Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [175]
As Van Wagenen drove his little Beetle to Redford’s office at the base of Timpanogos, he imagined chitchat about festival selections. Instead, Redford bluntly suggested a plan to merge the festival with his own half-defined “arts community,” perhaps like Yaddo, the famous Saratoga Springs colony that had nurtured writers like John Cheever, Truman Capote and scores of Pulitzer winners. Redford was highly enthused, says Van Wagenen, envisioning a new horizon, with opportunities to drag Hollywood into Utah and stir up support for local writers and out-of-state students who wanted to tell stories on film, but lacked resources. Van Wagenen suggested that the model not be Yaddo, but George White’s Eugene O’Neill Theater Retreat in Connecticut, where new and traditional plays were experimentally performed and critiqued by visiting dramaturges for the benefit of writers, directors and actors. “But I don’t take credit,” says Van Wagenen. “Bob knew what he wanted. He said, ‘That’s it, that’s exactly how it should begin. Now we know what we want to build, let’s get on and just do it.’ ”
The first objective, said Redford, was National Endowment for the Arts backing, and this was swiftly achieved with a $25,000 grant to fund an exploratory workshop in April 1979, just twelve weeks after completion of Ordinary People. This was followed by seminars in October and November, which were attended by Cathy Wyler, the daughter of director William Wyler, representing the NEA; Orion’s vice president Mike Medavoy; United Artists vice president Claire Townsend; Howard Klein of the Ford Foundation; Czech filmmaker and ex–American Film Institute tutor Frank Daniel; Native American director Larry Littlebird and filmmakers Annick Smith, Victor Nunez, Robert Geller, Moctesuma Esparza and Sydney Pollack. Also attending were former congressman Wayne Owens; Redford’s legal counsel Reg Gipson; Redford’s constant personal assistant since Three Days of the Condor, Robbi Miller; and theater executive George White himself. “It was a very adventurous collection of people,” says Van Wagenen, “and the composition of that team suggests Bob’s outlook. It was he and he alone who mustered those heavyweight names. I certainly couldn’t have done it. And he had a future game all mapped out in his mind. The NEA was for artistic credibility. Medavoy and Townsend were business credibility. The filmmakers were the think tank. George White was the great old sage. It was very sweetly tuned.”
Redford felt himself rejuvenated by the new project. He attributes the fluidity of the organizational setup to Van Wagenen; Van Wagenen says it was Redford who sat in the NEA offices in Washington to make the pleas, who took the minutes of the meetings, who made the late-night phone calls to secure essential supporters, including cash investors. The financial champions, says Van Wagenen, were the NEA’s Brian Doherty, Wall Streeter Dan Lufkin and Augie Busch of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, all of whom contributed to the $100,000 seed capital. Redford personally contributed $100,000 a year over the next several years, “primarily to keep the doors open,” says Reg Gipson, who contends the arrangement was “extremely fragile, living on the edge of a precipice really, in terms of a commonsense business plan.”
The new Sundance Institute board, handpicked by Redford, included Christopher Dodd, later chairman of the Democratic Party and a U.S. senator; Marjorie Benton of UNICEF and Save the Children; Bill Bradley; Frank Daniel; filmmaker Saul Bass and Gipson. Under their guidance an innovative schooling program was designed, to commence in the summer of 1981. The object of this program was not to launch a rival or remodeled film festival, but to develop a George White–style summer lab for aspirant filmmakers, who could