Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [179]
Primarily based on the bizarre true-life story of Eddie Waitkus, the Philadelphia Phillies player whose career was cut short when he was shot by a crazed woman who then jumped out of a window, the novel also drew material from the 1919 World Series Black Sox scandal, where eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw games. On top of this, Malamud referenced an encyclopedia of fabled yarns, from the Fisher King to Orestes. Redford found the sources fascinating, “because I was convinced it was the only way to tell the Big Story of baseball. You could make a movie that would follow all the rules and maneuvers, but it would miss the symbolic scale of it all. Malamud’s achievement, enhanced by Towne, was to introduce the mythic aspect.”
Baltimore-born Levinson had evolved from television comedy writing in Los Angeles to scriptwriting for Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie and High Anxiety to the semiautobiographical Diner. He, too, found the mythology of The Natural appealing. For Diner, he had abandoned conventional narrative to tell his story through vignettes. The originality of Towne’s approach, which emphasized Malamud’s fancy, was, to him, hypnotic: “First of all, I was attracted by Bob’s personal attachment. Secondly, I am a huge baseball fan, just like Bob. But more than anything, I was won over by Malamud’s story and Towne’s development of it. It was simply one of the best things I’d ever read. Towne took this intricate tale and turned it into an edifying story about goodness. Bob didn’t have to convince me. I said, ‘Yes, yes, this will do.’ ”
A flood of creative ideas flowed between actor and director. Redford decided, as an homage, to adopt Ted Williams’s number, 9. It was also decided that the photography by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel would take its cue from a character in the novel, Judge Banner, who refers to people in terms of darkness and light. The opposing female figures, the gunwoman Harriet and the bighearted Iris, would be depicted in darkness and iridescence, respectively. Hobbs’s childhood would be shown in a two-color sepia-like palette that would emphasize the pale greens and burnt yellows of a summery Midwest. These conceptualizations were planned in detail with Redford and carefully hand-drawn before a foot of film was shot. “What Bob and I wanted from the movie was lightness and irony,” says Levinson, “though most of the critics eventually chose to see it as a serious, even grim, piece of work.”
Through June 1983 Redford prepared for the movie with a rigorous fitness routine that included weeks of batting practice with a team of semipro players. He phoned Ted Williams, who was fishing in Nova Scotia and missed his call. Williams would later affectionately acknowledge Redford’s homage and send him signed memorabilia. “It was the best place to be,” says Redford, “full of childhood dreaming and hardball playing. After my long absence, I was ready for a good movie.”
The Natural would fulfill the first part of a two-picture deal that Gary Hendler had brokered for him with Columbia two years before. But Hendler was no longer Redford’s legal counsel—he was the president of a new movie company, TriStar, a partnership between divisions of Columbia, HBO and CBS, which had inherited The Natural. The men took a walk on the beach at Malibu to discuss Hendler’s new role. They had been together for sixteen years, and Redford was happy to credit his friend with enormous help in building his career and holding on to Sundance.