Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford had already done four other pictures together as director and star, respectively, before they made The Electric Horseman (1979), and they would make two more films after this. "In my opinion, he's one of the best movie actors we've ever had in this country," Pollack said of his star. "He's never doing nothing, but he does often hold something back, which, for me, only makes him more interesting." Pollack believes his creative collaboration with Redford to be the most important of his career, stretching back to when they acted together in War Hunt (1962). "We did films in our 30s, in our 40s and our 50s," Pollack said. "I've grown old with him." Their last film together, Havana (1990), wasn't a hit, and Redford has limited his on-screen appearances in recent years, but in a 2002 interview with The Guardian (UK), Pollack held out the hope they would work together at least once more. "I think we owe it to each other," he told the newspaper. "It's a rich time in both of our lives. I'd love to try to reflect what we've learned and where we are now. That would be exciting, but people aren't writing those kinds of stories."

The kind of story that excited them in 1979 was this comedy-western-romance about former rodeo champion Sonny Steele, hired by a cereal company to be its spokesperson. Decked out in a cowboy outfit covered in lights, Sonny is supposed to hawk the product during a special Las Vegas appearance, but when he finds out the champion horse he's riding is being drugged by the corporation, he rides off the stage and into the desert, where he plans to free the horse. Hot on his trail is reporter Alice "Hallie" Martin, who catches up with Steele on the run, falls in love with him, and aids him in his mission when the evil food conglomerate comes gunning for him.

It was the kind of story that also appealed strongly to co-star Jane Fonda. She had been traveling the country with her activist-politician husband Tom Hayden, spreading a message against unbridled corporate power and trying to mobilize people on issues of environmentalism, the injustices of big business, animal rights, and nuclear power (her prior release was the anti-nuke The China Syndrome, 1979). In addition to being aligned with the film's theme and political concerns, Fonda eagerly accepted the role because Redford's Wildwood Company (co-producer with Columbia and Universal) was willing to pay her rate of a million dollars a picture, which she had recently earned by rising to the position of number-one female box office star. She was also eager to work again with Redford and Pollack.

She and Redford knew each other since their stage days in New York in the early 1960s and worked together on film twice before this picture, on The Chase (1966) and Barefoot in the Park (1967). Known to be rather withdrawn and lost in her own process on most movie sets, Fonda was a different person around Redford. "We always had a good time," she said. "He's never been full of himself. He's hysterical. He plays practical jokes. I'm crazy about him." Redford said Fonda "always had faith in our connection and our chemistry." It helped, too, that they shared common liberal politics.

Fonda's connection with Pollack was also important. She has said that she really began to find her voice as an actress while working under his direction in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Pollack had asked her to read both the script and the book it was based on and to give him suggestions. "Nobody had ever asked my opinion about the content of a movie," she later said. "And that little thing made a huge difference."

Besides Las Vegas, location shooting for The Electric Horseman took place in the Utah wilderness near Redford's home (so he could get a break on his state taxes). Most of the shoot went smoothly, but when a series of traveling thunder storms kept interrupting a Redford-Fonda kissing scene, the 20-second bit ended up costing $280,000 for the 48 takes it required. The picture became the top-grossing movie of the 1979 fall season and garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound. Pollack makes a cameo appearance as a Las Vegas regular who makes a pass at Fonda.

Director: Sydney Pollack
Producer: Ray Stark
Screenplay: Shelly Burton, Paul Gaer, Robert Garland, David Rayfiel
Cinematography: Owen Roizman
Editing: Sheldon Kahn
Art Direction: J. Dennis Washington
Original Music: Dave Grusin
Cast: Robert Redford (Sonny Steele), Jane Fonda (Hallie Martin), Valerie Perrine (Charlotta Steele), Willie Nelson (Wendell Hickson), John Saxon (Hunt Sears).
C-121m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning.