Redford a natural in making movies that prick America's conscience

For Robert Redford, it's about the joy."The joy of trying to make something artistically interesting or pleasurable, entertaining, and still look at issues of substance that have to do with our lives," Redford mused.Hollywood icon. Founder of the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival. Oscar-winning director. Producer. Writer. Activist.Redford has accomplished quite a lot in his filmmaking career. Now 71 (that can't be!), the movie star of such classics as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Way We Were" and "The Natural" has hardly slowed down. We sat together for a chat in Chicago's Four Seasons Hotel where he had come to push his newest movie, "Lions for Lambs," which opens Friday at area theaters.The movie has three disjunctive story lines: a college professor (Redford) has a conference with a promising student; a veteran reporter (Meryl Streep) conducts an interview with a rising U.S. senator (Tom Cruise); and two U.S. servicemen fight for their lives, surrounded by the enemy in Afghanistan."I'd never seen that before," Redford said, "to see a narrative line that had to be rolled into three things occurring simultaneously. I mean, you've got two talking heads in two offices. That's usually death in a film. The challenge is, can you make what happens in these offices -- the words going between people -- a duel? A duel with a senator? A duel with a professor? If you make those duels active enough, using those issues as fodder, maybe that could be its own form of action.""Lions for Lambs," written by Michael Matthew Carnahan, also features an artificially induced countdown. The conversations must take place within a single hour."Here, for me the way to guarantee a certain energy and velocity, was to have everything be taking place within an hour," Redford said. "So that, basically -- and this sounds probably too cerebral -- by having this film have this pace and energy, we've only got so long, so let's get to the point! We've only got so long, so don't waste our time! We've only got so long, or we're going to die."I leaned in toward Redford and gave him a quizzical look."Don't you see in all these categories time's running out?" the filmmaker asked. "If we don't change our political methodology for getting people elected, we're going to get the same thing we've got now, only dressed up in a different suit. That's what that character (Cruise's senator) represents."Many years ago, a journalist asked Redford if movies could change a county's politics. The filmmaker said no, but they might be able to change its fashions. This brought up "The Candidate," Michael Ritchie's 1972 drama in which Redford played a pretty-boy candidate for the U.S. Senate in California. The movie posed the question, "How do we elect people in our country?" The film answered, "By cosmetics -- not by substance.""I thought back then in 1971, as elections were coming around in '72, that #8230; by putting that movie out there and me being approximately the same age as that generation, we would galvanize people. Yeah, let's make sure that we don't elect by cosmetics! Then we have people like Dan Quayle. It didn't change a thing."Redford sat back on the couch, but his famous blue eyes had just caught fire."With the naivete that I had, I thought that maybe a film could change something, that people wouldn't allow cosmetics to play a role," he said, almost sounding dejected. "But it didn't change a thing."Redford, a California native, grew up as a gifted athlete, but not a stellar student. He admitted, "My mind was always out the window."Then, his interest in telling stories on film came to him in a most unusual form: the infamous Iowa tests given to students in America at the time. One part of those tests proved to be an epiphany for young Redford."One of the tests was this picture and the text said, 'What's wrong with this picture?'," the filmmaker said. "Everything seemed perfect. You had to figure out what was wrong with it. It was a picture of woman standing with a broom on a porch talking to a man next to a white picket fence. Everything was neat and clean. Ah! She's only got one sock on."Somehow that went into my brain about my country. What's wrong with this picture? Is there a real story underneath the story that you're getting? That motivated me to have that be the substance of a lot films that I would make."Redford has directed the Oscar-winning "Ordinary People" (shot right here in Chicagoland), "The Milagro Beanfield War," "A River Runs Through It," "Quiz Show," "The Horse Whisperer," the ill-begotten Will Smith vehicle "The Legend of Bagger Vance" and now "Lions for Lambs.""Time is running out," Redford said flatly. "If something doesn't happen, if people don't get involved, that's the film. I've never made films that deliver the answers. Just dramatize the situations that are already out there. I prefer the question to be the dramatic punch, rather than an answer."Back in 1979, I attended a press conference in Lake County with Redford while he was directing "Ordinary People." He was asked if he made "message movies." He said, "No, I make movies to entertain." Does he still believe that?"If there's a message there, it's for you to find," the Hollywood icon replied. "If you want to send a message, go to Western Union. For me, you've got to entertain. What's always attracted me was the idea of entertaining and informing at the same time. Could you do both without going too far in one direction?"