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Francis Ford Coppola shared a chaotic but touching memory from the early years of his career to Robert Redford, who died on Tuesday at the age of 89.
Coppola helped the script of “The Way We Were”
Coppola posted photos of Redford from the film “War Hunt” (1962) and “The Great Gatsby” (1974) on Instagram. In the caption, he remembered his time as a production assistant at Sanders Bros., while studying film at the University of California in Los Angeles. At that time he got the task of picking up Redford, who was just giving his film debut in “War Hunt”. Coppola drove up with his lambretta, Redford jumped up, and the two went on the curvy path from Malibu to Topanga Canyon, where was shot. But on a steep curve, an oncoming car Coppola forced to dodge – both landed in the field. Redford, “an easy -going guy”, knocked the dust off and the journey continued.
In retrospect for the near-accident, Coppola said: “From that moment on, Robert Redford was an extremely friendly and spacious person for me.” The director of “The Godfather” also said that Redford asked him to write down a script for the Oscar-winning film “The Way We Were” with Barbra Streisand. “The best scene I contributed was the one in which Barbra’s figure Redford calls and says she calls her ‘best friend’ to tell him how her heart breaks – and he was her best friend,” says Coppola.
Coppola also wrote with “The Great Gatsby”
Coppola added that Redford also asked him to write down the Great Gatsby on the script for Jack Clayton’s remedy – just two weeks before the godfather appeared. “I spent my whole life admired Robert Redford – his class, his talent, his brilliance,” wrote Coppola. “The great work he did as a director. The incredible concentration in his one-man master’s work ‘All is Lost’ … So many great films and performance … But above all: Robert Redford was an intelligent, sincere and consistently good person. We all lost a really big one!”
Coppola is thus joining the flood, which was published in his house in Utah after Redford’s death on Tuesday morning. In her own tribute, Barbra Streisand said that the collaboration with Redford at “The Way We Were” was “exciting, intensive and pure joy”. “Bob was charismatic, intelligent, intense, always interesting – and one of the best actors at all,” said Streisand.