The “fucked movie” Robert Redford hated every second of making: “It wasn’t for me”
Whenever a great actor sadly passes away, it provides an excuse, if one were needed, to take a look at their body of work and either consume all their best films in as short a time as possible or rewatch any favourites you might have.
It’s a tough exercise to take on with someone like Robert Redford, however, because that would take some considerable time.
As far back as 1967, Redford was making superb movies like Neil Simon’s comedy Barefoot in the Park with Jane Fonda before he embarked on a frankly outrageous run over the next 15 years or so that included Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Paul Newman, The Sting, again with Newman, The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand, the thrilling Three Days of the Condor and then the peerless All the President’s Men in 1976.
It was a collection of movies that may not have been bettered by any actor in history, and we aren’t even considering his many later films like Indecent Proposal or his swansong, the brilliant The Old Man & The Gun. Across different genres, in front of and behind the camera, Redford quite simply made fantastic films.
He didn’t, like all actors, have a flawless track record, however, and especially early on, he made a few films that are eminently forgettable. One of those is undoubtedly Little Fauss and Big Halsy, a 1970 movie about two dirtbike racers from Arizona who both lust after a woman, which was not at all popular with the American public, despite having a Johnny Cash original written for it.
Directed by Sidney J Furie, it was a comedy-drama that Redford only agreed to star in as part of a bargain after being sued by Paramount for dropping out of a different film. He played Halsy while Fauss was taken on by an actor called Michael J Pollard, who had gained acclaim for his performance in Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.
Redford had problems on the shoot right from the off; he was commuting daily between the set and the production of another movie he was in called Downhill Racer. Aside from that, filming on Little Fauss was in the blazing Arizona desert heat, and he had considerable issues with his opposite actor and the film’s director, Furie.
Redford recalled in his autobiography: “Furie was one of the dictatorial, do-it-my-way-and-don’t-ask-questions brigade, and that works with a lot of actors; in fact, they crave it. But it wasn’t for me.”
And Redford’s relationship with his co-star was equally frayed, with Pollard reportedly moody and introverted and not interested in engaging with Redford, who tried to talk to him about the characters and the script, calling him “a self-absorbed, freewheeling Actors Studio anarchist”.
Unsurprisingly, Redford was not keen on the end result at all, calling it “A fucked movie” when speaking to Rolling Stone magazine some years later. But nevertheless, he thought it had some redeeming features that would have shone through under a different director.
He said: “I thought the underlying sentiment was an expression of what was truly at risk in the sixties fallout: loss of faith. It was about the condition that makes losers. Furie didn’t get that”.
Adding, “There were so many moments when he told me to do it one way, and I just couldn’t. I knew the truth of these people, but he couldn’t go there.”
