Richard Linklater Praises Robert Redford's Indie Advocacy

Richard Linklater, writer/director of many a cinephile's favorite film, probably owes a good part of his career to Robert Redford, the founder of the Sundance Film Festival.

His first film ("that anyone would care to watch," as he says), Slacker, played at Sundance in 1991. The Sundance Film Festival was, especially in its early years, when small crowds would gather in ramshackle venues like the Park City Library, the antithesis of all things Hollywood, despite Redford's stardom.

Linklater had actually submitted a rough cut to Sundance the year before and was rejected. Linklater finished the cut, and eventually it made its way back to the fest. Now it's considered a Sundance classic.

"The way Sundance works, it became like a big coming-out party," he told Sundance.org. "That was where everybody saw it; to play there was a huge stamp of approval."

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Linklater, reflecting on Redford's legacy and the festival to The Hollywood Reporter, called Redford's efforts in indie film "revolutionary."

When I first got interested in movies in the early '80s, around this time, every year there were a couple indie films that got out by hook or crook, showing at some obscure film festival somewhere. That was just starting. But as Sundance grew, the industry grew around it, and suddenly there was this indie world parallel to the studios that had its own economics and was self-sustaining to some degree. [Sundance] really deserves a lot of credit, and I can’t think of any other person who was more influential on creating this kind of indie world.

People complained about the market aspects, saying, “It’s all sellout!” But that was just a very lively economy buzzing along. People started complaining about it from about 1989 on, saying, “Oh, there’s agents here, now. There’s managers talking about money.” But what it was was a pretty healthy world of indie film.

So, bless him. I don’t know if he set out to do that, but that was certainly the result. He was just following his impulse to help people.

Many independent filmmakers received their big break at Sundance, including Kevin Smith (who points to Slacker as a formative film), Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Field, David O. Russell, Steve James, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, Darren Aronofsky, James Wan, Damien Chazelle, Lee Isaac Chung, Jane Schoenbrun, and Jim Jarmusch.

If not for Redford and Sundance, chances are the filmmaking landscape would look very different today.

It all started with Redford's vision. "Risk...can be the catalyst that propels you forward."

Be sure to check out Linklater's full conversation with The Hollywood Reporter for more.