The simple scene Robert Redford couldn’t pull off more than once: “You son of a bitch”
Despite the fact that there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of fashion websites dedicated to men’s style, to be honest, none of them are needed. All anyone really needs to do is Google ‘How to dress like Robert Redford in All the President’s Men’ and there you go, job done, all the men of the world suddenly look brilliant.
Between about 1968 and 1976, rather like the Rolling Stones, Robert Redford was at the top of his game: impossibly cool, very sexy and massively talented. He appeared in a string of superb films belonging to completely different genres and excelled in all of them, from Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Paul Newman.
Ridiculously good looking, Redford was a cinematic heartthrob the world over, but backed it up with brilliance; he was nominated for an Oscar in 1973 for his performance in The Sting, the depression era heist movie that saw him opposite Paul Newman again, and when he decided to try his hand at directing in 1980 he won the Oscar for Best Director at the first time of asking for Ordinary People. Impressive.
In 1973 Redford teamed up with Barbra Streisand, who was already a huge star in her own right having won a Grammy with her debut album a decade earlier and made Emmy award winning TV solo specials. The movie was The Way we Were, directed by Sydney Pollack who would go on to win two Oscars for Out of Africa, also starring Redford.
A romantic drama, The Way we Were told the story of two lovers with totally opposite political opinions struggling to overcome their differences. The music for the film was written and recorded by Streisand, who would later win an Oscar for it, becoming one of the highest-selling soundtracks of all time.
The film itself was also a huge hit, but wasn’t without issues during filming. As Redford explained of filming one slow dance scene in his autobiography, “Yes, it was troublesome. I was dancing with her (Streisand), and I was in my place, doing just fine. But she wasn’t dancing; it was awkward. Then Sydney (Pollack) pulled me aside and whispered, ‘Come on, man, she’s uncomfortable.’ Apparently, she had a side she favoured, right or left. A discomfort about her nose from one or the other angle. Fine by me. I acknowledge that kind of thing, when it affects that actor’s confidence. I said, ‘Okay, whatever works.’”
After the first edit of the film, Pollack was upset by what he had made after conflicts with the film’s writer and immediately apologised before recutting it. It was felt that neither actor had performed to their abilities, and the script, which at one point had eleven different contributors, made little sense.
Redford was also apparently unable to do two takes of one scene in the same manner. “He could not do it,” said Pollack. “It made hell for me, and it made hell for the editor to match continuity. Over the years with Bob, I learned to make adjustments… Like not showing my anger when he showed up late, which is normal for him, dishing some bullshit excuse. I kept my anger in check until the scene was in the can, till the weekend, when I could say outright, ‘You son of a bitch’ without messing up his mind for the scenes he needed to play.”
It didn’t put Pollack off working with Redford again however, he directed him in a total of seven movies between 1966 and 1990, including the fantastic New Hollywood thriller Three Days of the Condor in 1975.
