53rd Academy Awards

Actors as directors (Robert Redford)

Redford on the business of establishing Sundance https://hbr.org/2002/05/turning-an-industry-inside-out-a-conversation-with-robert-redford

I realized that there was something not there was something still unfulfilled and that was being able to tell the story completely my way and I had a very strong idea about stories I wanted to tell about the America that I grew up in and I was inclined to want to go into the what I would call The Gray Zone of American life that I grew up at a time during the second world war when I had family in the war um losing them in the war it was a very patriotic time paper drives and things like that and there was a lot of sloganeering that went on at that time like doesn't matter whether you win or lose but how you play the game and there was a lot of red white and blue slogan earring going on to keep keep things up for for the people and then I realized that yeah that was right that that was right we needed that at that time but but as I grew up and and got into the world I realized that there was an America there it was not quite what I would have been so propagandized and I I wanted to tell a story about what I would consider the gray area where things are more complicated where feelings are complicated things of that sort and so one of the things I had experienced in my life was the difference between those who had something and those who didn't cuz we didn't but but I would engage with people who did I would see the Difference and the idea that I I came across a lot of people that were so focused on things looking right their lawns had to be perfectly cut um but they were not willing to look to into feelings they were more complicated I wanted to tell that story about people that were afraid to look in inside themselves to uncover things that might be more unpleasant - Robert Redford in 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID3uB1aiPJQ&t=119s)

A 24 Oct 1979 Var article stated that director Robert Redford bought film rights before Judith Guest’s novel was published in 1976. A 27 Jul 1980 NYT interview reported that a staff member suggested he read the galleys of the unpublished novel. Redford described how he identified with teenager "Conrad Jarrett’s" sense of loneliness, of not having a voice, and his persona as an outsider. Production notes in AMPAS library files stated that Redford summed up the film as Jarrett’s effort at communicating “through the fog of the social structure in which he was raised.