PROVO, Utah (AP) – Robert Redford, the Hollywood golden boy who became an Oscar-winning director, liberal activist and godfather for independent cinema under the name of one of his best-loved characters, died Tuesday at 89.
Redford died “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah — the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement. No cause of death was provided.
After rising to stardom in the 1960s, Redford was one of the biggest stars of the ’70s with such films as “The Candidate,” “All the President’s Men” and “The Way We Were,” capping that decade with the best director Oscar for 1980’s “Ordinary People,” which also won best picture in 1980. His wavy blond hair and boyish grin made him the most desired of leading men, but he worked hard to transcend his looks — whether through his political advocacy, his willingness to take on unglamorous roles or his dedication to providing a platform for low-budget movies.
His roles ranged from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward to a mountain man in “Jeremiah Johnson” to a double agent in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and his co-stars included Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. But his most famous screen partner was his old friend and fellow activist and practical joker Paul Newman, their films a variation of their warm, teasing relationship off screen. Redford played the wily outlaw opposite Newman in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a box-office smash from which Redford’s Sundance Institute and festival got its name. He also teamed with Newman on 1973’s best picture Oscar winner, “The Sting,” which earned Redford a best-actor nomination as a young con artist in 1930s Chicago.
Film roles after the ’70s became more sporadic as Redford concentrated on directing and producing, and his new role as patriarch of the independent-film movement in the 1980s and ’90s through his Sundance Institute. But he starred in 1985’s best picture champion “Out of Africa” and in 2013 received some of the best reviews of his career as a shipwrecked sailor in “All is Lost,” in which he was the film’s only performer. In 2018, he was praised again in what he called his farewell movie, “The Old Man and the Gun.”
“I just figure that I’ve had a long career that I’m very pleased with. It’s been so long, ever since I was 21,” he told The Associated Press shortly before the film came out. “I figure now as I’m getting into my 80s, it’s maybe time to move toward retirement and spend more time with my wife and family.”
Aug. 17: Actor Robert De Niro is 82. Guitarist Gary Talley of The Box Tops is 78. “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes is 76. Actor Robert Joy (“CSI: NY”) is 74. Singer Kevin Rowland of Dexy’s Midnight Runners is 72. Bassist Colin Moulding of XTC is 70. Country singer-songwriter Kevin Welch is 70. Singer Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Go’s is 67. Actor Sean Penn is 65. Jazz saxophonist Everette Harp is 64. Guitarist Gilby Clarke (Guns N’ Roses) is 63. Singer Maria McKee (Lone Justice) is 61. Drummer Steve Gorman (The Black Crowes) is 60. Singer-bassist Jill Cunniff (Luscious Jackson) is 59. Actor David Conrad (“Ghost Whisperer,” “Relativity”) is 58. Rapper Posdnuos of De La Soul is 56. Actor-singer Donnie Wahlberg (New Kids on the Block) is 56. TV personality Giuliana Rancic (“Fashion Police,” ″E! News”) is 51. Actor Bryton James (“Family Matters”) is 39. Actor Brady Corbet (“24,” “Thirteen”) is 37. Actor Austin Butler (“Dune: Part Two,” “Elvis”) is 34. Actor Taissa Farmiga (“American Horror Story”) is 31.
Aug. 18: Actor Robert Redford is 89. Actor Henry G. Sanders (“Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”) is 83. Drummer Dennis Elliott (Foreigner) is 75. Comedian Elayne Boosler is 73. Country singer Steve Wilkinson of The Wilkinsons is 70. Comedian-actor Denis Leary is 68. Actor Madeleine Stowe is 67. TV news anchor Bob Woodruff is 64. Actor Adam Storke (“Mystic Pizza”) is 63. Actor Craig Bierko (“Sex and the City,” ″The Long Kiss Goodnight”) is 61. Singer Zac Maloy of The Nixons is 57. Musician Everlast (House of Pain) is 56. Rapper Masta Killa of Wu-Tang Clan is 56. Actor Edward Norton is 56. Actor Christian Slater is 56. Actor Kaitlin Olson (“The Mick,” ″It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) is 50. Comedian Andy Samberg (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” ″Saturday Night Live”) is 47. Guitarist Brad Tursi of Old Dominion is 46. Actor Maia Mitchell (“The Fosters”) is 32. Actor Madelaine Petsch (“Riverdale”) is 31. Actor Parker McKenna Posey (“My Wife and Kids”) is 30.
Aug. 19: Actor Debra Paget (“The Ten Commandments,” “Love Me Tender”) is 92. Actor Diana Muldaur (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”) is 87. Actor Jill St. John is 85. Singer Billy J. Kramer is 82. Country singer-songwriter Eddy Raven is 81. Singer Ian Gillan of Deep Purple is 80. Actor Gerald McRaney is 78. Actor Jim Carter (“Downton Abbey”) is 77. Singer-guitarist Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass is 77. Bassist John Deacon of Queen is 74. Actor Jonathan Frakes (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”) is 73. Actor Peter Gallagher is 70. Actor Adam Arkin is 69. Singer-songwriter Gary Chapman is 68. Actor Martin Donovan is 68. Singer Ivan Neville is 66. Actor Eric Lutes (“Caroline in the City”) is 63. Actor John Stamos is 62. Actor Kyra Sedgwick is 60. Actor Kevin Dillon (“Entourage”) is 60. Country singer Lee Ann Womack is 59. Former MTV reporter Tabitha Soren is 58. Country singer Clay Walker is 56. Rapper Fat Joe is 55. Actor Tracie Thoms (“Cold Case”) is 50. Actor Erika Christensen (“Parenthood”) is 43. Actor Melissa Fumero (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) is 43. Actor Tammin Sursok (“Pretty Little Liars”) is 42. Singer Karli Osborn (SHeDaisy) is 41. Rapper Romeo (formerly Lil’ Romeo) is 36. Actor Ethan Cutkosky (TV’s “Shameless”) is 26.
Aug. 20: News anchor Connie Chung is 79. Trombone player Jimmy Pankow of Chicago is 78. Actor Ray Wise (“Reaper,” ″Twin Peaks”) is 78. Actor John Noble (“Lord of the Rings” films) is 77. Singer Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) is 77. Singer Rudy Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers is 73. Singer-songwriter John Hiatt is 73. Actor-director Peter Horton (“thirtysomething”) is 72. “Today” show weatherman Al Roker is 71. Actor Jay Acovone (“Stargate SG-1”) is 70. Actor Joan Allen is 69. Director David O. Russell (“Silver Linings Playbook,” “American Hustle”) is 67. Actor James Marsters (“Angel,” ″Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) is 63. Rapper KRS-One is 60. Actor Colin Cunningham (“Falling Skies”) is 59. Actor Billy Gardell (“Mike and Molly”) is 56. Singer Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit is 55. Actor Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”) is 55. Guitarist Brad Avery of Third Day is 54. Actor Misha Collins (“Supernatural”) is 51. Singer Monique Powell of Save Ferris is 50. Actor Ben Barnes (“Westworld,” ″Prince Caspian”) is 44. Actor Meghan Ory (“Once Upon a Time”) is 43. Actor Andrew Garfield (“The Amazing Spider-Man”) is 42. Actor Brant Daugherty (“Pretty Little Liars”) is 40. Singer-actor Demi Lovato is 33.
Aug. 21: Guitarist James Burton (with Elvis Presley) is 86. Singer Jackie DeShannon is 84. Actor Patty McCormack (“Frost/Nixon,” “The Ropers”) is 80. Singer Carl Giammarese of The Buckinghams is 78. Actor Loretta Devine (“Boston Public”) is 76. Newsman Harry Smith is 74. Singer Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath) is 73. Guitarist Nick Kane (The Mavericks) is 71. Actor Kim Cattrall (“Sex and the City”) is 69. Actor Cleo King (“Mike and Molly”) is 63. Singer Serj Tankian of System of a Down is 58. Actor Carrie-Anne Moss (“The Matrix,” ″Chocolat”) is 55. Musician Liam Howlett of Prodigy is 54. Actor Alicia Witt (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” ″Cybill”) is 50. Singer-chef Kelis is 46. Actor Diego Klattenhoff (“The Blacklist”) is 46. TV personality Brody Jenner (“The Hills”) is 42. Singer Melissa Schuman of Dream is 41. Comedian Brooks Wheelan (“Saturday Night Live”) is 39. Actor Cody Kasch (“Desperate Housewives”) is 38. Musician Kacey Musgraves is 37. Actor Hayden Panettiere (“Nashville,” ″Heroes”) is 36. Actor RJ Mitte (“Breaking Bad”) is 33. Actor Maxim Knight (“Falling Skies”) is 26.
Aug. 22: Newsman Morton Dean is 90. TV writer/producer David Chase (“The Sopranos”) is 80. Correspondent Steve Kroft (“60 Minutes”) is 80. Guitarist David Marks of The Beach Boys is 77. Guitarist Vernon Reid of Living Colour is 67. Country singer Collin Raye is 65. Actor Regina Taylor (“The Unit,” ″I’ll Fly Away”) is 65. Singer Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears is 64. Drummer Debbi Peterson of The Bangles is 64. Guitarist Gary Lee Conner of Screaming Trees is 63. Singer Tori Amos is 62. Keyboardist James DeBarge of DeBarge is 62. Country singer Mila Mason is 62. Rapper GZA (Wu-Tang Clan) is 59. Actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (“Oz,” “Lost”) is 58. Actor Ty Burrell (“Modern Family”) is 58. Celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis is 55. Actor Melinda Page Hamilton (“Devious Maids,” ″Mad Men”) is 54. Actor Rick Yune (“Die Another Day,” “The Fast and the Furious”) is 54. Guitarist Paul Doucette of Matchbox Twenty is 53. Rapper Beenie Man is 52. Singer Howie Dorough of the Backstreet Boys is 52. Comedian Kristen Wiig (“Bridesmaids,” ″Saturday Night Live”) is 52. Actor Jenna Leigh Green (“Sabrina the Teenage Witch”) is 51. Keyboardist Bo Koster of My Morning Jacket is 51. Bassist Dean Back of Theory of a Deadman is 50. Actor and TV host James Corden is 47. Guitarist Jeff Stinco of Simple Plan is 47. Actor Brandon Adams (“The Mighty Ducks”) is 46. Actor Aya Sumika (“Numb3rs”) is 45. Actor Ari Stidham (TV’s “Scorpion”) is 33.
Aug. 23: Actor Vera Miles is 95. Actor Barbara Eden is 94. Actor Richard Sanders (“WKRP In Cincinnati”) is 85. Country singer Rex Allen Jr. is 78. Actor David Robb (“Downton Abbey”) is 78. Singer Linda Thompson is 78. Actor Shelley Long is 76. Fiddler-singer Woody Paul of Riders in the Sky is 76. Singer-actor Rick Springfield is 76. Actor-producer Mark Hudson (The Hudson Brothers) is 74. Actor Skipp Sudduth (“The Good Wife”) is 69. Guitarist Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots is 64. Singer-bassist Ira Dean of Trick Pony is 56. Actor Jay Mohr is 55. Actor Ray Park (“X-Men,” ″The Phantom Menace”) is 51. Actor Scott Caan (“Hawaii Five-0”) is 49. Singer Julian Casablancas of The Strokes is 47. Actor Joanne Froggatt (“Downton Abbey”) is 45. Actor Jaime Lee Kirchner (“Bull”) is 44. Saxophonist Andy Wild of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats is 44. Actor Annie Ilonzeh (“Chicago Fire”) is 42. Musician Sky Blu of LMFAO is 39. Actor Kimberly Matula (“The Bold and the Beautiful”) is 37.
John Bailey, the cinematographer on Ordinary People, Groundhog Day, As Good as It Gets and dozens of other notable films who endured two “stressful” terms as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, died Friday. He was 81.
Bailey diedin Los Angeles, his wife, Oscar-nominated film editor Carol Littleton (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), announced.
”It is with deep sadness I share with you that my best friend and husband, John Bailey, passed away peacefully in his sleep early this morning,” she said in a statement. “During John’s illness, we reminisced how we met 60 years ago and were married for 51 of those years. We shared a wonderful life of adventure in film and made many long-lasting friendships along the way. John will forever live in my heart.”
They worked on more than a dozen features together.
The Southern California-raised Bailey served as the director of photography for director Paul Schrader on American Gigolo (1980), Cat People (1982), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Light of Day (1987) and Forever Mine (1999) and collaborated with Lawrence Kasdan on The Big Chill (1983), Silverado (1985), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and Wyatt Earp (1994).
He had another fruitful relationship with director Ken Kwapis, working with him on six films: Vibes (1988), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), License to Wed (2007), He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), Big Miracle (2012) and A Walk in the Woods (2015), where he reunited with Ordinary People director Robert Redford.
Bailey also shot Michael Apted’s Continental Divide (1981), Stuart Rosenberg’s The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Wolfgang Petersen’s In the Line of Fire (1993), Robert Benton’s Nobody’s Fool (1994), Sam Raimi’s For Love of the Game (1999) and Callie Khouri’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002).
In a 2020 interview for American Cinematographer magazine, Bailey said his philosophy was “imbued with an international perspective” — one of his touchstone movies was the Vittorio Storaro-shot The Conformist (1970) — and that he had “a singular focus on the kinds of films I wanted to make, even from the time I was an assistant and [camera] operator.”
“I did not want to do tawdry films,” he added. “I did not want to do exploitive films or violent ones. I really held out, sometimes at great personal expense, literally, in terms of money, to do films that I knew were building a résumé that when I did become a director of photography, that was part of who I was.”
A member of the American Society of Cinematographers since 1985, he received a lifetime achievement award from the group in 2015.
John Bailey (right) with director Lawrence Kasdan on the set of 1983’s ‘The Big Chill’
Bailey also was a longtime board member at the Academy when he followed Cheryl Boone Isaacs as AMPAS president in August 2017, becoming the only one to come from the cinematography branch. He won reelection the next summer before being succeeded by David Rubin in August 2019.
His tenure was marked by a huge increase in members, especially for international and non-Hollywood folks; the ousters of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski from the Academy; a Kevin Hart hosting imbroglio; and three moves meant to boost Oscar TV ratings that were torpedoed amid great criticism: the creation of a “popular Oscar,” the elimination of three live best song performances on the show, and the sidelining of four winners’ speeches to commercial breaks.
“I had no idea how stressful that job was going to be,” he said.
The son of a machinist, John Ira Bailey was born on Aug. 10, 1942, in Moberly, Missouri, and raised in Norwalk, California. He edited the school newspaper at Pius X High School in Downey, California, then attended Santa Clara University and Loyola Marymount University, graduating in 1964.
He decided to pursue cinematography while spending two years at USC in a new graduate program for film studies.
Bailey spent more than a decade as an apprentice cinematographer/camera operator for the likes of Néstor Almendros, Vilmos Zsigmond and Charles Rosher Jr. on such films as Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1976) and Robert Altman’s The Late Show and 3 Women, both released in 1977.
The first studio feature he shot as D.P. was Boulevard Nights (1979), directed by Michael Pressman.
Bailey broke through when two films he worked on back-to-back — the stylish neo-noir American Gigolo, just the third film that Schrader directed, and the restrained Oscar best picture winner Ordinary People, Redford’s directorial debut — were released within seven months of each other in 1980.
Boulevard Nights producer Tony Bill had recommended Bailey to Redford. “Not that many first-time directors back then would have hired an inexperienced cinematographer,” Bailey said in 2015 on an ASC podcast, “but Redford certainly had the experience and the confidence [from his years as an actor] to do that.”
For Bailey, the script was always paramount when it came to taking a job, and he had great screenplays to work with on Groundhog Day (1993), co-written by director Harold Ramis, and the best picture Oscar nominee As Good as It Gets (1997), co-written by director James L. Brooks.
His cinematography résumé also included Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), That Championship Season (1982), Without a Trace (1983), Racing With the Moon (1984), Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), Swimming to Cambodia (1987), My Blue Heaven (1990), Extreme Measures (1996), Living Out Loud (1998), The Anniversary Party (2001), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), The Producers (2005) and The Way Way Back (2013).
Bailey also directed a handful of films, including Lily Tomlin’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1991), China Moon (1994), Mariette in Ecstasy (1996) and Via Dolorosa (2000).
Bailey said he sought the Academy presidency primarily to support the organization’s film archive, the Margaret Herrick Library, the Nicholl screenwriting programs and international cinema. “I didn’t want to worry about the Oscars so much,” he said in 2021. “The studios are invested in the Oscars, the studios are going to make sure the Oscars take care of themselves, one way or another.
“Everybody seems to have an idea — and they think their idea is best — about what the Academy Awards should be. The absolute inanity, coupled with the hubris that comes with it sometimes, especially on the part of certain trade and media critics … it just really bothered me that whole Oscar season, day after day, having to read the drivel by some of these journalists that said they knew how to fix the Oscars.”
He and Littleton, who is to receive an honorary Oscar at the delayed Governors Awards in January, had no children.
“All of us at the Academy are deeply saddened to learn of John’s passing,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang said in a joint statement. “John was a passionately engaged member of the Academy and the film community. He served as our president and as an Academy governor for many years and played a leadership role on the cinematographers branch. His impact and contributions to the film community will forever be remembered. Our thoughts and support are with Carol at this time.”
Donations in his memory can be made to the Academy Foundation.
Bailey said his formative years in Hollywood taught him that becoming a successful cinematographer had more to do with just learning how to operate the equipment.
“It’s about learning how people work together, forging relationships, dealing with the stresses and the sort of unexpected accidents and gifts that you’re given day to day and developing a perspective that when you go to work in the morning, you’re not executing a blueprint based on storyboards or discussions or anything,” he said. “You are in a living, changing, spontaneous, human flux. Anything can happen at any given moment.”
Anyone who reads a lot of popular non-fiction is accustomed to the inevitable disappointment of the movie version. Stinkers like Unbroken, In The Heart of the Sea, and He’s Just Not That Into You… (and the list goes on) are barely-remembered for a reason, but even relatively-successful, positively-reviewed films like The Blind Side, Moneyball, or Into The Wild still pale in comparison to the books that spawned them, at least for those of us who read them. “The book was better” isn’t just something book readers say to be pedantic; most of the time, it’s true.
That’s part of what makes Martin Scorsese’s take on David Grann’s 2017 best-seller Killers of the Flower Moon stand out. While it’s certainly a different story than the book, as all good non-fiction movie adaptations necessarily should be, Scorsese still gets to the heart of its most important themes (the banality of evil and the lawlessness of frontier capitalism especially) and lends them an emotional gravity and visual power beyond words that books can’t. This is especially true of the movie’s ending, which condenses hundreds of pages of often dense (and brilliant) historical exposition into a single, invented scene that somehow captures perfectly the commoditization of the Osage Reign of Terror without repeating any of the details, imbuing them with the added thump of Scorsese acknowledging his own mortality.
Simply put, it’s hard to remember a non-fiction movie adaptation as successful as Killers of the Flower Moon. (In this writer’s opinion, even the previous film based on a David Grann book—2016’s The Lost City of Z, by the much-loved director James Gray—doesn’t measure up.)
To help us remember some nonfiction-to-movie adaptations that did work, we turned to someone who’s both an expert at researching the recent past and someone who might have some opinions about book-to-movie adaptations: David Grann himself, who agreed to share a few of his favorites.
Zodiac
“I’ve grown a bit exhausted by films about serial killers, but this adaptation is about so much more. It is a deep exploration of the nature of obsession—of the killer’s fixations and our fixations with unraveling the mystery of the killer. And the movie grapples with a question that has always haunted me as a reporter: What happens when the facts we frantically seek to make sense of murderous evil—including the identity of the perpetrator—elude us?”
All the President’s Men
“I recently rewatched this film and I found it no less gripping than when I first saw it decades ago. The movie manages to capture not only the historic Watergate conspiracy but also the deep, unsettling paranoia that can eat away at society when institutions are unstable—something that feels unnervingly familiar today. Plus, the film helped to unleash a whole new generation of investigative reporters—though none of them looked quite like Robert Redford.”
Adaptation
“This ‘adaptation,’ if you can call it that, of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief brilliantly and hysterically gets at the essential conundrum of transforming a work of facticity into a work of cinema. They are such wildly different mediums. One is bound by the literal truth, the author’s decisions dictated by the underlying source materials; the other is visual and elastic, with invented scenes and dialogue, illuminating realms inaccessible to a reporter or a historian. In the case of Adaptation, the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman madly shows what happens when these two equally passionate art forms collide.”
I sometimes hide disappointment behind a meek observation that, well, “it isn’t for me,” but I’m sure that Dauntless developer Phoenix Labs’ life sim role-playing gameFae Farm, out on Switch and PC on September 8,is for me. Calm and uncomplicated “cozy gaming” is heavily associated with women, I’m one of those. Fae Farm, in which you play a traveler who’s chosen to travel to a distant island in order to restore it, is washed in fairy magic, and I like that. I love Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park, I spend too much money on my haircuts—I’m just like other girls.
Fae Farm disrespects that, then, by being a duplicate of almost every major life sim game that came before it, acting like all other girls want is copycat farming mechanics and obligatory marriage.
Fae Farm is overly familiar
Seeming to anticipate my irritation, my custom character won’t stop giggling in the, I will say, pleasantly representative creator. I test out a few different skin tones from Fae Farm’s abundant options, and she’s laughing. I weigh the merits of space buns over braids while scanning the hijab and turban styles, and she chuckles unremittingly. Oh my God. I select “Silent” when it’s time to pick a voice. I can already tell this game is going to patronize me.
Not that it needs to. Fae Farm borrows all its important elements from the king of modern cozy gaming, Stardew Valley, and from the genre’s 1997 mothership Harvest Moon, so I’m walking into a recurring dream.
Like in those games, creating and maintaining neglected farmland makes up part of my daily routine, as does interacting with Azoria island (I rename my town and homestead to a body part of my choice, but I can’t edit the island’s name) shopkeepers to buy useful or decorative items, like little glass bottles of health-restoring potions, wallpaper embellished with butterflies, and a peasant dress I routinely reinvent by dying it different colors.
My neighbors offer me both main story quests, all plainly stated in a graphic on the left of my screen, that let me access new parts of Azoria’s map, but I return to them for additional side quests that lead me to new gameplay features, like bastard bunny Cottontail creatures I can buy and bring home to harvest their excess cotton. Island residents also help me acquire and upgrade skills I’ve mastered in other life sims like Disney Dreamlight Valley, Dinkum, and Hello Kitty Island Adventure: fishing, mining, bug-catching, and cooking.
Fae Farm is less coquettish about those things than other games are. They aren’t really “minigames” here, though you can complicate things by strategically holding A to sneak up on a bug instead of impulsively approaching, and fish will tug your line, turning it taut and red, before allowing you to snag them. Most of the time, though, if you see a tiara-topped queen bee and want to document it in your almanac, as long as you swing, it’s guaranteed to end up in your net. If a woozy rainbow starburst, which can signal rarity, instead intrigues you to a brawny fish’s shadow deep underwater, you only have to cast a line, and the fish is likely yours for dinner.
In part, this effortlessness is what makes Fae Farm’s life sim activities appealing. Everyone already knows that real world chores can be hard, and they can feel hard to start. Why not pick up your Switch, leave your mind on the table far away from you, and be instantly full among the ladybugs?
I get it, I like escapism and low-dose edibles, too. But I’m growing skeptical of heirloom cozy game escapism—the fishing, mining, bug-catching, etc. It’s starting to feel pre-chewed and insulting, the expectation that I’ll pay another $60 and put in another 100 hours into a game I’ve already played in a dozen other forms.
I’m extra disappointed, then, that I’m not a fairy, the one Fae Farm aspect I’d hoped would set it apart from the rest of the farming sim milieu. But, while magic helps me clear purple weed tangles, which are identical to Disney Dreamlight’s Night Thorns, no one in town speaks of fairies during my 13-hour playthrough, and I never reach the mainline quest that unlocks fairy wings, which enable double-jump. Their empty slot in my outfit editor taunts me.
I witness, instead, how wild magic has turned stray objects like pocket watches, wagon wheels, and treasure chests into enemies–fanged “jumbles” which snap while I explore the Saltwater Mines, one of three dungeon systems in the game. I whack them with my magic staff and avoid their area-of-effect attacks, the path of which are revealed in the few seconds before they’re executed, to shake out the resources they drop, like raw gems and lumber.
Aside from these jumbles, though, there is rarely any satisfying conflict in this game. I upgrade my tools to more durable copper relatively early on, after acquiring tons of nuggets in the multilevel Mines, where floors don’t permanently unlock until you’ve gotten enough metal to smelt a seal. These seals also unlock fast-travel portals, or wayshrines, located throughout Fae Farm’s map, but I mostly travel by diving into the ocean (an action that, amusingly, refills my watering can) and bouncing on springy, purple mushroom tops.
With my improved copper sickle, I’m able to conserve energy while amassing plant fibers with which to feed my Cottontail, or while I crack open beech tree stumps to craft other homestead decor, some of which can interestingly augment my max health, stamina, or blue mana meter. I hit a glittery rock with one swing, and a cascade of citrine floods my inventory.
Very quickly, stuff starts taking over my Fae Farm life. It’s partially my fault—I can’t help myself from collecting seashells and all kinds of other garbage to sell, eat, or build with. I make it a habit to trek to the central market at least once a day (unlike other sims, there’s no penalty for staying out late; at midnight, you’re teleported to bed like you’ve always been well-behaved), to unload up to 32 items onto a set of tables, at which everything sells overnight.
But even after upgrading my inventory and buying an additional market stall, I feel overburdened (over-padding your backpack doesn’t encumber you in-game, however; only losing a large chunk of health or staying awake past 11 p.m. can make your character sluggish). I’m constantly finding recipes for new furniture, like a stamina-boosting, “relaxing cozy” bed, or a mana-improving, “inspiring cozy” crystal ball. And I unlock crafting stations to form processed materials, like a loom I use to make fabric for clothing. But I run out of space to carry all the materials I need to make them. I get stuck in a loop of collecting items, discovering recipes, but not having enough inventory space to fill them; I then drop some items in order to gather a different, more specific set of items. In the end, I have a wooden fence. I start wondering what’s the point.
Image: Phoenix Labs
What’s the point?
I’ve been considering how the “girl games” I grew up with—things like fairy-sprinkled massively multiplayer online game Pixie Hollow—compare to games from around that time marketed to men, like Dead Space or Guitar Hero. It’s belittling, in hindsight, that shared human experiences like triumph, tears, and “Everlong” by Foo Fighters were implied to be things that only men could really understand, could really relate to in a game. Girls are too simple to accept anything other than Tinkerbell wearing lipgloss, games said then.
But, you know, I like guitars, too. I thought everyone knew that, but I’m realizing, with Fae Farm, that games still see women—now a major demographic—as blank, easily satisfied consumers.
I think the imitative content I already mentioned speaks to that point, but I don’t find any Fae Farm quality as offensive as its allowing you to date and, ultimately, marry one of your empty shell neighbors, all of who repeat generic dialogue when engaged in conversation: “Thanks, I’m glad you were able to clear out those thorns,” “I’m looking forward to planting my spring crops,” “I love watching the blossoming trees in spring.”
With dialogue this unsexy, it feels like Phoenix Labs added dating elements to its game because that’s what you do in a game like Stardew Valley, and that’s what women like.
I’m ready to move on from that. Women aren’t so undemanding, and neither is the cozy game genre in 2023. Other relaxing games, including this year’s Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood and A Space for The Unbound, use soothing genre characteristics, like repetitive actions and hushed music, only to provide a downy pillow at which to explore more complex, more human themes, like gender identity, trauma, and love. And they do it successfully.
I’m over seeing girls’ cuteness being understood as their obedience—to social expectations, to men’s interpretation, whatever—and I don’t need Fae Farm following suit by serving us hollow chocolate bunnies, something easy to eat. Other modern cozy games have already demonstrated that the genre can handle emotional depth, and I prefer that to the worn-out Harvest Moon picnic blanket. We can wrap ourselves in something more prickly, life sims’primarily female audience is certainly capable of complexity. Women like more than flowers and marriage. We contain multitudes. It’s not a big deal.
Though the pair starred in four movies together, the “Grace and Frankie” star revealed Redford couldn’t stand love scenes while speaking on a panel at Cannes Film Festival on Friday.
“He did not like to kiss,” Fonda confessed, per Deadline.
The actor and activist remembered Redford being testy while on set, but said she never pressed him as to why.
“I never said anything,” she revealed. “And he’s always in a bad mood, and I always thought it was my fault.”
“He’s a very good person,” Fonda added. “He just has an issue with women.” Fonda did not elaborate further.
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda receive a Golden Lion For Lifetime Achievement Award during the 2017 Venice Film Festival.
Pascal Le Segretain via Getty Images
The celebrity said she learned not to take things personally by the time she and Redford worked together on 2017’s “Our Souls at Night.”
“The last movie I made with him was six years ago,” Fonda said. “What was I, about 80 years old or something like that. And I finally knew I had grown up. When he would come on the set three hours late in a bad mood, I knew it wasn’t my fault.”
Despite the delays, she said, “We always had a good time.”
Fonda and Redford first worked together on 1960’s “Tall Story” before collaborating again on 1967’s “Barefoot in the Park.” The pair also starred in 1979’s “The Electric Horseman,” which would be their last film together until 2017.
While Fonda talked up her chemistry with Redford at the 2017 Venice Film Festival, she told attendees he wasn’t as enthusiastic.
“I live for sex scenes with him,” she said. “He doesn’t like sex scenes, [but] he’s a great kisser.”
Redford was married to historian Lola Van Wagenen from 1958 until 1985. He wed artist Sibylle Szaggars in 2009.
Fonda has been married three times: first to French filmmaker Roger Vadim from 1965 to 1973, then to politician Tom Hayden from 1973 to 1990 and last, to media mogul Ted Turner, whom she married in 1991 and divorced in 2001.
This film about a Jersey guy brimming with toxic masculinity was Gordon-Levitt’s feature writing and directing debut. He starred as the title character, with Scarlett Johansson as the woman of his dreams, who still can’t match his distorted, X-rated expectations.
“That’s what I always wanted,” he says. “Direct a movie that plays Sundance. It was a life goal. Funny enough, I remember loving the experience of watching the movie, but one of the things I remember most afterwards is talking to my mom about the movie. Don Jon deals heavily with the objectification of women—and men as well—but this is something that my mom always raised my brother and me to be quite focused on. And I made a movie about that, but in a roundabout way. It satirizes it and brings that objectification right into your face.”
“The movie is playing at Sundance, where I wanted it to play, and it played well in front of a big audience, and all that external validation was there. But actually, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of that night is a conversation I had just with my own mom,” he says.
Years would pass before his next big Sundance experience, but that one would involve the story of a mother too.
2023 —Flora and Son
Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Flora and Son.
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Gordon-Levitt’s latest film, Flora and Son, is set to debut on opening weekend of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Eve Hewson stars as a single mom in Dublin whose struggle to earn a living while raising a troubled boy has withered most of her other hopes and dreams. She still clings to music as a passion, and Gordon-Levitt plays her online guitar teacher.
The musical is directed by John Carney, the filmmaker behind the 2007 Sundance musical hit Once. “He strikes a balance between bringing that kind of magic that only a musical can bring, but on the other hand, grounding it in real, human, heartfelt life in a way that I think is pretty unique,” Gordon-Levitt says. “Getting to finally do some music in a movie is momentous for me in a new and different way. Even though it’s kind of a humble musical—that’s more my style.”
Despite his long history at Sundance, Gordon-Levitt says the annual gathering means more to him than just a platform to show off work. He thinks of it as an inspiration, and quotes something he once heard from that guy who gave him his first Sundance T-shirt.
“I would just echo Mr. Redford in trying to direct our focus back to the creative process itself,” Gordon-Levitt says. “Ultimately that’s what the spirit of Sundance is, in my opinion. And the creative process itself is something that people can have—you can have, I can have, anybody can have—whether you get into Sundance or you don’t get into Sundance. It doesn’t have to all be this elite clique of the industry. It can be anybody, everybody.”
