Robert Redford’s Restless Solitude

Redford says it in a perfect southern accent and then talks about lying on the family-room carpet with Billy Carter watching a tape of the Nixon–Kennedy debates in preparation for Jimmy’s debates with Gerald Ford. (Carter woke him at 6 the next morning and asked him if he wanted Cheerios.) But he quickly slips over to the flip side of fame and relates skiing with his son Jamie and Vice President Walter Mondale and how oppressive it was with all the Secret Service.

Then Redford sees a familiar face. A man with long, streaked blond hair and a cowboy squint walks toward him with a rollaway bag.

“Am I interrupting?”

Redford flashes his famous smile at Brad Pitt. “Depends what you have in mind.”

“Nothing good.”

The only clip in the Telluride highlights from a film Redford directed was of Pitt being dragged downriver with a trout on the line in the Redford-directed ‘A River Runs Through It.’

“I was just looking at you when you were younger, fresher, cleaner.”

Pitt grimaces. “Younger, more respectable, and I smelled better.”

They talk about the scene for a moment. Then a sweet thing happens. Both men get more than a little sentimental. Pitt clears his throat.

“I get a little choked up in that bit of ‘A River Runs Through It,'” he says.

“You were great,” Redford tells him.

“Yeah, I get a little choked up.”

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