Mr. Redford!” It was pathetic, honestly. I don’t go in for hero worship, or cult culture, so I didn’t chase him.

I met Redford at his Sundance, in Park City (now coming to Boulder), but also didn’t meet him. With Hummers and Paris Hiltons and greed all around, he bemoaned the calcifying stresses of capitalism and, rightly, urged attendees to go see and support the films and filmmakers and forget the celebrity, the noise.

He protected wild land. He made real movies. He produced as soon as he had any fame, starting in the early 70s. My favorite film, The Candidate, is worth watching–if you can hear it really, really well, because there’s little voices coming out of the corners of that film.

I named my beloved first dog as an adult after him. Redford. Reddy.

Three Days of the Condor, in a strange way, helped raise me. Tweed, and a peacoat. Corduroy in All the President’s Men. Cowboy swagger in Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, and Electric Horseman. He, and his best friend Newman, helped raise me as a young man without a father active in my life at the time. So did Toshiro Mifune, and Cary Grant, and Errol Flynn.

But Redford, again like Newman, used his fame to support good needed things. He taught me, an outgoing, social animal, to rest in myself and my grumpy integrity in the face of sly, smiling forces of “go along with The Man”ism. He stood up for Nature, urgently, thoroughly, giving his time and fame and he stood up for journalism, and story-telling, and diversity above just about all.

Without diversity in voices, we are weaker for it, and our world more boring, safer for the rich and powerful who would use us.

I will miss him. I cried this morning, talking about him. I will miss him. He was family, in a way. He was my father, in a way. He was a mentor, from afar. I think he will continue to guide millions, as we watch his films.

Watch the video:

“ I grew up without a father in my life, and he [Robert Redford] and [Paul] Newman—maybe Toshiro Mifune—were father figures in my life. People who went against kind of the mainstream and yet still had a wonderful, helpful effect in a world so full of suffering.”

“I guess it hits hard right now because we’re in a world so full of cynicism and greed and hate. And he represented someone who really went his own way and tried to protect our beautiful nature and foster independent cinema.” ~ Waylon H. Lewis

Can’t watch the video? Why not listen?

~

What was your favorite Redford film or two that you’d recommend to others here?

RIP, Bob. Thank you, Mr. Robert Redford, for being an iconoclast—an example particularly to so many young men like myself of humor and strength and kindness and integrity in a world of unoriginality, greed, willful harm and suffering.

As an actor, one of the greats, he owned the 70s. “Kids these days” know him from small but good part in a few Marvel movies, or the Jeremiah Johnson gif (you know the one, even if you didn’t realize it was him), or maybe The Natural or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I’d highly recommend Three Days of the Condor, a blockbuster in its day with a cold warning at the end, or my favorite, The Candidate. Electric Horseman, light and fun but also anti-Big Money. All the President’s Men, an all-time great watch that bolstered an entire generation of journalism and ethics in politics.

But he was so much more than an actor. He was a champion for our environment, basic protections in view of our living on this planet for generations to come. He got involved, and disillusioned with, politics. He directed films, and was really good at it. He had the Sundance Channel, which for a time was a big thing on cable, until it got sold, and the Sundance Catalog, etc. A lot of entrepreneurial successes, and all of them consistent with this ethos, his ethics.

But it was his Sundance Film Festival, and the Institute behind it, that gave new life to a generation or two or three of filmmakers. Tarantino, etc. Films, as they do, had been sucked into Big Money sequels and money grabs, playing it safe. Sundance tore all that up and made small strange great films famous, and trained filmmakers and focused on diversity not out of some weak virtue-signaling but because it’s far more fun and interesting and empowering than its opposite.

PS: I named my first dog as an adult “Redford,” or Reddy. He was my best friend for many years.