Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [161]
Through the summer, Bob Garland, David Rayfiel and Alvin Sargent worked around the clock on the script, which Fonda had yet to see a page of. At one point, Rayfiel sent an ominous Churchillian note to Pollack: “Never has so much been written by so many for so little.” Fonda, though, was not amused: “There were moments when I began to fret. It wasn’t a normal scenario. It seemed to be a movie based on a lot of talk and no paperwork, which was something I’d never before encountered.” On August 1, twelve weeks before filming, Redford wrote on his copy of the latest cobbled-together script: “The present version is too encumbered. Too much hardware, too much plot, too much ‘necessity’ to justify the size of it all. Too urban, as opposed to simple rural.” Pollack and Redford continued to work very closely and amassed piles of videos to watch. “It was the start of the home video era,” Pollack said, “and so we had easy access to the old Cary Grant movies, the Billy Wilders Bob loved and the Frank Capras I loved. Out of them we took the spirit of joy and brightness and put it into The Electric Horseman. All the time we knew we were dealing with a story about the cynicism of showbiz, about the exploitation of humans and animals that fall into the trap, about dark things. But we played with it until we found the upbeat story. We also had a wonderful bonus. The story became stronger with the history of these actors, of Jane and Bob. The hard-driving characters meet, clash and fall in love. What could be better? I’d developed a reputation, or so Jane told me, as the master of foreplay. She said, ‘You’re always leading the characters right up to the bedroom door, and that makes for a very sexy picture.’ So that’s what I built on: foreplay. Let the audience impose their fantasies on these characters. Let them play with the notion: Is Bob screwing Jane? Will it go that far?”
Though the script Fonda was given still only amounted to a scattering of action pages, some notes Pollack made to himself five days before production titled “Night Thoughts” finally defined characters intertwined by childlike romantic idealism. Pollack singled out one speech for Hallie: “When I was a kid, the prince was all in white. Nothing he did was ever wrong. He had justice and morality and ethics all on his side. It was loaded, really loaded. I guess like most fantasies.” On the same page he summarized Redford’s Sonny in a speech: “There are people in Africa or some damn place who believe that if someone takes their picture, they won’t live as long. That you take something away from them. Well, maybe you just have so much to give out—like a light bulb—and if other people are taking it all the time, then there isn’t much left for you.”
“Once I had those speeches, I had the film,” said Pollack. “From that point on we knew who these characters were, how they were attracted to each other and what they truly represented.”
Redford condensed Pollack’s theorizing into a simple trick: a walk. “There was too much development,” he says. “In the end you could look at Sonny sixty ways. I wanted to see him as the guy who says, ‘No more.’ He has given it all to the point where he’s literally bent out of shape. His back no longer works. He walks with a rick, like every step hurts. His story is in the walk.” And the romance? “It made sense; it was organic in the story. And with Jane it was easy.”
The Electric Horseman started location filming in November at Caesars Palace, the only casino in Vegas willing to trade gambling losses for Hollywood publicity (since gaming tables would be closed for