Gene Hackman always thought Robert Redford was an idiot: “He was appalled”
Many cinephiles could be forgiven for thinking Gene Hackman and Robert Redford, two titans of American cinema from the last six decades, never worked together. That’s probably because their one collaboration was released 56 years ago and barely made a dent at the box office. Having said that, though, the film was well-received by critics, with both Hackman and Redford’s performances being singled out for acclaim.
Both actors played fiercely driven and determined men who often clashed, reflecting their real-life personalities and experience working together. In fact, Hackman thought the stubborn Redford was an idiot on-set, and he wasn’t shy about letting people know about it.
When Hackman signed up to play a calculating and meticulous ski coach who brutally prepares Redford’s US ski team hopeful for international competitions, he was only a year removed from being nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the Oscars. After that nomination for playing Buck Barrow in Bonnie & Clyde, he quickly followed it up with three quickfire pictures (The Split, Riot, The Gypsy Moths) before his date with Redford in Downhill Racer was set.
At this time, Redford was on a similar trajectory to Hackman. After 1967’s Barefoot in the Park put him on the map, he broke out as a superstar in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and seized upon his new star status to facilitate the production of Downhill Racer. Ever since Redford built a winter home in Utah in the early ’60s, he had become enamoured with skiing, and saw a gap in the market for movies centred around the sport.
“My motivation was to erase the bad feeling between Hollywood and the ski world,” Redford told SKI magazine. “In the past, because Hollywood had never had good intentions about a ski film, skiing was used as a background for some sex thing or for a dopey teenage party film. I wanted to make a good film.”
While Redford’s passion for the material was obvious, not to mention the key factor in getting the film off the ground, it occasionally led to some dicey decision-making on his part. Just before decamping to Europe to shoot the movie, the star sliced his knee open to the bone in a snowmobile accident, and stand-ins had to do some of his skiing in the film. However, they didn’t do all of it, and a barely recovered Redford insisted on doing a lot of the dangerous ski stunts himself. This drove Hackman round the bend.
“Does that idiot know about insurance liabilities?” Hackman raged at production manager Walter Coblenz. “If he falls, we’re all on our way home!”
In the end, all Hackman could do was watch Redford shoot ill-advised scene after ill-advised scene, all while Coblenz tried his best to talk the star out of some of his more hazardous flights of fancy. According to Coblenz, he was often barking up the wrong tree “because you really don’t tell Bob what to do. You politely request, and then hope.”
It must be said that Hackman reportedly liked Redford personally, and they got along while making the film, so there was no feud to speak of. However, it is notable that they never worked together again, despite both men sustaining thriving Hollywood careers well into their later years. Perhaps Downhill Racer did leave a bad taste in Hackman’s mouth, with director Michael Ritchie potentially summing it up best: “Gene liked Redford. But he was appalled by the skiing.”
