"Seymour, we do not dignify absurdities with coverage. This is still America, god damn it! Who wants a cowboy actor in the White House?"
Charles Robert Redford Jr. is an American actor and potential candidate for President of the United States.
Biography
In the 1980s, Robert Redford expresses interest in running for the position of President of the United States in 1988. In 1987, the New York Gazette publishes an article regarding Redford's potential run of the presidency.
Appearances
- Watchmen
- A Stronger Loving World (mentioned)
Trivia
- The New York Gazette's headline reads "RR", leading readers to initially assume this is a reference to Ronald Reagan, but dialogue soon reveals those to be Robert Redford's initials.
- When Seymour suggests writing a piece about Redford running for office, Hector Godfrey shoots down the idea, saying, “Who wants a cowboy in the White House?”. This is not only a reference to Redford's 1968 film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but it's a subtle jab at Reagan, who like Redford, had a career in Hollywood before he began his political career.
- In Snyder's Watchmen film adaptation, the reference at the end of the story was changed to say that Ronald Reagan was running for president, with the same retort that "a cowboy in the White House" would be ridiculous. The line may have been changed because a 2008 movie audience might not have been immediately familiar with Redford's cowboy roles.
- Redford's most popular and critically acclaimed film, All the President's Men (which was a dramatization of the Watergate scandal), would've not been made in the Watchmen Universe because Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were murdered before they could expose the truth about the Watergate break-in and Richard Nixon's involvement, meaning that Redford never would have played Woodward in the film.
