In case you missed it, Goodman did an hourlong interview with Robert Redford

[EFerrari]

and she brought the discussion around to his activism, of course. It's a good one.

Sundance Founder Robert Redford on His Life, His Activism and the Importance of Independent Films

Democracy Now! broadcasts from Park City, Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, the nation’s largest festival for independent cinema. Today, we spend the hour with Robert Redford. He’s well known as an actor, but part and parcel of who he is is an activist. He took his success and leveraged it to promote his real passions: environmental justice, Native American rights and independent filmmaking. Since 1980, through the Sundance Film Festival and the Sundance Institute, Robert Redford has helped independent voices develop their craft—in film, theater and music—and reach new audiences. Redford joins us for a wide-ranging interview about these many roles in his life, on and off screen.

Video, audio, transcript at link

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/25/sundance_founder_robert_redford_on_his

[housewolf]

1. Gosh, I really enjoyed that!

Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I learned many things about Robert Redford that I never knew before.

35 Years later, and I'm STILL in love with Robert Redford! :rofl:

:hi:

[EFerrari]

2. I know. Me, too, and I don't fall in love very easily.

He's STILL the one. :rofl:

:hi:

[NoFace]

5. Amy Goodman looks smitten as well wth those puppy dog eyes...lol

[EFerrari]

7. I noticed that, too.

Her taste is as excellent as the rest of her. lol

[Onceuponalife]

3. Redford rocks.

And I sorely miss Paul Newman.

[EFerrari]

4. I never knew how much he tried to do for Leonard Peltier.

And his story about making "All The Presidents Men" was amazing.

When you start putting together how socially involved both of these guys were, the friendship makes so much sense. :)

[amborin]

6. speaking of which: "The Candidate" :

snip

A majority of Obama voters who switched to Brown said that "Democratic policies were doing more to help Wall Street than Main Street." A full 95 percent said the economy was important or very important when it came to deciding their vote. Surprise, surprise, policies do matter.

But what was the President’s reaction? ABC News reported, "President Obama said today that he feels he lost a direct connection to the American people in his first year in office because he focused too heavily on policy-making."

snip

When Obama continued the Bush/Paulson moves on the bank bailouts, that was the beginning of the end of his “change” Presidency. Health care was simply the confirmation as large proportion of his base was prepared to cut him slack waiting to see what he would do with the issue. In the end, we got a terrible bill, and no amount of salesmanship or nice speeches will change the substance. It does not even deliver on the promise that got most people prepared to hold their collective noses and vote for it, that of eliminating the practice of rescinding policies on the basis of "pre-existing condition".

Read the bill. As Yves Smith has highlighted, it allows an out for fraud. Guess what? Not telling your insurer of a preexisting condition, EVEN ONE YOU DID NOT KNOW ABOUT, is fraud! Unbeknownst to most, fraud is the means under current law that insurers deny coverage. The bill preserves the status quo here. A nursing organization with 150,000 members opposed the bill for this very reason.

snip

President Obama is providing increasingly disturbing parallels with one of Robert Redford’s memorable characters, Bill McKay, from “The Candidate”. If you recall how that movie ended, McKay escapes the victory party and pulls Lucas into a room while throngs of journalists clamor outside. McKay then asks his political spin doctor, Marvin Lucas, who engineered the victory: “Marvin ... What do we do now?” The media throng arrives to drag them out at that moment and McKay never receives an answer. Today’s electorate is waiting for an answer from the President which encapsulates something beyond a mere “change” slogan. Judging from the policies, they’ve been getting, they aren’t happy with the answers.

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2010/01/president-obama-its-not-just-words.html

[ConsAreLiars]

8. Wow! - I had a few clues but really no idea about the depth and extent

of his long history of working class values and activism. I had no idea, and never put his role-choices or Sundance in the context this interview provided. Through the TV machine I had not heard a hint of him being a true class warrior, fighting on a front very few get near.

I DVR DN! and just watched that and realized how much information is being suppressed by/in the corporate media.

There were several lesser known facts/observations/insights in that interview that should be repeated and rec'd up to top on DU.

(edit keyboard misses)

[EFerrari]

9. That's what I felt, too, after watching.

I didn't know he came from a working class family. Didn't really put together what he was doing at Sundance with that, either. I respect this man so much. He didn't have to do any of it. He could have just skated on his material success. Truly admirable.

[ConsAreLiars]

10. All (well, almost all but a few singled out to be demonized) who fight for people and against the

non-humans, the corporations and their hirelings, will never even get mentioned. The message is not that resistance is impossible, but that it is non-existent. Laura Flanders' Grit TV is another way to get around that censoring,

(edit typo)

[EFerrari]

12. Free Speech TV has Amy, Laura and Thom on right in a row every

weekday morning. What a difference from the corporate media! :hi:

[MelissaB]

11. Thanks for this.

I'm watching now.