Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [224]
All the time, says Redford, he was aware of his failings as a manager: “I tended to be disorganized and too spontaneous,” he says, “and I also trusted too much.” He became concerned at this time that crucial initiatives were being mishandled within the group. Failings in the actualization of the cable scheme and the cinema centers initiative sounded the alarm, but then Redford discovered troubling aspects of the deal making. The finger pointed to Gary Beer, who, as one staffer put it, “tended to operate as a one-man band.” Redford was particularly bothered that the cable deal allowed Beer to cash in his Sundance shares at any time. Arguments ensued, then Beer resigned “by mutual agreement.” In his place Redford installed Bob Freeman, who had helped create the sports-themed restaurant franchise ESPN Zone. To join him in a retooled management, Redford also appointed Gordon Bowen, a Madison Avenue adman responsible for the redesign of American Express and Coca-Cola, with responsibility to rebrand Sundance. Shortly after, as part of the executive shake-up, the team managing the new cable channel was replaced by Tom Harbeck, former creative linchpin of Nickelodeon.
There was still, stubbornly, a perception problem about Sundance and what it truly represented. The oft-expressed, easy-target obloquy “purveyors of granola film” was fueled by the rebels of Sundance themselves. In June 1990 Quentin Tarantino had arrived at the labs to workshop Reservoir Dogs with adviser Steve Buscemi. Eighteen months later, as a favor, festival director Geoff Gilmore rushed the late-delivered movie into festival competition. When it failed to win the grand jury prize, Tarantino left town declaring Sundance a waste of time. “They were liberal in the worst sense,” he was reported saying. “When [the competition] was over I stormed out. It was a slightly less dramatic version of, Fuck off!” On its later release Reservoir Dogs was much honored as the movie that reclaimed the spirit of film noir for America. But no credit went to Sundance.
Sterling Van Wagenen was vehement about what he saw as a built-in contradictory dilemma. “When the summer labs started in 1981, the sanctity of the independent artist was written in stone. In those early meetings we were surrounded by Victor Nunez, Moctesuma Esparza, Larry Littlebird and Annick Smith, all of whom had very strong opinions and were protective of the notion of liberal thinking and freedom. It was a place for radicals. Those people were weeded out over the years. At my last Sundance board meeting, which was held in a conference room at CAA in Beverly Hills, Joe Roth was sitting on one side of me, and Mike Ovitz on the other. When I looked around, there were no independent filmmakers in the room at all.” Hume Cronyn said, “The problem centers on the word ‘independent.’ Bob always stated that he wanted to create opportunity for new voices, some paradigm that allowed others to speak, as it were. This was about equal opportunity arts. But those new artists are looking for the wide audience, too, and they often become absorbed in the mainstream. So ‘granola’ only means ‘organic’ and ‘new.’ What happens afterward, after these new independent voices break out, is nothing to do with Sundance, or its identity.”
Sundance was still, unquestionably, a lure for those with fresh ideas. By the mid-nineties, the institute (now distinguished as the nonprofit kernel of the group) operated