Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(55)

My script, called “Goodbye, Bear,” was a sentimental bouquet laid at the feet of a certain type of young, irresistibly cynical New York girl, the flower of every generation. In this case, she was nurtured in such bygone hothouses as El Morocco and the Stork Club and was seen through the eyes of an infatuated but unforceful man. The story had no barb. It was merely a history and would have been better as a poem, but it possessed a kind of lovely dignity. It also produced an unexpected result, reminiscent of the Chinese fable of the mandarin who stood by the river fishing with a straight pin instead of a hook. When word of this curious behavior reached the emperor, he came to see. “What could anyone hope to catch with such a hook?” The answer was serene. “You, my emperor.” The emperor, uncrowned then, was Robert Redford, just becoming known on the New York stage. Somehow, he had gotten hold of the script, and we met for lunch, two na?fs in the sunlit city.

There come back to me many memories of Redford when he was new and his image that of purest youth. One morning in London at the entrance of the Savoy, three or four women came up asking for an autograph. As he signed, he gave me a sort of embarrassed smile. “You hired them,” I said to him afterward. He broke out in a wonderful laugh—no, no, he hadn’t. The car that was driving us to the airport that day broke down in the tunnel just before Heathrow, and we got out and ran for the plane, carrying our bags. That was how easy and unattended his life was then.

Later, in 1968, we went together to the Winter Olympics and Grenoble, slept in corridors, since rooms were unavailable, and rode on buses. By then, I was the author of several scripts, although none had been made into movies, and had been hired to write “Downhill Racer,” a ski film that Redford would star in. We travelled for weeks with the United States team.

At dinner one night, I remarked that I saw Billy Kidd as the model for the main character. Kidd was the dominant skier on the U.S. team and, in the manner of champions, was somewhat arrogant and aloof. He was tough—from a poor part of town, I imagined, honed by years on the icy runs of the East.

Redford shook his head. The racer he was interested in was at another table. Over there. I looked. Golden, unimpressible, a bit like Redford himself—which of course should have marked him from the first—sat a little-known team member named Spider Sabich. What there was of his reputation seemed to be based on his having broken his leg six or seven times.

“Him?” I said. “Sabich?”

Yes, Redford said; when he was that age he had been just like him—vain, savvy.

So easy, all of it, such play. Back in New York, when I went into restaurants with Redford, eyes turned to watch as we crossed the room—the glory seems to be yours as well. There was a dreamlike quality also, perhaps because Redford seemed to be just passing through, not really involved. It was washing over him, like a casual love affair. He wore black silk shirts and drove a Porsche, disliked being called Bobby by eager agents, and more than once said, “I hate being a movie star.” Nevertheless, he became one, with the life of evasion that went with it, of trying not to be recognized, a life of friends only, of sitting at the very front of the plane, the last to board, like a wanted man.

Years later, at forty, he looked better than when we had first known one another. The handsome, somewhat shallow college boy had disappeared and a lean, perceptive man stood in his place. From a kind of unconcerned amusement and a natural caution he had made an astonishing success. His days had a form; he accomplished something during them. As if glancing at a menu, he was able to choose his life.

We drifted apart. I wrote another film for him, but it was never made. “My presence in something,” I remember him saying, perhaps in apology, “is enough to give it an aura of artificiality.” He knew his limitations.

I saw him last at a premiere. A mob was waiting. Inside the theater every seat was filled. Then in the bluish gloom a murmur went across the crowd. People began to stand. There was a virtual rain of light as flashbulbs went off everywhere, and, amid a small group moving down the aisle, the blond head of the star could be seen. I was far off—years, in fact—but felt a certain sickening pull. There came to me the part about Falstaff and the coronation. I shall be sent for in private, I thought, consoling myself. I shall be sent for soon at night.

As I think of early days, an inseparable part of them appears: the thrilling city—New York was that—and a kind of Athenian brilliance over everything, which might well have been the light coming through the tall glass archways of Lincoln Center, where, in the fall, the Film Festival was held. It drew what I felt to be the elite, the great European directors—Antonioni, Truffaut, Fellini, and Godard—presenting a new kind of film, more imaginative and penetrating than our own.

The city was leaping with films, schools of them, of every variety, daring films that were breaking into something vast and uncharted, as an icebreaker crushes its way to open sea.

I was living not in New York itself but thirty miles from it, with my wife and children, in a half-converted barn in Rockland County. By chance, I met a writer named Lane Slate—he had a place just down the road—and was drawn to him immediately. He was irreverent and well read, an expert on Joyce, on films, on painting—the very companion I had been longing for. Together we made a short documentary called Team, Team, Team, some twelve minutes long, about football, the sweat and dirt of practice. It was my first film. A few months later, to our astonishment, it won first prize at Venice.