Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [143]
This gripe, Pakula conceded, was expressed by no one else. Robards, for one, was an ardent fan of Redford’s, and vice versa. Pakula recalled, “Jason kept whispering to me, ‘That kid has class. Dustin acts with his body. But Redford acts with his fingertips.’ ”
Getting permission to shoot at public buildings was difficult. “They just didn’t want us in Washington, so every permission was a stranglehold,” says Walter Coblenz, who had responsibility for such things. “I made a decision. I wanted to pull the shoot out as soon as possible because they were throwing obstacles at us. We shot at the Library of Congress, for example, and they just didn’t want us. There was anger and denial all around. We were told that the incident portrayed in the book was inaccurate, that the library had never been involved. That drove Woodward mad, because he knew what was true, he was there.” Later, Coblenz had a meeting with Ron Nessen, Gerald Ford’s press secretary, about staging a briefing scene at the White House. Nessen said there’d be no problem, that Ford understood the quality and purpose of the movie. “We scripted it in,” says Coblenz, “but of course we were naïve. There was no way Ford would allow Redford to come to the White House to diss the previous president. We were suddenly told it was all off, that the administration didn’t approve. It felt hugely ironic. It seemed like business as usual.”
In the end, Pakula shot 300,000 feet of film, which would eventually be cut to 12,300 feet for a 2:18 movie. With a scheduled opening in April, Redford was astonished to get a call from Coblenz during the Christmas holidays. Redford had left the production three months before, assuming all was well. Coblenz told him, “Bob, you better get back to L.A. We’ve got all these rolls, and Alan is paralyzed. He is so immersed in it that he can’t sort it out. We’re screwed. We’ll never make an opening.” Redford knew Pakula’s problem was often overanalysis and indecision. “There was also the fact that he would never work beyond 6:00 p.m. Soon as the clock chimed, he was out of there for his cocktail and his social night.” Redford flew from Utah to L.A. and hunkered down with the editor—the sixth Pakula had employed—to wrap the movie. “And we just labored round the clock. We had the deadline, so it had to be done.”
The budget, at the start, had been $6.5 million. By January the production was, admitted Pakula, “$2 million over budget and a month over time. On the other hand, we all remained friends, which was no small accomplishment. Kay Graham still had her doubts, but Bernstein and Woodward were okay and that seemed the right order of things.” For Redford, Warners’ support was welcome but equivocal. “We had a new champion there in Frank Wells, who was now president of the company. He didn’t grumble too much about the overruns because he felt it was a noble endeavor. At the same time, Warners believed the movie would make no money. Watergate had been done to death on every TV show, every magazine cover, you name it.”
Redford and Pakula argued about only one thing in the editing: the finale. Pakula wanted to show TV footage of Nixon’s resignation and the famous defiant farewell wave on the steps of the helicopter on the White House lawn. Redford resisted. “I told Alan again and again, ‘This isn’t about Nixon. It’s about journalism. I want to end with the guys just working away.’ But I was overruled and so we settled on a compromise, which was the image of the teletype announcing Nixon’s resignation. In retrospect, Alan was probably right. The movie was about the power of responsible journalism, but it was also about a historical political terminus. After Nixon’s departure it was no longer un-American to question the morality of the chief executive. That moment of farewell was a big deal.”
Warners’ worries about poor returns proved groundless. All the President’s Men,