Why I hate Robert Redford

It’s not enough he was a great looking guy, a huge movie star, and an Oscar-winning director? Now he also has to take credit for writing the screenplay of ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN?

Fuck him.

The screenplay is credited to William Goldman. For those not familiar, he wrote BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID (the film that actually launched Redford’s starring career), THE PRINCESS BRIDE, MARATHON MAN, and many others. He’s also written a ton of brilliant books, both fiction and non-fiction. His book about the movie industry, ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE is still the definitive read on the subject. Suffice it to say, the man is a GIANT. He’s my screenwriting idol.

Goldman took on the near impossible task of taking the book of ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN with its complicated cast of players, and tangled-web of deceits and cover ups and somehow turned it into a cohesive dramatic structure that fit within the time limits of a movie. And he miraculously made it compelling even when everyone in the world already knew the ending. 

He did draft after draft, before and during the filming. Ultimately he won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay. And yet he still wishes he hadn’t bothered with this assignment. To win an Oscar and still regret taking the project speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Redford, in his biography and a Vanity Fair article claims that HE along with director Alan J. Pakula booked a room in a hotel and spent a month rewriting Goldman’s “disastrous” screenplay.

Fuck him.

Journalist Richard Stayton, in an article for Written By Magazine (put out by the WGA), investigated this claim. He managed to secure practically every draft. It was an exhaustive process. Ultimately, he concludes that William Goldman, not Robert Redford wrote ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN. To quote him:

Writers write, and actors – for the most part – speak their lines. After reading Goldman’s script, that distinction seems both clear and indisputable.

So again, fuck you, Robert Redford.

Anyone in a position of power who uses it to take credit for someone else's work is a scumbag in my book. That Redford would deny credit to a man who did a near-impossible job of turning a long complex piece of nonfiction into a riveting motion picture (not to mention that this man was a key figure in your career) is reprehensible. Is your ego that big? Is your need for praise that great? Is your disregard for others that enormous?

This is why I hate him. And this is why I say once more, but in capital letters this time:

FUCK YOU, ROBERT REDFORD.

from By Ken Levine