Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [147]
Redford knew he was making enemies among Utahans statewide. He took comfort from his role model, Wayne Owens, who had worked for Bobby Kennedy and had become the first liberal Mormon to win a seat in a state beloved of conservatives. “Wayne changed common perceptions the grassroots way, by walking around, by getting off the mediaspeak bandwagon and bringing it down to the level of the common man,” says Redford. “Sure, a lot of right-leaning folk were unhappy. But enough people liked that Wayne was a guy from the sheepherding community who wanted new, egalitarian rules. They were tired of the status quo, with the bankers and rich businessmen owning the state.” Ted Wilson, a former assistant to Owens, was elected, too, against the odds. For Redford these victories represented a beacon of opportunity. For decades, as he saw it, the country seesawed on a government of compromises—a Republican chief executive with a Democratic House and maybe Senate (or vice versa), held in balance by the political action committees (PACs) and specialist lobby groups shoring up House and Senate incumbents expecting payback. With people like Owens going to Washington, there was optimism that change could be made without constitutional challenges. The battle to block Kaiparowits, for Redford, was a brick in the wall.
Before the battle was fully engaged, and just seven days after completing principal photography on All the President’s Men, Redford joined a group of adventurers to collaborate with National Geographic magazine on a three-week horseback expedition to measure the cost of changes in the West. Redford viewed this as a golden opportunity. During Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid he had befriended Lula Betenson, Butch’s surviving sister. In conversation with her and with local historian Kerry Boren, he had been apprised of the fact that the trail ridden by the famous outlaws was gradually being eroded by an assortment of developments. While working with Pakula in Washington, he’d stopped by the National Geographic offices and proposed they produce a photo essay that might record how the West once was. Now, with Kaiparowits looming, the need seemed urgent. At first, the magazine was unsure, then Redford suggested he himself conduct a ride along the trail, with a group of historians and observers he would assemble. Ted Wilson saw this as a stroke of genius. “Anyone who spent time with Bob knew he was a poet. He’ll talk about Willa Cather before he’ll talk about Richard Nixon. The “outlaw trail” ride [as the National Geographic adventure was called] was his political style. It was glamorous, with lots of references to Butch Cassidy’s gang and all the rest, but it was really a powerful tool for gathering votes.”
Adrenaline, says Redford, drove him; but there was also the need to disengage from the airless offices of Cal Edison and the congressional staffers and reconnect with the land. Ostensibly, the Geographic project was a marathon survey ride, Pony Express fashion, around the bolt-holes em-ployed in the 1880s and 1890s by the Wild Bunch, starting at Kaycee, Wyoming, and ending at Lake Powell. His old buddy Tom Skerritt saw it also as an emotional stabilizer. “That was the restatement of Bob the Outlaw, the loner who’s most comfortable saddling a horse and disappearing on the mesa. It was a reminder that he was really nonpartisan, that his politics began with the ‘We, the people’ part of the Constitution.”
The photographer Jonathan Blair, whose Geographic assignments