The Seventies provided some of the greatest dramas of all time. Films like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Network remain as dramatic today as they were then. In that time, though, film historians have uncovered much of the behind the scenes drama that happened on these classic films and, in some cases, it’s better than what happened on screen.
The latest case of this is a claim by Robert Redford that legendary, Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman didn’t actually write All The President’s Men, Alan J. Pakula‘s multiple Oscar-winner starring Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two Washington Post reporters who eventually blew the lid off the Watergate scandal.
In Michael Feeney Callan‘s new biography on Redford called Robert Redford: The Biography, Redford tells a story of how he and Pakula spent a month rewriting Goldman’s script before shooting. Is he telling the truth? Another piece of investigative journalism says “No.” Read More »
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Robert Redford is already in the baseball hall of fame for playing the lead in The Natural, which is a benchmark in baseball on film. That was a piece of fiction, but now Mr. Redford is poised to play one of the most important real figures in the history of the game: Branch Rickey, who broke the color barrier in baseball by hiring Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Read More »
Robert Redford‘s The Conspirator, starring Robin Wright as Mary Surratt, the one woman charged in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and James McAvoy as her lawyer, opened at the Toronto Film Festival last year. Now there is a full-length trailer for the film, which you can see after the break. Read More »
In August of last year, we heard that Robert Redford was going to, in some measure, beat Steven Spielberg to the punch with a film about Lincoln. But Redford’s film, The Conspirator, isn’t quite about Lincoln himself — it is about Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), one of the accused members of a conspiracy to assassinate the President and, in the wake of the case, the first woman executed by the US government.
The film was shot last fall in Savannah, GA, and Redford is now talking about the picture, giving us some more information, and a few photos. Read More »
It didn’t take long at all for Robert Redford‘s The Conspirator to get off the ground. The film, which hinges on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was announced only months ago and is already shooting in Savannah, GA. We knew some of the cast prior to the shoot’s start, but now we’ve got a host of good names to throw your way, in addition to some pics and video. Read More »
THR’s RiskyBizBlog reports that Robert Redford will direct The Conspirator, a film about Mary Surratt, said to be an accomplice of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. While this movie is a far cry from Steven Spielberg’s intended biopic about the President, nonetheless it is a bit surprising to hear about another major director taking on a project so close to Lincoln when Spielberg isn’t yet able to get his own financed. Read More »
I’ve already told you about Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem – and more than once – but the status of several more films from Voltage Pictures upcoming slate has now come to light. Voltage are a sales and financing company, and they’re now out in Berlin to drum up interest for their projects at the EFM – European Film Market. Screen Daily have the dish on the lot.
Robert Redford‘s “romantic thriller” The Company You Keep seems to be the one getting the big push. Set to film in July, this one suits Redford down to the ground as it “tells of a former radical activist who goes on the run for the sake of his young daughter after his identity is revealed.” I assume director Redford will also take the lead role of Jim Grant, former Weather Underground man who played a part in a “bank robbery gone wrong” because, frankly, there’s nobody better for the part. And while there’s definitely an obvious whiff of Sneakers about this, Neil Gordon’s source novel is very different in most respects.
Read More »
After mentioning it in various interviews over the years, Robert Redford has announced that his adaptation of Bill Bryson’s nonfiction bestseller A Walk in the Woods will be his next project, with director Barry Levinson said to be on board as well. The meaning of the film’s title is literal, and the plot follows Bryson and his crass, fat ex-alcoholic friend as they attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgie to Maine. Only 10-25 percent of those who attempt the hike in its entirety are said to succeed; after much deliberation, Bryson and co. did not.
“It’ll be fun. I don’t know when I’ve read a book that I laughed so loud,” Redford said to the AP. “Also it’s a chance to take a look at the country. …The backdrop is pretty terrific, if you stop to think of all the visuals that are possible as they go along that trail.”
At one point, Redford was trying coax his friend and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid co-star, Paul Newman, to play the friend, but no word if that remains the case. Personally, I doubt it. After Woods, Redford said he will hop on the gestating Untitled Jackie Robinson Project to star as influential Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey for director Thomas Carter. Redford described the film as an “inside, down to the mats story.”
While a bigger audience probably awaits A Bloody Run in the Woods, I’m a sucker for growing-old-is-cool wilderness films like Redford’s A River Runs Through It from 1992. To bad he’s not directing this one, as he has a killer eye for such imagery, much more-so than on war polemics like Lions for Lambs, but he’s clearly hands-on here.
