Robert Redford and Me

How about a break from health care reform in favor of a bit of levity?

Away from the silver screen, I've never laid eyes on Robert Redford. Not so much much as a nanosecond of a celebrity sighting from a hundred yards off. Even so, we've crossed virtual paths a couple of times.

Shortly after I moved to Austin in 1981, John Nichols set up a table at Scholz' Garten to sign copies of his newest novel, The Nirvana Blues. As an admirer of The Milagro Beanfield War and The Magic Journey, I wanted to meet Nichols even though -- in those grad school days -- I could ill afford the price of a hard copy novel. Nonetheless, I went down to the Garten and stood in the signing line.

The line moved slowly because Nichols actually spent time chatting with each patron. I thought about what I wanted to talk about, and by the time I reached the head of the line, I had it: I had seen something somewhere that a film company had taken out an option on Milagro. Was this true? Nichols smiled broadly. It was indeed true, and he had been talking to "Bob Redford" about the possibilities. He didn't know whether anything would come of it, but "Bob" was really interested. A film of Milagro was released seven years later, 1988, written in part by Nichols and directed -- yes -- by Bob Redford.

In the mid-90s at the behest of good friend Paul Newman, Redford became in investor in The Nation. Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation and a truly kind man, relished telling me the following story. It seems he had lunch one afternoon with Redford and Newman. Navasky -- who I don't think would mind me say looks nothing like that pair -- trailed them out of the restaurant when lunch was over. A woman grabbed his coat sleeve wanted to know something: "I know you're somebody. But who?"

Finally, while I can't claim to have heard this one first hand, I am reading the book from which this one comes. It's 1966 or '67, and Redford -- a young, up-and-coming actor who had already done acclaimed work on Broadway and had starred in Barefoot in the Park with Jane Fonda) approached director Mike Nichols about lead role in a film Nichols had begun called The Graduate. As Nichols tells the story,

We were friends, we had done [the stage version of] Barefoot. I was playing pool with him and I said, 'I'm really sad, but you can't do it. You can't play a loser. He said, 'Of course I can play a loser!' I said, 'You can't! Look at you! How many times have you ever struck out with a woman?' And he said, I swear to, 'What do you mean?' He didn't even understand the concept. To him it was like saying, "How many times have you been to a restaurant and not had a meal?' (from Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, Mark Harris, p. 237)

For the record, I have a meal when I go to a restaurant. As for how many times I've struck out, well, let's save that one for the record books...

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