My Beef With Robert Redford

A few weeks ago, someone mentioned a new movie with Robert Redford that was coming out.

"Idon't think I'll see that. I just haven't been able to forgive him forThe Way We Were," I said. "I've given it a few years, but it's stilljust too hard for me."

"Uh-huh," she said, giving me the "you'rean odd over-sharer" eye, "well, I'm able to separate actors from thecharacters they portray."

"That must be nice for you," I said enthusiastically. Then, I changed the subject.

I have trouble letting things go (surprise, surprise), and I've been known to hold the occasional grudge. I try to forgive, but I don't always forget.

When you combine this little shortcoming of mine with the fact that I am the perfect audience, trouble can ensue. (The Waitress incident is only a small example.) In fact, there are two actors I can seemingly never forgive -- and not in that Tom Cruise way of "why did I waste two hours of my life on Vanilla Sky" kind of way. I can't forgive what they did on screen.

I don't hold grudges for the actual personal lives of stars - a la Tiger Woods, Jesse James and Brad Pitt -- but when it comes to the characters they play, it's a whole different story. My head may know actors and characters are two separate entities, but my heart just hasn't gotten the message. That being said, here's my problem list:

1. We'll begin with the aforementioned Robert Redford. I adored Sneakers, The Natural and A River Runs Through It. His directorial debut, Ordinary People, was one of my absolute favorites, and then I saw The Way We Were. I watched RR/Hubbell cheat on Katie, I saw him give up on her when things got too hard, and I heard him ask about the daughter he wouldn't raise before running off to the blond he'd replaced his wife with.

The worst line for me in the whole movie? When Hubbell is talking to his best friend J.J. on the sailboat near the end of the film. Hubbell has already slept with Carol Ann, and J.J. admits that Carol Ann has left him and California. Then J.J. says that it doesn't really matter because Carol Ann "was no Katie."

I cried like a baby. 

After the first time I saw The Way We Were, my boss asked me what was wrong the following Monday. She said that I didn't seem like my usual self. "Did something happen over the weekend? Is it your family? Are you feeling all right?"

"It's none of that," I said.

She continued to look at me with concern.

"I watched The Way We Were last night."

"Oh," she said, and she nodded.

"Men just leave, don't they?" I said. "It gets hard and they go. It's easier for them to go, isn't it? Why is it so much easier for them to leave?"

I was 22 and a little dramatic, but a movie from 1973 had reduced me to tears in front of a woman 40 years my senior. In short, The Way We Were broke me.

Her response? "It is easier for men to leave," and we talked for 30 minutes about RR, Barbra and romantic relationships.

I can barely watch the film these days. If I do, I start crying duringthe opening credits because I know what's coming, and I can hardlystand it. And no matter what Robert Redford does, I see Hubbell standing in the middle of a home movie theater telling Katie he'll only stay until the baby is born, and I just hate him. It's beyond irrational, but I haven't been able to shake it in eight years. He just should have stayed with her -- despite all the McCarthyism and whatnot.

2. Jeff Daniels also makes my list. Jeff Daniels, I don't care that you are the lovable patriarch in Arachnophobia. Pleasantville, Dumb and Dumber and The Butcher's Wife mean nothing to me. (That last one for different reasons, but still.) For me, you will always be Flap from Terms of Endearment.

And Flap went into his wife/Debra Winger's hospital room as she was dying and told her he wouldn't raise their three children. Flap said he was going to go off with his terrible mistress Janice and abandon their children while the woman he married and bore his kids died of cancer.

Again, my disdain is completely irrational, but it is what it is.

On the other hand, there are two other actors who I can apparently accept in any situation or role.

1. I adore Ted Levine. It does not bother me at all that he hunted Jodie Foster down with night vision goggles in Silence of the Lambs. I don't even care that he uttered one of the creepiest movie lines ever -- "It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again." When he's Captain Leland Stottlemeyer on Monk, he's Capt. Stottlemeyer, and I love him. I love that he fights for Adrian, their often-strained relationship and that, in the end, you know they're best friends. Trying to sew a suit of human skin never even occurs to me when I watch him go a-crime-solving.

I could probably watch the movie and the series back-to-back on USA and not bat an eye.

2. I also like David Boreanaz. When he was Angel, I only wanted him to be with Buffy. But, when I see him now, I don't see Angel. I see Seeley Booth. And Seeley Booth can love Temperance Brennan without my thinking he's cheating on Sarah Michelle Geller. It's all good.

Clearly, there are a lot of X factors here: acting ability, story line, character development, my sanity ...
but, in the long run, there's no telling who will end up on either list.

Hollywood take note, and choose your roles wisely: Laurel Mills is watching.