Robert Redford was not subtle about his distaste for Hollywood.
He loathed awards season, the annual spree of self-congratulation and glittery excess that starts in August and culminates with the Academy Awards in March. His face would frost over if you asked what he thought about the mindless sequels and remakes churned out by the film industry. He lived in the mountains of Utah, where he died on Tuesday, eschewing the air-kiss culture of fashionable Los Angeles neighborhoods.
“He didn’t want to be where elite breeds eliteness,” said John Cooper, who for 32 years worked at Mr. Redford’s Sundance Film Festival, most recently as director.
The feelings were not mutual.
Hollywood tends to have very little tolerance for criticism, whether it is from people outside the industry or at the center of it. But it would be difficult to find anyone in Hollywood who resented Mr. Redford for his stinging assessments, or his decision to spend most of his time in Utah.
To put it simply, the movie capital adored him.
“The amount of gratitude that the industry has for what Bob built and sustained and championed is really without peer,” said Bill Kramer, chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, referring to the Sundance festival and its related workshops. “There is nothing but love.”
Mr. Redford was revered in part because he said out loud what many Hollywood figures think privately but are too afraid for their jobs to speak openly. That includes some of the powerful executives who work at studios putting sequel upon sequel into production. They don’t make those movies because they are fulfilled by them; they make them to sell tickets.
Hollywood is mostly run by people whose love of movies was formed in the 1970s and 1980s, when Mr. Redford was using his celebrity to push through seminal political thrillers like “All the President’s Men,” difficult dramas like “Ordinary People” and commentaries on societal issues like “The Milagro Beanfield War.” These are the kinds of films that they would like to make if only they could.
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The post Robert Redford Didn’t Love Hollywood, Yet Hollywood Loved Him appeared first on New York Times.
