Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [176]
“The success of this format was entirely dependent on the quality of what we called creative and technical advisers,” says Redford, who immediately sought the involvement of a host of friends and associates from film and theater, including Morgan Freeman, whom he’d met on Brubaker, Robert Duvall, Karl Malden, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and writer Waldo Salt.
“It was footslog,” says Reg Gipson, “not at all the overnight success some people have said. Bob was personally knocking on doors begging favors for a long, long time.” Celebrity had rewarded him with positions in various boardrooms, among them the Museum of Modern Art’s. At a MoMA benefit he targeted potential supporters. Actor Hume Cronyn recalls being buttonholed by Redford. “He told me this fanciful story of how he wanted to create a film and theater group in the Southwest that would change contemporary movies,” said Cronyn. “I didn’t believe a word of it, but I was smitten.” Thereafter, Cronyn volunteered for the regulation six years on the board, all the time working also as an adviser, a role he kept till the last years of his life.
Michelle Satter, introduced to Redford by George White, was a Bostonian in her twenties who had organized outdoor festivals for her hometown Institute of Contemporary Arts. Initially she was invited to conduct a study of marketing and distribution, a gesture, she says, that comprehensively shows Redford’s long-term vision. “It seemed crazy back then, because we were all newcomers with no product of any kind to distribute. I wondered was I wasting my time, but the energy generated by Bob was seductive. He led, we followed.” Satter became lab director.
The first Sundance Institute lab took place over the month of June 1981, with a budget of $160,000 cobbled together from the NEA, Orion, Time Warner, the Ford Foundation, the Marjorie Benton Foundation, and Irene Diamond of the Diamond Foundation. By the standard that would shortly develop, it was primitive, just a handful of young tyros debating scripts in the mountain meadows with a bunch of seasoned pros, with the accent as much on theater—on account of the access to the on-site open-air theater—as film. Redford saw the immediate value of the process. “Half of the submissions were Third World themes. I’d seen so many minority films fail because of lack of finessing. Instantly, before our eyes, we saw how expert tutoring could address that. It was an issue of promoting confidence in aspiring filmmakers, as much as teaching technique.” But his main preoccupation was the frantic assessment of so many new alliances, and a rearguard fight to silence the dissenters. “I never talked as much as I did that summer,” he says. Gary Hendler, for one, was deeply suspicious of the venture, believing it to be a wasteful indulgence. “The trouble with Bob,” he complained to Gipson, “is that he only listens to himself.”
Shortly after the first lab, Brent Beck asked for a meeting with Redford in the log cabin administrative annex a short walk from the main meeting hall.
“It won’t work,” he told Redford.
“Why?”
Beck slid across the desk the receipts of the two-week lab, which was serviced entirely by resort catering and accommodation. “Because, the way it is, almost none of these people, advisers or benefactors, are paying guests. So every time you convene a planning meeting, or a lab, it’ll put a terrible strain on resources.”
“So?”
“We’re still a business, Bob. It’s the bottom line that counts.”
Redford glanced at the receipts and pushed them back.
“It will work,” he told Beck.
At the time, Pollack reported himself uplifted. “The spirit of Sundance reminds