Sundance's Redford moving on from film fest

By Glenn Lovell
Knight Ridder News Service

REDFORD

This is his way of announcing that his tenure as founder and frontman of the Sundance Film Festival is nearing an end. And he's about to recommit to his day job: acting and directing.

"I never really intended 23 years ago to find myself that pulled over into Sundance," explains Redford, 66, who introduced the festival's opening film, the surfing documentary "Riding Waves," Thursday in Park City, Utah. "I had the idea and I designed it, but I thought I could transfer it to somebody else to implement."

For a lot of reasons that didn't happen, and his career as an actor ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Sting") and Oscar-winning director ("Ordinary People") suffered. "It all turned out to be far more difficult than I ever imagined," he said.

But now Sundance is "firmly on its own feet," Redford reports, and its mission — to support independent films and filmmakers and to give audiences alternatives to glossy, studio-produced movies — isn't in danger of being subverted. So he can return to that long-

delayed sequel to "The Candidate" (1972) and other pet projects, such as a western called "The Outrider" and an adaptation of Neil Gordon's "The Company You Keep," about going underground in the radical '60s.

As proof of his new focus, Redford is appearing on screen at the festival for the first time in its 17-year history (the Sundance Institute was founded in 1981, the festival six years later). He plays a kidnapped businessman in "The Clearing," co-starring Helen Mirren and Willem Dafoe. "It's a psychological thriller about a complacent family whose life is disrupted when this very harsh thing happens," Redford explains. "As the situation kicks into high gear, we sit back and watch how various people deal with it."

A friend indie

According to festival director Geoffrey Gilmore, Redford had to be talked into premiering "The Clearing" at Sundance. "We argued and struggled a bit over it — Bob didn't think it was appropriate" to showcase one of his own movies, says Gilmore. "I told him this was a great way of answering his critics, who say he runs an indie festival but doesn't act in indie films. This time he did."

Actually, Redford is involved in three other festival entries. He is executive producer of "The Motorcycle Diaries," about the young Che Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal), and, via the institute's summer labs, he helped shepherd Chris Eyre's "Edge of America" (with James McDaniel as a black basketball coach on an Indian reservation) and Jacob Kornbluth's "The Best Thief in the World" (a slice-of-lifer about a city kid testing the limits).

"Of all the festivals I've been involved in," Redford says, "I think this is going to be the most difficult in terms of the sheer weight of what's going on."

This year's event — budgeted at $5 million and including new titles by Bernardo Bertolucci, Brad Anderson and Lars von Trier — is expected to attract 40,000 cineasts, many of whom are exhibitors, journalists and boutique distributors shopping for the next "Blair Witch Project," which was snatched up at a midnight screening in 1999.

"In the beginning, no one came," Redford recalls, laughing. "It was just the filmmakers. I was standing on the street, pulling people into the theaters. No press. No agents. No celebrities. Once we became a market, a place to pick up films, everything changed: The whole thing sort of ballooned up into this bloated thing."

Redford says the rap against the fest — that it's become more about selling than seeing films — is shortsighted. He dismisses author Peter Biskind's new Sundance exposé, "Down & Dirty Pictures," as "sort of a joke. There will always be people trying to go after Sundance. I never spoke to Biskind, never met him.

"People come to the festival and they see agents on cell phones," Redford adds, "stepping in and out of screenings to make deals, and they go, 'Well, Sundance is losing its way.' Not if you look at the heart of the festival. That's the same: We still program for diversity and uniqueness of voice. We always have a wide range of very, very extreme films. Some of which are not going to be to everybody's liking."

Themes parked

Once again there's an emphasis on families in crisis, civil-rights and violations around the globe. Once again, such indie darlings as Matt Dillon, Isabella Rossellini, Billy Bob Thornton and Patricia Arquette are front and center in offbeat thrillers and comedies. Once again the documentaries — including "Super Size Me," about a guy who survived for a month on nothing but McDonald's burgers — are treated with a reverence usually reserved for prestige studio dramas.

But there is one key difference this year.

"This is the first batch of films conceived and released post-Sept. 11," Redford points out. "They're about moral ambivalence, insecurity, not knowing where to go. They're about people in search of something but not sure what. We don't know what's coming. And this is reflected in this new batch of films."

Last year's audience/industry favorites included several now on the fast track for Oscar nominations: "The Cooler," "In America," "Whale Rider," "Capturing the Friedmans," "thirteen," "The Station Agent."

But ask Redford about this year's buzz and he'll wave you off.

"That's the beauty of this festival: It's completely unpredictable until it's over. What's the buzz? You'll know when it's over. There's no such thing as early buzz. That's led more people astray. People have rushed into Sundance because of 'the buzz' and made the worst possible deals on pictures that never went anywhere."