Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [169]
Azenberg’s judgment impressed Redford. After more reflection, he confirmed Moore’s casting as Beth. Moore had little time to “organize the terrors” before flying with her assistant and hairdresser to Chicago, where they moved into a rented property in Lake Forest that would form the hub of production. Bit by bit Redford learned about the chaos in Moore’s personal life: that her time in Lake Forest represented her first serious split with Tinker and the terminus of her marriage; that she had recently begun her first affair; and that her mind-set was both euphoric and depressed. “I didn’t doubt Mary’s strength as a woman and an actress,” says Redford. “It was an advantage because I was attempting to project a character that I’d never seen in movies. I’d known many women like Beth in real life, people who cannot connect with their emotions. But only in real life. I felt we had new ground to cross.”
Having studied so many directors up close, Redford knew that his point of entry to directing was to stay close to his actors. “I felt confident among actors. I felt I could relate in terms of reassurance and creating the positivity in the environment an actor needs.” A week of rehearsals began, in theater fashion, with the actors seated in a circle, with scripts in their laps.
Sutherland, whose headlining career had begun with Altman’s M*A*S*H, expected the momentary uncertainties of a first-time director but found Redford clearheaded and diametrically unlike Pakula, who had directed him on Klute: “Bob totally handed trust to the actor. He’d learned that himself, the need for space for the actor to find the role. I knew what I wanted to do with Jarrett, which is not to say he didn’t. He did. But he gave me room.”
For Moore, the process was like working with a master engineer. “We walked through it with the utmost detail. There was time to investigate the role, and then to let it fly. He restricted nothing. The only direction he gave me, other than the gentle shaping of the character, was about my mannerisms. There were gestures that hung over from [her television character] Mary Richards: the hand slapping the thigh, the raised hand jabbing in emphasis of a line, the snap-quick turn of the head.”
Tim Hutton, who had researched his role by reading books in the Children in Crisis series and by attending group therapy sessions at a mental institution under an assumed name, believed he benefited best from daily walks with Redford in which the topics varied from cinematographic objectives to Hutton’s struggle to overcome his father’s death. “Bob understood everything,” said Hutton. “It’s hard to explain how secure you feel working with someone who knows your struggle and who knows how to help.” In Moore’s view, Hutton’s comfort reflected the deeply personal connection Redford felt with the story. “We talked a lot about family. He gradually became open about his relationship with his father and how it impacted on him. He told me straight that he had great difficulty with his father’s judgments and attitude to him. There was no acrimony. There was a loving acceptance, but, as in my own case, I got the impression that there was also a desire to resolve that part of his emotional life once and for all. I suspected there was something of his father, in his eyes, in Beth.”
In the eyes of Marcella Scott, Redford had “never divested himself of the need to impress Charlie. They seemed bound together by destiny.” In 1979, Charlie retired from Standard Oil to settle permanently in a large, timbered house overlooking San Francisco Bay. They wrote and talked often, but Redford admits to ongoing sparring: “I didn’t visit him during The Candidate [filmed in nearby Marin County] and he resisted visiting Sundance for the longest time. When I finally arranged it for him, he complained about the altitude. I accepted that we were not of the same cut. But forgiveness wasn’t the issue. Understanding was. He was a man bent out of shape by being exiled as a teenager, a