How Robert Redford’s Sundance Legacy Saved Hollywood

They say don’t meet your heroes but we can make an exception, apparently, for Robert Redford.

He came by TheWrap’s studio at Sundance for an interview years ago. We were still really small and scrappy but you’d never have known it by his attitude – engaged and respectful, we might as well have been one of the legacy heavy-hitters. Craggy of face, tousled of hair and twinkly of eye – my God, the guy never lost it. And he then spoke across a range of topics: his new film, diversity in filmmaking, the state of indie film, before sailing along to the next recipient of his fairy dust.

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There will be many tributes and accolades to the man who indelibly embodied the rogueish Sundance kid in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” the dogged Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men,” the bearlike mountain man of “Jeremiah Johnson” as well as the smooth Jay Gatsby in “The Great Gatsby,” to name just a few. But Robert Redford was a monumental figure in American cinema far beyond his prowess as an actor and Oscar-winning skill as a director.

Redford determined early on to use his movie star status for causes more important than celebrity, and independent film is the most significant beneficiary of that.

Small and scrappy was the vibe he created up in the mountains of Park City, Utah, at Sundance, the festival he founded in 1978 (the iconic name was introduced in 1991) and it practically invented the category of independent film, which took off in the 1990s. Along with the nonprofit institute and talent laboratory of the same name, Sundance has by now nurtured two generations-and-counting of film talent, including Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Chloé Zhao and Ryan Coogler, among countless others.

The filmmakers who got their first break at Sundance (and I’ve been privileged to be present for the cultural sonic boom when a new talent premiered there, from “Beasts of the Southern Wild” to “Donny Darko” to “Didi,” to name a few) owe it to Redford. And so do all of us lovers of film.

“Bob,” as everyone at Sundance called him, would walk around the festival every January like a proud dad, greeting regulars and fans alike, doing what he loved – building a community for independent film, the creative pipeline that feeds Hollywood. The out of the box creativity that Sundance nurtures drives the vitality of the Hollywood movie pipeline, whether that’s Coogler moving on from the bare bones budget of “Fruitvale Station” to “Black Panther” and “Sinners,” or Zhao, whose “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” premiered at Sundance in 2015, moving on to her Oscar-winning “Nomadland” or this year’s “Hamnet.”

“That’s what started Sundance,” he told me in an interview in 2015. “We wanted to keep alive not only the opportunity for new filmmakers to have a place to develop, but also keep pushing that (diversity), because that’s the world of independence. Diversity is basically a description of independence. Diversity is what moves the ball for me. Give people a chance who have different points of view, let the audience decide whether they like it or not.”

Redford knew enough to support but not dominate. To inspire, not lecture. He was as in awe of the young talent at his festival as everyone else. It is a sad reality that Redford’s passing coincides with struggles at his beloved festival, and the general decline of independent film as a category.

Sundance will end its run in Park City in January 2026, moving to Boulder after several years of struggles with cost, crowding and lack of sponsors.

But that’s not mostly the fault of the festival, which suffers from a broader crisis in the business model that underpins independent film. The model used to be low-budget films made on a credit card, sold for millions of dollars to arthouse distributors, and often enough they would become huge hits (“Garden State,” “Hustle & Flow”) and a talent pipeline for Hollywood’s major studios.

Today there are plenty of wealthy people willing to fund scrappy movies, but not enough distributors willing to buy and distribute them. The hits out of Sundance, such as the crowd-pleasing “CODA,” which won Best Picture at the Oscars, are enough to keep filmmakers hoping, but not enough to sustain a business. Streamers are generally making their own movies and have shut off the spigot that once saw bidding wars in the halls of the Eccles Theater in Park City.

Redford shepherded this legacy for the better part of 50 years, but it remains to be seen how the coming years will play out with his passing.

One thing’s for sure: His death leaves a movie star-sized hole in our cultural universe, and an even bigger question mark for the future of independent film.

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