Creativity Regained

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To build such an organization, Redford had to learn about business, which he did the same way he learned everything else -- by observing, guessing, and revising. "I surprised myself early on by growing really fascinated with business," says Redford. "I had bought the land, and I had to make deals with banks, and I had to make payments, and I didn't know what I was doing. I had to learn fast.

"It became like an acting exercise," Redford continues. "I had to act like I was a normal human being. I had to act like I was more conservative than I was. I had to act like I knew about business. It was challenging and fun."

As a business, Sundance got off to a rocky start. The first thing Redford wanted to do was buy land -- lots of it. His plan was to start with a resort that would generate enough money to make the loan payments without compromising the area's natural beauty. But when he invited investors out to Provo, all they saw was real estate. Those partners bought the land with him but not the vision. Laughing, Redford speculates what they were thinking: "Redford's out of his mind -- he doesn't have a clue about business. As soon as we get into the deal, he'll learn real fast what the story is and he'll submit to real estate [development] right off the bat!" They were wrong. Even with payments looming, Redford refused to sell off subdivisions, and his partners eventually gave in.

If Redford's fellow investors had any doubts about his attitude toward compromise those doubts soon vanished. The partners wanted to build a restaurant next to the ski lift, the obvious spot since it would get the most traffic. "No, no, no," Redford recalls himself saying. "Let's give it its own space, let people wander and discover it." But there was a tree smack in the middle of Redford's proposed site. "Well, that's great!" Redford said. "We'll build it around the tree and call it the Tree Room."

His partners balked. "According to the formula, you'll lose 12 eating-places," they argued. "Then 12 fewer people will eat," Redford responded.

Soon after that, Redford's partners sold their interests, and Redford assumed the whole load in 1970. "They realized I was an impossible partner -- and they were right," he says. Redford and three friends built the restaurant by hand for $19,000. There were many problems. The original partners had made a bad deal on the land, "and we bought it from a sheepherder," says Redford. Even the tree died. But Redford planted another tree, and today the Tree Room is profitable and recognized as one of the finest restaurants in the state. "I just believed we could do something incorporating the environment that would make it more meaningful, and they believed you had to put the environment away from it and go straight to business," says Redford.

"You have to think not only revenue, but the quality of that revenue," Redford says. It is a philosophy he has never abandoned.

Under a brilliant blue sky the village of Sundance is framed by conservation land lush with ponderosa pine and quaking aspen. Once an isolated canyon and the sacred hunting and storytelling ground of the Ute tribe, the area remains serenely quiet. The loudest sound is rushing water, still high from the spring runoff from snow-spired Mount Timpanogos.

Sundance's rough-sawn post-and-beam structures include a rehearsal hall, screening room, outdoor amphitheater, general store, the Tree Room restaurant, the Owl Bar, and cottages. Intimate in scale, the buildings are connected by simple paths and footbridges. Their rich natural hues blend easily with the colors of the land.

Not to be confused with the famous Sundance Film Festival held each winter in nearby Park City, the programs of the Sundance Institute are housed chiefly in this village, among the first simple structures Redford built more than 20 years ago. The institute is the engine behind Redford's vision, a carefully tended, highly productive series of experimental labs and mentoring programs offered year-round for emerging and professional directors, screenwriters, playwrights, composers, and theater artists. Individually and together, they are making a stand against formulaic entertainment.

In movies today, "there's a kind of soullessness, a blandness, a homogenization of story, of character in order to attempt to please everyone," says actor-director Stanley Tucci, an institute alumni who spoke to me by phone while filming in New York. Redford puts it this way: "Film viewing is extremely impersonal now; it's almost hostile. You have 40 screens. You usher people in and out as quickly as possible to get in as many [shows] per day [as possible]. The real money is made in the concessions."

Hollywood, in other words, is a Raisinets economy. It was to combat that growing homogenization that Redford established the institute in 1981 as an incubator for raw talent and divergent visions. In the early years, the actor supported the institute out of his own personal wealth. Today 35% of its $15 million budget comes from the Sundance Film Festival and the rest derives from sponsors, grants, and private contributions.

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