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By Root 697 0

” But when the time came, under Bush administration policy, the United States joined the Rio summit and, says Bradley, “sat on its hands.” Ironically—inexcusably, says Adams—the Sundance debaters had virtually no representation. “No one in the current administration was too much interested, so we were elbowed out of position.” For Al Gore, an ambitious senator not yet embarked upon a career in conservation, the Rio summit was “a disaster for America, and for the planet.” Global pollution control, whether the United States liked it or not, was in the offing. But, though Sundance and the Rio summit requested legislated assurances of reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from all the leading nations, the United States’ refusal to commit was a backward step, said Gore, in which America was setting a dangerous precedent of renewed isolation.

“I was exhilarated by the symposium and shattered by the play-out,” says Redford. “You could say we achieved everything, and nothing. Rio proved that people everywhere were concerned. The old nonsense about it coming down to a battle of clean environment versus jobs no longer stood. There were economic statistics that showed no substantial conflict. What was needed was new thinking. We presented a new forum at the symposium and people listened. The science community wanted it. The diplomats wanted it. But government let us down.”

“I was upset for Bob,” says Adams, “because he shone a light and the politicians didn’t care. He had spent a decade trying to bring academics, government officials and environmentalists together. In a wise world the IRM would have evolved into the president’s permanent counsel. That never happened. Instead, it was ignored, squeezed, forgotten.”

The IRM’s demise became an issue of debate among the Sundance staffers and beyond. Many felt relieved that Redford was freeing himself from institutional politics and moving back toward film. Van Wagenen believed “it was best, because he lived, breathed and ate movies. He was a film artist before he was anything, and when he wasn’t making films, he was uptight, a fish out of water.” Indeed, Adams recognized as much and saw the cause of the IRM’s failure in Redford himself: “The greatest asset of the IRM was his mind, and his intuition for deal making. But a part of his psyche was elsewhere, and he handed the power over to Minger and others. What the IRM needed as a fixture was a political tactician who could work both sides to fuse the middle. I believed Bob was that man. He had years of experience in the tough arena of show business, and he was masterly at resolving disputes. I finally thought, Politics’ loss is the movie world’s gain.”

20

Beyond Hurricane Country

The students still came, the programs were ongoing, but Sundance was for most of the country largely invisible.

The entire operation, Redford came to believe, needed better, more effective, more widespread branding; with that, the indispensable media exposure would follow. A new approach was called for. “I knew I was scattered,” says Redford. “I knew I was fair game for those who accused me of being a dabbler or stretching too far. But I was never offended by failure. In fact, risk was the lodestar.”

The Production Fund may have failed and political forums may not have raised awareness enough, but in 1989 a modestly budgeted movie made by a twenty-five-year-old southerner would accomplish what Redford hoped for, electrifying the January film festival and propelling Sundance to the media center stage. At the beginning of the eighties, according to lab student and NYU film school graduate Tom DiCillo, New Yorkers viewed Sundance, labs and festival, as the home of the granolafest. “Before I first came there,” says DiCillo, who was a cameraman for Jim Jarmusch, another lab attendee, “we laughed about Sundance. We associated it with boring pastorals about ‘going home’ and ‘returning to the land.’ ” But there was far more to Sundance “product” than Utahan ideals or the mild, bucolic movies Van Wagenen had pursued. Redford saw this problem of recognition as