Paul Newman

rest in peace

;_;

Glad "Slap Shot" didn't win.

i am glad Nobody's Fool got 2 votes :)

Great actor. (duh)

pouring some dressing out for the man

rip

RIP big man.

http://videodetective.com/photos/039/001650_1.jpg

cool-jazz hollywood hero, r.i.p.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i227/rioblondie/gal-newman.jpg

pouring some dressing out for the man

beat me to it, goddammit.

I guess no juicy books on him will come out while Joanne is still with us.

Best lemonade ever.
RIP.

Rachel Rachel DVD in February

Not enough love in this thread for "Hud," which I saw for the first time ever last night. This one's gonna haunt me for quite a while. Great performances; bleak, beautiful (and Oscar-winning) b/w cinematography.

"The Last Picture Show" is one of my favorite movies of all time, also set in small-town Texas. What else should I rent for similar look/feel/emotional resonance?

lol at the idea frat boys are broing down with some Slap Shot.

or hockey fans (to go down one rung on the food chain).

Riffled through some pulpy PN bio the other day, in which he was reported to have opined to a former male lover that he wish he'd done The Front Runner (gay track-and-field love story) instead of Slap Shot, "which is nothing."

his friendship with Gore Vidal was never fully explained, was it?

who cares

actors say a bunch of dumb shit

that's why they use scripts

http://www.abouttown.us/dutchess/articles/summer06/images/gorevidal2.jpg

http://blogs.publico.es/bobpop/files/2008/09/vidalnewman.jpg

whose balls are those?

Watched The Young Philadelphians this week (part of a box set I've been slowly working my way through). One of those films where Newman's as good as ever in the midst of a lot of nothing--although a generically '50s-closeted Adam West ("I...can't love...anyone!") was entertaining.

Just watched The Hustler and Color back to back. In Color, it's hard to catch a glimpse of the old Eddie. But "I'm back" probably wins it.

Happy birthday dear Paul.

Over the past two years, with two friends, we started a mission to watch ~all of Newman's films. We are at 42 right now. I recommend the journey.

But I can't recommend Quintet.

There was a time when I would have said A New Kind of Love was my favorite movie. I still have a soft spot for it.

Played this clip from The Hustler for my class this morning. But it wasn't a good choice--all Gleason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5XMnxp2S9Q

VHS, does that include WUSA or The Silver Chalice?

Happy Birthday Coach! #SlapShot pic.twitter.com/KPBLqfHQ3i

— The Hanson Brothers (@Hanson_Brothers) January 26, 2018

Not very good in Harper. He doesn't have much to work with--almost every line that's supposed to be clever falls flat--but Newman doesn't help. Grim the whole way; even in The Verdict, he jokes around a little.

I thought Harper was pretty good. Drowning pool was dour

Would have been 83 today. My grocer, for whatever reason, has removed his salad dressing, which I always bought (oil & vinegar).

It's all about the Sockarooni sauce:

https://newmansown.com/product/sockarooni-sauce/

His autobiography is out. Good review/analysis of his crooked ambit through life by none other than Simon Callow -

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/12/22/ol-blue-eyes-the-extraordinary-life-of-an-ordinary-man-paul-newman/

I read bits at the bookstore in December and was pretty charmed; he had a good sense of himself, the ridiculousness of stardom.

Would have been 83 today.

I just came back to correct that, thanks--died at 83, almost his 100th.

I showed three clips to a grade 8 class this morning (extra time to kill): one from The Hustler, "Werewolves of London" from The Color of Money (95% Cruise, but it's a great scene and I knew there was no language), and his closing statement in The Verdict (stodgy, but a good introduction). They were unusually attentive, and one guy was even able to explain how a pool hustler operated.

I like the marinara sauce e

Showed Hud tonight for my dying-faster-than-fledgling monthly movie night. I just love it: I think it's my favourite of anything you'd care to classify as a death-of-the/revisionist/whatever western, ahead of McCabe or The Wild Bunch or Liberty Valence or anything (including the more famous The Last Picture Show, also by Larry McMurty). It never really gained any long-term critical standing--big in its day, and it won three key AAs--and I'm not sure why. I understand why the self-righteousness (and occasional speechifying) of Melvyn Douglas's Homer might bother someone, but I'm fine with it in the context of the film, and his last two lines are worth all of that and more. Patricia Neal is brilliant. Newman's role isn't necessarily challenging, but I think it's iconic. I was thinking tonight about how it was made in '63, the year of JFK's assassination, and how the Texas locale and Newman's anti-government contempt points to the future.

Also, actual line delivered by Newman: "My daddy thinks oil is something you stick in your salad dressing."

Mellencamp said that when he saw it, he was reminded of his uncle, to some extent, and decided that he himself didn't want to take rebellion alienation etc. that far; it could become a trap, for self and others.
It's hard not to sympathize with golden misfit/antihero-to-asshole Hud to some extent, out in the Big Empty (such gray black-and-white), and vs. Melvyn's speechifyin' to boot---then again, it's complicated, and dangerous, like with Chuck and Jimmy in Better Call Saul.

anti-government contempt points to the future.

Is it a good movie?

"My daddy thinks oil is something you stick in your salad dressing."

Cowboys eat salad? Not according to what I heard.

It's hard not to sympathize with golden misfit/antihero-to-asshole Hud to some extent, out in the Big Empty (such gray black-and-white), and vs. Melvyn's speechifyin' to boot

Which of course is exactly what happened, or at least according to Wikipedia: "Although Hud was conceived as an outwardly charming, but morally repugnant character, audiences, especially young people, found him likable, even admirable. Paul Newman said, 'We thought the last thing people would do was accept Hud as a heroic character...His amorality just went over the audience's head; all they saw was this Western, heroic individual.' Martin Ritt later attributed audience interpretation of the character to the counterculture of the 1960s which 'changed the values' of the young audiences who saw Hud as a hero."

I doubt, as Newman claims, anything was over the audience's head; that's just movies. Like in Sweet Smell of Success: Martin Milner is a total bore when played off against Lancaster and Curtis. Or The Fabulous Baker Boys: who'd want to be Beau Bridges when you could be Jeff? (I think Beau's great in TFBB.) Goodness is almost always a bore next to amorality. The thing about Hud is, Newman's always ridiculing Douglas about this very thing: "Wild-eyed Homer Bannon, passing out scripture and verse like you wrote it yourself. So I just naturally had to go bad, in the face of so much good."

And just to be 100% clear, I'm speaking generally there. There's no way, in Hud, you can be conflicted about Newman past a certain point (if you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about). Watching it tonight, I was thinking how awful he is even in his first scene, in the way he uses his nephew.

Louis Menand wrote a wonderful essay about Newman last year in The New Yorker. He was reviewing a book, then went back and read a lot more, watched a lot of movies, made some points I hadn't thought of, others I'd forgotten, from growing up while taking in sooo many Newman movies like Beatles records, enjoyable-to-exciting and yet pretty much for granted.

Looking at the poll results I had no idea he played so many versions of Henry/Hank/Harry, and that those roles were so undervalued by you, the ILX voting contingent.

To Ritt's credit the attempted rate of O'Neal captures her horror and shock.

It's one of his two or three best performances, and I prefer the performance and the movie to The Hustler, which is pretty dull and portentous when Piper Laurie and Newman are bonding and whenever George C. Scott isn't onscreen.

no actor of his generation has given me greater pleasure

+1

There were certainly more talented actors, but none had his presence. Just seeing his face gives me the warm feelies.

Only one vote for either The Verdict or any Tennessee Williams, and none for Absence of Malice, is a tad galling.

I am partial to The Sting, which also got no votes.

Ditto, tho swap it out for Buffalo Bill and the Indians.

I voted for Newman's complicated portrayal of the married closeted gay man Brick Pollitt in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof - he was a favorite son, a former athlete and high school star who possessed an archetypal masculinity, but who after marrying became an alcoholic in mourning for his lost friend Skipper

Pretty interesting reading about Brandon de Wilde, Newman's nephew in Hud (and the kid in Shane):

DeWilde had hoped to embark on a music career. He asked his friend Gram Parsons (later of the Byrds and founder of the seminal country rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers) and his International Submarine Band to back him in a recording session. ISB guitarist John Nuese claimed that deWilde sang harmony with Parsons better than anyone except Emmylou Harris. Bassist Ian Dunlop wrote, "The lure of getting a record out was tugging hard at Brandon."

Parsons and Harris later co-wrote a song titled "In My Hour of Darkness," the first verse of which refers to the car crash that killed deWilde.

Did not know that! Or that they co-wrote a great one that passes through my head pretty often, thanks.
Vs. what Alfred said about Piper and Paul, aiiiieee:
Frank Kogan asked me about this one (the Delines' Colfax) on my ILM list of 30 albums by female country artists, and I replied:

Delines' Colfax Avenue: seedy lowkey glory, cruising through another day and night in old bad-cough Nashville, Birmingham, Chicago, wherever, not nec cruising in the sexual-to-romantic sense, though that does happen, but also looking for work,. for a wayward family member, also going to work, or a date: my central Scene ballot comment had to do with Piper Laurie and Paul Newman. "two lucky pennies," across from each other in a booth, backlit by gray sunlight of the diner window, before things go more sideways in The Hustler.

That's a sharp scene.

I used to know the singer in The Delines, but that was in another lifetime, it feels like.

Amy Boone, yeah, she and Deborah Kelly, her sister, I think, had a band, The Damnations TX, who made a good album I have, Half Mad Moon---then Kelly was badly injured in a car wreck, and Boone joined novelist Willy Vlautin's Richmond Fontaine, told him to write something for her, so Delines, and Colfax. A follow-up didn't hold my attention through a reverie set in a Wal-Mart parking lot, but maybe I should check back in---No Dep has covered them over the years---
https://thedelines.bandcamp.com/album/colfax

Back to Newman: xpost Menand quotes him to the effect that he was the guy in The Vedict, no Method class exercises required.

The Verdict, sorry.

Not the first time I've seen Butch Cassidy, but I'm pretty sure the last. Okay up to Bolivia, really drags after that. "Raindrops" always great.