Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [242]
In May 2008 the bombshell came when the Sundance Channel was sold. The channel, in terms of audience numbers, sponsorship investment and its documentary production slate, was never healthier. Surpassing the projections made twelve years before, almost thirty million homes were now served, but its sacrifice was inevitable. It was the bitterest pill to accept that the purchaser was Rainbow Media, the programming subsidiary of Cablevision, owners of the Independent Film Channel. Redford’s 6 percent share gave him $30 million. In the acquisition announcement, Josh Sapan, CEO of Rainbow, praised Sundance’s record of achievement without acknowledging what media analysts predicted: that Sundance and the IFC would probably be merged in the coming years.
Wounded but uncowed, Redford stayed on as creative adviser to the Sundance Channel, retaining an office alongside its chief executive at Penn Plaza in New York. He immediately began to work toward a series of short films designed for mobile phone users. “I don’t intend to rescind any of the policy we started out with,” he said defiantly. “Sundance Channel was conceived to preserve experiment and diversity, and that’s what it will continue to do.”
Behind the bravado was a deep hurt. Sundance as defined just ten years before was no longer viable. “But he told us,” said one staffer, “it’s about evolution. We go forward with Sundance and remember our purpose: stewardship of independence, the same old acorn.”
There was, of course, much for Redford to be thankful for. His personal life was never so serene, his fulfillment rich in interacting with his children and grandchildren, whose legions swelled to five when Amy and her husband, Denver-born CalArts theater director Matt August, had a daughter, Eden Hart, in August 2008. Old wounds, too, seemed healed. Lola’s new life was based around Lake Champlain in Charlotte, Vermont, from where she ran Clio Inc., a media-based “virtual corporation” designed to pursue environmental and sociological activism, with her new husband, George Burrill. Part of each year she spent in New Zealand, but Redford often dined with her, enjoying, says Jamie, “the most pleasant relationship imaginable.”
There was a special joy in seeing the creative growth among his loved ones. Shauna was no longer involved with the catalog or Sundance, but she continued painting and resided in Connecticut with her husband, Eric Schlosser, whose books Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness became classroom staples and earned him the moniker of the new Upton Sinclair. Jamie’s screenwriting was thriving, with two script credits for the Hillerman Indian detective stories, now funded by PBS, under his belt and a directorial feature debut with Spin, a small-budget movie about a Latino family that starred Rubén Blades and was well received. Amy was also on the road to a significant film career, moving from acting roles in mainstream television series like Sex and the City to her own directorial start, The Guitar, described by festival director Geoff Gilmore as “a whimsical fairy tale,” which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Redford “stood back and relished” all this, and was especially moved by the progress of Bylle, whose art rapidly evolved, veering through southwestern and Arabic themes to coalesce in Miró-like dream imagery that won the attention of IMG Artists, the adventurous management group whose concert and exhibition festivals would provide a global forum for her. “I had a skepticism about American expressionist art since CU,” says Redford. “But Bylle’s experiments changed my perspective. It reminds me how not all problems respond to linearity. The abstract viewpoint, the lateral thought, the poetry, is often the way to resolution.”
The serenity was dented by losses: Pakula, Michael Ritchie, George Roy Hill and Stuart Rosenberg all passed away over a short