Robert Redford isn’t the first name that comes to mind when one thinks Disney or Disney family films. He probably isn’t even on the list. But Disney is, in fact, a very important part of who Robert Redford is today and how he found his way to PETE’S DRAGON.
“I grew up on Disney as a child – “Fantasia”, “Bambi”, his animated films that had to do with animals. I grew up on that as a child. And then he left that and went into family dramas and so forth and I lost interest. When he moved away from the magic of the animal kingdom I lost interest. So it’s interesting to regain interest with Disney coming back to this because it brings animals back. As a child I loved films that were about things I hadn’t seen or heard or knew about it, but if it had to do with animals or if it had to do with nature I was automatically drawn to it. . .so to be able to see on films, nature, it was very exciting.” And exciting it is to see not only Redford, but Bryce Dallas Howard, Karl Urban, Oona Laurence and Oakes Fegley bring this story about a dragon named Elliot and a boy named Pete to life.
LISTEN: Robert Redford on the appeal of PETE’S DRAGON
In PETE’S DRAGON, Redford plays the lovable woodcarver Mr. Meacham who loves to tell stories about his time in the woods when he met a dragon that breathed fire! Although long a town myth, Meacham insists the dragon is real while his daughter Grace, a forest ranger, gently dismisses his tale as folly since she has never seen a dragon in all her years walking the forests. But what if Meacham’s stories are true?
Having done perhaps one other “family” film over the course of his legendary career, that being the voice of Ike the Horse in the 2006 live action “Charlotte’s Web”, it begs the question as to why PETE’S DRAGON? Redford readily admits he “would love to do a musical. Anything I haven’t done before. You keep moving, you keep trying new things. That keeps you active.” Expounding further, Redford notes that “This was different enough from what I had done, and particularly what I had done before and what came after, the two films that I did after this were very very different. I like the differences. I love the idea of being able to do this and have it be so different from anything I’ve done before.”
But for Robert Redford, he doesn’t just do something because it’s different. There needs to be that something special that clicks within him. With PETE’S DRAGON, one of the possibilities seemed to be the underlying themes of the environment and conservation, issues he has championed for decades. During the recent press day for the film, I had the chance to ask him just that: Was it the environmental and conservation sub-text or the idea of the magic of storytelling that drew him to PETE’S DRAGON?
“The magic. That’s what it was. When I was a kid I grew up with that word being paramount. That word was huge as a child growing up, ‘cause you were little and the world was bigger than you were. So anytime you saw that word, it meant that it was touching something larger than your life. So you loved that idea. The word ‘magic’ was very paramount when I was a kid and then you outgrow it. Pretty soon you’re living a life where there’s no magic any more and you kind of regret it. And you say, ‘Gee, that’s sad we kind of lost that.’ So the idea that I could play a part in a project that really has to do with the word magic and you keep that alive. . .of being in a project that could bring that back, I liked that.”
With that Robert Redford twinkle in his eye, he gets a bit wistful as he talks about storytelling and magic. “As you get older, the world get darker and things get more cynical around you and you miss that. . . Also, I have grandkids, and I was raised by being told a story, mostly to calm me down at night so I’d go to sleep. But then it meant a lot to me to be told a story. To me there was nothing greater than ‘Once Upon A Time.’ If I ever heard that ‘Once Upon A Time”, I’d go ‘Ahhh!’ So that meant a lot to me as a kid, so I decided to do the same for my children. And now the grandchildren.” One can hear the excitement build in his voice as he talks about his family tradition of storytelling as “I passed it to my kids and it made a big impression on them. . .so it stuck with them so they have done it with their kids. Now, since I don’t put their kids to bed, we just sit around and we talk and sometimes I’ll purposely create a fantasy situation just for us to talk about, just to keep that alive.”
A passionate activist for the world in which we live, Redford is more than aware of the state of affairs on a global level, and opines on the loss of “magic” in these conflict-filled times. “I think it’s sad that our culture has lost a lot of the magic in favor of getting too real about what’s going on. . .I think high technology has taken away a lot of the magic. It’s got a very sterile side to it, new technology. It makes me sad because I think the idea of the imagination, the idea of fantasy and magic is really wonderful. New technology begins to take all that away. . . If we want to create magic, we do it electronically or technologically. But there’s something too technical about that. Something’s missing. Magic.”
So what is this “magic” that Redford keeps referring to? “Magic is something beyond what you know and what you experience. It’s something else out there that promises something. You don’t know what it is, but at least it’s promising. But it’s beyond your reach, but it’s something positive. It’s something special.”
For Robert Redford and so many others, PETE’S DRAGON has that “magic”, that “something special.” “I have no idea how this movie will be received. But it feels to me that it’s coming at a very good time because things are very sad and shocking and depressing around us. We’re shocked by what happens almost every day. We can’t believe that human beings can be capable of this kind of action. So it gets darker and darker because there’s more of these stories. . . Just to have something like this that creates a kind of magic and it brings childhood back, and that brings magic back, I think is probably healthy. I don’t know what kind of difference it’s gonna make, but I was very happy to be in a movie like this at a time when it’s so dark. This puts a little bit of light into the picture, I hope.”
BONUS LISTEN: Robert Redford’s directorial eye and his approach to scripts and acting
