The movie Robert Redford knew was doomed from the start: “It became very, very tense”
It’s impossible to succeed in Hollywood and enjoy a long career at the top of the mountain without having good instincts, whether it’s for better or worse, as Robert Redford discovered when he realised early on that one of his movies was destined for a world of hurt.
As an actor and filmmaker, he typically trusted his gut. Even though his friend Paul Newman was convinced that Ordinary People wasn’t a film worth making, Redford was adamant that it was perfect for his directorial debut, which ultimately won him the Academy Award for ‘Best Director’.
Then again, it was a fairly massive oversight on Redford’s part to question why Burt Bacharach’s ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ was being used in the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid soundtrack when the song sold millions of copies and won an Oscar, with the actor admitting he was wrong to cast doubt on its suitability.
Redford spent most of his career hovering around the upper echelons of the industry’s hierarchy, and nobody gets into that position without having a knack for knowing what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, 2007’s political drama Lions for Lambs fell firmly into the latter category.
The combination of Redford producing, directing, and playing the lead role opposite fellow heavyweights Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep should have at least guaranteed solid reviews and a decent return at the box office, only for the laboured and portentous story to see it fail on both fronts.
The filmmaker initially envisioned Denzel Washington as fast-rising senator Jasper Irving, but problems arose when he was replaced by another megastar, with Lions for Lambs serving as the first picture to be released under Cruise’s relaunched United Artists, which gave him plenty of sway. He even brought his own political advisors on board to help inform his performance, a power play that left Redford seething.
“I called him on it,” he revealed. “Saying, ‘Wait a second, Tom. This is not the way I want to do this, and certainly not with these people in my eyeline.” Redford was also crunched for time, with United Artists pushing for the film to arrive in cinemas less than 11 months after the first day of shooting.
“You roll with these things,” Redford admitted. “Of greater concern to me was the small budget and the short time frame, since our deal was to have the movie ready for a grand UA launch by Christmas 2007.” Timing was of the essence, which apparently wasn’t enough to stop production from slowing to a crawl, so much so that Streep was spotted being actively bored out of her mind on set.
A crew remember recalled that “it got to the point where we had to deploy cards with the lines written on them” to keep things moving, before a damning indictment of the living legend: “Meryl lost interest. She started playing with her BlackBerry. Bob freaked. It became very, very tense.”
From the first day, Redford knew he had limited funds, a short schedule, a locked-in release date, and Cruise’s muscle to contend with. As hard as he tried to scrub it, the writing was already on the wall for Lions for Lambs, which flopped in cinemas and was resoundingly panned.
