environmentalism

Books Helped Robert Redford’s Film Career Shine

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A screen shot from The Natural movie starring a man who hit a home run in life.

Like many other performers, Robert Redford appeared in a number of films inspired by books. I’ll discuss several of those screen adaptations in this post, which appears five days after the sad news of the iconic star’s September 16 death at age 89.

The first movie that came to mind was The Natural (1984), based on Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel of the same name. Redford starred as baseball player Roy Hobbs, who returns to the game in midlife after being shot as a young man. (The Hobbs name is an amalgam of real-life baseball legends Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby.) Quite a compelling and affecting motion picture, which — as is often the case with Hollywood — has a happier ending than the one in the more nuanced book.

A decade earlier, another major role for Redford was in the 1974 movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 classic The Great Gatsby. Redford was Jay Gatsby to Mia Farrow’s Daisy Buchanan.

I didn’t realize until researching this post that 1973’s The Way We Were movie — in which Redford co-starred with Barbra Streisand — was based on Arthur Laurents’ 1972 novel rather than on a totally original screenplay.

Redford was not only an actor but a director, producer, longtime champion of independent films, and laudable activist for the environment and other causes. Several of those multiple talents came together for the 1988 movie version of John Nichols’ 1974 novel The Milagro Beanfield War. The film — whose cast included Ruben Blades and Sonia Braga — didn’t do well at the box office, but Redford received praise for his direction of it.

I’ve read Nichols’ and Malamud’s books, but not Judith Guest’s 1976 novel Ordinary People, for which Redford won the directing Oscar for the 1980 movie version starring Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, and Timothy Hutton. I’ve seen the film, which is excellent.

Redford of course also acted in movies based on notable nonfiction books — including 1937’s Out of Africa memoir by Isak Dinesen (Redford co-starred with Meryl Streep in the 1985 film) and 1974’s Watergate-scandal-focused All the President’s Men by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Redford played Woodward opposite Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein in the 1976 movie). I’ve read both books, and the films did each of them justice even as their main characters were more glamorous than their written-page counterparts.

A great late-career role for Redford was in the 2017 screen adaptation of Kent Haruf’s very poignant 2015 novel Our Souls at Night, about an older couple’s twilight-years romance. He co-starred with Jane Fonda, repeating a charismatic pairing from several earlier films.

I’ll close with this: Redford lived a life that we’ll remember with affection and admiration for his talent, his kindness, and his social conscience. People such as the cruel Trump and his dreadful toadies will be remembered quite differently when they’re gone.

Any thoughts on Redford, the films and books mentioned in this post, or any book-inspired Redford movies I might have missed? (My post included only titles for which I read the book or saw the film or both.)

Misty the LGBTQ-friendly cat says: “I have two mums, and I’m fine with that.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, and includes many encounters with celebrities. (But not Robert Redford. 🙂 )

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about an exploding school budget deficit and a Township Council member’s sudden resignation — is here.

It’s Earth Day in Some Parts of Planet Literature

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Yesterday, April 22, was Earth Day. Our planet is in deep ecological trouble, and America’s Predator-in-Chief is making things worse with his profoundly anti-environment policies. I guess he’s also the Polluter-in-Chief.

Anyway, I began to think about novels that have directly or indirectly focused on the environment, and the first one that came to mind was Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior.

That book is many things — including a compelling portrayal of a rural Tennessean’s dissatisfaction with her life and marriage, and what she does about it. But Flight Behavior is also a novel about climate change — including how butterflies are devastatingly affected by it.

Kingsolver addresses ecological matters in Prodigal Summer, too.

One of the ultimate environmental catastrophes takes place in Nevil Shute’s On the Beach when nuclear radiation bears down on Australia after ruining much of the world.

Then there are novels in which environmentalism is perhaps not the biggest theme, but an important theme. For instance, the harming of Oklahoma land by greedy agribusiness is a big reason why the Joad family of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is forced to uproot themselves to try their luck in California. The evil forces in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings certainly lay waste to a lot of Middle-earth land. And Anne Shirley’s keen appreciation of nature is one of the endearing elements in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

Also, the shrinking of the American wilderness is a poignant backdrop in James Fenimore Cooper’s five “Leatherstocking” novels (The Last of the Mohicans, etc.). Heck, protagonist Natty Bumppo is more comfortable with the eco-friendlier ways of Native Americans (such as his close friend Chingachgook) than he is with the eco-destructive ways of his fellow whites.

Of course, sci-fi, speculative fiction, dystopian novels, and post-apocalypse books often address environmental issues in direct or indirect fashion — as when they show the Earth abused by corporations and humankind in general. Examples include Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and various other books. There are also the death throes of Earth at the end of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.

In the children’s-book area, The Lorax by Dr. Seuss is considered a fable about how corporate greed does a number on nature.

What are some of your favorite fictional works that touch on environmental issues?

Here’s a review of, and a video interview about, my new literary-trivia book Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time  — which earned a “Best Seller” tag on Amazon for a time this weekend.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com, which covers Montclair, N.J., and nearby towns. The latest weekly column is here.