Creative ideas, design and passion trigger business growth.
“We need to get away from preciousness, of having everything right.”
– Robert Redford
All competent writers keep a morgue file – a stockpile of information that may someday be useful. Such files contain old magazine articles, newspaper clippings and more. Non-writing cynics may not see the value of such accumulations, but morgue files become truly valuable when you’re seeking an idea or reference.
Unfortunately, my morgue file sometimes grows from my file drawers to the desk and then across the floor. Like kudzu. Still, it’s useful. For example, it contains a September 2003 issue of Inc. magazine, where, on page 62, writer and business consultant Stephen H. Zades interviewed Robert Redford.
I met Robert Redford in Colorado, some years back. He was driving a copper-colored (metal-flake), Porsche 911 (it tended to oversteer, he said). Thus, we became instant, although passing, friends. We were both visiting the Aspen International Design Conference. Redford was collaborating on a film with Saul Bass (1920-1996), an Academy Award-winning designer. He and I sat together as Bass lectured on graphic design and his film projects; later we talked Porsches.
Bass created more than 50 film-title sequences for Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, John Frankenheimer and Martin Scorsese; he also designed numerous logos, including those for Bell Systems, United Way, Continental and United Air Lines. (See a collection of his outstanding poster designs at www.cinemacom.com/saul-bass.html.)
Bass said he was self-taught because, when he began, there were no design schools. Design, then, was called commercial art, and few classes existed. He took a painting class at the start of his career.
In the Inc. interview, Redford spoke of his Sundance enterprise and the unconventional efforts that created it. Altogether, Sundance is many enterprises – it includes a resort, DVD/video line, catalog-sales business and a nonprofit institute that comprises various creative workshops. Best known perhaps, is the Sundance Film Festival.
Today, Sundance is a leading institute for inspiring independent films and has been involved in making more than 85 films, including Raising Victor Vargas, Boys Don’t Cry and Reservoir Dogs. The enterprise began in 1961, with two acres, 24-year-old Redford’s hand-built cabin and his belief in a grander place.
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