Word: bernstein
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Redford bought the movie rights for $450,000. He began work by affixing himself to the Post city room, particularly to Woodward and Bernstein. "I fell in love with the Post," he says. "I felt these people really did lead a different life. I saw all the leads that Bob and Carl couldn't go with. It was such fat, juicy stuff." He won the confidence of Bradlee and most of the paper's other executives, with the exception of Publisher Katharine Graham, who remained wary of the whole project...
...film that made Redford a superstar, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. His work was apparently both very good and very bad. He licked the narration problems posed by the book, carving a straight, simple dramatic line. But he also put heavy emphasis on crude news room humor. Bernstein was quoted as saying that the script read like a Henny Youngman jokebook. Another reporter retitled it Butch and Sundance Bring Down the Government, while Bradlee recalls it as "a caricature of us?tough-guy reporters...
Redford was also disappointed by the script. It lacked details and substance on the matter that had come to interest him most?the newsgathering process. At this point, Bernstein took a crack at rewriting the script, but that, too, proved a mistake. Bernstein apparently built up his image as the more swinging member of the Woodstein team. "Carl," Redford told him, "Errol Flynn is dead." Thereafter, as Bernstein puts it, "Redford got on the script in a concentrated way." He squeezed a couple more revisions out of the miffed Goldman, who was eager to get on with adapting his Marathon...
Goldman's script did serve one important function. It was good enough to use as a recruiting device for Dustin Hoffman, whom Redford wanted to play Bernstein. Says Hoffman: "I was amazed. Goldman had cracked the narrative problem. I had doubts until then that you could make a movie out of the book." He saw that problems remained, especially in the characterizations. But he signed on, provided that he could share director approval with Redford...
Even the painstaking habits that annoyed Redford on the set must seem worthwhile now. The director has patiently sought out the inner dynamics of the film's many short scenes involving characters who have no lasting relationship with Woodward and Bernstein or anyone else in the film. His ability to find drama in the way a cup of coffee is handled, in the briefest play of emotions across the troubled face of a reluctant informer, is remarkable and invaluable in preventing the film from being no more than a historical record, a documentary in the dullest sense of the term...