Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [229]
The fact that he had produced a movie so full of mystical whimsy and hopeful philosophy—and one so personally revelatory—and the fact that it had been so resoundingly rejected drove him freshly and deeper into self-analysis. As reflected in the controversy of the disputed national election result, America too was going through a time of great uncertainty and self-questioning. Hurt as he was by the rejection of the movie, he was heartened by this national urge for reevaluation.
The Clinton era in general had been good for him, and the National Medal of Arts, presented to him by the president at a White House ceremony in May 1999, seemed as much an acknowledgment of his constant conservation work as of Sundance and some durable films. The two campaigns he participated in during the Clinton era, though—the ones he took most pride in—had delivered mixed results.
The expanded highway dispute with the Utah Department of Transportation that had absorbed a hefty amount of his spare time since the seventies seemed resolved when, with Governor Calvin Rampton’s intervention, the proposed six lanes were reduced to four. Sundance then suggested further truncation to an environmentally friendly new two-lane road that would be serviced with picnic areas and scenic hike routes built by Redford. Sundance’s environmental spokesperson, Julie Mack, felt victory was in sight, that the defacement of the canyon was uppermost in the minds of all locals. But Redford always underestimated local opposition to him and the reality that, for many, he was still an interloper imposing personal priorities. Beyond the ring of resort properties buffering what Gary Beer called “the little kingdom” were three hundred acres of privately owned lands run by eight independent property owner associations amassed under the North Fork Property Owners Council. “They’d always argued with Sundance,” says Beer, “starting with rows about who got the first use of the community plows when everyone was snowed in each January. Their position was that they frankly didn’t care that Bob’s resort had brought a little cash into the local economy each winter season and each summer lab season. They weren’t interested in the small fry and they certainly didn’t want talk of conservation. They just wanted to make good and invite all and every developer into the area.”
The conservationist Utah Coalition’s lawyers, partly funded by Redford, lost to the UDOT in the Salt Lake courts. The widened four-lane highway that would allow a heavier volume of cross-state traffic was authorized and, within weeks, construction began. According to Mack, the evidence of serious environmental damage was immediate. Landslide pollution poisoned much of the Provo River stock, and sections of the mountainside fringing the road became unstable and had to be harnessed with permanent, unprepossessing steel buttresses. “It was a case of what happens when you start unraveling a ball of string,” says Mack. “It might have been worse, with a six-lane highway and wider land reclaim, but it was still upsetting for everyone interested in land protection.”
But there were successes, too. Under Clinton, Republicans in Congress had advanced a bill that proposed the limiting of wilderness in Utah to just 1.8 million acres of Bureau of Land Management–preserved lands. President Clinton had vetoed it. Redford, Mack and Joyce Deep, serving the Utah Coalition, worked with Wayne Owens and Bill Bradley on an alternative Citizens’ Proposal Bill calling for 5.7 million wilderness acres. Even the most loyal of Sundance staffers—people like mountain manager Jerry Hill—had their doubts about Redford’s goals: “I saw the coalition’s viewpoint but the bottom line was our employment and our survival. Preservation was fine. Still, we, and our children, needed