Redford: It’s time to revisit Watergate

Actor participates in cable special

By Ellen Gray

Philadelphia Daily News

Robert Redford wasn’t exactly itching to return to Watergate.

When the Discovery Channel approached the man who’d played Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men” about doing a film to commemorate the scandal’s sort-of anniversary — it’s been almost 41 years since the break-in and not quite 39 since Richard Nixon’s resignation — “my first reaction was, ‘No, leave it alone. That’s what it was then. You know, times move on,’” the actor/ director said in a phone interview last week.

But Discovery was persistent. “And then I thought about it, and I said, ‘No, wait a minute. It’s far enough back now that it’s a piece of American history, and maybe if you revisit that, there might be something to [show] the younger, or newer, generation, who may not even know about it,” said the 76-year-old actor and director, whose latest movie, “The Company You Keep,” is in theaters now.

Chances are, he’s right. Because though “gate” has been attached to dozens of more forgettable scandals, from “Nannygate” to “Nipplegate,” one thing that comes through in Discovery’s “All the President’s Men Revisited” is that the big daddy of them all — named after the building where the break-in to Democratic headquarters occurred — took place in a very different Washington, D.C.

And a very long time ago.

So long ago, in fact, that Redford in the film recalls watching the 1973 Watergate hearings in the Senate during breaks on the set of “The Great Gatsby.” (Leonardo DiCaprio, who’s about to make his own debut as Jay Gatsby, wouldn’t be born until the following year.)

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who, along with “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, helps lower the median age of the talking heads in “Revisited,” was a newborn when the Senate hearings convened and speaks about how her mother basically fed her and watched Watergate.

Redford’s interest in the scandal, though, predated U.S. Sen. Howard Baker’s famous question, “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

“When I got involved in the story, it was only about two weeks after the actual break-in,” Redford said. “A lot of people don’t know that. ... I was already focused on that issue because it looked like a story that went away real quick.” He thought that there was more to it, “and therefore when the two names [of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward] started to appear, I was already focused [on whether] this thing was going to completely go away.

“You knew; your gut told you that there was something more ... and so I started to focus on these two guys all through that summer [of 1972], and then when it exploded into a major deal, I thought, ‘Well, this would be an interesting little black-and-white film that I could produce with two unknown actors.’ And to show what hard work was, to show what journalism was really like ... whatever the outcome. I didn’t know where it was going to go. There were no hearings; there was no resignation — nothing like that. That was in the future. I just wanted to tell this little story.”