Many, many personal recollection sagas — affectionate, anecdotal, bittersweet — have been posted since the sudden, saddening death of Robert Redford last Monday (9.15).
Taken together they’ve all conveyed the same basic thing, which is that dealing with Redford in this or that capacity was spirit-enhancing…that their professional brush or extended relationship with this classy, formidable, gentle-mannered movie star, director and Sundance founder had rubbed off in a good way…that they were happy and proud to have worked or at least chatted with this Mount Rushmore-like fellow. He had done something for or to them on some level, and they were grateful.
Me too. I ran into Redford socially and/or spoke with him six or seven times over the decades, and I always felt heartened by these brief transactions. An All Is Lost convo in Cannes, and four months later at the Telluride picnic. I did a brief phoner with him in the late ’90s for…I forget, Entertainment Weekly or the L.A. Times Syndicate. In the summer of ’80 I wrote him an apology letter about having co-created a renegade Penthouse “interview” based on a 90-minute encounter with Redford at Yale University’s Battell Chapel, when he was first talking about Ordinary People. Redford was ruffled by this but wrote me back, saying he respected my contrition.
And there were casual party encounters in Park City, of course, and a couple of Yarrow Hotel discussions (I noticed during one of these, sometime in the early aughts, that the rim of Redford’s eyes were bloodshot, which told me he’d had some minor work done) plus those little press conferences that he used to sit for at the Sundance resort…annual, small-scale press gatherings that happened on Saturday mornings, and for which he was always late.
The Redford moment that stands out happened at the end of one of those Saturday morning q & a sessions, and it involved, however briefly or insignificantly, Redford saying “thanks” for my having done something…hardly anything but a little teeny-weeny something…for him. Because I’d passed along the sad, shocking news about the death of hotshot producer Don Simpson, whom I’d spoken to many times over the years and genuinely liked.
He and Redford were hardly two peas in a pod, but they were roughly similar in age, knew the same players, tended to process events and trends in thoughtful, metaphorical terms, etc.
Simpson was found dead at his Bel Air home on the afternoon of Friday, 1.20. Calling from my Park City rental I had done a long phoner that night with director-screenwriter James Toback, who had spoken with the 52-year-old Simpson only hours before he passed.
I took the press bus out to the Sundance resort (near Heber City) at around 9 am the next morning, and the Redford press chat began around 10:30 am.
After it ended but before Redford, 59, had gotten up to leave the microphone-laden table, I went up and asked, “Did you know Don Simpson, Bob?” I figured he’d heard the half-day-old news, but he hadn’t. Plus he’d either missed or ignored my using the past tense, and so he answered by saying he vaguely knew Simpson but had never discussed anything substantive with the guy, much less collaborated with him.
“Are you writing an article about Don?” Redford asked. “He’s dead,” I replied. Redford was slightly jarred: “He’s dead?” HE: “They found him in his bathroom yesterday. Sorry, I thought you might have heard.” Redford: “I didn’t know.” HE: “Sorry. It’s sad and shocking. I knew him, liked him.” Redford looked down, took a breath, shook it off and said “thanks…thanks for telling me.” HE: “Sure. See ya.”
