Redford takes on Rather's legacy in 'Truth'

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Even the sturdiest of perches can be toppled.

Brian Williams found that out in June, when he was permanently ejected from the NBC Nightly News anchor chair after an internal review of his fabrications of events in the field.

It was 10 years ago that Dan Rather was booted from CBS Evening News after four decades with the network, thanks to his controversial 60 Minutes report on George W. Bush.

That's where Truth (in theaters Oct. 16) comes in, a new film starring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett, which delves into the events which ultimately caused Rather's downfall after 24 years as the face of the network.

The film will open this month at the Toronto Film Festival. "It's a very, very different film," said Redford, who goes toe-to-toe with Blanchett as Rather's longtime Peabody Award-winning producer, Mary Mapes.

Mapes was also terminated after holes were found in their pre-election report, which questioned President George W. Bush's pre-Vietnam service in the Texas Air National Guard. The film is based on Mapes' 2005 memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, The President and the Privilege of Power.

But Redford as Rather? Director James Vanderbilt says trying to get "a legend to play a legend" was the only workaround when casting someone so familiar to millions. "They're similar in the sense that they both have that voice of God that's been around in our collective unconscious for decades," says Vanderbilt, who decided to forgo prosthetics and simply grayed Redford's hair.

"The only tricky part is playing Dan Rather because he's someone who everybody knows. They know what he looks like, what he sounds like," says Redford. "To play him, I had to be careful not to do a caricature, yet I had to get the essence."

Redford initially met Rather back in the 1970s, when he appeared on 60 Minutes to protest dam and power-plant development in southern Utah. But he says he spent most of his Truth prep watching old Rather newscasts.

The two spoke only once before Redford began filming, and the newsman had a single note for the movie star.

"He said, 'It's all about loyalty,' " Redford says. "It was a triumvirate of loyalty."

Rather told Redford he had "unbreakable loyalty" to Mapes and to CBS, and "the shock and despair (was) when they broke that loyalty."

Redford nods. "I said, 'That's a good story." And it reminded Redford of his 1994 comic drama Quiz Show, about a fixed game show. "Because Quiz Show was about the same thing, the power of the money people (who) would turn on their own to protect themselves."

In Truth, "the title is about what everyone is trying to get to," says Vanderbilt. "How the sausage is made, how our news stories are baked, prepared and served to us."

In 2005, Rather was asked to step down from his anchor post after the authenticity of several documents that verified Bush's absence from service were questioned. Rather, who has defended the thrust of the report, later accused CBS of caving the the White House, and in 2007 he sued CBS and its parent company, Viacom. The suit was dismissed.

"He did get sabotaged," says Redford, an acknowledged critic of the Bush administration. "I always had trouble with Bush being the president. I thought he was limited and unqualified."

Those documents were "a small technicality" of the Bush report, says Redford, pointing to the bigger picture, "which is the relationship between the common person and the corporate control of people. And the fact that CBS was the controlling factor. He was at their mercy."