Robert Redford looked directly at me and held my gaze, his blue eyes penetrating mine. He turned to me with all the attention a man can give a woman, and as he spoke, I could not hear a word he was saying.
“Robert Redford is speaking to you!!” yelled a voice from somewhere in my brain. “Directly to you! Robert Redford is making eye contact with you!!”
Though I tried to shut it out, I failed entirely. When Redford finished, I grabbed the hand of the man sitting next to me, the man who brought me to see this movie star — my husband, David. He too looked shell-shocked.
We had come to the Brooklyn Academy of Music back in 2009 to see a screening of “All The Presidents’ Men,” which was being shown as part of a Robert Redford retrospective. Redford not only starred in the movie but was responsible for bringing it to the screen. The promised post-screening panel discussion with Redford, and Watergate reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, was hard for David and me to resist.
We were “Watergate babies.” When Republican operatives broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel, we were preadolescents. We both grew up in families where the TV news played nightly in the background and The New York Times spread daily over the kitchen table. We matured with a consciousness of the power of the press. When Richard Nixon resigned, I stood transfixed before the TV as he exited the White House, aware of the role the press played in his departure. I began to imagine that someday I would uncover political corruption just the way Woodward and Bernstein did at The Washington Post. David’s psyche was equally marked; we met when we were newspaper reporters at a medium-sized daily newspaper, just about a decade after Nixon resigned.
We fell in love in the newsroom. Between covering local zoning boards, we zoned in on our common passions, sharing long conversations, leisurely walks, and Sunday mornings with the newspaper. We experienced a newsroom romance in the midst of our romance with the newsroom.
We eventually married, but our professional lives soon detoured from daily journalism. David ran a business, and I became a freelance writer covering not politics, but health and human-interest stories. Still, seeing our journalistic heroes alongside one of the most handsome and inspiring actors in American film excited us the way a Red Sox World Series excites Bostonians. And bonus — the lecture coincided with our wedding anniversary. Geeks? I guess.
We sat in the third row in a 250-person auditorium. It was intimate, and I school-girlishly anticipated seeing Woodward and Bernstein and, well, being in the same room with Redford. I mean, who wouldn’t? I was not only a Watergate baby, but a Redford baby, too. I had gone weak in the knees while watching him in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting.” His blond hair begged to be gently brushed aside (just the way Barbra Streisand did it in “The Way We Were”). His eyes seemed bluer than any other thing in nature, and his smile brilliantly underlined his whole face. But I was never a girl who fell on looks alone; Redford sealed the deal when he made “All the President’s Men.” Good looks and a serious intellect? Be still, my heart.
Like the passing of many of a generation’s standouts, the announcement of his death felt like a gut punch. But Redford was more than just a good-looking actor who brought joy through his work. His activism and bold artistic decisions changed society. His death feels like it coincides with the decline of our country. As Jane Fonda said, “He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.” Never was that more evident than at the Brooklyn Academy of Music all those years ago.
After watching the film, I raised my hand to ask Bernstein a question during the Q and A. He answered me. Then Woodward chimed in. And then Redford turned toward me. That’s when the screaming inside my head began. I couldn’t believe that this famous man cared enough to listen to me and was thoughtful enough to answer my query, which had to do with whether journalists would ever again be able to influence politics as Woodward and Bernstein had. Too bad I didn’t hear a word. And then, just like that, it was over.
Now the Redford era is over, too, and like so many, I feel bereft. Not only has the world lost a handsome, serious actor, but it has lost a man of substance at a time when so little substance is evident anywhere. Redford fought for clean air and water. In the Sundance Institute, he created a place for independent filmmakers that changed the lives of many and brought previously unspoken-about issues and filmmakers to prominence. And he helped to inspire a journalist like me — using his star power to elevate the art of truth telling.
That Watergate baby still lives inside me, the one who believes the “mainstream media” is essential to democracy. The one who believes that there is such a thing as truth, and that the arts can be a powerful way to deliver it. Now, however, The Washington Post is a shadow of its former self, politicians lie at will, spin doctors distort their viewpoints and offer “alternative facts,” and people are being silenced by an authoritarian leader. Even if corruption is revealed beyond a reasonable doubt, politicians so fear retribution that they remain silent. Will there ever be another Watergate? It’s hard to imagine it.
Redford’s death makes me long for another America, an America where the bad guys could be outed, environmentalism was cool, and journalists could be heroes. His death, I guess you could say, makes me long for The Way We Were.
