Redford's resolve - interview with Robert Redford - Interview

Interview, Jan, 1997 by Graham Fuller

Can Sundance help keep independent movies from going soft?

This month's Sundance Film Festival, the sixteenth, kicks off at a difficult time for independent movies. Theaters are glutted with mediocre indie product that's pushing often better films out into the wilderness; studio movies are invading traditional Indie exhibition slots; and the box-office-driven mainstream mentality is gradually infecting the raw, low-budget indie sensibility.

Since launching the Sundance festival, Robert Redford has heard a few thousand kvetches about its unofficial role as the world's broker of independent film. He also knows that you can't please all of the trade press all of the time. As at any other festival, good and bad films play at Sundance, but it remains a bastion of artistic Integrity no matter how many ten-percenters from L.A. prowl the snowy streets of Park City, Utah, during the last week of each January.

Redford gave us the lowdown on Sundance '97 over the phone from his Wildwood production office in L.A., where he is gearing up to direct his next project, The Horse Whisperer.

GRAHAM FULLER: The hoopla surrounding Independent film has led to Hollywood buzzing around it like bees around honey. As a result, you can see it becoming diluted. After the 1995 Sundance festival, however, I believe you indicated to your director of programming, Geoff Gilmore, that you wanted to see a return to that original gritty Independent spirit.

ROBERT REDFORD: Yes, I did. I'd gone to the theater one night during the '95 festival to see a few films - including Shallow Grave and The Basketball Diaries - and I could barely eat for twenty-four hours afterward because they were so loaded with violence. I remember thinking, Uh-oh, somebody's got too keen an eye focused on what it is that works formula-wise in the mainstream. There are too many films here that have token violence that's appealing to the commerciality of the marketplace. That's when I said, "Let's be aggressive about finding edgier, more experimental, riskier films that don't depend on anything formulaic whatsoever."

GF: Did you remind the programmers of that this time round?

RR: No, because I thought the festival was very strong last year. And I would say you're going to find more thoughtful, cerebral films at Sundance this time, films that are quite a bit different than what's been there before.

GF: Has it been a good year for submissions?

RR: Last year we had around eight-hundred features to go through - some two-hundred documentaries and six-hundred dramatic features - and we could only play a hundred and ten. We're looking at a 20 percent increase on that this year. It's kind of a tough spot to be in because you simply can't play everything.

Although there's an expansion of product - and quality - there's no commensurate increase in avenues for theatrical release in the marketplace in general. Basically, there needs to be more theaters. That's the chief problem for independent film right now, and it keeps getting camouflaged by all the fashionable attention. It actually makes me nervous because, like fashion, it will exhaust itself, and independent film will become yesterday's news. That would he unfortunate, because it's vital to the industry.

GF: Are you letting the festival get too big?

RR: I have absolutely no plans to extend this festival. I'd rather close it, quite frankly, and let someone else start a festival. Of course, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't expand. People say, "Why don't you play more films?" We even have filmmakers trying to copy us on our own turf. In the last two years there's been a festival [Slamdance] that's tried to attach itself to us in a parasitical way and use the fact that we couldn't play all the films that had been submitted. They actually used that as a negative to bring more people to their cause, although it didn't really work. The fact is, someone will always say there's not enough of this or not enough of that. And then someone else will say, "You're getting too big, and you're losing the hardcore edge you had when you started." If you look at the history of the festival, we got criticism in the early days for playing films up in Park City that no one would ever see, because they were sweet, soft, go-away films. But then the films began to emerge on their own and dictate their own following, and the next thing we heard was that we were getting too commercial.

GF: Do you think the festival has remained fluid?

RR: I do. One year black filmmakers emerged, then there was a rash of young filmmakers in their twenties. Last year women filmmakers were particularly strong. What I've always liked about the festival is that it's eclectic in nature: No two years are identical.

GF: Do you think it's dangerous for corporate-owned producer/distributors - the Miramaxes and New Lines - to be so invested in independent film?

RR: It certainly presents a hazard. Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the end. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off. Entertainment has pervaded every system of information in our culture, and along with it comes the promise of money. So it's hard for artists not to keep half an eye on what works commercially as they go about realizing their visions. As a young filmmaker, you've got to deliver, and you've got to deliver fast these days; that wasn't the case twenty years ago.