What an incredible career – mainstream heartthrob, accomplished director, and someone who put indie cinema on the map with the Sundance festival.
Robert Redford
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Noooo – this is terrible news 😩
He’s 89 FFS! Not exactly terrible news. Consummate actor, director and seemingly all round good guy.
Robert Redford on Donald Trump: “It is painfully clear we have a president who degrades everything he touches, a person who does not understand (or care?) that his duty is to defend our democracy. Our shared tolerance and respect for the truth, our sacred rule of law, our essential freedom of the press and our precious freedoms of speech — all have been threatened by a single man.”
You’re about 89 too, Lodestone. I’ll still consider it terrible news when you pop your clogs.
Touche
Integrity
Hollywood legend. 89, good innings
Best ever closed-mouth, piercing look. An original and one of the very best. Quiet grace.
Australia – a good place to head for, I hear
Thought somehow he would just go on and on. Butch and the Sting were two standard Sunday TV movies way back then, or so it seems. RIP.
He was a fine director too, although when directing himself there were a few too many lovingly lingering shots of his face. One of the greats.
Of the 10 films he directed I’ve only seen Ordinary People, A River Runs Through It and Quiz Show. I enjoyed them (though I’d rate Clint Eastwood much, much higher as a director). I’m wondering which others I should try and watch.
As an actor, he made so many brilliant films. My favourites would be Butch Cassidy, The Sting, The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby, Brubaker and Spy Game.
He wasn’t an ugly chap, was he?
When he wanted to play Benjamin in The Graduate director Mike Nichols didn’t think he was right to play a young man who was awkward around women. To make the point he asked Redford if he had ever been returned down by a woman in his life. A baffled Redford replied, ‘What do you mean?’
What a great legacy though. Thoroughly good bloke and handsome to the end.
A genuine, cast-iron, undisputed Film Star in every way. Charisma, talent before and behind the camera, and a supporter of young independent filmmakers. RIP.
Among his many great films, my favourite is probably the spy/crime caper Sneakers, which I’ve seen more often than most of the well-known classics. It didn’t set the box office on fire, but I love it, and RR is at the centre of a great cast: Ben Kingsley, David Strathairn, etc.
Ooh, noted.
Sneakers is a brilliant movie.
I also really enjoyed his late career work; The Last Castle, The Clearing, All Is Lost and Truth. He was always reliably watchable right up to the end.
I know a few people who’ve met/worked with him, and he was apparently a legitimately lovely human being.
Barefoot In The Park
Three Days Of The Condor.
Great films. Great jackets worn in both.
Adding All The President’s Men. Which I may be screening tomorrow.
Oh yes, very good indeed. Great haircuts all round and a lot of typing.
AtPM: A really good film, and one of the few that gets the feel of working on a big paper just right.
Also, it’s one of those movies that pulls off the rare feat of being riveting even when you know the ending. Whenever it’s on, I end up watching it again.
The Smershpod podcast recently did an episode on it, and pointed out how many great character actors appear in it for just one or two scenes but make such a big impression. Quality all round.
Good tip thanks. I like Smershpod but don’t subscribe which I should really .
Not often named as a classic, but the aforementioned ‘Sneakers’ was also a childhood favourite of mine. I really should watch it again. (“Too Many Secrets?”)
Great actor.
“The fall’ll probably kill ya”
Is that what Mark E. Smith said to every new recruit?
Redford (especially) in 1970s films is a pleasure to watch. Maybe the first Hollywood star I learnt to recognise, but this might have been because my Mum made a point of watching TV whenever he was on.
Indecent proposal came out when i was in first year in college and i remember us chatting one day about the plot and Ger says that when his aunt heard it was about somebody sleeping with Robert Redford for a million quid she said she’d do it but might need some time to get the money together….
Now that was a terrible film. Lot of love for Sneakers here. Incredible cast (Poitier also), but a very conventional film. Entertaining though. One scene of Redford riding a bike had me losing it completely in the cinema, really tickled me.
Watched 3 days of the condor recently for first time, that was interesting, also love the Newman films and Barefoot in the Park is wonderful, albeit betraying it’s stage origins.
Back in 1893, I watched Barefoot in the Park alone in a virtually deserted cinema. I literally fell out of my seat laughing so hard.
Saw it on TV last year – ah, like so many things it seems, hasn’t aged well (unlike me).
A great film. I love the running gag about the climb to their apartment being so long that nobody can breathe when they finally arrive.
Yeah
Very good! 😂
IP was really icky. Rightly shoed by the right on critics. What a horrible basic premise.
A couple of favourites of mine from the seventies are Jeremiah Johnson, and The Candidate. Haven’t seen either for many years so I hope that they have aged well
“There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was”
Ah, The Natural. Another great film. Beautifully made, and the ending, with the sparks tumbling down and the music rising, gets me every time.
I’ve only attended one baseball game and was bored out of my mind thanks to the seemingly endless pauses between plays, but I can understand why some people can get so emotional about it. Its history obviously means a huge amount to Americans.
It also has some great literature and writing about it in a way that other sports haven’t.
George Will, a conservative columnist of the old school, with whom I’m not sure I agree a great deal, wrote beautifully about baseball and what it represents in America.
Someone I was reading this morning said that it was notable how warm the tributes were from his female co-stars, many of whom take no prisoners, eg Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep.
It really does seem as though he was a genuinely nice guy.
I saw a nice tribute from James Woods, who (based on his film roles) never struck me as Mr Cuddly and Sentimental. He said he was performing on stage in New York when Redford, by then a massive star, turned up and gave personal notes of praise to all of the cast. A nice thing to do.