Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Redford rides off into the sunset
NEW YORK » In “The Old Man and the Gun,” the elderly bank robber Forrest Tucker, played by Robert Redford, walks up to a bank teller, smiles, says a few words in a kindly manner, and collects a heap of money. Later when the teller is interviewed by the police, she’ll sound a little bewildered describing the encounter. “He was a gentleman.”
Redford, now 82, has for six decades been leaving us similarly charmed. Who wouldn’t hand over whatever Robert Redford asked for? But David Lowery’s “The Old Man and the Gun” may be his last heist. Redford has said the movie, which Fox Searchlight will release Sept. 28, will be his final one as an actor. The news, with palpable affection, ricocheted around the world.
“I didn’t expect that kind of response,” Redford chuckles, speaking by phone from his house in Santa Fe. “Now I can’t say I was just kidding!”
“But I did say ‘Never say never,’” he adds, giving himself an out. “I just figure that I’ve had a long career that I’m very pleased with. It’s been so long, ever since I was 21. I figure now as I’m getting into my 80s, it’s maybe time to move toward retirement and spend more time with my wife and family.”
That Redford might be hanging it up has the unmistakable feel of an era passing. For many, his face — from sandy-haired California boy to weathered mountain man — has charted half a century of something intrinsically American. His Sundance Kid, his Jeremiah Johnson, his Bob Woodward are figures of rigorous self-determination. From the young C.I.A. agent in “Three Days of the Condor” to the aged sailor in “All Is Lost,” they are smooth-sailing romantics whose quiet ways are violently capsized.
“For me, the word to be underscored is ‘independence,’” says Redford. “I’ve always believed in that word. That’s what led to me eventually wanting to create a category that supported independent artists who weren’t given a chance to be heard. The
industry was pretty well controlled by the mainstream, which I was a part of. But I saw other stories out there that weren’t having a chance to be told and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can commit my energies to giving those people a chance.’ As I look back on it, I feel very good about that.”
It was through the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit he founded in 1981 for independent filmmaking that puts on the
Sundance Film Festival, that Redford met Lowery, the 37-year-old director. Shortly after Lowery’s “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” premiered at Sundance, he met with Redford, who expressed his interest in making a movie based on Tucker, a lifelong stickup man and prison escapee whom David Grann profiled in the New Yorker .
Lowery then wrote a script that became “The Old Man and the Gun.” It wasn’t until shortly before shooting that his phone lit up after Redford, in an interview, suggested this might be his last movie.
“My first thought was, boy, pressure’s on. My second thought was that I needed to completely ignore that pressure and not let it influence the movie. I actively worked against it feeling like grand summation,” says Lowery. “But I did want to tap into what makes Robert Redford a movie star and acknowledge where he came from and what he’s done. It wasn’t meant to be a swan song but if it winds up being a bookend, hopefully it’s a fitting one.”
And as a capstone for Redford, the ‘70s-set “The Old Man and the Gun” is indeed poignant.