NEW YORK – Earlier this week we sat down with Robert Redford to discuss his latest film, “The Company You Keep,” which is opening in NY and LA tomorrow (April 5).
The movie is Redford’s ninth as a director, but only the fourth in which he has both directed and appeared (if you count an uncredited narrator role in “A River Runs Through it”). It is, perhaps, therefore no surprise that when we spoke to him his mind was squarely on this film and not any potential appearances in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” down the line.
However, we did still ask a question or two about his joining the ever-expanding Marvel universe.
To deal with that latter bit first, Redford confirmed to us that he is in talks to be in the movie, but wouldn’t divulge anything about his character. As he put it, it’s “a part of my plan and that’s that.”
The Hollywood legend was much more open about “Company.” In the film, he plays a former member of the Weather Underground who, 30 years later, finds himself confronted by the past he thought he left behind.
In the interview, Redford said that he wasn’t a member of the counterculture and that he doesn’t regret that choice, even if he was “empathetic to what was going on.” At that moment in history, his “commitment was elsewhere” as he was building his career and starting a family.
Even so, Redford has clearly spent a long time thinking about the movement, his relation (or not) to it, and what has become of the people who were a part of it. In fact, he told us that as he watched the movement end he thought that down the line, once it became our nation’s history, the story would be worth telling.
Redford certainly put together a good cast to tell the story in “The Company You Keep.” In addition to his appearing in it, the film also stars Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Stanley Tucci, Anna Kendrick, Brit Marling, and Terrence Howard amongst others.
Following its NY/LA opening this Friday, the film is slated to expand to more of the country in the coming weeks.