Robert Redford died this week. He was a great fan of Montana,
an advocate for a better society and a
fierce defender of the environment. He once said,
“The way I saw
things, I would see what was wrong. I could see what could be better.
I developed kind of a dark view of life, looking at my own country.”
Great story: Redford’s hit film, A River Runs Through It was
filming in Montana in 1991. Following a call for local actors, my
dad, Rev. Bob Holmes, was actually cast as the newspaper editor! When
the makeup crew asked him to shave his beard he resisted, so Redford
asked his team to research if his keeping his beard would be
historically accurate. (Yes).
But the summer they shot the film the weather was so good they
kept putting off the indoor scenes until it was too late and my folks
had to go to Europe, so dad never appeared in the film. It would have
been such a feather in his cap, as well as being a lauded preacher
and speaker, to appear in that classic film!
