RIP Robert Redford

[Here me roar]

Babe

 

[TigerVols]

My late mother's birthday was this week; Robert Redford was her hall pass. I assume she's cashed it in now.

 

[DanOregon]

Couple of other notes: Was listening to the Maggie and Perloff radio show and the news broke and they started talking about him. A young producer didn't know who he was, then saw a picture and he said. "Oh THAT is a handsome man." And if you haven't seen "All is Lost" where there is no dialogue, worth a watch.

Plus, the patient zero of The Slow Clap. Brubaker.

 

[DanOregon]

Didn't realize he did Jeremiah Johnson in '73. Pretty crazy to be riding high at the box office and go off to the woods for six months and shoot that thing in Utah. Figured it was after The Sting, All The Presidents Men etc. But it was just after Butch and Sundance. Could have been a career killer.

 

[UNCGrad]

Goddam, another reason to love Charles Schulz. Need to pick up the bio on him that I have and get back into it.

Speaking of Roy Hobbs ...

 

[Inky_Wretch]

I guess I'd never thought about it, but Redford helped spark all the baseball movies we got in the 80s and 90s.

“The Natural” is not a kids movie, not like “Little Big League” or “The Sandlot.” It belongs more to the lineage of “Bull Durham” or “Field of Dreams,” “Eight Men Out” or “A League Of Their Own.” All of those baseball films – and more, like “Major League” – followed Redford’s lead, arriving at theaters in the decade after “The Natural”.

It took the success of “The Natural,” which grossed $48 million against a $28 million budget, to revive the genre. The care and precision of a royal Hollywood figure was critical.

“They kept being told baseball movies are box office poison,” said Rick Cerrone, the editor-in-chief of Baseball Digest, who served as a consultant for the film while working in the commissioner’s office.

“The last one that made any money was probably ‘Pride of the Yankees,’ and that was 40 years before. So the edict from Robert Redford was, ‘We’re not screwing around here. We’ve got to get this right.’ And it created the golden era of baseball movies.”

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6636356/2025/09/17/robert-redford-roy-hobbs-the-natural/

 

[Huggy]

Don't forget Quint!!

Ya, folla?

 

[micropolitan guy]

Tough year for the Knights, losing both Roy Hobbs and Bump Bailey.

His decision to film "The Natural" in Buffalo reverberates to this day.

https://archive.is/Jj3Ke

 

[Octave]

always liked this scene.

 

[garrow]

The Natural is one of the most beautiful looking movies ever, courtesy of cinematography by Zooey Deschanel's dad.

 

[Della9250]

Didn't realize he did Jeremiah Johnson in '73. Pretty crazy to be riding high at the box office and go off to the woods for six months and shoot that thing in Utah. Figured it was after The Sting, All The Presidents Men etc. But it was just after Butch and Sundance. Could have been a career killer.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

"The Natural" for deeply-steeped baseball historians (or those like me interested in its history) required a lot of suspense of disbelief, like "knocking the cover off the ball." (I guess that would have to be a ground rule double?)

But man, it set the predicate for a lot of baseball movies (serious and otherwise) to follow, like "Bull Durham" and "Major League." Mainly the interaction between an aging player and the superannuated manager.

 

[lakefront]

Twilight Zone episode "Nothing in the Dark"

 

[micropolitan guy]

The Natural is one of the most beautiful looking movies ever, courtesy of cinematography by Zooey Deschanel's dad.

I have a director's cut DVD of the movie with comments from the producers, director, Deschanel, Malumud's daughter, etc. Deschanel was especially proud of the scene where Hobbs opens his bat case and a soft light falls on Wonderboy; he likened it to King Arthur discovering Excalibur.

Also, they had a very limited time to shoot the scene with the Whammer at the train stop, because he wanted to get the lighting just right, the so-called "Golden Hour.". And in the end of that scene, the train that appears to be pulling away as it leaves the station is actually stationary, and he's pulling the camera back away from the train. That scene was filmed in LA because the light was bad at the South Dayton (NY) location.

Just fascinating stuff. He was nominated for an Oscar, but did not win. So were Glenn Close and Randy Newman, but they didn't win either.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

Always thought the movie was a bit heavy handed on the symbolism — Glenn Close in white, Barbara Hershey in black, Kim Basinger in between. And knocking the cover off the ball works a lot better on the book than it did in the film

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

Twilight Zone episode "Nothing in the Dark"
View attachment 20709

I saw that the other day, I swear I thought that was William Shatner in one of the early episodes.

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

The Great Gatsby.

 

[Here me roar]

I saw that the other day, I swear I thought that was William Shatner in one of the early episodes.

Young shatner was pretty but not that pretty. He was in two Twilight zones.

 

[micropolitan guy]

The Great Gatsby.

Sam Waterston didn't always have gray hair?

 

[da man]

Always thought the movie was a bit heavy handed on the symbolism — Glenn Close in white, Barbara Hershey in black, Kim Basinger in between. And knocking the cover off the ball works a lot better on the book than it did in the film

Not just in white but with a halo in the scene at the game in Chicago.