Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [134]
Redford’s prolificacy was such that his Olympian position seemed untouchable. The sixteen-point addendum to his Waldo contract exemplified the power he now held: he had approval of director and all costars; he was covered for living expenses if he was more than fifty miles from home, charged at $1,000 a week; five first-class air tickets were to be supplied to him to travel to and from all locations; he had the use of chauffeured limousines throughout filming or related work; sole-star billing above the title was guaranteed, as was health insurance, the use of a personal makeup artist and costumer (Gary Liddiard and Bernie Pollack, Sydney’s brother, respectively), Wildwood’s right to approve all publicity images, and one 16 mm print of the movie for personal use. He also received a percentage of the gross box office earnings, without deducting costs.
With bristling confidence of his status, he moved on to the Watergate story. In June 1974, the previously unknown and totally incriminating tape of Nixon and Haldeman colluding against potential investigators was released, and the following month the House Judiciary Committee recommended the first article of impeachment against the president on the charge of obstruction of justice. The second and third articles, for abuse of power and contempt of Congress, were subsequently passed, and a few days later, on August 8, Nixon resigned.
Earlier, in April, on his return from Waldo Pepper location shooting in Texas, Redford had met up again with Woodward and Bernstein in Washington. Their book was near completion and he agreed to pay $450,000 for the film rights. Shortly afterward, due to a misunderstanding, Simon and Schuster, the publisher, sent the galley proofs of the book to Bill Goldman’s agent, and before Redford knew it, Goldman was the screenwriter on the movie. “I was troubled from the beginning about Bill but friendship kept it going,” says Redford. Woodward never doubted that Goldman would be the screenwriter. “He was there at the start,” says Woodward, “and we spent a lot of time together. So I assumed …”
Redford recalls setting out his vision for the film to Goldman. “I told him I didn’t want a thriller,” he says. “This story was allegory, about a certain innocence that was corrupted by Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein personified the innocence. They were the old school, the journalists who investigated, extrapolated and worked to a standard. Because they were personally such a study in contrasts, I thought there was amazing psychological material to mine. Bill, I knew, was very skillful. But I had reservations about that. When he wrote his novels, it was homage to his favorite novelists. When it came to Butch Cassidy, it was homage to his favorite buddy movies, like Gunga Din. One admired him for it. But what troubled me on a personal level was the fact that his views were caustic. It was fun to be in his company and hear him, until you thought, What happens when this judgmental bit is turned on me? I became uncomfortable in some aspect of our friendship, and that should have warned me off.”
In a very short time, Goldman turned in his screenplay, which no one liked. Woodward, Bernstein and Redford were dismayed, mostly because Goldman had not visited the Washington Post offices nor interviewed the key participants, like Ben Bradlee, the executive editor. “He put a lot of work into it,” says Woodward. “There was no question of it. But it wasn’t accurate to The Post or the way we worked.” Nevertheless, Redford stayed loyal and sent out the script to a few directors he was interested in. When Elia Kazan and William Friedkin turned it down, he started to seriously rethink. “I got the impression that no one took it seriously. Bradlee felt it was glib, like another Butch Cassidy, and that was very worrying.” For a while, Redford confided to friends that he thought he was losing the proj-ect. And then one day, with no prior notice, Carl Bernstein and his wife