Classics: Robert Redford

His love for skiing rivals his commitment to acting. An exclusive, what-turns-me-on interview. 

This 1975 cover story with Robert Redford, by Dick Needham in SKI Magazine, opened with a glamour image of Redford flashing his immense star power, with an inset of Redford­­­—a devoted but late-in-life skier—hard-charging downhill. In the interview Redford notes that skiing is “the only area where I’m by myself, where I can just get away and set myself free” but laments what he sees as the “whole shopping mall kind of mentality that’s taken over skiing.” See page 30 for a full obituary of Redford. Photo top courtesy Sundance Resort.

Robert Redford is not your typical celebrity-as-skier. He doesn’t attend the Bear Valley Pro-Celebrity Race. He isn’t seen among the glamour throng at the Lange Cup. He doesn’t jet to Gstaad … or St. Moritz.

Fact is, he’s a hardcore skier who’s admittedly damn selfish about the private moments, the losing of self and the reawakening to beauty and exhilaration that skiing gives him.

And he skis very well. Owner of his own ski area, Sundance (no absentee landlord, Redford has a strong, ever-present hand in the area’s development), he was reared as a skier under Junior Bounous and Jerry Warren (SKI’s pointers demonstrator). What makes Redford different, in one of many respects, is that he learned to ski through racing, putting him miles ahead of most learners in the sport.

Last season, SKI Editor Dick Needham skied with Redford at Sundance. Photographer Scott Nelson was along to shoot the action. After a morning of incomparable sun and powder, they sat down for a break:

Needham: When did you first begin skiing?

Redford: I was a latecomer. I first started skiing seven years ago. I grew up in California, on a beach, and I was more water sports and team sports oriented. In my mid-20s, I lost interest in all that and went into individual sports: tennis, climbing and, later, skiing. But skiing, for me, has always
been it.

Needham: You went to the University of Colorado. Surely you must have thought about taking up skiing while you were there.

Redford: There have been all sorts of hyped-up reports of how I went to Colorado to ski. That wasn’t true. I went to get into the mountains, which I’ve always loved, and to climb. The reason I didn’t ski is crazy, and I guess I’ve always been like this. I didn’t ski because everyone else did, and for some reason, that turned me off the uniformity of everybody putting ski racks on their cars. I loved to go to Aspen, but to drink. We went to the Red Onion—there wasn’t much beyond that in those days. My interest in skiing really stems from building my house in Utah. I really got turned on to the idea of the naturalness of the sport and the mountain environment. You can hang your hat in a lot of places, but your heart is where your home is, and mine is in the mountains.

Needham: Why did you choose to settle in Utah?

Redford: Colorado, as far as I was concerned, was going down the tube. Natural resources in Colorado were being mined to the point of bumper-to-bumper development, and it seemed that the whole state was going for it. Aspen in those days was a wild, wonderful place to be. Now it’s crowded, infested—it’s great for those who like that sort of thing, but it’s uncomfortable for me. In a sense, that’s what has happened to skiing.

Needham: Could you expand on that?

Redford: There are things that concern me about skiing. I love the naturalness of the sport. There’s such a natural high to skiing. It doesn’t need any hype at all, and I tend to resist the affectations that I see in skiing. I remember watching a group of young guys at Snowbird last season. They were bombing down the hill, really trucking it. I don’t mean hooting and
hollering in an affected way, naturally.

On the other hand, other aspects of the sport have become a bit mannered. And that doesn’t do it for me at all. It’s as though Madison Avenue had grabbed the idea and blew it right out into oblivion. There’s a whole shopping mall kind of mentality that’s taken over skiing. It all has to do with the way the sport is marketed. There’s a healthy tide turning in America, the resistance to being oversold. Skiers just aren’t buying this synthetic, hard-sell approach to something that should be natural.

Needham: It’s an interesting point. Who, or what, do you feel has been responsible for this oversell?

Redford: For one, I never did believe any of those number experts who give you the computerized figures of ٦ million skiers in the United States. That’s a lot of crap. It’s that kind of attitude, the business-school-grad-computer-index-card game that I think is threatening skiing. To be honest with you, I have to stick with the older guys, the McCoys, Friedl Pfeifers, Tommy Corcorans and the skiers from the Tenth Mountain Division who really did something for the sport. They’re the responsible ones because they know their mountain. They’ve been up there. They’ve climbed it at night. They’ve been through it in storms. They’ve trudged it on foot, and they know every square inch of it. They’re not some hotshot business-school grad who’s never seen a pair of skis and comes out and says, “I don’t have to see the mountain, just give me the count for consumption of more energy.” It’s
absolutely crazy!

Needham: You have other commitments, namely to your film career. How are you able to devote time to skiing, let alone overseeing the development of a ski area?

Redford: For me, skiing is magnetic—it’s very sensual. It’s the one thing I can do that gives me complete freedom of mind. It’s the only area where I’m by myself, where I can just get away and set myself free, and I’m very selfish about it. To any skier, I’d say, “Look, I believe in skiing because I know what it does for you. Don’t give me all this hyped-up glamour pap. If you feel like yelling, yell. But don’t feel you have to yell because all the hotdoggers are doing it. Just do what you feel like doing … and it will all come out. It’s such a great high.”

Needham: Have you ever encountered problems in your ski technique that have been hard to overcome?

Redford: Yes. I have one basic flaw in my skiing. I water-skied quite a bit as a kid. And in water skiing, you have to lean back. So the natural tendency for me was to always sit back on my skis. I find I have to mentally get myself ahead, get forward on my skis. This creates problems for me because I have a bad back; I injured it when I was young. I love skiing so much that
I don’t care if I screw up, as long as I’m moving, as long as I’m going fast enough to feel the exhilaration. I don’t even stop for lunch. I don’t stop. Eat, you can, but stop, and you lose your rhythm.

Needham: What equipment do you use?

Redford: I ski several brands of skis. It seems everybody’s getting into the act. To be honest with you, you have to be pretty damn good to be able to differentiate between brands of skis these days. They’re all good, and so are today’s boots and bindings. I prefer a longer ski because I like to ski fast. As a result, I’ve found it tough adjusting to a shorter length. Right now, I’m on a 195, and I prefer a 205, but with the bumps, I just can’t take it.

Needham: Let’s talk about films for a minute. What did you have in mind when you made Downhill Racer?

Redford: Downhill Racer was a very personal film for me. It had a lot of implied thoughts that didn’t have anything to do with skiing. It had to do with amateur athletics in the United States, the kind of athletes we seem to spawn in this country. It’s a mistake to say that Downhill Racer was a ski film. I chose skiing as the supportive element because that was the sport that turned me on, and I thought it had the perfect blend, visually, of poetry and danger.

Needham: Is skiing a saleable commodity in Hollywood?

Redford: Not really. Downhill Racer wasn’t that successful in terms of broad audience appeal to a lot of people; there just wasn’t enough of a story.

Without a plot, you don’t have a film. You can make a film about a man who makes shower curtains, and if it’s a good story, if it has dramatic drive, if it says something strong or entertains, then shower-curtain films will be in. If you can’t carry a story, it’s not going to work. 

Dick Needham, an accomplished writer and journalist, was the longest-serving editor of SKI Magazine, directing the publication from 1974 to 1994. In later years he edited Skiing Heritage. He died in 2012.