Redford and Nolte find rapport in ‘A Walk in the Woods’

Park City • When you're dealing with two actors — Robert Redford and Nick Nolte — with "combined a hundred years of acting craft under their belts," director Ken Kwapis found that a loose grip on the reins is sometimes best.

"It's the smart director who knows when to shut up and let two guys who know what they're doing do their thing," Kwapis said, after the movie he directed with Redford and Nolte, "A Walk in the Woods," premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

The movie (which opens in theaters nationwide Wednesday) is based on Bill Bryson's memoir of a hike he took on the Appalachian Trail, a reunion with his long-estranged buddy Katz. Redford plays the slightly straitlaced Bryson and Nolte plays the gruff, irascible Katz.

"A Walk in the Woods" allowed Redford to get back into a comedy, something he did in his early career — in the stage and movie versions of Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park," for instance — but not so much lately.

"I kind of missed it over the years," Redford said during a series of roundtable interviews in Park City during Sundance. "This opportunity came up, and I just felt it was a good opportunity to do a comedy that had more dimension in it than just one note. That's what appealed to me."

Nolte, noting that "good comedy scripts are very hard to find," reminisced about a time when a good script came his way and he refused to let go: Paul Mazursky's 1986 comedy "Down and Out in Beverly Hills."

Nolte said he knew Mazursky was considering Jack Nicholson for the part, so when the director visited to talk about the movie, Nolte insisted they read the script together then and there. "I knew if I read the whole script with him, he'd have to give it to me," Nolte said, adding that he even walked Mazursky to his car until the director finally caved and gave him the role.

Redford and Nolte, though they became stars around the same time, had never worked together until Redford directed Nolte in a small role in the 2012 thriller "The Company You Keep," about former radicals on the run.

"We had a connection, and it worked really well," Redford said of Nolte.

Screenwriter Bill Holderman, who adapted Bryson's book, saw Redford and Nolte mesh well in "The Company You Keep." "Their rapport was so amazing," he said.

Redford, Holderman said, had been trying to make "A Walk in the Woods" into a movie for more than a decade. When Redford first secured the film rights, he had intended the movie as a reunion with his old friend — and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" co-star — Paul Newman. Alas, Newman's ill health made that impossible, and Redford shelved the project for several years.

"It would have been fantastic to see what Paul Newman would have made with that part. I'm sure it would have been a very different movie," Bryson said. "Nick Nolte is Katz, in a way I don't think Paul Newman would have been. It would have still been a wonderful movie, but you would have lost Katz as Katz was in the book."

Holderman found that the traits of Redford and Nolte, and those of their characters, often overlapped. "Their fundamental understanding of who the characters were was so rich and deep that they could just bring all of that background and it just blended together beautifully," he said.

Filming "A Walk in the Woods" in the Appalachians, mostly in Georgia, Kwapis ("He's Just Not That Into You") was struck by how Redford and Nolte were willing to sacrifice dignity for comedy.

In particular, there was one scene in which Bryson and Katz get stuck on a ledge and try various tricks — including removing their pants — to catch a branch to climb to safety.

"I was delighted by how much both of them were willing to take the plunge and make asses of themselves," Kwapis said.

"A Walk in the Woods" does have a serious undercurrent to it, Kwapis said. "This is a movie about lost time, falling out of touch with someone forever, and can you reconnect," he said. "The key was how to let that stuff sneak up on you, as opposed to announce you're going to feel a certain way."

"Maybe," Redford said, "if the film succeeded at all, you would feel something. Camaraderie, revived friendship, moments lost, attempts to regain the moments when time is running out. That kind of stuff."

spmeans@sltrib.com

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