Most sports movies will try to convince you that it’s not about winning, it’s about how you play the game. Not DOWNHILL RACER (1969). In fact, one of the primary reasons Robert Redford struggled to get this film made was because no one had made a sports movie with a protagonist whose amorality and arrogance had no effect on his winning streak. He chose to center the narrative around downhill racing pretty much because baseball and football were already taken.

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Speaking about his long-time friend and mentor, Robert Redford told a crowd in New York City that he learned a great deal from the late Paul Newman, especially generosity. “Back then it was really about actors playing roles. It wasn’t until later that it became more about actors’ personalities,” Redford told a packed theater at Lincoln Center.

The crowd enthusiastically hung on Redford’s words. This was no doubt because of the star power of the great actor, director and Sundance Institute creator (particularly because the audience skewed toward his generation), but perhaps even more so because the crowd was packed with committed environmentalists. This was a special, intimate conversation between Redford, a longtime green leader, and veteran radio journalist Bob Edwards (formerly of NPR and now of Sirius radio), hosted by the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council (Watch video of NRDC head Frances Beinecke accepting a 2009 Heart of Green Award).

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Robert Redford, Marissa Tomei, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson and more read excerpts from Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States for the forthcoming documentary THE PEOPLE SPEAK.

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Celebrities, from the A list on down, are a dime a dozen at Sundance, where even nobodies (like me) walk around acting like they belong here—like they’re more important than that nobody walking in the opposite direction.

What’s truly rare at Sundance is someone who looks like they don’t belong. Like Howard Zinn.

The aged, V-necked author of the textbook corrective A People’s History of the United States, Zinn couldn’t have looked more out of place among the actors who took the ASCAP Music Café stage yesterday afternoon, one by one, to read from People’s primary-source companion, Voices of a People’s History of the United States. Among the readers were three freshly named Academy Award nominees—Josh Brolin, Marisa Tomei, and Melissa Leo—as well as Benjamin Bratt, Woody Harrelson, Robert Redford, and others. (Several of them read on the audio version of the book, and Zinn is holding similar readings elsewhere while being filmed for a documentary on the subject.)

“At first we were astounded [the actors] would come,” Zinn told the packed crowd. “Now we’re blase about it.”

Bratt went first, and read a graphic passage about the slaughter of Native Americans. His baritone was legitimately compelling, but something about it made me uncomfortable—all of these celebrities, all of these cameras, all of these craning necks. Yes, maybe the event was bringing attention to the forgotten or ignored horrors of American history. I can support that. But something about it seemed so self-serving, and so contrived.

I slipped out once Bratt finished. I’ve read Zinn’s work, and hearing Woody Harrelson read it to me wasn’t going to make these stories any more, or less, compelling than they already were. I suppose if you lived in a bubble in L.A. and never knew that the U.S., like all countries ever, built itself up by oppressing others, then maybe—if you didn’t space out, or spend the entire time staring at celebrities—you found it all very informative indeed.

SUNDANCE CHANNEL PARTY

There are myriad ways of judging whether a party is a success or not. How about these:

-It’s packed.

-Free Stella Artois (and then some).

-Robert Redford.

All three apply to the Sundance Channel’s 31 DAYS OF SUNDANCE party held yesterday afternoon at 350 Main. “This party has a long history,” said Laura Michalchyshyn, general manager of the Sundance Channel. “It’s been around since the inception of the festival and it’s one of the most popular parties because it’s attended by filmmakers. “Hey, filmmakers and free beer—you can’t beat that.”

I was excited to run into Evan Shapiro, the president of IFC TV and the Sundance Channel, so I could ask him something that had been nagging me for a while: When will his two channels start streaming movies online?

“Both websites have a tremendous amount of content online, most of it original to the website,” said Shapiro, but he added, “We, to date, don’t believe the television experience online is an optimal one.” I told him my (admittedly inexpert) belief that eventually TV programming will shift entirely to the internet, thereby killing cable TV. “I don’t agree it’s going to be web-based,” he replied, arguing instead that hi-def TV will be the main portal for content delivery.

As for this year’s films, Shapiro said, “I think the world wants to focus on the crisis, but suddenly I feel like the people and the artists are far more hopeful than they have been in the past.” He cited MARY & MAX, 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, ADVENTURELAND and I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS, continuing, “American filmmakers in particular are full of realistic optimism that I haven’t seen in a block of film like this, ever.”

Later on at the party, I ran into someone from last weekend who had blocked me out while I was videotaping Efren Ramirez (Pedro from NAPOLEAN DYNAMITE) dancing with some actress. That “someone” turned out to be Chris Barrett, a subject in the documentary THE CORPORATION, who met Ramirez back in 2004 (when both of their films screened at Sundance). And that actress turned out to be Laura Harring from MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

So what’s Barrett been up to since THE CORPORATION? He and Ramirez wrote a book together called Direct Your Own Life, and Barrett’s documentary AFTER SCHOOL, about teacher-student sex scandals, is in post-production.

And then we shook hands, which can mean all sorts of things at Sundance. In this instance, though, I think it meant “no hard feelings.”

Robert Redford speaks to the filmmakers of this year’s festival about creating a sense of community of like-minded artists.

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One of thousands of digital snapshots that make up “We Feel Fine,” an installation at New Frontiers’ headquarters

With Sundance billing this year as its 25th anniversary, Robert Redford today was asked the expected questions about the festival’s past vs. present, but he resisted nostalgia and instead focused on the festival’s future. Sundance hasn’t changed much, he insisted. “What’s changed, of course, is the world around us.” The changes in the “product”—the production and distribution of films—simply reflect our changing world, he said, “but the mission remains the same.”

To that end, he pushed Sundance’s New Frontier programming, described in the film guide as “a platform for innovations in cinematic culture at the crossroads of art, technology, and film.” (Decoding the jargon, I think that means “unconventional, and often technologically adventurous, films and art installations.”) Redford said he feels there’s something “dead” about technology, an absence of “an artistic element.” That’s why, he added, “fusing art with the new technology is a very exciting thing for me.”

The conversation shifted to other aspects of the future—some hopeful (Obama), others less so (the economy, stupid)—but an hour earlier, when I dropped into the New Frontier headquarters, I had glimpsed what Redford was referring to.

It was an overwhelming experience at first. The space was incredibly dark, with low ceilings. Crickets whirred overhead. Meanwhile, several video installations battled for attention. One of them, a blurry time-lapse of nature images projected onto black walls, made me dizzy. Another, a digital video of a radioactive-looking buck foraging in the woods, recalled the episode of The Simpsons in which Mr. Burns emerges, a glowing green extraterrestrial, from the forest.

Those installations were interesting only in passing, but as I walked around, trying not to trip on anything or bump into anyone, I found other fascinating works (like “We Feel Fine,” pictured above) that sustained my interest—so much so that I’m going to return there (when I don’t have a Redford press conference to run off to) before reporting back on them. For now, I’ll leave it at this: Some of the most interesting, provocative art at Sundance may not be up on the movie screen, but down on the basement floor of 333 Main St.

With all the spin… the flip, the bob, the weave… the duplicitous behavior coming from the Republicans… scrapping around in campaign desperation. Blurring the facts seems to be a strategy.

But what’s not a blur is that the Republican party has had it all for the last 8 years – Presidency and national administration, both houses of Congress, even, one might argue, the Supreme Court.

All of this power was completely in their hands at a period in our history when innovation and opportunity has abounded. What have they done with it? Launched a war based on lies, undermined seminal laws of the land, ran our economy into the ground; left 47 million Americans without health care, presided over massive American job loss and home foreclosures, not addressed social security or quality education or sustainability in our environmental and energy policy.

Deregulation? It’s pretty much been a GOP mainstay. Let the market solve it. And look where it’s gotten us. They try to rewrite history with their meanness, their lies, and their spin. But we can’t buy it again, unless of course, we want more of the same. They have plunged not only America, but the world into an uncertain future on so many levels.

And so it’s really quite simple. They’ve had their time. Look at what they’ve done with it. An extension of that? Are we crazy?

The choice has never been, more clear, between two futures.

- Robert Redford

Are we missing something? The simple and clear story? The real story?

To resurrect a popular campaign phrase from a while back:
Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? How about 8 years ago?

I do admire the messaging skill of the Republican machine — simple, clear, repetitive and strong.

But wrong.

The highly skilled deception. The highly skilled distraction… from reality… and the real lives of people.

I notice the repeat of the phrase “the American people,” used so many times in the rhetoric of President Bush — who has arguably done more to hurt and undermine these very same people than anyone in modern political history. And now his party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees have picked up the same mantra to push an extension of the same plans that have devastated “the American people.”

It’s an obvious attempt to attach their cynical message to the people. But the message and the policies it pushes couldn’t have more disregard for “the American people,” their dignity and the reality they face in the uncertain future designed by this crowd.

“The American people” deserve better than this.

- Robert Redford

Filmmaking duo Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer show up last year to Sundance with thier low-budget no-star “kitchen sink” drama QUINCEANERA. They left winning both Grand Jury prize and Audience Award. Now we can learn from their experience.

Read more after the jump…

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