View: letter from the editor, september - Robert Redford directs new film 'Quiz Show' - Editorial

Interview, Sept, 1994 by Ingrid Sischy

In the course of a life each of us finds ourself in many situations that at an earlier time we wouldn't have pictured. I experienced such a moment recently when I was heading out of the Interview offices on my way to Albert Watson's photography studio--where he was shooting Robert Redford for this month's cover story--and a colleague shoved a pile of socks into my hands. Suffice it to say, when I was growing up I never pictured myself shaking hands with Redford, let alone while handing him socks. Socks turned out to be more than an ice-breaker, though; they ended up as a kind of key into the being of Robert Redford.

When I noticed that he already had a pair on, I mock-grumbled, "So why did I have to bring these all the way?" The twinkle in his eyes that does its magic when he's up on the big screen isn't a matter of special effects; it comes with the guy. And it glittered like a shard of glass in the sun when I referred to his socks. He sat down on a big easy chair, a smile on that easy-on-the-eyes face, and lifting his feet into the air, asked, "What's wrong with this picture?" Stumped, I answered, "Nothing." He looked at me like maybe he wasn't going to tell. Then he laughed, "They don't match." And indeed one sock was a little whiter than the other. The minute he gave away his secret, something clicked.

Robert Redford is just like his socks were that day. Who he actually is, and what he has actually done, doesn't match any of the cliches of what one might expect Robert Redford--blond-haired, blue-eyed, longtime Hollywood legend--to be. He looks like the kind of presidential candidate the spinmen would dream up. But there's nothing spinlike or manufactured about his stands and his involvement in all sorts of humanistic and creative issues. Once one starts thinking about him, it becomes clear that he is one of the most outspoken figures out there. But it's almost as if we take him for granted. Well, sometimes what we're looking for is right in front of our eyes.

Redford is an actor in the biggest sense. Other people talk about supporting independent film. He acts on it, just like he acts on environmental issues, racial inequities, and other urgent matters. You get the feeling he's the way he is so he can face himself in the mirror, certainly not for self-promotional purposes. As an actor, he's been a part of so many potentially self-inflating successes, it's almost a shock that he's so un-self-involved. But actually, he has a lot to say about the subject of how one holds onto one's self in this world. That's clear from the projects he gets involved with and the movies he's directed. His latest film, Quiz Show, which opens September 14, pivots on two characters, both of whom lose their sense of integrity because of how they give in to the spotlight. The movie is also a not-beating-around-the-bush indictment of television lies, of its willingness to do anything to get those ratings, of corporate corruption, and of the abuse of others that often comes with lots of power and money. The bottom line of Quiz Show is that what the public was made to believe didn't match what was really happening.

Quiz Show is based on a true story that happened in the late '50s, when people tended to believe what they were seeing. Now, often, it's the opposite. Which is why Redford seemed so perfect for our cover. It's hard to believe how much one can in fact believe he's the real thing. He and his work embody all the issues we deal with every day--what to believe, who to believe, whether an image matches what's really going on, et cetera. And as Redford shows, mismatches are as telling as things that fit. The man who has the appearance of fulfilling the old formula of what an American movie star was supposed to look like is anything but a believer in status quos. Needless to say, he wore the two subtly different white socks when Watson took the pictures. You can't tell this from the images. It's like a secret buried in the background of what happened at the photo shoot. Digging it back up provides a way to explain why we wanted to put Robert Redford on the cover--and remembering the story of what happened led to a view of this issue as a whole. We hope the result of all the matching and mismatching that come up in every which way in these pages will be a feeling that we've provided you with the best look around at what's going on in music, television, fashion, the movies, sports, and, of course, the contemporary world.

We matched up two of the most exciting musicians to come down the pike, Liz Phair and Beck. These two, who seem similar in their unwillingness to do what's expected of them in order to keep on milking their success and whose differences turn out to be as intriguing as what they have in common, are giving real life to music because of their antiformulaic approaches. We asked Godfrey Cheshire to interview three filmmakers for our feature "Hollywood's New Hitmen." One of them, Quentin Tarantino, is already well-known as someone who's making movies that are riveting because they do both and don't match what you're expecting. Pulp Fiction, the latest film that he wrote and directed, has scenes that seem made for quotes like "You can't believe what you're seeing." And speaking of being mesmerized, there's an interview with the lawyer who's become better known on television than Perry Mason--Alan Dershowitz. Of course, he discusses the O. J. Simpson case, from his own inside perspective as part of the Robert Shapiro's defense team; and he also goes into the larger implications of all these trials that have grabbed the TV limelight, and with it, America. Again, what does match and what doesn't match comes up--this time in terms of our sense of justice. We serve up an interview with Conchita Martinez, the new women's tennis champ, whose win at Wimbledon was a match that went down in history and who'll be going for it again this month at the U.S. Open. And knowing how each of us likes to take flights of fancy, we have prepared a field guide to fashion today, matching up designers and what they do as if we were creating a bird guide; in it you'll find the essences of--and differences among--dozens of designers. So nestle into our pages, and take flight with us.