Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [241]
Lions for Lambs was about the war in Afghanistan or, more specifically, the national mood relating to American involvement in a foreign conflict that seemed to many not much different from Asian engagements of old. Redford was to play an idealistic West Coast professor, Stephen Malley, who attempts to motivate a college student slacker, whom Carnahan based on himself. The story also traced the fate of two of Malley’s motivated students who join the U.S. Army and enter the conflict in Afghanistan. In a parallel plotline, a Republican senator and presidential hopeful attempts to persuade a leading female journalist to whitewash a questionable military strategy against the Taliban.
“I thought it was massively challenging,” says Redford, “because it could so easily slip into leftist bias, and that would defeat its purpose. Malley’s mission is to encourage social engagement in his students. It calls for talk before action. It’s about learning as much as teaching, but it couldn’t be preachy. It’s about morality, but it can’t be moralistic. Because of the divisive nature of Bush’s war on terror, I thought it was timely. As a director, I emphatically wasn’t taking sides. I didn’t want to say this or that is right or wrong. I just felt Lions for Lambs could provoke a meaningful wider discussion.”
Redford envisaged Meryl Streep for the journalist Janine Roth and Denzel Washington for the Republican senator Irving. Streep jumped at the part. But Cruise became Irving. “You roll with these things,” says Redford, “and of greater concern to me was the small budget—$35 million—and the short time frame, since our deal was to have the movie ready for a grand UA launch by Christmas 2007.”
Troubles rained down. First, no major soundstage was available in Hollywood, so production was based at “a utility barn” at Ren-Mar Studios on Cahuenga Boulevard. Since extensive Afghanistan action scenes were required and the budget would allow no foreign locations, complex snow-machine work was sited at sunny Rocky Peak Park in Simi Valley. Then came eighteen-hour days “shuffling and reshuffling pages like card sharks.” Some people thought Cruise was unprepared. He did not interact well with Streep and Cruise and Redford seemed to be on different wavelengths. Cruise was on record saying his interest in the project revolved around Redford, whose work he had followed joyfully since Ordinary People. But Redford struggled with his costar’s approach. “At one point he brought in some neoconservative foreign policy advisers, among them Robert Kagan, whom I thought were inappropriate,” says Redford. “I called him on it, saying, ‘Wait a second, Tom. This is not the way I want to do this, and certainly not with these people in my eye line.’ ” Cruise backed off. The delays went on. “It got to the point where we had to deploy cards with the lines written on them,” says a crew member. “Meryl lost interest. She started playing with her BlackBerry. Bob freaked. It became very, very tense.”
Lions for Lambs stumbled through to make its deadline and opened, as promised, in November 2007. The previews did not go well. After the first screening in New York, Fox News reported that neither Streep nor Redford accompanied Cruise to the Museum of the Moving Image, where he was being honored that night. Observers read between the lines.
Ironically, the film incited some of the most impassioned reviews of Redford’s recent career. Critic Amy Biancolli in the Houston Chronicle called it Redford’s “bravest” film, and The Hollywood Reporter agreed that it “raises many important questions.” But these plaudits were challenged by savage reviews deriding “pompous-assery” and “preachiness.”
Redford considered the failure his and his alone, and lamented the fact that the movie grossed just $63 million worldwide, rendering a loss, taking marketing costs into consideration, estimated by The New York