- Title: USA: Robert Redford returns to the big screen after six years
- Date: 1st April 2013
- Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (APRIL 01, 2013) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ROBERT REDFORD, ACTOR AND DIRECTOR, SAYING: "Young people today looking at this story about what young people then did. They may not know about this because now it's a piece of American history. It's 30 years later, they may not know about that. So in a sense you might be informing you
- Embargoed: 16th April 2013 13:00
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- Location: Usa
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVAAZ5B5UMGN1O7FQCV4X1WOI24B
- Story Text: Politics, family and drama all come together for the new film "The Company You Keep."
The movie is a fictional thriller based on a 2003 novel by Neil Gordon, and follows a former left-wing American militant whose past comes back to haunt him. Redford plays Jim Grant, a respectable lawyer and widower with a young daughter whose life is thrown into turmoil when his secret identity, as a member of The Weather Underground decades earlier, is revealed by a tenacious reporter played by Shia LaBeouf.
The film is loosely based on the real-life events of radical antiwar protesters of the late 1960's and 70's. Redford hopes the film will both educate and entertain audiences.
"In a sense you might be informing young people about a piece of American history they may not know about. That could also apply to them because I'm sure most all young people are passionate about something, you know? And they are committed and they're passionate, they don't think about tomorrow, they don't think about yesterday, they're in the moment - that's what these people were at one time. So now will that inform young people, I don't know, we'll see? Will it entertain them? I hope so otherwise I've made a big mistake," Redford told Reuters.
For LaBeouf, if it wasn't for his acting bug, he said he is sure he would have been a part of a similar cause: "Everybody wants to be a part of something, you know? I think I would have, if I didn't find acting, I'd have been a part of some kind of something. And I don't think it would have been superfluous either. It wouldn't have been just some sort of 18th street stick 'em up kids. I would have had like a reason, you know? Something to justify my rebelliousness. I'd had been rebel with a cause for sure. Just to justify it."
76-year-old Redford spent 4 years developing the film and packed it with a star studded cast the includes Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Anna Kendrick and Richard Jenkins to name a few.
And while these actors come from different backgrounds, Redford made sure they all had a voice on set.
"I believe in hiring actors with craft, to me it's so much easier directing a film if you can hire actors who are crafted. They know their craft because that means you can ask them to do anything, you can improvise and they are going to be there. When you have actors like that then you want to bring them in and share with it," he said.
Stanley Tucci portrays a newspaper editor in the film and talked about the collaborative environment Redford created: "You're always, you've always felt comfortable saying, 'hey, what about this? Can I do this? Is it alright if I stop here. Yea, yea try it.' It's great, it was easy, it was relaxed. I was sad I was there for such a short period of time."
"The Company You Keep" will be released in New York and Los Angeles on April 5th. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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