Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [104]
With Wizan as producer and Warners’ backing, work started. Edward Anhalt, who had won several Academy Awards throughout the fifties, was assigned the rewrite, and contracts were signed all around. Redford accepted an up-front $200,000 against his best-yet fee of $500,000. Pollack’s fee was $220,000, a 20 percent improvement on Castle Keep.
Pollack and Calley decided to shoot the film in southern Spain. Redford was shocked. He had been adamant from the outset: this movie should be made in the best, authentic setting—his own front yard. “I had an acute sense of location. The script was the unsensationalized life of a Rocky Mountain trapper. John Johnson, the original mountain man, lived in these canyons around Sundance 120 years ago. That was one good reason to do it here. There was also a budgetary advantage in the Utah right-to-work law. It made financial sense. There was no way I was going to go along with Sydney if he wished to make this on a Warners’ lot with pickups in Spain.”
Pollack insisted that the movie could not be made entirely on location for its budget of $4 million. But Redford dug his heels in. “He had a stubborn streak a mile wide,” said Pollack. “I argued. I begged. I reckoned, We’ll go through hell on this one, but he’ll get his way.” Redford did. A month after Little Fauss wrapped, the newly titled Jeremiah Johnson started shooting with autumnal pickups in Sundance’s Alpine Meadows, at Mirror Lake, on the flank of Timpanogos and along the ridges of Provo Canyon. “It turned into a mess,” said Pollack. “We simply were not ready for production. As soon as we started, I knew for sure we could not do it for the $4 million agreed. Bob was a very expensive actor by now. And Calley was worried because the numbers didn’t add up. He said, ‘Bob is too costly, and these locations of his are too awkward. It will never work. You will run out of money.’ But Bob continued to be insistent: ‘We can shoot in Utah,’ he said.”
According to Pollack, Ted Ashley, backed by Warners’ legal executive Frank Wells, pulled the plug in Utah. Warners then announced that the movie would be shot on the back lot, with the second unit doing some background shooting around Lake Arrowhead.
Redford would have none of it. He flew to Los Angeles with Hendler, Begelman and Fields for a showdown with Warners. Begelman advised Ashley, Calley and Wells that their star might become unavailable because of “illness.” Threats and counterthreats flew. When things calmed down, it was agreed that Ashley, Calley and Wells would deposit $4 million in Zions Bank in Provo, which would represent their total contribution to the production. If the costs ran over, they would have to be covered by director and actor. A lien would be put on Pollack’s production company as collateral.
Pollack was not at the meeting and felt this proposal was hardest on him. “It wasn’t an easy decision for me to accept,” he said, “because I was only just establishing myself and my company. I thought about getting out at that point, but I couldn’t because Bob had already spent his $200,000.” And it was true that Redford was financially stretched to the limit that summer. Nevertheless, Redford insists he was as exposed in the deal as his friend. “It was wrong of me to agree to the $4 million in Sydney’s absence, and I did apologize eventually. But I deferred part of my fee, because of the risk. I was sharing this with Sydney, and I wanted to be fair.”
For a while Pollack refused to return Redford’s calls. “I was pissed,” says Redford. “It was clear this wasn’t going to be an easy film to make, and he was getting cold feet. But we had made promises to each other. I got him on the phone and told him, ‘Don’t fuck me around, Sydney. You know we have to do this picture.’ It was tense