Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [122]
Hurrying for cash, Redford resumed the work in planning his next movie, which was now many months late, with George Roy Hill. The Sting, their new project, is a film with a history almost as convoluted as its plot. It had started in October 1970, when David Ward, a young writer contracted to actor-producer Tony Bill, taped a ten-minute synopsis of an original concept inspired by the writings of Nelson Algren. Bill sent the tape to Redford, who liked it and arranged a three-way meeting in New York. Ward admits he was “kind of surprised by Tony’s choice of Redford, because the part of Hooker, the con man around whom the plot resolves, I had in mind for a young guy. But I was immensely impressed by this new notion of the wily Sundance Kid playing the very wily Hooker.” Ward had written just one movie for Tony Bill—the critically, if not financially, successful Steelyard Blues—and had, he says, a desire to do something in his favorite territory, “among the lowlifes of Algren and Steinbeck and in the era when you could best idealize criminal life, which was the twenties.” At the meeting, Redford was encouraging, says Ward, but unwilling to commit. The story, though, he liked. It was about two fast-talking Prohibition hustlers, Hooker and Gondorff, who scam and double-scam with the objective of taking down a murderous thug. Already tagged to play Gondorff was Peter Boyle. “I liked Ward,” says Redford. “But he was very inexperienced, and I wasn’t even sure I had a place in this. I told him, ‘Do a great script, and I’ll see what I can do to support you.’ ”
Ward worked in the converted garage of his rented Topanga Canyon home, writing with a pencil on a yellow legal pad. He produced several drafts over twelve months before submitting a final one to Redford. Hill, who had been drawn in by Tony Bill, also received the script. Hill liked it immediately. “But I felt he’d made a mistake in the tenor of the dialogue,” said Hill. “It was too modern, not at all of the period, and that was its weakness. But, that said, David presented a fantastic script. It was so intricate that it needed no input from anyone, just dialogue adjustments.” The attraction for Hill was the stun-the-audience twist at the end and, even more, the evocation of the bygone era. “Period was my soft spot,” said Hill. “Nothing beats historical scene setting. That was what I liked about Hawaii, what I liked about Butch Cassidy. I used every trick and technology available to get the audience in. When I read The Sting, I imagined that old Universal art deco logo and sepia faces and Model Ts.”
While Redford was absorbed on The Way We Were, Hill met with Tony Bill and his partners, Michael and Julia Phillips, made a deal and took the project to Richard Zanuck, who was now producing independently with David Brown. It was Zanuck and Brown, finally, who sealed the production with Universal. For Ward, the only moment of hesitation was when Dan Melnick, a former drama executive at ABC, suggested they cut loose from Hill and Zanuck to make the movie themselves, with Ward directing. “In the end,” says Ward, “I knew I would be selling a great story short. The option was either a very-low-budget movie directed by me or the blockbuster directed by George. It was a no-brainer.