PASADENA, Calif. — Robert Redford has been trying to bring Tony Hillerman's mystery novels to the screen for some 17 years. He just never thought it would take that long — or that it would be the small screen, not the big one, where his movies would find a home.
And he certainly never thought they'd air on PBS.
But the first of what Redford hopes will be a series of Hillerman-inspired installments of "Mystery!" will air nationally in November. And he's so enthusiastic about the project that he may even direct a future installment himself.
So what took so long?
"The biggest obstacle was that I assumed something that wasn't to be assumed," Redford said. "I assumed that people would jump at the idea of doing a film series that's very low-budget, showing something completely new, breaking new ground, bringing the elements of mystery and humor and character together like the old 'Thin Man' series or the Charlie Chan mystery series. I saw it in that vein. And I thought that there'd be a huge jump to it from the commercial parts of Hollywood, but there wasn't. And that surprised me."
He shopped it to various studios for years, without any takers. The closest he came to making his dream come true was the critically excoriated 1991 movie "Dark Wind," with Lou Diamond Phillips, which eventually went straight to video.
"Skinwalkers" will introduce Hillerman's two Navajo detectives, Joe Leaphorn (Wes Studi) and Jim Chee (Adam Beach), as they struggle to solve a series of murders that seem tied to Native American folklore. They're a study in contrasts — Leaphorn is an urban Indian, unfamiliar with his culture; Chee is both a tribal policeman and an aspiring medicine man.
Seeing them together on screen is a dream come true for Redford. "I put so much into this," he said. "I've struggled with Tony's pieces for many, many years. . . . It was kind of a much harder road than I was anticipating because of the lack of support for the Native Americans on a stand-alone basis.
"I mean, it was OK when you had Native Americans symbolically representing one side of an equation that allowed the guys in the white hats to
be good guys. But it was quite another thing if you said, 'Let's make a film dealing with this culture.' "
Adding to the difficulty of getting the project off the ground is that Redford "initially conceived this as a film series — one to be released every 18 months — and allow audiences to get familiar and kind of adopt the two characters. It was getting to be hard."
Enter Pat Mitchell, who became president of PBS two years ago. She was not only a former president of Turner Broadcasting but had been a member of the Sundance board, and she was herself part Native American. Mitchell maintained an interest in his efforts, "periodically asking . . . how it was going." And her questioning "accelerated" after she went to PBS.
Basically, Redford gave up hope that Hollywood would ever want to do "Skinwalkers" or any of the other Hillerman books as features, no matter how modestly budgeted. He said the movie industry exists in "a terrible climate of fear, and the fear is so pervasive, it's shrinking a lot of opportunities all over the place. . . . Everybody's afraid. Everybody's pulling back. They're cutting to the sure thing."
And the "sure thing" is youth-oriented movies that are mostly "animation and action."
"And because people are afraid and because the industry has been run more and more of the last years by the merchant mentality, you're not going to get many chances taken," Redford said. "That's why I thought PBS was such a good fit."
Not that he was quickly sold on the idea of taking the project to television. "I was still somewhat stuck on the idea of trying to preserve it only for film. I didn't jump to it," Redford said. "And then, as time went on, I began to look at the situation and recognize how valuable I thought Pat was in that position, with an organization that shared so many similarities with Sundance — ours being to create opportunities and nurture new artists and new voices for independent film, and hers to do the same thing, and offer some distribution for that. It seemed to suddenly be a very, very good fit."
Added to the mix was Carlton Television, a production company that is distributing "Skinwalkers" in markets around the world. "It was a good fit because of the quality of the distributors. And for Pat — she got me cheap," Redford said with a laugh.
And, while nothing is set yet, PBS is hoping to make a series of Hillerman "Mystery!" movies. Studi and Beach have already signed on.
Redford first acquired the rights to Hillerman's books in 1986. "I was making a film in New Mexico and read the first two or three of Tony's books. I had no idea at that time there was this gigantic underground population of support for him. So I just saw it individually as a chance to do something that was very personal."
His interest in Hillerman's books is directly tied to his interest in Native American culture, which has been with him almost his entire life.
"When I was about 5, my mother was driving to Texas with me in the car, and we went through Gallup — that was during the war," Redford said. "And I was so impacted by what I saw and just the nature of it, that I asked that she stop the car so I could get out and talk to somebody, or maybe even touch them. And that's where it started."
It developed into a particular fascination with the Navajo and Hopi people, which led him to spend "quite a lot of time" in and around the reservations.
"That led to political activism involving Native American lands and their culture and responsibilities that we — as a nation — carried, that hadn't been repaid," Redford said. "A lot of documentaries were made, produced, narrated through the years, kind of culminating in the documentary 'Incident at Ogalala,' involving Leonard Pelletier and the issue of — are minorities subjected to a double standard in our judicial system? Which, clearly, in his case was the case."
And it led him in 1980 to attempt to get a Native American division going at his Sundance Film Lab, "because, up to that point, primarily the Native American art was relegated to beads and crafts and weaving and things of that kind, but film had not come forward."
He acknowledged that not a lot has come out of that attempt — the major exception being the 1998 film "Smoke Signals," from Native American director Chris Eyres (who also directed "Skinwalkers"). But he's never given up on the attempt, "because I felt that Native Americans had, in their hands, a tremendous asset, which is essentially a tradition of oral storytelling as a communication through time, rather than a written document, and being essentially very visually oriented because of their heritage being tied to land and their culture, I felt there were tremendous possibilities for them to tell their own stories, rather than what we had experienced through the years, which was being given the stories of Native Americans through the eyes, solely, of Hollywood or certain Anglo people, no matter how well-intended they were. So that brought me to this place."
And he's hopeful that his dream of turning the Chee and Leaphorn series into a series will finally come to fruition. He's even talking about directing at least one movie, which would be the first time he's directed for TV.
"I want to direct 'Thief of Time.' It's just a personal favorite of mine I'd like to do," Redford said.
He's also talking about buying the rights to more of Hillerman's books.
"We have 12 of them, and I didn't option any more until I could put one on the screen," Redford said with a laugh. "But now, with this, we're going to go forward with Tony. He's got a new book out that's really quite good."
E-MAIL: pierce@desnews.com