One Good Ride
Adventures in the American West with Jamie Redford
On a sunny April day in 2014, I went surfing with my friend Jamie in Bolinas, near his home in Marin County. It was a rare opportunity—he was juggling several documentaries in various stages of production, and I was passing through town to plug a book. I thought it would be the first of many surf sessions together, but it didn’t turn out that way.
The whole scene felt magical—rounded mountains, redwoods, palm trees, sandy beach. Walking down to the water, we saw an older longboarder catch a waist-high wave efficiently, effortlessly. Three or four paddle strokes, a smooth pop-up, a mellow trimming turn, and then he was going down the line for a long while. It was nothing flashy, just a clean, elegant ride.
As we paddled out, I said, “That’s all I want to do, surf like that.” I’d only been surfing for a couple of years, and it seemed a modest ambition, but Jamie knew otherwise.
“I know what you mean,” Jamie said. “But I surf here a lot, and that guy’s out here pretty much every time.”
In essence, the longboarder’s ease was well-earned. A quiet, much-practiced grace that didn’t announce itself. That was Jamie, too.
I met Jamie in the fall of 1980, when we were freshman at the University of Colorado. I was visiting a friend across campus one evening, and we were rambling in and out of dorm rooms, as freshmen will. Tacked above a desk in one room was a small photo of a skier jumping off a cornice.
It wasn’t huge air, but a compelling image, shot from below. The skier in a relaxed neutral position, silhouetted in equipoise against a brilliant blue sky over bright snow. The little photo represented the essence of what had drawn me to the Rockies from Ohio.
A slender redhead was standing nearby. I asked if it was him in the photo. He said yes, and shrugged. I asked for details, and he just said it was at a little ski area in Utah. He made an impression, both with his strong skiing and his modest nature. That was my first impression of Jamie Redford. And yes, because he usually had to get this out of the way first, Robert Redford was his dad.
We ran into each other occasionally around campus. Sophomore year we were in an English class together—modern short stories—and sometimes compared notes after class. We were both blown away by Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones.
By then I was sharing a house with a few people including Maro Chermayeff, one of Jamie’s oldest friends from his childhood in Manhattan. In February he stopped by the house and invited me to go skiing at Vail, where he planned to stay with family friends.
We drove up after classes on Friday in his VW Scirocco, arrived late, had a beer with the homeowners in the kitchen, and crashed in a guestroom in the basement. I noticed a lot of ski memorabilia around the house—trophies and photos.
The next day, after breakfast with our hosts, we went out skiing. I asked Jamie about all of those awards. Oh, yeah, he said, that woman we were just drinking coffee with had been on the US Ski Team, she’s an Olympian. I’d not put it together there in the kitchen where she seemed a mere mortal flipping pancakes, but I’d seen her nerve-wracking downhill races on NBC, and watched her free-skiing in 70s ski films.
But this was just how it was with Jamie. You’d be in the lift line, and his acquaintances would ski over and soon you were riding the gondola with people whose names or faces you’d recognize.
There were often hangers-on hanging around, trying to get close to Jamie and his famous father. He could easily have leveraged his position—it would have been the path of least resistance—and had every opportunity to be a self-important jerk.
This was the 1980s, the Reagan years, and Boulder was a bastion of narcissistic excess. It was swarming with beautiful people fueled by Humboldt County bud and fine Colombian blow. Hedonism was not just tolerated, it seemed the prevailing ethos. In that milieu, Jamie stood out—kind, generous, self-effacing, and goofy as hell.
The last two years of college we shared a condo downtown. We both planned to write, though our plans were nebulous. So around the kitchen table we often discussed the stories we were writing and the short films he was making. Some evenings we jammed on guitar, usually Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead tunes, me thrashing out three major chords on my acoustic, Jamie playing elegant lead on his gold-top Les Paul.
But we mostly bonded in the outdoors. And when he was outside—on skis, a motocross bike, or a mountain bike—Jamie was a maniac. This was most apparent at Sundance—the Redfords’ Utah ski resort where he spent so many months of his formative years.
On skis, Jamie had a racer’s ability to not just hold an edge, but to steadily accelerate through a turn. Once, I followed as he took the entire lower mountain at Sundance in what seemed like three turns. He was absolutely smoking, milking every bit of energy from the mountain. Then he set up a line he knew intimately and caught air off a roll next to a lift tower. It wasn’t big air, but he traced an arc a few feet above the slope for what seemed forever, like a downhill racer.
That was probably the weekend in 1985 when we’d gone out for the United States Film Festival, the precursor to the Sundance festival. It was an eye-opener for me, a glimpse of celebrity. For the premier film we drove from Sundance to a Salt Lake City theater in a convoy of several cars. When we parked on the street, the paparazzi didn’t know which car Robert Redford was riding in. So Jamie and I emerged into a sea of flashing cameras, just like in the movies.
Jamie was an old hand at this. “Follow me,” he said. Within seconds, we were standing in a dark alcove, watching the circus pass. We waited a few minutes, then went into the theater to watch the film, which was good. A quirky, druggy thriller.
The next morning, Jamie’s dad asked us to have breakfast with one of the stars of the film, an up and comer named Sean Penn, and his movie star fiancée Liz McGovern. His dad probably thought it would be fun—we were about the same age, and they were staying up at the mountain. The four of us sat at a big round table in the otherwise nearly empty Tree Room restaurant at Sundance.
The movie stars were either hungover or profoundly unhappy, or both. If either said a word during the breakfast, I don’t remember it. Jamie, ever game, tried to make conversation for a while. Then we just talked on our side of the table, planning our day of skiing. The food was always good there, but we gobbled our eggs and slammed our coffee so we could quickly take our leave.
Ever discreet, Jamie didn’t say much as we walked outside and stepped into our bindings. Once on the chairlift, safely away from any prying ears, he looked over at me, raised his eyebrows, and said something like, “What was that all about?” We laughed all the way up the mountain.
Jamie had dozens of stories like this, but he’d never trade on them. It was just the fabric of his life. Strange situations seemed to follow him around. And he was an amazing raconteur. It was a killer combo.
When he’d have a horrible experience with a dentist, and was in raging pain seeking help in the middle of the night, it would have been a great story. But there was always an added element. Like he was doing a favor for a famous friend and house sitting for a weekend, but the guy’s pets were crazy and the house had some ridiculous security system he couldn’t figure out, and—had he mentioned?—it was now two in the morning and he’d never been in such pain.
He’d tell you these stories with a twinkle in his eye and a half smile, and it was hard to know if he was telling the truth. I doubted him a few times and learned my lesson. I came to call these tall-but-true tales Jamie Stories.
He was a golden boy, the full package—handsome, athletic, talented, and hard-working. And he had a problem, an autoimmune disorder affecting his colon. Originally thought to be Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, it was eventually diagnosed as primary sclerosing cholangitis. Since high school, it had intermittently laid him up for weeks at a time. He gave himself daily injections of prednisone.
You could know Jamie well and not understand the gravity of his disease. It wasn’t that he hid it well, he just didn’t let it show.
Still, Jamie was always up for an adventure outdoors. Once, we camped by a stream near Rocky Mountain National Park and had some great fishing for wild trout, a mix of rainbows and cutthroats. It was idyllic, wet-wading in the cold, riffly water, the fish eagerly rising to dry flies.
Another time, we were drifting nymphs for chunky brown trout on the Provo River near Sundance on a hot dry summer day. In mid-afternoon, just as our energy was flagging and the fishing was fading, a watermelon came bobbing down the channel. Jamie waded out chest deep, nearly overtopping his waders, and wrangled it to shore. It seemed hysterical, such an improbable treat. We smashed it on a rock, and devoured that river-chilled melon like cavemen.
In the late 80s, Jamie was living in Denver with Kyle Smith, and I was living in Boulder with Margot Dale, the women we’d later marry. We’d all go out for Mexican food near Larimer Square, or to an Italian restaurant in Cherry Creek. And we took ski weekends together. Once to Monarch, near Salida, but mostly to Sundance.
We’d always drive the same route, through Craig, Vernal and Dinosaur, the four of us joking, telling stories, stopping at small-town diners. One of those weekends was unforgettable.
We drove over late on a Friday, and arrived at Sundance just as it started snowing. We arose to well over a foot of light powder. The road up Provo Canyon was a mess, so the ski area was practically empty. We made fresh tracks all day long.
That night, the same thing happened, another solid foot fell. We’d shuffle through the deep snow from the chairlift over to Bishop’s Bowl, and stand there for a moment, choosing a line in the untracked snow. Then Jamie would drop in over the lip and disappear into a mound of powder, growing larger as he picked up speed. It was snorkel skiing—flying down the bowl you’d really need to crane your neck to catch a breath every now and then. I’d watch the snow flowing over Jamie, then see his hat as he came up for air.
The first day had seemed an undeserved gift from the snow gods. The second day, even better, was pure gravy. Unbelievably, it happened again that night—more than a foot of snow fell.
That last day was utterly magical. Mount Timpanogos looming gloriously above. The snow crystalline under radiant sun. Absolute powder bliss. After each run we’d just look at each other with shit-eating grins and shake our heads. There was absolutely nothing left to say. Driving back to Colorado late that night, tattered, we agreed that we might never again see snow like that, but that would be okay. I never have. Not even close.
Then in 1993, Jamie’s chronic disease caught up with him. He needed a new liver.
It was touch-and-go for Jamie that summer. He got on the transplant list and flew to Nebraska for the procedure. But after the transplant, his hepatic artery became clogged. He got a different liver, had another transplant. This one took. We were living in Montana by then, and I remember opening the Missoulian and seeing a small wire story about Robert Redford’s son’s second transplant that quoted his doctor saying the new liver was working “pretty darn well.”
The transplants made two things clear. Jamie had won a second chance and could live healthily for a while; and it was not certain how long that while might be.
Jamie regained his vigor quickly. In partnership with his old friend Maro he made his first documentary, about the transplant experience. He and Kyle and their children Dylan and Lena settled in Marin County. He became a successful screenwriter. One screenplay became the feature film Cowboy Up, with Darryl Hannah, Molly Ringwald, and Kiefer Sutherland. Another became Spin, with Ruben Blades, Dana Delany, Paula Garces, and Stanley Tucci, which he also directed.
He scratched his musical itch by playing lead guitar in a hot local band, Olive and the Dirty Martinis. And he threw himself into projects to increase support for organ transplants, organizing fundraisers from San Francisco to Boston featuring musical luminaries like John Williams. Meanwhile, he put his name and energy behind environmental campaigns through The Redford Center, which he cofounded with his father. Jamie recognized that they had a platform, a soapbox, and felt it important to use it well. They worked to protect Utah wilderness, and teamed up for a documentary about the Colorado River.
Before long, Jamie really hit his stride as a documentarian. He made films for HBO and others about dyslexia, the Ramapough Mountain Indians fighting Ford’s toxic legacy in New Jersey, the promise of renewable energy, and the challenges posed by childhood trauma.
When he came to a Maine island to interview a source for Toxic Hot Seat, a film about the dangers of flame retardants, I tagged along. There he was with his crew, a filmmaker in his element conducting an interview, but seeing the questions he’d scrawled on a legal pad took me right back to our kitchen table in Boulder.
Jamie had been an avid skateboarder in his teens in New York. So it wasn’t surprising that he began surfing soon after moving to California. He became strong enough to surf even the heavy beach break at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach. He introduced his children to the sport, and surfed all over California, and in Hawaii and New Zealand. When I started surfing in Maine much later, he gave me long-distance advice.
I’d hoped to surf with Jamie again in December 2018, four years after our Bolinas surf session, when I’d be on a brief reporting trip to San Francisco. But two days before I arrived, he sent an email with the subject line: I’M GOING TO MISS YOU IN CA. “So bummed,” he wrote. “I got an earlier slot to go to mayo clinic - az. I’ve had some issues related to my transplant that they are uniquely qualified to deal with. I am going straight there from New York City. Just want to get the appointment over with.”
We talked a few times the next year, and e-mailed and texted a lot. We discussed making a documentary about guitarist Tommy Bolin. We began scheming about a surf vacation with college friends. As vague vacation plans will, they became ever more grandiose. La Jolla? Mazatlan? Kauai? Maybe even New Zealand?
But it soon became clear that he really was sick this time. He needed another liver. In the fall of 2019, he got back on “the list”—the catalog of transplant hopefuls that he’d spent years raising awareness about—and waited… and waited. While waiting, he was diagnosed with cancer of the bile duct, and that screwed everything up.
In February 2020, just before the pandemic shut things down, Jamie explained all this to me on a short hike with Kyle by a reservoir near their home.
Kyle wandered off looking at plants as we sat on a log above the lake. Jamie told me a crazy story about a big-wave surfer he knew who’d had a horrific wipeout, but he muted his own. He said that he couldn’t begin the process of waiting for a new liver until he was absolutely cancer-free—anti-rejection drugs allow cancer cells free rein to rampage through the body—but chemotherapy had given him acute sepsis, twice, that had landed him in the hospital.
He was still fighting, still optimistic, but as I listened, it was hard not to calculate the odds. Even before the cancer diagnosis, he’d been low on the transplant list. This time, he’d be lower, he’d be a worse candidate for a transplant. And that remote possibility—kicking the cancer completely, getting back on the list, actually getting a liver—was the very best possible scenario. It seemed like Jamie was boxed in.
Walking out, where the trail crossed a low bluff, a spin-fisherman just below us was landing a large rainbow. From that vantage above the water on a sunny day, we could see the trout clearly. We talked about fishing the lake on my next visit. But I knew this was a long shot. Jamie’s enthusiasm belied his frailty.
On the way back to his house, Jamie talked about the documentaries he was wrapping up—one about the importance of unstructured play, another about the author Amy Tan. He still had work to do. I gave him a hug in the kitchen and, as I drove away, I wondered if I’d ever see him again.
In July, Jamie sent a note to his friends expressing gratitude for the life he’d led, and especially for the gift of watching his children grow up. He said he’d called in hospice. Hemmed in by smoke as California burned, Jamie made peace with his decision to stop medical treatment.
“No regrets,” he wrote. “No dreams deferred. So many peak experiences as a parent, family member, artist, activist, sports lover, musician. It’s been a life that makes this difficult time easier to face. And for that, I am very grateful.”
He took one last road trip to Sundance with Dylan and Lena. They stopped in Elko, under a Beijing haze, where his favorite Basque-style restaurant was a no-go, packed with maskless patrons. But he had a blast because his children, who inherited his good-natured humor, kept him in stitches all the way across Nevada and Utah.
We kept texting through September. In early October, he stopped responding. Jamie died October 16th, at home, surrounded by his loving family.
So we didn’t take that surf vacation. That session in Bolinas was the only time we ever surfed together.
We both caught a few waves that day. After we agreed to get one more, Jamie dropped in on a clean, chest-high right. At first, I lost sight of him behind the wave. Watching from the lineup, I saw him again, rising and floating out on the shoulder, then lost him again behind the wave. Then, impossibly far down the beach, I saw his head and shoulders rise above the wave, still gliding down the line. He made it look easy.
I rode in on a lesser wave. Walking up from the beach, I said, “That looked like an amazing wave.”
Smiling, clearly stoked, Jamie said, “You usually get one good ride.”