The Big Picture - The Paul Newman Hall of Fame

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Sean and Amanda briefly tease next week’s mailbag episode and react to the Golden Globes adding a new category for Best Podcast (1:34). Then, they dive into their long-awaited Paul Newman episode, where they unpack who Newman was as a person (7:06), explore what made him such a special actor (16:13), and build his Hall of Fame by selecting the 10 most essential performances of his career (43:47). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe show. That's right. I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're going to talk about the games, the X's and O's, the drama, the playoffs are coming up. And now you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're gonna love so make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast. Let's go! I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbin.

And this is the Big Picture Right Conversation Show about Paul Newman. It's finally here to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday. This year in 2025, we are talking about Paul Newman, a magical movie star, a favorite of this show, someone that we've never dedicated an entire episode to. Very excited to build his Hall of Fame with you, Amanda. We have spent days, weeks, months re-watching and watching for the first time his vast filmography. Do you feel ready for this experience?

As ready as I'm going to be. OK. You know, like, I've really been. There was a moment last week where I was like, maybe I can never watch a Paul Newman film again. And maybe I hate him. And that's, I've come back around. Okay, that's good.

You know, we went to the deep immersion and we came back, but it was like, it's time to do this, you know? I agree. It is almost time to do it, until these very brief announcements. First of all, we are doing a Mailbag episode next week. Right. So, if you have questions, we have an email address you can send those questions to.

Bob Wagner will be back to be scouting those questions for us, looking forward to hearing about- What is the email address? It's jimfennacy. We don't know what it is. At gmail.com. Chris has this down so great on the watch. Like his, you know, his like-

Jack, what new email address? Do we know? Come on, help us out. BigPicMailbag at gmail.com. There we go. BigPicMailbag at gmailcom. BigPicMailbag at Gmail.com. Send us your questions if you want to know about movies this year, if you want to know about movies from the past, if you want to know about the awards race, if you want to know about any old thing.

More about Minecraft? Should we force Amanda to see Minecraft? I just, I don't, I can't do it this weekend. It's a pretty, like three birthday parties, but maybe like next weekend, sure. Maybe next weekend. Yeah, while you're gone. While everyone else is at Cannes, while you're golf parties, but maybe like next weekend. Okay. Maybe next weekend. While you're gone, while everyone else is at can while you're golfing, I can go see Minecraft.

Okay. I'm going to mark that down in my brain. News. Yeah. Did get some news yesterday. I certainly heard from a lot of people about this news. Yeah. What was the news?

The news is that we are going to be accepting the first Golden Globe for podcast next year at the Golden Globes. Very exciting. Yeah, so they're introducing a podcast category. To be honest, I put this in the outline and realized I didn't actually click through on any of the headlines, so I know none of the details. Do you? Just that they have identified a top 25 podcasts in some way.

Sure. We don't know what the metrics are. Could it be downloads? Could it be reviews? Could it be vibes? I don't know. But they're going to identify 25 podcasts and then members of the organization that votes on the Golden Globes, which was once the Hollywood Foreign Press and now is something else, will determine the best podcast.

So it's going to be Smartless. It's going to be Amy Poehler. It's going to be Dax Shepard. It's going to be Joe Rogan. And it's going to, um, Dax Shepard. Yes. It's gonna be Joe Rogan. And it's gonna be me and you. Okay, great. What do you think our chances are? Really excited to meet Amy Polar. I hope they put us at the same table as part of Spotify. Amy is great. I look forward to racing against her.

She does seem like a great hang. She is a good hang for sure. Uh, the other group, you know, can't say. Don't know. Yeah. No comment. Um... A regular person is not gonna win this award. So it's important that everyone understand that folks like me person is not going to win this award. So it's important that everyone understand that folks like me and you are not up for this award.

Now that the Golden Globes are owned by the same group that owns every single industry trade magazine, they quote unquote, take the award seriously, but, and don't jam it up with celebrities. So this is the category with which they will get all of the famous people back to the Golden Globes. What if they just zagged and it was just pure integrity? It was just all science podcasts, you know? How many science podcasts are you listening to? Depends on how you define science.

I mean, you have a science corner, so that's one. Thank you. That's about it. I do listen to Science Versus from time to time, which is owned by Spotify. I'm not a Huberman guy. So that's not of interest to me. Though I did see a few weeks ago,

we had dinner at a cousin's house and like my, Amy, if you're listening, Amy is now into Huberman as well. She started telling me about it. So it's reached the next generation. Not Amy Poehler, you're saying a different Amy. No, no, no, different Amy, different Amy I'm related to. Amy Poehler if you're listening, thank you.

Yes, Amy Poehler if you're listening, thank you. Yes, Amy Poehler, if you're listening, I can't wait to see what the Golden Globes. Uh, any other news? Anything else happen that you feel like is important? I mean, they've got a new pope? Cowards? They only, like, 24 hours. Listen.

I'm glad you brought this up. I honestly don't remember the pope's name at this moment. I know that he's American, but also spent a lot of time in Peru. I know nothing about his politics. I just know that it was like they did not do enough ballots, you know? I can't say for sure whether that's true or not. I will never know. His name will be Pope Leo XIV. Okay. His real name is Robert Prevost. Okay. He's an American. All right. Can you tell me your information source right now? I'm looking at Reuters. Okay. Oh good. I believe it's trustworthy

You know notably from Chicago, but attended Villanova Pennsylvania area college, okay, which is of course incredibly important to me and also quite timely because Three key members of the New York Knicks all went to Villanova at the same time and were champions together at Villanova. Is Villanova J. Wright? Uh, yes, it is. Yes. J. Wright, legendary Villanova coach. Well, they'll always have my attention because they gave me Jalen Brunson.

I think that the Cardinals phoned it in. You know? It's like I understand that they don't want to be sequestered, I guess. Uh, and they want to be... You're like the Upton Sinclair of the Pope folks. Even though it did seem, according to the film Conclave, like the sequester, like the Conclave is pretty porous, you know?

Like information can get in if it needs to, so it's fine. And they were, and the nuns were making them meals all the time. But they didn't want to do the work. They just, like, three black smokes and then we're out? Come on! You know what I I didn't. This felt a little ghoulish, but I should have followed up on this instinct, which is that when the previous pope died, we should have done the conclave watch along. That was really the move because everyone's watching that movie now.

On Peacock, they're renting it. I think we should have given it like a week and then... To grieve? Well, like to not be the most ghoulish. I didn't grieve. I don't, like I said, I don't know that much about Francis. Don't forget God is watching. Yeah, sure.

Be gentle. Pope Francis in your thoughts always. And now Pope Leo XIV will rise once more. And I'm a lapsed Catholic, so. Leo number one on our 35 over 35 list. Leo number one on the Pope list. And the Leo birthdays are coming soon. Yeah, Leo season.

We did it. Paul Newman was not a Leo. He was the Pope list. And the Leo birthdays are coming soon. Yeah, Leo season. What a year for Leos. We did it. Paul Newman was not a Leo. He was born in January. January 26th, 1925. He was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and that's where he grew up. And when you look at his biography... That's like an under five seconds from like Pope jokes to this is what I do

I know that was like you really turned that one on I got other pods to record today You know I got meetings. I got a screening. I've got a moderator QA for tonight. We're oh what screening I have pavements You're gonna be there. Yeah, absolutely maniac. We were just talking about this five minutes before recording screening Yeah, no I am am going to be there. But whether or not I get to a microphone is an, um, I guess TGV. Did you go to Capri Club earlier before the recording or is that just for later? Here's what I want to say right now.

I, we have been preparing for this podcast for literal months. Yeah. So do not Julia Roberts Hall of Fame me. Okay. I won't speed run it. I promise. I, we have a lot to share. Um, we accumulated a significant amount of research for this episode,

which is unusual for us. It's usually just me, like, banging into a Google Doc for roughly 12 hours. This is, in theory, a more developed conversation. I have watched too many Newman films, though. And that feeling that you described at the beginning of the episode, I think will infect some of this, which is just like, oh, yeah, and then there was this one, and then there was this one. So, you know, I'd like to have like a bit of a broad conversation

about his life first and about kind of what he meant to movies and what he meant to America, to Hollywood, and a lot of other things. Should preface this by saying there's been a lot of great writing about Newman over the years. Basically, all of his films were reviewed by the film critics of their time. He's one of the signature movie stars of that time.

There's a wonderful documentary called The Last Movie Stars that is about Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward and the intersection of their fame and their family over 45 years in America that is very much worth watching that is available on Max right now. I revisited it last night after seeing it when it came out a couple of years ago. I revisited it, the whole thing,

but over the course of the last few months. It's great, directed by Ethan Hawke. It is like a very pandemic-style thing. It was made during the pandemic, and so it features, it features transcripts of a series of interviews that Newman's biographer did. Stewart Stern. Um, before Paul Newman decided that he didn't want the biography to go forward and burned the tapes.

So the tapes. So the tapes were burned, but the transcripts remained. And Woodward and Newman's kids brought these transcripts and kind of initiated the process of making this, this documentary that relies on these transcripts and a bunch of people you'll recognize reading the transcripts and a lot of footage. And it was useful in this exercise of just kind of grounding

the individual films like in a, in, in his career and in a place and time. It's a great documentary. I recommend it. It's really expansive and covers six episodes and covers roughly five and a half hours. We don't really have a lot of examples of this for even the greatest movie stars. You know, like Humphrey Bogart had a massive life as well. Right.

There's no six hour documentary. There's like a one hour and 50 minute documentary about his life and his, you know, marriage to Lauren Bacall and, you know, his relationships and his history. But it's rare to find something so fulsome. And it's exciting because that book didn't get published. So that book is, you know, this is as close as we're going to get to that book. Nevertheless, like, looking over the sketches and traces

and the kind of data points of his life is so interesting because he is kind of a signature member of the boomer generation. I mean, he is like that real crux between greatest generation and boomer and baby boomer. And the way that he lived and worked is so reflected. His politics, his taste as an artist, the way that he lived and worked is so reflected. His politics, his taste as an artist, the way that he lived as a man,

really feels like this fascinating representation of America and America changing throughout the 20th century. So, you know, he died in 2008, he was 83 years old. Joanne Woodward is still alive. They were married for 50 years when he passed, and she kind of retreated from public life some years ago after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but she's still with us.

She's 95 years old. Newman served in the Navy during World War II. He was stationed in Hawaii. It's been reported that he very nearly was on an aircraft carrier that was bombed during in the Pacific Theater, but he didn't make it to that aircraft carrier because the pilot of his bombardier crew was ill one day. And so that plane never made it to that aircraft carrier because the pilot of his bombardier crew was ill one day. And so that plane never made it to the aircraft carrier. And so he survived World War II and moved back to Cleveland and through the GI Bill went to Kenyon College and then

quickly moved to New York and started studying at Yale and then the actor studio. And so this, you know, this life, the son of a sports goods store owner and like a very, kind of like the sketch of normal man in America, very quickly becomes a star. He's on Broadway one year out of the actor studio starring in William Inge's Picnic, which is kind of a crazy thing. And so he arrives in New York at this critical time and he's doing theater and television.

And pretty quickly after being on Broadway, gets into movies. And so I remember I was thinking about this when we did the Sidney Lumet episode, and we were like, this guy was here at the dawn of television and at the dawn of the kind of New York theater acting revolution at the actor studio in Strasburg and Stella Adler

and all these key figures. And Newman is kind of the actor version of that. you know, where he's kind of right place, right time, everything kind of falls into place for him in so many ways. Yes. Except he, because he's an actor and not a director, he winds up on a studio contract and he winds up making a lot of things that you and I, quite frankly, had not seen until we started upon this project because they're not the most memorable. And like, you know, there are exceptions to that.

Like, Cat on a Hot 10 Roof is pretty early in his career and memorable. And, you know, it's not that many years before The Hustler and then HUD. Like, there are kind of benchmarks along the way. it's not that many years before The Hustler and then HUD. Like there are kind of benchmarks along the way, but for a long time, like he's just kind of stuck like second place to James Dean, making movies that don't really fit him or are forgotten now, to put it kindly.

And so he is obviously like immediately a star and immediately has the success, but there is, he's not doing what he wants to do immediately. And you can kind of sense that discomfort and that chip on his shoulder or that kind of chomping at the, like, the, in a suit that doesn't fit, basically, for a long time. It's interesting because it's not like he is being cast in the 1956 version of Transformers. You know, he's getting to do Tennessee Williams adaptations or Roman period pieces or biopics about athletes. Like, on paper, a lot of the movies that he makes in the 50s, most of which are now sort

of forgotten or are, you'll hear their name, but nobody ever goes back and watches them. Like, my journey through physical media with his career has been fascinating because almost none of the movies from the 50s are even available on Blu-ray, let alone, like, 4k or anything like that. Like, they're all either Warner Archive DVDs, or you just can't get them. And so, you know, they're just not beloved movies, even though he makes a movie in 54 called The Silver Chalice, which is a real dud.

And you can see that that's the first instant of him kind of being like, shit, like, what are they trying to make me here? What kind of actor am I supposed to be? Who am I as a guy? You know, he's not a stage-trained British theater actor who wants to do Shakespeare, but he's also not quite James Dean.

You know, he's not that cool. He's not... He's beautiful. Well, yeah, not yet anyway. But something that transforms over time with him. So he's a... He's a late bloomer, even though... I mean, he really is. That's the other interesting thing about revisiting all of this. You put in our notes that you first saw Newman as like old guy Newman and he does have this, I mean, you know, he worked for 60 years.

So but he has this kind of this resurgence in his 70s and 80s or he's just he's like fully old and he's like playing the old guy roles with all of the like, you know, experience and wisdom and all of like the accrued Newman-ness that we attached to him. I don't think I first saw him as a as old Newman, actually. I think that I was shown Cat on a Hot Tin Roof like far too early in high school because of the Tennessee Williams situation. Ironically, perhaps his most virile. Right. Yes. Even though relative to that story. Sure, yeah, we'll get into it.

But he does really like find himself again as the old guy. He's a great old guy actor. He's a great old guy and it is like a whole other phase of his career, which is different than late blooming, but there is something about he had to wait and like he didn't want to wait and you can, and that is kind of, he had to wait, and he didn't wanna wait. And that is kind of what animates some of the better performances, is that frustration. But he ages very well.

Let's talk about what made him a special actor. I made a lot of notes about the things that I like about him. He's world renowned for the blue eyes. He has these piercing blue eyes that are among the most, it's like Bette Davis and Paul Newman. It's a very short list of people who you think of when you think of the eyes of Hollywood. Always seemed very funny, but not a clown.

You know, always seemed very cool, but not pretentious. You know, always seemed very regular, but also somehow elevated. Like a real contradiction of terms in terms of what kind of star power he had and what kind of actor he was. Yeah, there's a, I think his magic is in the tension between what he looks like, the Paul Newman that you see, which is, you know, one of the most astonishingly attractive people to ever be on screen. And also confident, and as you said, like, at ease, like, you know, funny, but not like, ha ha, funny.

Just a great Hank to use the parlance of the Golden Globes. He's clever and amusing. And, but there's just so much going on inside that you can tell. And he is, like, very withholding. He's trying to keep it down. But, like, there's something tortured. There's, like, something that doesn't add up with this, you know, gift from God, like blessed exterior.

And so trying to, like trying to pin him down as you watch him is what's fun about it. And then obviously like the magic comes when he actually like break whatever is inside him. Yes. Breaks out, which it doesn't always. It's true and some of the parts that he is very good at are the ones where it never breaks out,

where there's just something right under the surface. I described it as an abiding turmoil. Yeah. That there's this sense that all the time there's something that is inside of him that is unexamined. And one of the great things about the last movie stars, and if you read about Newman,

is that you see especially as he kind of accrued more power and got more control over what kind of movies he makes, he was constantly putting his life and his feelings into his characters. He was finding ways to mold the characters to communicate things about his relationship with his parents or his relationship with his wife or his struggles as a parent or his struggles with addiction. All of this stuff from his life, even though he's not a writer, he is a director, but even the films that he directs,

you don't always feel like they're born of his own personal experience. But in the movie star parts, he's putting himself in them so concretely and so excitingly. And I think we project a lot of that onto movie stars on the show. And we just had this conversation

about Mission Impossible Fallout. And I'm like, this is Tom Cruise apologizing for everything he did in 2002 or whatever. But you can, he literally would like go on Dick Cavett and say like, I didn't feel good about how I lived this part of my life, and I communicated that in the movie. Which is just fascinating. I mean, there's like a level of vulnerability, I think,

to him as a famous person and as an actor that is very rare, even though he was very good at playing guys who were very shielded as well. Yeah. Well, in the old days, they just, they actually did share more, I guess, because they just didn't have social media. Yeah, no therapy.

No therapy. I mean, well, no therapy until later in life. There's, but they really, I guess, even like going on Dick Cavett was like not as big a deal because 45,000 people wouldn't aggregate it or whatever. That's a good point. So, but they, yeah, they got pretty real. And the last movie stars has a lot of tape

of both Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward just like really sharing. Yes, really sharing,, the struggles of marriage. I remember, you know, that famous moment when Ben Affleck won, was it Best Picture? When he was like, marriage is a lot of work. But it's worth it. And, you know, for 300 years, we were like,

we'll talk about what Ben Affleck said at the Oscars forever. They were doing this routinely. Exactly. You know, one of the things I like about him is that he clearly is, like, a hyper-trained, skilled actor, who understands the kind of concepts of revolving acting style that's happening in America in that time. And he's really into rehearsal and he's really into like knocking,

like making sure he knows who the character is and how he wants to play it beforehand. But when you don't really feel that method or that sense, that like overweening sense of like, But you don't really feel that method or that sense, that like overweening sense of like, this guy's trying really hard. You know, that's not part of an energy that he brings to the table.

And if you do, it's not really a role or a movie that's working as well. Because like, it takes a lot of work in really any field or any walk of life to look unstudied and to look like you just, you know, rolled out of bed. Yeah. How are we doing? Yeah.

Could do this. Are we pulling it off? Yeah. But that was his skill. And it does, as you say, like require preparation and work and there is like a study to it. But what he was best at. Like, you know, like there are some of the period pieces that are here that just, it's,

that's not what I want from Paul Newman. And that's not what he was good at. It's not what he was good at. We were talking about some of the accent work before we started for both Paul Newman and Joanne, you know, some highs and some lows. Now some of that is just because this is a person who worked all the time.

Yes. Really liked working and tried a lot of different stuff, tried a lot of different genres, tried a lot of different type of roles. He also just, you know, the numbers are so large that he played like 48 different cowboys and 12 different private investigators. And, you know, he... And some things work better than others. But the unforced, the light touch performances. Yeah, he does strike you as like a hyper serious and curious artist, but not pretentious.

And someone who does want to try something different on a regular basis, but at a certain point, as a star, knew when he needed to kind of circle the wagons and get a hit, knew when he could kind of go far afield and try something unusual. He learns in the 60s that, like, there are some limitations to his flexibility as an actor. He takes on a couple of parts that are pretty disastrous.

The other thing too is, when you work this much, he's made a lot of stinkers. He made a lot of movies that are okay at best. And he also has, for us, I think, the easiest hall of fame of all time, because he has so many iconic roles, that it would be hard to turn down some of the movies that could go in. So I did have an idea about that that I'll pitch to you as we get a little further in the conversation.

Um, but yeah, he just had this knack for turning out a hit when his career needed it, you know? I mean, he... And this is, like, the title theory of the documentary that we've been referencing, but like, he really did understand how to be a movie star in every single way from sharing, you know, the public perception and sharing that we discussed,

like he would give some of it and then, you know, burns the tapes, right? Like obviously Newman's own and the entire, all of his some of it and then, you know, burns the tapes, right? Like obviously Newman's own and the entire, all of his philanthropy work, but also, you know, his work in the civil rights movement, et cetera. Like he understood that he had a platform. He understood sooner than most people how to use that, how to even use like his image and his face on the carton

of the lemonade in a way to further what he wanted to do. It was very savvy. And that came from, like, from understanding his own star power and, like, trajectory as a star, not just as an actor. Yeah, I think we also live in a time of performative good service and performative ethics and performative politics. And even though he was very public with his politics,

which he described as kind of coming too late. He described as he was a star for 10 years. And I think it was Stuart Rosenberg, who we worked with many times, described him as basically apolitical for the first 10 years that he knew him. And he has this kind of dawning realization in the Kennedy era. It kind of feels like it matches somewhat with him taking on the hustler and HUD and like more complicated anti-hero type roles.

And he becomes very interested in civil rights and starts working very closely with Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King and becomes interested in the presidential race and Eugene McCarthy and he is this unusually articulate and thoughtful, hyper-famous movie star. There's a couple people, you know, we mentioned Affleck already, Clooney voices Newman in the documentary. When you watch the documentary, you're like, did Clooney take every move from Newman? Like, so many of the moves that he has leaned on.

Even like, graying early. Yeah. His style, his sense of ease, his comfort in his fame and in his ability to develop a character, never straying too far outside the character. You know, Clooney's good politics, whether you agree with his politics or not, that he's been very consistent as a publicly outspoken, famous person.

I think he kind of set a template for the progressive movie star that no one has ever really matched. And it's interesting too, because inside of his career, he's taking on more and more movies that reflect how he feels about the world. And in some ways, it's kind of generating this discontent, this rage that he has at the way the world is going with Vietnam and the way that people who have less than are mistreated in this country, like all these very clear progressive values. And then he kind of runs out of patience. And he's like, fuck, I can't make movies like this

and try to beat people over the head with my point of view. And he starts literally failing in his work because he's let his point of view get too strong inside of the movie. So he has to find alternative ways to communicate some of his ideas. But again, he's not writing these movies. Like he's scouting material that fits the point of view that he has on the world.

So just like he said, used or savvy, I think that's the thing that I realized when you see him in the seventies and he's like a father of six and, uh, which is unfathomable, you know, he's once divorced and remarried and he's also a high functioning alcoholic. I mean, he would drink a case of beer a day, or he would have six to eight martinis at night. Yeah, the six to eight martinis was an extraordinary detail. It's unfathomable how he lived and was so beautiful,

never gained weight, is so graceful in seemingly everything he did, and also was bereft inside and drunk all the time. It's just, it's one of the craziest lives that's ever happened, really in American life, but especially in Hollywood. And then he somehow, you know, rebuilt his relationship with Joanne Woodward. They never split up. They renewed their vows. He enters this old guy phase of his career. And then he becomes the guy who, like, lifts up the younger person.

You know, he lifts up Tom Cruise. He lifts up Melanie Griffith. He lifts up Tom Hanks. He lifts up these actors that he shares scenes with and has things passed down to him. Throughout his entire career, I noted, as I was watching some of these movies, either for the first time or for a third, fifth, twelfth time, really good scene partner.

Yes. You know, not just with his wife though, he's great with his wife, but he really like, he really engages the performer. And if they are having a moment, if Sidney Poitier is having a moment in a movie, he will like genuflect at Sidney Poitier to make it clear that we should all be watching him.

He doesn't draw the attention away from the other people in the movie, which is, sounds stupid, but is unusual. No, it's really true. And especially for someone who also... whose signature talent is just kind of like filling the screen and brooding with those eyes in such a way that you... I mean, you're happy to be watching him, you think you know what's going on underneath,

but you're not totally sure, but it is just like... like a shot of a man standing there, you're happy to be watching him. You think you know what's going on underneath, but you're not totally sure. But it is just like a shot of a man standing there, you know, and that it's like incredible acting. But it's true, he's really responsive to everyone else. And it is, you can see who he likes and who he thinks is a good actor, Joanne Woodward being first and like among them. It's like some of the movies they made

are just not very good, but any scene when the two of them are on screen, it just lights up, you really understand it. But that goes through all of the movies. It's like there are just moments of something being like, oh, look, Paul Newman's awake because this other person is giving something to him and he's giving it back. And it's really exciting.

It really is. He's in this, he's stuck in this middle zone. I asked Tracy Letts about him. And I said, like, can you give me some thoughts on Newman as a performer, as somebody who's been watching movies for a really long time and understands, you know, playwriting and stage performance. And, um, he located him closer to what Henry Fonda or Gregory Peck or Jimmy Stewart represented, and that he was closer to those guys than he actually was to the new Hollywood stars like Redford or Newman or Jack Nicholson

Which I think is really interesting because he's kind of he's like arguably the bridge figure He is the person who he was never really in the new Hollywood though He did work with Sidney Lumet and Sidney Pollock and a lot of practitioners who were working at that time But he also worked with Hitchcock and he worked with Mark Robson and he worked with, you know, all of these like 50s Hollywood studio contract filmmakers. And his acting style, you know, his probably biggest heavyweight contemporary is Marlon Brando, but Lumet has this great quote. He said of Newman, who we worked with on The Verdict, when you meet him and talk to him, there's no indication that this is a man who's the talent that he has.

And that seeming normalcy that fascinates me, because clearly his life has been anything but normal, so it's the exact opposite of Marlon Brando. Yeah. That Brando is this, like, um, you can feel the effort in the transformation that he's making and that he's making unto acting. He is... Marlon Brando walks into room and is like, I'm acting.

Yes, exactly. Yes. And look at me do it. And I'm like the greatest ever do it, but like, here it is. And now we're acting. Yes. And yeah, I think, I mean, you know, Tracy's the smartest and the best, but the, the Henry Fonda's of the world are, you know, hold the screen just by their, like,

their normalness and their, are they going to figure this out and are they going to do the right thing? And Newman obviously like takes a bunch of roles that start to subvert that idea. But he still has that old school quality of like, well, I sure hope he's gonna do the right thing. You know? Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I think what Tracy was describing as a kind of morality, I would maybe use the word integrity,

that you get the sense that there's something, even when he's playing a piece of shit, and he played plenty of pieces of shit in his career, the paradox of HUD is that HUD is this great breakthrough anti-hero of American cinema. And he's like one of the most great breakthrough anti-hero of American cinema. Right. He's like one of the most important movie characters, really of all time.

He says a lot about, I think, like what the mindset of the country was in the early 60s and where we were going. But people were with him and rooting for him, even though he's a motherfucker. He's a real bastard in that movie. But because he conveyed that sense of, I guess, decency or something, just that magnetism that he had, that it made him different. And I think you made the key point, which is that James Dean is probably the most important person to his life

that he didn't actually spend very much time with. Right. Because there were a lot of parts that they both went up for when Dean was alive. And when Dean died, I don't think any American actor benefited more from that death than Newman. The parts that he got, the way he got to slide into the culture. And also the way that the culture got to move away from that kind of brooding sense of like wounded cool

that Dean represented into something like a little bit... sunnier and a little bit more approachable. But if it needed to go dark, it could go dark. But that wasn't how we thought about Newman in the persona sense of the term. You know, he was like an ambassador for movies. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's true, though.

Then you think about like every single signature role. I guess not everyone, but most of them, they are like way darker than... They are, they are. Even the happy movies, he's like a criminal. Yeah, well, sure. And that's fine. I mean, he's like Robin Hood. It's fine. But, you know, I'm thinking of like,

Hud and Hustler and Cool Hand Luke. And like, these... Those are tough. Those are really, really screwed up guys. You're 100% right. I feel like those movies would seem even darker if they were Brando or Dean or Monty Clift, you know? I think they would sing melodramatic with Brando or Dean

because they would go so far. They would be wallowing. And there is something to Newman that is like resisting any feelings at all, you know? That is, but, you know, he's a human being, so they tug at him. And that is what keeps it from being like a soap opera. I agree with you. I think that's well put. Dean was originally cast to play the role of Rocky Graziano

in Somebody Up There Likes Me, which is sort of Newman's big breakthrough in the movies. Um, but he died, so Newman got the role. He also replaced Dean in the role of a boxer in the television adaptation of Hemingway's story The Battler, which is something that comes up again when he eventually makes... They make this very strange movie called Adventures of a boxer in the television adaptation of Hemingway's story, The Battler, which is something that comes up again when he eventually makes, they make this very strange movie called

adventures of a young, Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man. And Newman actually does play the battler in that movie. It's one of the weirdest parts that Newman ever played. I think the other thing to consider too is that it felt like the new Hollywood was fighting Vietnam and Paul Newman actually served in World War II. Like even though he was making the sting and adapting Ken Kesey novels and working

on art in the seventies that felt like this kind of progressive transgressive stuff, he was literally- He was in his fifties in the seventies. Exactly. Exactly. He was an older guy. I mean, and he was like, would you call him anti-establishment? You know, this, the sixties roles.

I think that that's ultimately what they represent. Are what they represent, but it's, you're right. It's a slightly different period in time and a slightly different establishment. They're, and they're, they're metaphorical. They're not actually like men marching against the war. And it's not even Easy Rider, you know, where they're like breaking the law on the outskirts of society.

It's like, it's a guy in a chain gang. It's a cattle rancher. It's a pool hustler. These are people that are like even barely in society. And I think because of that, he doesn't feel the same way that like Peter Fonda felt like anti-establishment. You know, where he actually was kind of a... I mean, he was rejecting, yeah.

Exactly, he was rejecting his own father and the idea of America in some ways. And Newman was very suspicious of America, but weirdly has this, like, kind of deep-seated sense of patriotism, too, that is kind of at war with some of his feelings about where the country's going. Again, like, we never get to have a conversation about a movie star like this,

because none of them ever communicate any of these ideas. They don't ever have this kind of life experience that Newman brought to a lot of his fame. And also a lot of people who have this life experience don't get to become movie stars. So he's really interesting. I mean, he got to interpret Tennessee Williams multiple times,

William Inge, William Faulkner, Larry McMurtry. Like, he got to work on a lot of those historical mid-century texts about, like, wounded men, sad men. Yeah. Which... Working through it. We used to make movies about courageous men in the 40s and then sad men in the 50s,

and then really destroyed men in the 60s and 70s. And then the 80s, women got to make some movies. Sure. And we were mostly just... We were sad and trying to have it all. Yeah. And how about now? And then ultimately happy. And now you get to make the love list. Yeah.

Everything's going great. I also like the way that filmmakers and other actors would use his beauty against him. You know, that he was often playing characters that were like impotent or were closeted or were hiding something about their past and that when you're so beautiful, it's like when you meet a genuinely beautiful person in the world and you're like, what's wrong with you?

Well, if you didn't do that, then he is so beautiful that he could veer into cheesecake territory, you know? And if he were just smiling and happy, then he would just smiling and happy, then he would just be like another bachelor contestant, you know, or bachelorette, I guess. He would just be like, oh, like, okay, like you're cute. But there is, you do have to subvert it.

And I think he knows that. And I think just the sum of his power comes from the fact that he's so tortured by it. And it's like, no, I'm not that cheesecake that it deepens it. But yeah, you got to do something because otherwise you're just staring at the sun. Yeah, I'm trying to think. You know, like we have Robert Pattinson now. Like Robert Pattinson could have become a kind of cheesecake.

Like a brooding cheesecake. I mean, he's obviously so handsome, but there is something, like, interesting about him. It's not like cookie cutter. Like, I feel, you know, if you, like, bought a, like a doll. Like, he is a Ken doll, but like, Paul Newman could be. And then, except like with blue eyes that are real. And I don't know, I definitely tortured him.

He talks a lot about it, about trying to be more than just like this incredibly attractive person, but he also used it very well. Yeah. I think he said one of the things he would want on his tombstone would be that were his eyes to turn brown, his life and career would be over. Yeah. I think it's like here lies Paul Newman, whose career ended because his eyes turned red or something like that.

Um, let's just mention some of the philanthropy that you talked about before you start getting into the movie career. Um, as you said, lifelong outspoken advocate for civil rights. Uh, his son died of an overdose in 1978. And after he passed away, Scott, he started the Scott Newman Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and that lasted for 35 years. He's best known for Newman's Own, which is a food company that he started when he was living in Connecticut with his family in 1982 with A.E. Hockner, who was a writer and his best friend.

And that's a company that still exists to this day, And all of their post-tax proceeds go to charity. All of them. I think I said that my first introduction to Paul Newman was probably Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But I think it's actually... And I was always going for the lemonade, you know? We had the lemonade from time to time. More of a Tropicana household, as I recall.

But, um, or Minamid, not sure. But the salad dressing, no question. Yeah, and like, but the cartons, the branding, his face, it's absolutely seared into my brain. Like, it's like a real, you know, you're an 80s kid if. Yes, I mean, popcorn, salsa, wine, pasta sauce, like, they did and do everything. Jack, do the children know about Newman's Own?

They do, especially the salad dressing. Okay, great. All right. Dressing is big. I'm glad. I'm glad. Yeah. And I mean, over these 40 plus years, they've generated $600 million in

charity, which is just, again, just amazing. Like a lot of famous people do charitable work. Not like this. No. They don't build companies that are entirely existing to, in theory, create healthy foods that will then lead to the proceeds for charity for child-focused programs. And then the other thing he did is that he and Woodward established the Hole in the Wall

Gang Camp, which is a summer camp for children and families who are coping with cancer, which is like one of the most pure things you could possibly do in the universe. Yeah, it's really wonderful. So this is just a high-level philanthropist who's also conducting one of the greatest movie careers in the history of that work. A real get-shit-done guy. Also, which is key to actually being... doing anything but being a philanthropist.

And I guess, like, you know, having a successful career, but it's just... He saw a lot of things through to the finish line. I don't really... I would say that the last movie stars, which accomplishes a lot, especially for a documentary made during COVID and using a lot of Zoom footage, I don't... The one thing it doesn't communicate

is the how of that. Like, how did he do it? Right, especially while being a functioning alcoholic. It's very hard to understand. You know, I can barely get my kid dressed in the morning. It communicates that Joanne Woodward stayed home throughout much of the 60s in order and put her career second in order

to raise the kids while his career flourished. There would be a, there's a really interesting episode like this to be done about Joanne Woodward too. And the way that their careers kind of rose and fell in different phases and why. And the way that their careers kind of rose and fell in different phases and why. And the resentments that came because of that and the way that they kind of held it together,

but that there was always something unresolved in some ways it seems like, because she won an Oscar in 1958 and was the much bigger star when they got together. And then slowly things shift like this because of the work that he gets to do and then they have a family. So that's a... And age and, you know, Hollywood being awful. What happens to you know Hollywood. Exactly. So I have a bunch of data points to share before we start going through the movies. Eight competitive acting

nominations and he was nominated in five different decades. I'll wait to share which films were nominated for Academy Awards. Okay. He also was nominated for Best Picture for a movie he directed in 1969 called Rachel Rachel. He also won an Academy, an honorary Oscar in 86, which is before he won a competitive acting Oscar. Right. And then in 1984, he won the Humanitarian Award. So he's won three Oscars.

He's won four Golden Globes, but never for future film acting, which tells you everything you need to know about the Golden Globes in their podcast category. He frequently liked to work with the same filmmaker. He made five movies with Martin Ritt, four movies with Stuart Rosenberg, three movies with George Roy Hill, two with Robert Altman, two with Robert Benton, two with Richard Brooks, two with James Gladstone, two with John Houston, two with Mark Robson, two with Jack Smite, two with Robert Wise. And then as I said, he got to work with Hitchcock, Lumet,

Scorsese, Pollock, the Cullen Brothers, Otto Preminger, James Ivory, and John Lasseter. That's a pretty hallowed collection of filmmakers across 50 years. So he had great taste, even though he made a bunch of shitty movies. It's kind of fascinating. It doesn't always come out.

It doesn't always come out. It doesn't always come out. He and Woodward worked together on 16 different movies. He directed her, I believe, four times. They starred alongside one another 10 times in feature films. She won the Best Actress It Can for her work in the effective gamma rays on Man and the Moon Marigold, which is a very tough movie, very hard movie to watch. Um...

That's the one that she disliked. She hated that character. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hated playing her and also her daughter, their daughter Nella was her co-star in the movie. Really like a tough kind of hard-bitten drama from 1972. And also I forgot to mention he was a fucking race car driver. And not only a race car driver, but a successful one at that who actually won races in the 1980s

and was close friends with Mario and Freddy. And he like finished second at Le Mans and like, at age like 54 won races in the 1980s and was close friends with Mario and Freddy. And he finished second at LeMans at age 54 or something in his 50s. It's really... You get a high-functioning alcoholic, professional race car driver. They just made them different back then. This is insane. And the world was built differently. It really was.

And mostly for worse, but good for Paul Newman for figuring it out. He's a magical, magical person. He made 57 feature films in his career. That's not including documentary and whatnot. So here's my number one anxiety as we go into the Hall of Fame. It's remembering which films are which. Okay. As I have, I have seen almost all of them. Well, you told me I didn't have to watch a couple.

Yes. I just could not get to. But it is, but there is going to be a little bit of me like, Googling the title and being like, oh, right, okay, so this is the one where, you know, he's a lawyer and this is the one where he is so-and-so, because there are a lot. And some of them do, especially the early ones, kind of blend, bleed together. I have some recall on some of these films.

I think once we get to roughly 1963, we're going to be okay. Yeah. I did want to suggest that in addition to red, yellow, and green, we each get a pair of purples. And purples are special delineations for Sean and Amanda, in which we get to say, you should watch this movie. Why are they purple? I thought it would just be a nice color to include in the mix.

Would you prefer orange? No, I mean, I guess if it were... Yeah, I guess I was trying to do some like color theory, you know, but... Feel free. But no orange. I mean, it could be blue if you want, but I wanted to de-gender it. Oh, that's so nice, but I like blue. I know you're wearing blue right now.

It's a very nice shirt. Thank you. I, you know, I did think of Paul Newman's eyes when I put it on. Well done. Uh, purple's fine. Make another choice. I like blue. Okay, it'll be blue.

Okay. We'll each get two blues. So we'll be able to say that these, cause this is challenging because as I said, his iconography is so steeped in roughly 11 movies. Yeah. That we're not, like we can't get too cute. Yeah.

We'd like to be a little cute, but not that cute. Yeah, so the blues are for cuteness, okay And everything else is for discussion the first film in his film career Not on television division because he did make a couple TV movies in the 50s is the silver chalice Which was a Roman epic huge bomb at the box office Paul hated his performance in the movie right like very self-deprecating about it, which is it which is a theme Yes Right. Like, very self-deprecating about it. Which is a theme. When he is embarrassed about a movie, then he spends a lot of time afterwards talking about it

and being like, sorry, hope you didn't see that one. Yes, a move that, of course, George Clooney has pulled many times over his career as well. Shot at Warner Brothers same time as East of Eden, James Dean turned down the role in The Silver Chalice to make East of Eden. You can see their careers like this at that time. This movie is red. It is.

In the Hall of Fame. It's not going in. It is one of the worst movies that he made, honestly. Because it's also not interesting. He made a lot of movies that didn't work. Right. But at least they were going for something. This is just like the robe and the Ten Commandments and, you know, a lot of films like that,

but just the lesser version. Fifty-six, Somebody Up There Likes Me. Big star making performance. Right. Classic biopic. He's playing Rocky Gra likes me. Big star making performance. Right. Classic biopic. He's playing Rocky Graziano. I'm not sure Paul Newman necessarily conveys Italian New Yorker. I was going to say, like, his physicality is pretty interesting because

he does a lot of sports movies very credibly, but I don't know if boxing. In general, I don't know if he's the world's greatest puncher. And I understand that in the 50s and 60s and 70s, we were, you know, we didn't have the technology and the choreography that we have today. And so people were, you know, doing the fakes or whatever, but it's just... It's a good take.

Yeah, let's do the puncher's hall of fame. He has many wonderful qualities, but I wouldn't say that his boxing was the most believable aspect of this film. I wouldn't say that either. Um... So that's not going in. Yeah. Somebody If They're Like Me is very well regarded for what it is, I would say. Um... It didn't get an Oscar nomination,

but I think it kind of puts him on the radar of the Academy and the industry at large. And so they know that they can trust him with some more complicated material. The next film he makes is the same year. It's called The Rack. It's a pretty interesting movie. Did you watch this movie? They did.

It's a courtroom drama. It's a courtroom drama. It's a story by Rod Serling and the screenplay is written by Stuart Stern, who is the man who would go on to write those unpublished memoirs. And it's about a guy who was captured by the Japanese and who informed, turned, and comes back to America after informing on the US government and kind of like this moral quandary that he finds himself in as a man trying to re-situate in America and how his family feels about him,

his parents, his... the woman in his life. And it's like a little broad. It's like a little melodramatic. And he does a bunch of movies like this in the 50s where it's like with a slightly different filmmaker. You could see this becoming an all-time classic, but it's just a little off. But you can see like what a skilled actor he is, I would say. And he has this like climactic monologue,

like on the stand. Well, you know, like... It's very few good men. Exactly. And where he, like all of his characters, like emotions and conflicts are, you know, kind of brought in front of everyone. And it's very good. It's a movie that if you really like Newman, it is worth seeking out.

Especially for this early period. That's gonna be read though. Yeah. The next movie is the Helen Morgan story, which I did not watch. I watched it. So it's directed by Michael Curtiz. This is a movie that Newman was forced to make by Jack Warner when he was under that contract that we talked about at Warner Brothers.

So what's the movie? Right. So it is about... It stars Anne Blythe and Paul Newman, and she plays Helen Morgan, who's like a torch thinker. And he is a manager of love interest. And it kind of, so, you know, there's a little bit of like a star is born in it. And he's a little sleazy and he's in and out

and is he making money off of her, you know. So he's not little sleazy and he's in and out and is he making money off of her? You know, so he's not a good guy, but he's also not the center of the story. It's her. And it's not that great. It's interesting that he starts getting slotted into parts like this, because his next movie, this I would say Helen Morgan story

and this next movie are both red, but until they sail from 1957, which is a pretty interesting movie about a group of New Zealand sisters who all fall in love with U.S. Marines during World War II. And it's Jean Simons and Joan Fontaine and Piper Laurie. Joan Fontaine is majestic in this movie. She's so beautiful. And he did the movie because Robert Wise directed it and he directed Somebody Up There Likes Me. But again, Newman has a fairly modest part in this movie. She's so beautiful. And he did the movie because Robert Wise directed it and he directed somebody up there likes me.

But again, Newman has a fairly modest part in this movie. He's not the focus. The sisters are really the focus of the movie. And it just feels like another movie where it's like this guy's under contract. He was a soldier once. He looked good in this movie. Just slot him in.

Just slot him in. And then, so I feel like this happens to every big star, but you have movies like this where like, how many of our listeners have heard of, let alone seen, until they sail? It's as though it does not exist, even though it's like right, the movie he makes right before the long hot summer, which is a critical movie in his career.

Yeah. It's interesting. How, I think this was available, but... You could, yeah, you could watch it. It's on DVD, you can get it on DVD. Oh, so do you, is it in your... I have it on DVD, yeah. Okay.

That's how I watched it. So do you have every single Paul Newman movie that's available on Blu-ray or... Yeah, there's a couple things that... That's available on a disc? It's a generous question, thank you, Amanda. You know... Well, because you lent me a couple,

and we'll talk about them, but there was one where I was just like, I would like to understand why Sean owns this movie. I mean, I bought a bunch. I bought a bunch of stuff for this. Yeah. Oh, OK. But there's also something about him working so consistently with a group of filmmakers who I own other films of.

So then it's kind of like part of the collection where it's like, now I own a bunch of movies that Mark Robson has directed, a bunch of movies that Robert Wise has directed. You know, Robert Wise has directed. The Andromeda Strain, West Side Story, you know. And The Sound of Music. Sound of Music, yes, of course.

Many other great movies. He directed Star Trek The Motion Picture. So Until They Sail is red. And then in 1958, he makes The Long Hot Summer. Now he had met Joanne Woodward on Picnic in 1953. She was the understudy and he was the star. They clearly got along. It's unclear if anything happened.

It seemed like there was some sort of situation, but he was married at the time with kids. They reconnect on this movie, The Long Hot Summer, which is kind of like an amalgam of a bunch of William Faulkner stories, kind of blended up into one... novelized film about... that also pulls from some Tennessee Williams kind of mythology, like the Orson Welles character in this movie is sort of big daddy

from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but he hasn't made Cat on a Hot Tin Roof yet. But Paul and Joanne are in this movie together. This movie's okay. It feels like there are other better. They're really good at it though. But they're, as I was gonna say, their chemistry is hot in this movie. And he looks amazing in this movie.

He looks great. And he has a couple of magical scenes. I mean, he is the handsome guy that rolls up to town and everyone is like, who's that? There is a scene where the ladies are having tea on the porch outside and they're just like, ooh. But the scene when he's on yet another porch and she's asleep and he's like, oh, Clara.

I mean, it's and I think he's shirtless for no good reason, other than why wouldn't Pauline be shirtless. He's certainly in the tank top for a lot of this film. It's really very powerful. Yeah. Joanne Woodward became pregnant during the movie and miscarried. And this is right when Paul was getting a divorce from his first wife. It's an interesting collection of actors, most of whom were not from the American South,

but most of whom were from the actor's studio. So in addition to Paul and Joanne, Anthony Ferrancio, so it was a brother, Emily Remick, who's so young and so beautiful in this movie, too They work together again later in the future as well Not a big hit Really really liked by critics and it kicks off his relationship with Martin Ritt who I think becomes kind of one is critical Critical connectors, I would say for the sake of the purpose like for the purpose of this exercise to me. This is a yellow I agree. I mean, it's not gonna be a green,

but we can yell at it. It's not gonna be. We'll probably say that a bunch more times throughout this, but because it is Newman and Woodward come together, and it's Martin Witt and Newman... And when they're on screen together, you just sit up a little straighter. It's very exciting. Newman also won Best Actor, a can, for this movie.

So he's on his way. He's on his way. This is the movie that is like, here he comes. An important he's on his way. He's on his way. This is the movie that is like, here he comes. Yeah. An important star is on his way. The next film he makes though is The Left-Handed Gun, which was based on a teleplay by Gore Vidal, who the famous novelist, essayist,

and Gore Vidal became one of his best friends. He was very, very close with Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman throughout their entire careers. In fact, when you hear Paul Newman speaking about democracy in America, or the lack thereof, you can hear a lot of Gore Vidal's opinions. I love Gore Vidal. One of my favorite writers. I always loved him.

And he, I think Newman was a person who was trying to hold on to optimism in the face of the cynicism that someone like Vidal had. The left-handed gun is really just a, is it Billy the Kid? I want to say it's Billy the Kid. It's William Bonney is the character that he portrays. This movie is just not... It's not a very good Western. Also, apparently, Billy the Kid was not left-handed. That that was an assumption made because someone reversed a photo.

I don't know. Classic. Photo technologies. Yeah, also Paul Newman. Or maybe we just can't know. Or maybe it was just that, you know, back then, they just taught people to only use their right hand. So maybe in spirit he was.

Yeah, some other issues with the movie. Newman was 33 when he played the part. I think Billy the Kid is 18. That's not ideal. It is, however, it's the directorial debut of Arthur Penn, another one of these critical figures in the new Hollywood he would go on to make a little bit later, Bonnie and Clyde. So. Then comes Canada Hudson and Clyde. Yeah.

So... Then comes Canada Hudson-Roof. Yeah. The huge milestone in his career. He gets nominated for an Academy Award. It's his first time doing Tennessee Williams in a film. Not the last time. The movie is great, but very flawed,

because it really changes the play. Yeah. And soft play is a lot of what's going on with his character, in particular, even though it's implied. You can understand it now if you have a working knowledge of the text. I definitely read this play in high school and saw the movie sometime after that, and was like, -"What is wrong? Why is this?" -"Right. Maybe this is why they showed us the movie in high school, because they didn't want us to read the play,

because I went to a very restrictive and not progressive school. Interesting. Okay. Well, I hope you enjoyed the film. As Brick, he's very hot. Elizabeth Taylor also very hot. Throwing herself constantly at Paul Newman. And, you know, this does introduce, like, you know, impenetrable Paul Newman. And in, like, many ways, like, the most closed off, the most...

Yes, the repressed heartthrob. Yeah, I mean, literally, his character is called Brick. So, it's... I think this one's pretty important. Is it going in? Are you yellowing it? It's at a minimum yellow. It's at a minimum yellow. First Oscar nomination. He's great in this part. This, he's kind of does variations on this theme

a number of times in his career too. So it feels pretty important in that respect. He's much more in, the long hot summer, he's much more passionate, I would say. You know, in this movie, he's so tight. Exactly. And he plays that tightness again in the future. So let's yellow it for now.

Rally Around the Flag Boys is not a film I've seen. It is directed by a great filmmaker, Leo McCary. I did watch this. I wanted it to work because this is essentially like a domestic rom-com between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. And I can't remember what he does, but she is a stay at home mom who's pretty on board and involved in local politics. And so she wants to prevent a missile base being built nearby.

So there are, you know, some of their politics, some of their locals have. It's not really played as like a serious political issue. And somehow Paul Newman has to be like the liaison between whoever he works for and the government. And so he like, he was basically in a lot of situations where he's just kind of like, my crazy wife, sorry, I don't know. And... My wife.

And it's my wife. And so they, and then he is like, maybe has eyes for someone else. And so it's not like the happy, frantic, romantic comedy you want from the two of them. And it's not like the happy, frantic, romantic comedy you want from the two of them. And it's not really a forward-thinking look at the role of women in America. And it didn't really work.

And there also wasn't... They didn't even have that much fizz when they were together, I guess, because they're supposed to be warring. So I did buy a copy of this, but I did not watch it. So it's not worth watching? Yeah. I don't know. Okay. You know, I was like, oh, a a copy of this, but I did not watch it. So it's not worth watching? Yeah. I don't know. I, you know, I was like, oh, a romantic comedy of sorts,

or at least a comedy with two people who at this, who really have the hots for each other. Maybe it'll be exciting and it wasn't that good. It's red. The Young Philadelphians. This is a film I did watch. I did as well. Another legal drama.

Kind of an odd duck of a movie in terms of the way that it's shaped. It also stars Barbara Rush and Robert Vaughn, who was nominated for an Academy Award one of the first times he was seen on screen. Newman didn't want to do the movie. Yeah. Didn't like the movie. Had a hard time making the movie and it didn't really do that well. What happened? I watched this.

It's in black and white and he gives a lot of speeches. Is he a lawyer? No, he's like a construction foreman, but he is the kind of like, or his mother is a very powerful figure who like rejected a powerful family. And you remember- Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right.

And so then he has to like, he deals with the family. So that's why they're like... It's like a lot of standing around in drawing rooms. Yes. Being like, this is how I feel. He made a lot of movies that are like this, and the next movie is like this too. It's another, it's a deep melodrama,

shot in CinemaScope. It should be great. It's called From the Terror... So just for the record, The Young Philadelphians is red. From the Terrorist from 1960, which I just watched yesterday for the first time, is another romantic drama. It's Paul and Joanne.

It's about the estranged son of a factory owner who marries into a prestigious family and moves to New York. And it's kind of a love triangle movie, which is a little close to Paul and Joanne's life. They're... Well, there are several of those. There aren't very many movies where they're just, like, hot for each other, and then it works out. It's true. There's storminess in the way that they portray their relationship

all the time on screen. And the movie is... It looks beautiful. And like Myrna Loy plays Paul Newman's mom in the movie. And it's directed by Mark Robson, who was like a studio hand and made a couple of cool movies over the years, especially Vowelutin movies in the 40s. But it's like, if Douglas Sirka directed this movie, it might have been an all-time classic.

And it's like in slightly less skilled hands. And so it's just kind of a dud. So it's red in slightly less skilled hands. And so it's just kind of a dud. So it's red. Yeah. Fair? You did text me while watching it just to say that Joanne Woodward is absolutely throwing heat in it, which is true.

I mean, her performance and her beauty is so striking at this time in her career. And she has like a, you know, she's considered a great beauty, but she has kind of an unusual beauty. It's always changing also. Yeah, she's changing her hair in every movie, and, like, she'll have scars on her face in certain...

Like, she's a very... She was a chameleonic as an actor, but she is so striking in this movie. 1960 Exodus. Um, this is one of the, like, the big, like, uh, honking ducks of his career, in my opinion. It's a three and a half hour historical epic about the, um, the founding of Israel essentially. And today it's widely considered like a Zionist piece of propaganda.

At the time when it was made, it was considered like a big fancy awards film. Otto Preminger directed it. Newman was half Jewish. The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, legendary screenwriter. But it's just kind of a slog and it's kind of a dull historical drama and doesn't really play very well at all to modern audiences. Even though at the time, it was like,

Paul Newman is the star of the most important film of the year. Like, it had that energy about it. I didn't really like rewatching it. I did see it some time ago, but it's just not that great. I didn't make it through this one. This was one of the ones where I was like, I started it and then I got it.

And I was like, I don't think this is going in the Hall of Fame. And then one year later, 1961, The Hustler. So this is a movie about Fast Thetty Felson, a pool hustler and a decaying man who makes a lot of bad decisions in his life and who's... Very young decaying man. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, like, there's a kind of subterranean psychology going on in this character where you can kind of surmise

what's wrong with him and the way that he expresses his frustration and sadness. But it's not the kind of movie where he, like, sits down on the psychiatrist's couch and is like, well, my mom was mean to me and my dad threw me down the stairs and that's why, blah, well, my mom was mean to me and my dad threw me down the stairs. And that's why blah, blah, blah. Um, but it's directed by Robert Ross in this black and white hyper realistic style.

It feels like you're watching something that is really happening, which is unusual for movies at this time. And Newman is both like beautiful and pathetic. And I think he's really good at that balance between somebody who's kind of coming apart, even though it seems like he should have the world in the palm of his hands. It's one of his signature roles. It's not the last time he played this role either.

So, as I said, we have been scrambling to do a lot of research for this. I'm watching a lot of movies and, you know, some are great and some are not so great, and I was really cramming at the end to get as much as I could. And then this morning, I was like, I need something to remind me why,

like Paul Newman is Paul Newman. I need something from the early days, like, you know, Cool Hand Luke is seared in my brain, so I don't need to, so I went back and I rewatched The Hustler. And I didn't have time to watch the whole thing, but I rewatched parts of it just to get that sense of this, like, beautiful, like, very alive, very...

both, like, confident and in total denial. Um... Just, like, magical person who totally holds the screen. And he's charming and he's stupid and you're rooting for him and you're screaming at him being like, what are you doing? And she's a bad person and he makes bad decisions and you just, like, can't look away.

Yeah, part of what's so great about the movie is it does this thing that so many good sports movies do where the star gets overconfident and makes a huge mistake and just before he makes it, you're like, don't do, no, don't, Minnesota Fats, don't play him. Don't play him in that way. What are you, you can't possibly. You want to believe that he can do it and you know that he can, because you're only at minute 42 of the movie.

And you're like, we've got a long way to go here, as this guy's life falls apart. This was a reunion with Piper Laurie, after Until They Sail, they're wonderful together in this movie. Newman was nominated for an Academy Award, this film was nominated for eight Oscars, it won for Black and White Art Direction in Cinematography, it's gorgeous.

To me, it is the first green of our list. Agree, yeah, no question. 1961 Paris Blues. Powerful, just powerful. A little bit of a forgotten movie, and I would like to use our platform to make people aware of how special this movie is. This is a reunion with Martin Ritt. It's also a reunion with Joanne Woodward.

It's the one and only time he worked with Sidney Poitier. And Diane Carroll also stars in this movie. It's about two American jazz musicians living in Paris and playing music and falling in love. It's shot gorgeously in Paris and playing music and falling in love. Shot gorgeously in black and white, Duke Ellington does the music, and long stretches of the film are just people gazing upon Paul Newman playing jazz trombone and then walking the streets of Paris. This movie is phenomenal.

It's the one where I was like, I can't believe this exists. I can't believe I'm just hearing about this, never seen this exists. I can't believe I'm just hearing about this. Never seen this before. I can't believe everyone looks like this. I can't believe that I'm just watching the most beautiful people in the world, like, fake play jazz in jazz clubs in the late 50s Paris.

It's incredible. This is like, this is our... If it's not green, it's blue. So it's the signature blue, and perhaps perfect for Paris Blues. I don't know that the actual performance that Newman gives is like among his best. It doesn't matter. It's just the movie is a mood. It is an incredible mood.

And he gets the mood right. He does. He does. He's very good at the mood. The scene when he, like early on, before he meets Joanne Woodward, when he's in the kitchen with the proprietor of, I don't know whether it's his like landlord or she runs the jazz club or both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's also magnetized to him.

Yeah, and it's like, are we gonna, you know, have- Are we gonna fuck? Yeah, exactly, but like, I don't remember, it's like, are we gonna have scrambled eggs or something? Like, I don't remember the actual, the subject. It's, you're just kind of like, what is going on? He's just kind of floating around that kitchen island, and that's like, this is, this is cinema to me.

Yeah, well, Ritz Kammerer just like, does such a great job of doing that thing that you see in A Complete Unknown, where he's just, people are gazing upon a musician as though they are pure sexuality. But he's playing trombone. It's such a funny thing. There's a great Pavel Pavlikowski movie called Ida that came out maybe 10 years ago, that is a black and white film that is about jazz in Europe.

And if you like Ida, I highly recommend Paris Blues. Let's make this a blue. OK. Neither Sidney Poitier nor Paul Newman could really play jazz. Right. Notable. Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong basically made fun of them on the set of this movie. 1962 Sweet Bird of Youth.

This is another Tennessee Williams adaptation. I did watch this, did you watch this? I did as well. This is a Tennessee Williams adaptation, another one that gets dramatically sanitized from stage to screen. Spoiler alert, at the end of the stage play, This is a Tennessee Williams adaptation, another one that gets dramatically sanitized from stage to screen. Spoiler alert, at the end of the stage play,

the character that Newman plays, who's sort of an aspiring actor, who becomes the gigolo to an aging actress, is castrated. He's castrated in dramatic fashion, and it is like the most hat on a hat Tennessee Williams dying masculinity metaphor you've ever seen in your life.

In the movie, that's not what happens. In the movie, he basically just gets beat up and is wounded. It's a little overdrawn, this movie. I think it's flawed. It has some things in it that are interesting, but it's so pales in comparison to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and same director, same source material, same, you know, playwright.

And there's not really even that much for him to do performance-wise. He's just kind of the pretty dressing. And like a guy, you know, trying to make the best of a situation, but which we've seen before, but... Yeah, it's definitely a hustler for sure. And he kind of excelled at playing these kinds of hustler types, but the material is just

a little bit more thin. So that's going to be red, I would say. I mentioned Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man from 62. He has a very small role in this movie as a battered boxer called the Battler. And this is the first performance of his, I don't know if you got a chance to see this, that is like, I'm going to try something. And in this movie, he tries talking like a big lug,

who might even have a brain injury. Okay. I didn't see this one out. It's really weird. He's not the star. He kind of shambles into the movie about 40 minutes in. And he gets this kind of set piece where this man who's left his home, the story's sort of roughly based on the experiences that Hemingway had in his life and the ways in which he became a young man

by kind of traversing across the land of America and finding himself. But it's also like done in this very kind of fancy schmancy on sound stages set style Hollywood production. So it doesn't have that like the exterior photography is beautiful, but every scene is shot with like fake trees. So it's very odd movie. Newman, you can tell at this stage, it's an important movie because you can tell he's kind of like, I'm getting bored playing the same guy over and over again. Sweet Bird of

Youth, The Hustler, Cat on the Hot Tin Roof. Like I'm playing a lot of guys who were like, I bet I can get one over on you. And this is an attempt to break out of that a little bit. The film's not successful, so it's going to be red, but that leads us to HUD. Yeah. So, another movie with Martin Ritt. They're very important to one another, these guys. This is based on a novel by Larry McMurtry called Horseman Pass, which I've not read. I wonder if Chris has read that book. One of the early Larry McMurtry novels.

And it's about... The book is different. The book is from the perspective of this young nephew. The film shifts more to HUD's perspective, who is the son of a rancher. The rancher is aging and they've bought this batch of cattle and they have foot and mouth disease. And they have to figure out what to do with these cattle, whether or not to kill them and to move on and try to get more cattle or to try to push through. That becomes kind of a central metaphor for like this generation of spoiled and soiled young men who are selfish and venal and are only interested in what they want in pleasuring themselves over common decency, what's good for your family, what's good for your fellow man.

Again, another extraordinary black and white movie that Martin Ridd made, James Wong Howe shot it. This movie is often cited as some of the greatest black and white cinematography in film history. Uh, Howe is often cited as one of the greatest cinematographers ever in part because this is a black and white movie that is not a noir that has nighttime photography that is amazing. Like if you look at the way that Newman looks...

I mean, it looks so good. Including a scene where Paul Newman wrestles a pig. Yeah, that's true. Which is like, it's incredible. And I was talking about, like, there are many other physical things that he has to do in his movies. And he's just, like, wrestling a pig, and he looks amazing, and it's, like, at a rodeo at night.

And it, like, it is, like, balletic and beautiful. Yeah, it's amazing. This is a great film. What better metaphor for America than trying to wrestle a pig? Yeah. And again, I talked about how, you know, this was a real anti-hero, really like a bad person. Patricia Neal is in this film.

She won an Academy Award for her work as Alma, the sort of like housekeeper slash mother slash sexual dynamo. Her, I'd love to do an episode about her. She's fascinating. She's an American royal doll for 30slash, mother, slash, sexual dynamo. Yeah. I'd love to do an episode about her. She's fascinating. She's an American Royal doll for 30 years. She lived quite a life. And this movie, I think, is a little bit in conversation with Giant, the George Stevens

movie that I mentioned a couple times during Kills of the Flower Moon discussion that star James Dean. It was also about kind of like the changing America, passing from one generation of stolid, hardworking men to another generation of men who are like, I want to do what I want to do. I want to fuck who I want to fuck. And, um... But the other interesting thing about this movie is that I think it was made with the understanding that you just explained of, you know, the older generation and decency and this

younger group of people and Paul Newman's character, who just like is a bad dude, like is a bad guy. Like we're, you know, we're talking about fraud and attempted rape. Yes. Just like, but, and the movie is made with that understanding of him as a character. And then the response to it was just like, oh my God, Paul Newman as HUD is like the coolest person. People were rooting for him. And even the makers of the, the filmmakers were like,

we didn't expect that to happen because there's, he doesn't do anything. He doesn't do anything that you, to make you root for him or that you should like him. And it's a little bit Paul Newman, it's a little bit like a reflection of the time and a younger generation of people and how they're responding to the setup. But some of it is just he is so magnetic

even as he's doing truly awful things. Yeah, some fascinating context for this movie. At the time, Life magazine described the HUD character as likable, smart, and with the potential to measure. At the time, Life magazine described the HUD character as likable, smart, and with the potential to measure up to his tough, honorable father. It's a pretty strong misread of the movie. Newman had a quote in response to that.

He 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, which I think gives you a lot of insight into essentially the generation to come, which we thought at the time was tremendously progressive, but we later learned was tremendously selfish.

Yes. And I think this is a fascinating quote in the last movie star, as Paul Schrader describes the performance like this. He says, I think Newman gives probably the most important performance in the history of cinema. It's the first time that an American bad guy had been presented without excuse or remorse And no attempt is made to make him likable and he has no apology or change of heart at the end and you can't take

Your eyes off him. You think he's the coolest thing you've ever seen now that says a lot about Paul Schrader Of course But it also says a lot with the audience that's film so embraced and it's not meant to be a cautionary tale And it's like if you like the Sopranos, if you like the films of Martin Scorsese, if you like the films of these kind of like figures who are really tormented and really awful, this is really like a breeding ground, I would say,

for a lot of that stuff. It's definitely green. Absolutely. A very important movie in his career. Do you feel like it's a movie that I had seen before and that I revisited, but do you feel like it's been handed down in the way that even like, I mean, definitely not Cool Hand Luke, but like The Hustler and some of the other kind of... No, no. I think when I was in college and in film school, they showed it to us. Yeah. Because at that time it was considered

like one of these kind of signals of the new Hollywood to come. Got it. You know, like this is where movies were going. But I don't think that in the letterbox era, it has been conferred. And I'll tell you not to keep circling back to physical media, but this film is not available

on Blu-ray in America. And it's one of the most important American movies ever made. I don't know why that is. I did notice that an Australian company is putting it out on Blu-ray like next month. That indicates usually that like the studio has decided that it's gonna, it's gonna come out at some point. But this beautiful movie not being available.

It's not available in 4K or Blu-ray? Blu-ray. There's foreign Blu-rays, but there's no U.S. Blu-ray. As far as I know, you can only get it on DVD. Is it a rights issue? I have no fucking idea. Very, very strange. I think you're about to get like five HUD Blu-rays, but there's no U.S. Blu-rays. As far as I know, you can only get it on DVD. Is it a rights issue? I have no fucking idea. Very, very strange. I think you're about to get like five HUD Blu-rays in that. I hope so. Send them along.

1963, A New Kind of Love. I haven't seen this. I did watch this. This in the documentary is positioned as, there's a great story from one of the Woodward Newman children that's like, Paul read this, said this is the worst script that I've ever read. And then Joanne says, I've stayed home and I've raised your children and I want to do this, this movie where I get to go and like wear pretty costumes

and do all these things and you say no. And then Paul says, I take it back. It's the best thing I've ever read. This is sort of Amanda goes to Venice, but the movie. But basically, so obviously I watched it immediately. It's not very good. It is a romantic comedy. There is a great makeover scene for Joanne Woodward,

and it's like an arch makeover, you know, it's a send up. But she, he's a newspaper columnist. She is, she works for a department store. And then they all wind up in Paris, though I honestly couldn't tell you whether they actually were in Paris. And somehow she gets confused for a call girl, like an expensive one. Sure, as you do.

And then, and hijinks ensue and he's like writing about her and then also her boss is in love with someone, I don't know. And then at the end, it works out, but there's like a dream sequence where they get married while he's dressed as a football player. I wouldn't say everything comes together. OK. But I did like the makeover sequence. And it, you know, it was like good, good old school. They put a lot of the costume department and the production team really came through.

Was this like the twenty seven dresses of 1963? Sure. Sure. This is what I do. Yeah. These are the kind dresses of 1963? Sure. Sure. This is what I do. These are the kind of comps I do. I was just thinking, I haven't seen 27 dresses in a very long time. It's not my favorite. Nor mine. Okay, Red for a new kind of love. The Prize is a movie I have seen, but not in some time. I think you just watched this, right?

I did just watch it. I liked this one. It's pretty cool. I don't think it's going in, but I enjoyed it. It's kind of a thriller and kind of a comedy. Is it a bit of a strange genre mix about, it's about a novelist who goes to the Nobel Prize awards and a man of scientists who's receiving an award played by Edward G. Robinson, the Newman character thinks he's an imposter.

Right? Isn't that... Well, I think he actually does get abducted, and then they, like, replace him. Right. Right. And so... But he's the one who, like, susses that out. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he becomes the detective, even though he's also, like,

winning the Nobel Prize for... For literature. Yeah. Which, I mean... You know, Paul Newman could do a lot of things, but, you know... What do you mean? Are there no beautiful novelists? Has no beautiful man ever won the Nobel Prize for literature? The Nobel Prize would never give anyone that cool. That's actually a category in when you're delineating the awards is how ugly is this person.

And so you're right, Paul Newman would never win. Not a huge movie in his career. There is a lovely Blu-ray. How is this movie on Blu-ray and not HUD? Not a success, not really a box office success either. So the prize is red. What a way to go. I also did not watch. You told me you did watch this. I think I did. Hold on. What a way to go.

Newman has like a small role. Yeah, Shirley MacLaine. Oh, this is fun. Okay. So it's Shirley MacLaine. I mean, I wish you'd watch it. The premise is that Shirley MacLaine is at the end of her life and is recounting all of her marriages. Because...

Including Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, and Gene Kelly. Yeah. And the reason that she wants to do this is because she wants to give her money away to the IRS or something, which is like, don't give your money to the IRS. She wants to give it to the IRS? I don't know. I don't know. It was weird. So, Paul Newman is... Did the IRS fund this movie?

Probably, with the CIA. So, Paul Newman is one of the husbands, like, I would say, like, 30s, and he is a... He's an artist, and he builds this painting machine that splatters paint and then ultimately it kills him. So that's, I mean, spoiler alert, I guess. Well, they're all dead.

That's how she is the widow that inherits all the thing. It's the process of moving. So the machine's pretty cool. He is very scruffy in it and is like playing a little more bohemian than maybe I buy from Paul Newman. So this is red, but I watched it. Okay, it's red.

1964, The Outrage. Not a film I would recommend people watch, but it is an interesting artifact in this career. It is a reunion with Martin Ritt. They're coming off this incredible success of HUD, Paris Blues. They decided they want to remake Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, but they're gonna make it a story about white guys and a Mexican.

And Paul Newman's gonna play the Mexican. He's a blue eyed Mexican named, I believe, Juan Carrasco. And this movie is terrible. It's pointless. It actually looks pretty good. The photography is really nice as it is in most Martin Ridd movies. But Newman's performance is dreadful

and not just because it's culturally insensitive. It's actually quite bad and it's a little bit curious. He's, again, this is him kind of like feeling around in the dark trying things that maybe we would not be trying in 2025. OK. Probably not even in 1985. And it's not meaningfully different enough

from Rashomon to necessitate its existence. But it's a story of a rape and a murder and told through three different perspectives. Told through the perspective of someone who participated, someone who witnessed it, and then a third mysterious figure. And it's just okay. It is a very early William Shatner movie performance. Edward G. Robinson is also in this movie.

Like, it's just one of those movies where, like, if you've seen Rashomon, why do we need this movie? And I also don't know any other person in the universe who has seen this movie. It has really been... I skipped it. It has been where like, if you've seen Rashomon, why do we need this movie? And I also don't know any other person in the universe who has seen this movie. It has really been... I skipped it. It has been like mothballed. Not a hit and it's red.

Lady Ella, I have not seen. I have. This is a Sophia Loren movie. Yes. Another woman of note recounting her loves at the end of her life, but then it turns out to be a period piece. And so

Paul Newman is like wearing like capes and stuff. Oh, which is just not where you want to be. If you're back to the silver chalice for him. Well, it's more I wish I could tell you he's there's like a count like 1700s 1800s. I couldn't really tell you again. I wouldn't say that like specificity of place or time is one of Lady L's attributes. And then he's like, he's a young guy and an old person. So in addition to the goatee or whatever, you know, costume drama facial hair he has going, then he has some aging. I wouldn't say he has a ton of chemistry with Sophia Loren. And it was weird. I don't recommend it. It's red.

Red. 1966 Harper. Now, I really like this movie a lot. This is a favorite of mine. I did not rewatch it because I've seen it at least three or four times in my life. It is an early William Goldman script. It's based on a Ross McDonald novel called The Moving Target. It's a classic detective story.

One of the things that jumps out of my... Lauren Bacall co-stars in the movie. One of the things that jumps out of my mind is a young Pamela Tiffin dancing on a diving board in a bikini. Yeah. I'll never forget. It will never escape my mind. It's really... And she looks great.

One thing I'd like to say about that is, as a point of aspiration, I remember in my 20s reading about Pamela Tiffin, she went on to marry Clay Felker, who was the editor-in-chief of New York Magazine. And I was like, is this something you can do? That's definitely what happens to magazine editors. I was like, who is this man? This is not the last time Newman would play this character.

He makes a sequel in the 70s. I don't think this is a movie that goes in the Hall of Fame, and there's certainly some things about it that feel very 1966, culturally. But it's a fun watch if you like detective movies. So it would be a blue for me. You want this to be your blue? Yeah.

OK. I mean, I really liked it. I had never seen it before. And it does have... It's like LA set, there are palm trees, you know, Lauren Bacall is just like Lauren Bacalling to 1000. This is also the first movie where he dips his head into a bowl full of ice cubes in the morning,

which is something he actually did in his real life because he drank so much and it brought the swelling down. Can I tell you something about myself? You do this. When I was pregnant, before every single dumb video recording we had to do. You dipped your face in ice cubes. It did.

Is it because of the heavy drinking the night before? Yeah, exactly. That was what I added to my pregnancy regimen. No, I was so swollen because I was pregnant. OK, OK. And he had made me be on YouTube. You looked great every time. I made you?

Yeah. OK. I did it.. Okay, okay. And he had made me be on YouTube. I made you? Yeah, it's okay, I did it. Same year, 19... Harper is not... It's your blue for now. Are we allowed to change our blues? Maybe. And we can like trade them? Yeah, we've only got like 50 more movies.

1966, again, Torn Curtain. This is his one movie with Hitchcock. On paper, political spy thriller, starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in the mid-60s with Hitchcock, on paper, political spy thriller starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in the mid-60s from Hitchcock. This should be the best movie ever made. Yeah, it's not. It's not.

It's not. It's pretty boring. It's pretty disappointing. Right. And this is a theme that will recur, where a lot of times Newman is like, ah, it's a remake of Rashomon. And you're being a bandit. That should be so cool. And it's not cool.

Like, he does, he missteps quite often. It takes a, like, there are your Hitchcock and twists and turns, but they take forever. It just goes on and you know, there's no tension in any of them. There is a scene with Newman and Julie Andrews like nuzzling in, in bed pretty early on in the movie. And you're just like, what am I watching? No heat. Yeah. Yeah. Not with, with respect. Julie Andrews has many other skills.

Yeah. Well, she's not a particularly sexual performer. Including teaching people how to be princesses. But... That's true. Hitchcock didn't like Newman, and Newman didn't like Hitchcock. Hitchcock didn't like very many actors, and they didn't really like him very much. That's a flex, though, just to be like, I don't...

I mean, I know most people don't like him as... He wasn't pleasing to work with, but, you know... I don't like Hitchcock. I don't know. It's... I think he was hard on some young women. Sure. That I know. Yeah. Male actors a little... You know, I think Cary Grant had nicer things to say about him,

but, you know, this movie's notable in part because a young Steven Spielberg snuck onto the soundstage of this movie all as being filmed just a few years before he started working in series television for Universal and Learned a lot Seemingly watching Hitchcock work block a scene and set up. It's not going in no 1967 ombre. Okay. Now you didn't really enjoy watching the Westerns. I kind of like this movie I did I I do think I saw this one. I watched all of them

I have a real fondness for the Martin Ridd movies. Thank you so much Wikipedia I googled ombre film ombrembre, parenthesis, Spanish for man. Man. Great, okay. Is there a film called Man? That's going to be my first film. Oh, I did. Yeah, I watched this one, okay.

I don't remember which Western. It's a movie about a white guy raised by Native Americans, sort of the dances with wolves of its time. And this man, portrayed by Newman, has to defend passengers of a stagecoach that's held up by a gang. And so man portrayed by Newman has to defend passengers of a stagecoach that's held up by a gang. And so it becomes kind of an extended standoff movie, long third act in which he is kind of attempting

to protect these people, these passengers in this kind of safe house at the top of a hill. I thought it was pretty sharp for a Western of its time, for kind of like a modernist Western. It's not going in, and Newman had some regrets about it because there's clearly something kind of insensitive about telling the story of the Native American experience through the eyes of the one white guy who kind of sort of got to have that experience.

A movie that would not be made today. But it's not a bad Western by any means, but we can make that red. And that takes us to Cool Hand Luke. The greenest of the greens. Is this the most iconic? It is to me. You think so?

Okay. And don't you think it has, cause it's got the, the 50 eggs. It's got the, the banjo scene. It's got obviously, um, what we have here is a failure to communicate. So, and it has the ending, which like, you know, can we spoil Cool Hand Luke? Sure. If you haven't watched Cool Hand Luke, I don't know why you're listening this far in a Paul Newman podcast, but please skip forward. But Zach, my husband always talks about seeing this young and being like, wait, he dies?

Like, what do you mean? And there's something about this character and you're, you're rooting for him. He gets you so on his side with very few words and with, you know, a lot, a lot of issues buried deep inside. And... And that... I guess it's just like an early example of anti-hero, but also, not really anti-hero, but just the hero it doesn't work out for. Yeah, tragedy. Yeah, it is a heroic tragedy, but also the hero is a deeply complicated figure.

He's living on a prison farm, and he represents something about rebellion, but you don't totally understand what it is he's rebelling against other than just the kind of strictures of the society that we exist inside of. As you said, like it has a number of incredibly iconic scenes, the hard boiled eggs in particular, what we've got here is a failure to communicate. The Lalo Schifrin score to this movie is incredible. So memorable that dun dun dun dun dun dun. It's a great movie.

In the last movie stars Ethan Hawke says Denzel, Malcolm X, De Niro, Raging Bull, Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke. That's what's in my mind in terms of the iconography of American acting. And it's a pretty interesting comparison. You could say Brando and Streetcar. You could add a couple of other figures to that. But it is in that lineage. Yeah. But even Brando in streetcar,

like, the enduring images of those performances, Brando, it's like screaming Stella at the top of his lungs. And even like, you know, I said 50 eggs, but he's really just like lying there through a lot of that scene. It is very funny. It is a very, um... like, recessed performance. And it is, when you say,

Paul Newman, the first thing that comes to mind for me. Green. 1968, The Secret War of Harry Frigg, a reunion with Jack Smite, who directed Harper. Harper is pretty funny, but not a comedy. The Secret War of Harry Frigg, which seems like a World War II drama on its surface, about five captured generals,

is actually a comedy and a bad comedy? I think I forgot to watch this. I'm realizing now. You didn't miss much. Um... It is... one of Newman's rare attempts to do pure comedy and be the lead of the film. And he plays a private who is elevated to major general inside of this prison camp in an attempt to like create

some sort of environment where he can free these five other generals. Very silly and not very effective, but I'm glad I watched it. It's read. It's the kind, it's the sort of, I think I've even said this on the rewatchables, that there are certain movies that you forget

that no one remembers. Like, this movie wasn't made in 1954. It was made immediately after Cool Hand Luke. No one saw it, no one cared, no one ever talks about it. It has really no public profile. I find that fascinating, part of the reason why is it's just not very good. 1969 Winning, which did you get a chance to watch this? I did, yes. This is a chance to watch this? Yes.

This is a critical movie in his career and in his life, even though it's not, I think, ultimately not a very successful film. Do you agree with that? Yes. It made me nervous for F1, the film. Because it's just a lot. So this is the movie, he plays a race car driver, and this is the movie that got him into race car driving. And so he becomes...

And it's definitely also exploring some of what's going on in his personal life. There is a scene in which he walks in on his wife played by Joanne Woodward having an affair with Robert Wagner. Correct. Daddy Wagner, as he's known here on the big picture. You remember that?

Check out the Natalie Wood documentary on Max, if you haven't, If you don't. And... but there are a lot of race car driving scenes that just go on and on and on and on. I would argue they're not enough. They all come in the last 40 minutes. There's like an hour of this movie with no race car driving. Yeah, but the climactic scene is really, really long.

It's really long. This is not... James Goldstone directed this movie, who's not a filmmaker on the caliber of Rosenberg or Ritt or some of the other filmmakers that he's working with a lot in the 60s. The drama of the movie is fascinating, in part because it's a movie definitely about the complexities of his relationship with Joanne Woodward, but even more specifically about his relationship with his son at the time. And there's a kind of surrogate son figure that comes into the movie who's Joanne Woodward, but even more specifically about his relationship with his son at the time. And there's a kind of surrogate son figure

that comes into the movie who's Joanne Woodward's character's son. And you can see him putting his experience of trying to teach his son to be a man in this film. And it's quite tragic because he ultimately passes away his son. But... I think he's good opposite...

Richard Thomas is, yeah, the young, really young Richard Thomas. Right, and so it's that Paul Newman thing of, like, this scene where he teaches him to drink. Yes. They just, like, everyone's awake and you're just like, oh, I'm watching something here. And I honestly, the last scene in the movie

between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, they're standing outside the house and it's like, are they gonna reconcile or are they not? And they, it's wonderful. Yeah, it has the, it feels like a new Hollywood movie. It feels like a complex character drama that doesn't tie it up nicely in a bow. But it's kind of a dirge, you know?

So winning, even though it's important to his life, is gonna be red. And then a 1969 butch casting in The Sundance Kid. His first movie with George Roy Hill, an all- time classic, one of the best American movies ever made. This is his, I would argue, his first old guy part. Yeah.

He is the much elder to Robert Redford. He is more of, I don't know if he's a mentor per se, but he's more of the like leading Rapscallion in the duo. He puts it together. Yeah, and The Sundance is the young buck. I don't know, what can you say? Magical movie. One of the most fun movies you can watch. I did rewatch it just because I hadn't seen it in a few years.

It's just, it still slaps, just so you know. Super fun. Newman's very funny in this movie. Um... So is Redford, honestly, which is just, you know... They both are. I could live inside of the scene when they're about to jump off the cliff, and Redford tells him he can't swim. I love them together in that moment.

Obviously Newman's fight scene when he beats up the big guy is so great. Just perfect little piece of movie making. Um, so it's green. 1970, W. USA. Kind of a nightmare. This is what you were talking about when you were like the politics got like two into the movies?

He's obviously spent a lot of time fighting for civil rights and speaking out against the Vietnam War and he's made this movie that is about a man who basically has no point of view on the world but works for a conservative talk radio station and you know mimics the ideas of the far right, the Christian right. And it becomes this kind of big arch satire of the falsity of American life through politics. And it's so much speechifying and super pretentious. And...

Joanne Woodward's also in this one. She is, she is. And it's also like it's set in New Orleans, and then there's like New Orleans jazz happening in the film, and Anthony Perkins is kind of on the sidelines of the story. It's a really like messy, it's a swing. It's an attempt to do something artistic, but it's almost like he couldn't get out of the way of his own.

I'll tell you what it is. We don't do this as much anymore that we have kids, but we still go out to dinner all the time, me and you and CR and our spouses. And there would be a moment at roughly the two plus hour mark of the dinner. Yeah. Where it would just be like, should we talk about politics? And then it would invariably lead to

like various men just sharing strongly held opinions that are just not that interesting. And... The number of times you had to apologize to someone like literally like we left the restaurant and before everyone to their cars you had to just be like, I'm sorry, Amanda. I'm sorry, Chris. I'm sorry, Phoebe. Well, I should be apologized to as well. But nevertheless, it just feels like that. Just feels like a guy who's just like,

all right, man, I know, you feel strongly about this. You know, we get it. So it's red. I'm really interested in sometimes a great notion. I don't think that this is a perfect film or even a great film, but I'm very interested in it. But it's honestly, it's good. It's quite good. I think this is a little bit of a lost keystone for him.

He directed this movie. He takes over, right? Because things are going poorly. Another filmmaker was making it, it was going very badly, so he had to take over. But it comes at a time when he's having a tremendous amount of turmoil. His drinking is really getting out of control and he and Joanne Woodward are having a lot of problems

and he's coming off of the failure of WUSA. Which is a film that he produced for this company that he founded in the late sixties with Barbra Streisand and third star... Sydney Poitier? Sydney Poitier. Where I think it's called Artists First, where they essentially develop and produce their own material. Sort of the Ben and Matt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. and produce their own material. Sort of the Ben and Matt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes a great notion is Ken Kesey's second novel. It's about loggers in Oregon, a family of loggers in Oregon. If you're excited about the forthcoming logging drama, Train Dreams, coming to Netflix, I would say this is the source text. And it's an interesting movie about this family's disinterest in the unionization of logging in that community at that time in that industry.

And some of the complexity downside of like closing yourself off of kind of isolationism. And what you think might be a sense of integrity is actually a kind of a loss of purpose and like creating danger around their lives. Some of the movie isn't fully baked or it feels like they weren't quite able to make what they wanted to. It seems like it was a very difficult shoot. Henry Fonda is actually in this movie as the patriarch. There's a death scene in this movie that is among the most upsetting scenes

in movie history. I don't really want to spoil it for people, but I'll just say that the guy who dies, the actor who dies, who did not have a big career in Hollywood, but was nominated for an Academy Award for this movie, almost entirely due to this scene, which is riveting and very tough. And Newman directed it and did an amazing job directing it. I just would recommend this movie. I don't know if it'd go... I don't know... We have two blues,

so maybe this could be my second blue unless you want it to be your second blue. It's a darn good movie. Paris Blue can be my first blue. Okay. So this can be your second blue. This will be my second blue. Because there's another one that I'm saving for my second blue, if it's not green, which it might need to be. 1972 Pocket Money?

I watched it. I was a little disappointed in this one. Well, he's like dumb cowboy, right? He's like dumb butch, basically. Yeah, it's just, it's a... It's so much of a HUD. It's like, it's a movie about like a cattle rancher who buys sick cattle and then needs to make some changes.

But it's like funny. It's meant to be played as like a little bit more of a romp, and Lee Marvin's in it, but I found it to be a little... It's another movie that like not a lot of people have seen. They kind of like disappeared. I didn't say I laughed, but it's just played for... Yeah, this one is a red for me. I was not a huge fan.

I know the life and times of Judge Roy Bean has its fans. This is his first movie with John Huston. You weren't one of them. No, this is the bear movie. Did you rewatch it? I didn't rewatch it, no. So you didn't see the bear? Well, I saw it some years ago. When we discussed it, you did not recall. You were like, this is the bear movie. Did you rewatch it? Did you notice it so you didn't see the bear? I saw it some years ago.

When we discussed it, you did not recall. You were like, this is the bear movie. I know, there are a lot of Westerns. There are a lot of things happening. To me, this is when hot Eva Gardner, hot old Eva Gardner. Like with cattle and, you know, and with other, you know, parts of the West and nature and stuff. And this one is the bear. That's how I remembered it.

His name is Bruno, the bear. Paul's how I remembered it. His name is Bruno the bear. Paul Newman yells at him. Did you like it? It was okay. It was kind of a hit at the time and kind of a big movie. I don't think it's one of Houston's best movies or one of Newman's best movies, but you can see him kind of settling into gray haredom.

You know, being an elder. Yes, and being a little cranky and just, you know, coming in to either act opposite a bear or do the... to be memorable and then leave, sort of. Yeah, I think it's like probably as close to a yellow as we'll get in this era. Um... Well, so...

The next one, the next one can be red, but when we were talking about the bear, we were talking about Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, which I call Bear Movie. Well, I said to you, like, I prefer the other John Houston movie that he made, which is the next movie, The Macintosh Man, which is another, like, detective. Yeah, it's like a spy thriller.

Yeah, and so he makes a lot of Westerns and he makes a lot of detect, spy thrillers. And it's just a spy thriller. Yeah, and so he makes a lot of Westerns and he makes a lot of detect-spy thrillers. And it's just a genre reference for me. The Macintosh Man is a weird one because he does a lot of accent work in this movie, and his Australian accent is the worst I've ever heard in my life. Like, truly terrible. The movie is pretty cool. It's about a guy who purposefully gets arrested

to get into prison to learn about this group, this organization that extracts people from prison for a price. And he extracts somebody who is in prison with him, and then they learn about the inner workings of this organization. It's like a fascinating, it's a little bit confusing and naughty at times, but, and not going in the Hall of Fame or anything, but a neat discovery for me. I hadn't seen it before. Yeah, I had never seen it. It held my attention.

I was like, I agree. It's a little dense, a little slow moving in the way that just, you know, our brains are ruined by all of the technologies available to us, but it's pretty good. If I had stumbled into it on a Saturday, as not part of a 40 film rewatch, it would have been even more enjoyable.

1973 is The Sting. Green. This is a green, obviously it's a reunion with Redford and George Roy Hill. It's also the only movie that he ever starred in that won Best Picture. And so for that reason alone, I feel that it should be, and he's also incredible as Henry Gondorf. The scene of him playing poker opposite Robert Shaw is one of the funniest movies.

Yeah, wiping the tie on his face and... I'm realizing now that my first interaction with Paul Newman was actually The Sting. Oh, interesting. Because I learned how to play the entertainer on the piano, and so my parents were like, oh, well sure, you'll love The Sting. And I was like, again, I'm seven.

Is it Marvin Hamlisch? Is that who is the composer of this movie? Yeah, but it's like that's a Scott Joplin original that they use prominently in the film. I would say that at seven seven I didn't get it, but then I grew up and watched it again. Very charming. It's not my favorite of his movies. I think it's actually one of the lesser thematic movies that he made.

It's really just a good time at the movies. It's kind of the Top Gun maverick of its time. It's like, oh yeah, these guys, I love these guys. They're doing fun stuff. They're in great costumes. This is a risky proposition they're about to embark upon. And this is kind of now kicking off another big period for him in the mid-70s, where he kind of comes back in a big way. In 74, he co-stars opposite

Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno, which is probably the biggest, maybe the second biggest behind the Poseidon adventure of the Irwin Allen mega disaster blockbusters. This is the sort of twister independence day of its time. Huge cast, star studded and a terrible, exciting special effects laden, I don't know, you know, mega movie. Um, the movie, it's also okay.

It's like two and a half hours. Really, really takes them a long time to get everyone out of that building. Yeah. And like, once the fire is set, for like 30 minutes, William Holden is like, it's gonna be okay, let's stay in here. And I don't really, you know, the plotting is a little bad. It's pretty bad. Uh, it's also an interesting thing

where it's based on two different novels that they smashed together. One of which was called The Glass Inferno, It's also an interesting thing where it's based on two different novels that they smashed together. Right. One of which was called The Glass Inferno, and the other one was called The Tower. Right. So they literally combined like the titles of the two novels in addition to the storyline.

Newman plays the architect. Mm-hmm. Steve McQueen plays the fearless fire chief. Sure. Faye Dunaway plays the hot lady that he sleeps with. What does she do? Uh, I don't know, but I will tell you. I mean, she doesn't get to do anything.

It's a completely thankless part, but, uh, Paul Newman is quite responsive to whatever Faye Dunaway is putting on screen. You know, she's obviously quite... She's obviously Faye Dunaway in the 70s. It's like, I get it. Yeah, she's super hot and she's beautiful in this time in movies, but she very rarely plays characters that are, like, um, seductresses. You know, she's, in like negligee in this movie

and she's more overly sexual than like Diane Christensen. Anyway, this is a perfectly adequate blockbuster. It's fine, it's not going in. 75, The Drowning Pool. This is a reunion of the Harper crew. Same character. Just a great new Hollywood detective movie. This movie rocks.

This is my blue, if we're not putting in it. I love this movie. And this is like, it is, you know, obviously some of it is personal preference of, like a mystery and then a bunch of people not doing what they should be doing with Southern accents. Very, very young Melanie Griffith. But I mean, this is shot by Gordon Willis. Like it looks beautiful. Joanne Woodward is in this one.

It's, I think he, again, like he's aging. And so even he fits in this character more. As slightly older than in Harper. Yeah, it moves from California to Louisiana. He fits in this character more as slightly older than in Harper. It moves from California to Louisiana. As you said, shot by Willis, scored by Michael Small. It comes out right around the same time as Night Moves, the Gene Hackman detective movie.

They're kind of like this neat little double feature that also features a very young Melanie Griffith and is like kind of skeezy, but very entertaining, and like a good mystery. This is but very entertaining and like a good mystery. It's like, this is a movie that's like a good book. It's just like a good page turner. He makes a movie like this much later in his career that I really liked too, which could have been a blue for me as well.

We'll get there. Um, 76, he just has a cameo in the Mel Brooks movie, silent movie. Obviously that's not going to go in. Also in 76, he makes Buffalo Bill and the Indians. This is his first movie with Robert Altman. I think a little bit of a lost classic, a little bit of a misunderstood movie. I'm not going to advocate for putting it in.

You do it. At the time, way ahead of its time. Sure. At the time, a vision of the West and the American Western and show business as like... And Paul Newman. And Paul, yes, the falsity of presentation that goes into these myths and these icons

of our culture by using Buffalo Bill Cody as like a portal into how this is a guy who many people thought was a hero of the Old West, but was in fact just like basically a carnival performer. Some really, really good performances in this movie. Geraldine Chaplin's wonderful, young Harvey Keitel. The movie's shot in what Altman calls an antique style. So it's all kind of browns and maroons and yellows. The coloring is beautiful.

And it's his first movie after Nashville. It's that thing where there's always something happening in the background. The camera's always kind of roving around looking for another event. It's a single location, but it feels very vast. It's a very cool there's always something happening in the background. The camera's always kind of roving around looking for another event. It's a single location, but it feels very vast. It's a very cool movie that I would recommend. And Newman does hold it all together.

Yes. Both in the text of the story, but also in the presence of your eye. I always find him wherever he is. Yes. 77 Slapshot. In green. Has to go in. Amazing comedy that is what I was referring to. 77 Slapshot. Green. Has to go in.

Amazing comedy that is what I was referring to. I think they locate this in the last movie stars where he starts thinking, if I want to get some of my ideas across about the way that the world is, I need to do it in a slightly more approachable format. This is a hockey comedy directed by George Roy Hill who just made two huge smashes with him about a small semi-professional club. And it's unclear who owns the team and why the team is being sold or closed down and who is controlling the fate of these guys.

Newman plays Reggie Dunlop, who's sort of the coach star, aging star of the team. And it's a hijinks movie. Everything is like, ridiculousness, the Hanson brothers and their, what they get up to beating the shit out of everybody on the ice. It's episodic, it's very silly. It's also written by a woman, the very rare new Hollywood comedy with a female screenwriter, Nancy Boyd, I want to say,

who based the experience on, I think, her brother's time playing semi-professional hockey. Just a brilliant movie. Really, really really funny also very funny to watch it's Funny to watch with other people and watch them laugh like it just makes it makes all boys your age laugh Yes, so hard 79 quintet well, you know, let's count up how many greens we have. Okay. As we're getting deeper and deeper into this run.

So we've got one, two, three, four, five. Hmm. Looks like we've got six right now. Not, not as many movies left as you might think. Buffalo Bill, the Indians is red, Slapshot is green. Quintet is his second movie with Altman. A famous disaster. A post-apocalyptic science fiction drama

about a society in which everyone plays a board game quintet, but some people play it with real people who are murdered. This is absolutely- I won't defend it. Yeah, don't, okay. I won't defend it. Listen, sometimes you try things. Yeah.

And if you're Robert Alman, you can really try whatever you want. And Lord knows he did. And... This is one of the movies that's... This is the movie that kind of like clinched his fall. That led to him making Popeye because he had made three consecutive duds.

Three or four consecutive duds. Like a wedding, perfect couple, quintet, and health all happen in this four-year window. And he's like, fuck. I was on top and now it's over within five years. Interesting movie in that respect, but very slow and a little hard to follow at times. And Newman is like, it seems like he's stoned throughout the whole movie. He's so quiet. So that's red. When the time ran out, when time ran out, I didn't watch. I didn't either. So this movie's gotten very bad reviews.

It does not seem historically significant. He made this movie because he had to fulfill a contract with Irwin Allen, theoretically, I assume, was made during the making of The Towering Inferno. And it's another disaster movie that also stars Willem Holden and Jaclyn Bissette. And it's about a volcano. It's red. Okay.

Fort Apache, The Bronx, did you check this out? No, I couldn't. I watched it on YouTube. Oh, well, you didn't tell me. I'm sorry, I didn't ask. I found it on YouTube, I believe, with Polish subtitles. I mean, I did ask you if this was in your physical media collection, and you said it was not available.

It's not available. You cannot buy this movie on physical media. You might be able to buy, like, a dingy DVD, but it's not actually a good transfer. It's a cop drama. Newman as a New York cop, you know, not bad. He's okay. He falls in love with Rachel Tickerton, who's about 25 years younger than him in the movie.

She plays a nurse. The movie is... Won't be the last time. That's a good point. It's not super notable, except for the fact that it very clearly inspired... Hill Street Blues. And even when you watch the scenes of the cops in the locker room, this movie as the template

for the prestige network cop drama is a really interesting artifact. Newman's fine, Ken Wall's in it, he's fine, Ed Asner's fine. It's an okay drama, but it's got some historical significance. Absence of Malice, have you seen this? Yeah, I watched this for the first time. So I would love to have like a really, really

like open discussion about this movie and Sally Field and ethics and journalism. Yeah, let's do it. What's going on? What's going on? It's a weird movie. Yeah, it's a movie about, is he, is he a construction company owner? I'm trying to remember what his job is.

I didn't rewatch it for this. Sydney Pollock directed this movie. Newman and Sally Field, as you said. Um, it's, I think it's about a construction company owner who is, uh, it's, it's, it's a liquor wholesaler. Oh, liquor wholesaler. Excuse me. But he's adjacent to, but like he's the son of,

but quote unquote, not involved in like illegal activities. Like the mob, right? Yes. And it- Organized crime. There's an insinuation in a newspaper article that he is responsible for a crime. Sally Field's a reporter who puts his name in print

and liables him. And it definitely goes off the rails. He made this movie in part because he was having such a hard time with the tabloid press, particularly the New York Post, that he was obviously very angry with what he felt that the press could get away with, particularly a certain kind of tabloid press. Sure. Which... valid. It is valid.

Sort of. It's made for kind of an awkward, like, is this movie against journalism? I'm not entirely sure. Well, it's sort of like, I guess it's like against journalism, but then he starts a, his character starts a romance with Sally Field. So it's against journalism in that way. Everyone you're not supposed to do that. And that's obviously like a long time trope in movies

of like the female, you know, the female journalist who starts having an affair with her source. I think the gender dynamics are part of what makes this movie a little icky. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I guess they do have the scene in the opening with the lawyer explaining basically, like the basic libel laws and what you need to do. And like, did you call for comment?

I was cut for a minute. I was like, well, this is decent journalism school. And then nothing happens. And he's just like a like, I kept waiting for him to turn bad also. Yeah. You know, and something odd about the characterization. Yeah. And I was like, what's going on here? And then he was just like, he was right and tabloids are bad. Okay.

It's kind of a miss for me, even though it was a big deal film at the time. He was nominated for an Academy Award for this movie, his performance. It's his one, two, three, four, fifth nomination. And he has not won yet. Right. Just worth noting here, conversationally, in 59 he was nominated for Kavanaugh Hudson Roof. He lost to David Niven for Separate Tables.

62 he lost to Maximilian Schell for Judgment at Nuremberg. 64 he lost to Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field, becoming the first black male Academy Award winner. In 1968, he lost to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night, another legendary movie. And then in 1982, he loses to Henry Fonda, his former scene partner and sometimes a great notion, for On Golden Pond.

So he's not won yet, even though he's an icon of the industry and he's entered his late 50s, essentially. But he keeps losing to these heavyweight performances. You know, like Maximilian Schell and Judgment at Nuremberg. That's like one of the most stirring performances of its era. And that's going to continue as we go through the list. Because in 1982, he makes The Verdict, which is a five star classic and one of my favorite movies of all time.

Unreal. We just showed it at the Coolidge Theater in Boston. Chris, Bill and I sat through the whole movie and we're just moved. So it's just one of the great courtroom dramas ever. It's one of the ones that I saved as like a treat. I think a couple of nights ago, I sat there and I was like, sorry,

I can't do bedtime, I gotta go watch The Verdict. It's a tremendously satisfying movie and it's a movie in which he has poured a lot of himself and Frank Galvin and his struggles with alcohol and his struggles with the ability to perform and to live up to the expectation that has been set upon him. And sort of like the real him and the him

that he could have been as an idea is so strong in this movie. Great David Mamet script. Sidney Lumet directed. He's nominated. I think this is the performance of his career. He's astonishing in this movie. Oh, unquestionably. Yeah. I mean, you're right. But this is also, it's like, oh think this is the performance of his career. He's astonishing in this movie.

Yeah, I mean, you're right. But this is also, it's like, old, this is old Paul Newman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, cool hand Luke is young Newman and this is... Yeah, I think those are the good, yeah, the counterweight. And he loses to Ben Kingsley for Gandhi. Yeah, it's not what you want. It's tough.

The verdict's going in. It's green. 1984 Harry and Son, He directs this movie. Another movie about the difficulties of being a dad. He does make this in the aftermath of the death of his son. His son is played... His son character is played by Robbie Benson in this movie. Robbie Benson did not give very good reviews.

I would not say that he's great in it. He's not. That's the tough thing about being Paul Newman. Paul Newman talked about this. Scott Newman struggled being Paul Newman's son. And then I think just being a young actor opposite Paul Newman had its struggles as well. Joey Newman has to play like the crazy lady next door who like raises birds? Yeah.

Okay. I'm not crazy about this movie. No. He also again plays a construction worker in this movie who gets laid off. You know. Because he can't see. No, he has like a heart issue. Some sort of control of his body. Right, the leg is later.

Yeah. In a different movie. 1986, The Color of Money. Yeah. Finally, the Academy has decided to grant him an Academy Award. Right. Probably 25 years too late, but... He doesn't show up.

He doesn't go. Yeah. Which is very funny. Legend. It's nice that he won for returning to Fast, that he fells in and playing opposite Tom Cruise in the sort of mentor mentee role. And he's just marvelous and electrifying.

This movie is pornography to me. I can watch it every day. It speaks to deepest to my soul. It's Scorsese. Scorsese and Newman at long last. And Newman contacted Scorsese to make the movie. Right. And Scorsese is in the middle of a very fallow period.

And Scorsese's response to him is, what do you got? And he's like, well, I got me and I got you. And that's enough. Yeah. So a great story and a movie that was a hit and I think helped. I think like immensely watchable. In a movie that was a hit and I think helped. And like immensely watchable. And it is about like introducing Tom Cruise and the Eddie Falston character, you know,

kind of seeing him young self, his young self and figuring out. But it is also just about Paul Newman. Yes. You know? And so, and Paul Newman like also clearly understands it. It's one of those times where it's like, well, we made a movie to win an Oscar, and then it did win an Oscar, and also it was good, and everything, just like, we're all on the same page here.

Right? And we're doing something well for a purpose, and then the purpose is achieved. 100%. This movie just makes me happy, so I'm very glad that I can go in. 1989, Fat Man and Little Boy. Perhaps you've seen the film Oppenheimer.

This is just Oppenheimer but bad. But it ends, you know, as I wish Oppenheimer would have with the Trinity sequence. But it's the Trinity sequence. Are you sure having seen this now that that's where it should have ended? No, because here's the choice that they make with the Trinity sequence.

Can I tell you? It's literally scored with the, like the reed flutes from the Nutcracker. I like that is honestly, that is what is pitched to play. And then the flames go up in Oppie's goggles. So Newman plays Leslie Gross, who is Matt Damon's character. He does not bring the panache and charisma that Matt Damon brought to Oppenheimer. It's... This is a really bad movie. John Cusack is there doing science and then...

and falls in love with Laura Dern, which is nice. That is nice. You know. So you just watched this, because I actually watched this before Oppenheimer. And I had a similar like, why did, how did this happen? Now Newman, you know, was against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that's one of the reasons why he made the movie. And he thought the story of Oppenheimer was resonant and important to tell.

It's interesting that he, you know, the movie could only get made if he took on the part of the military man until like he's on the poster. But the movie is really about Oppenheimer and about the creation of the bomb. And it's just kind of a dud. 1989 Blaze, which is written and directed by Ron Shelton based on a true story about a Louisiana governor who has a quite open affair with an exotic dancer in a film played by Lolita Davidovich,

to whom I would turn my life over. She was married and is still married to Ron Shelton. And it's, I haven't seen this since I was a kid watching it on cable. But I remember having fun with it. I did not. So you let me your DVD or your Blu-ray, what is it? It's a Blu-ray and it's a double Blu-ray that it also includes Billy Bathgate. Okay.

This is the one where I was like, why does Sean own this Blu-ray? You know? I bought it for Billy Bathgate. Okay. This is the one where I was like, why does Sean own this Blu-ray? You know? I bought it for Billy Bathgate. Okay. Got it. But I also... I really like Ron Shelton. I mean, Ron Shelton, you know, Wyman, Can't Jump, Bull Durham, you know. You know, so this has some questionable choices in terms of its portrayal of Louisiana government

and some cultural insensitivities choices in terms of its portrayal of Louisiana government and some cultural insensitivities and some things that we just, we don't say anymore for white people. Just- I'm sure it's accurate to its time. Yeah, sure. But you know, I was kind of like, oh, I don't know. But this wasn't, it wasn't bad.

He's funny. I mean, he is like sort of just playing Colonel Sanders. But... Like, I... But, you know, but a horny Colonel Sanders. He plays Earl Long, who's Huey Long's brother. Is Colonel Sanders horny? Like, canonically? Not as far as I know.

Okay. Well, I mean, he's... He, again, is responsive to the terms. What canon are we referring to? The KFC canon? I don't know, I'm just, you know, I know that there are fans out there in the world and I try to respect them where I can. There's only like seven more movies to go. We're almost there. Blaze is not going in.

I don't think Mr. and Mrs. Bridge is going in either. This is the last big movie in which Newman and Woodward were opposite one another. It's a very sensitive drama about an older couple directed by James Ivory. One of the rare American films that Ivory made. It's just fine. It's fine.

It's just fine. Yeah. Uh, 1994, a small but critical role in The Hudsucker Proxy, directed by the Coen Brothers. Oh, right, yes. Which is a great film. A very funny, antique, madcap, kind of post, you know, bringing up baby monkey business, His Girl Friday, fast-talking 40s comedy.

I like it a lot. It's not green. Newman plays the grouchy sort of head of the company who installs Tim Robbins' hud sucker character, who then mistakenly rises to success after he invents the hula hoop. I really like this movie, but I'm sure there are a lot of listeners who are like, how could you not put this in? But I'm like, we have to do 60 years of film history here.

So maybe as a faint, I can say that this is a yellow. Yeah, that's fine. 1994, Nobody's Fool. Oscar nominated. And adaptation, his first adaptation of a Richard Russo novel, directed by Robert Benton. And a movie about a guy for whom life just did not work out, named Donald Sully Sullivan, another construction worker, another guy whose body is betraying him, who has ruined his relationship with his son, who has no one who loves him in the world, except for... Except for Melanie Griffith.

Yes. In a slightly complicated way. Yes, I would say Melanie Griffith... She has the first pair of breasts I've ever seen in my life. When I saw this movie, I was like, all right, this is very exciting. And this scene that does not necessitate her doing that, but this is a reunion of them after the drowning pool some 20 years earlier. I love this movie.

It was talking to Van Lathan before we were recording earlier today. And this is clearly the first, one of the first Newman movies that we both saw. And so when I say old guy Newman, I think this is how I got to him. He's really, really good at that. And he's like, he's really good with the kid. He's really good being angry. He's, you know, still like throwing, you know, taking his shots with Melanie Griffith.

It's like there's regret. It's funny. It's very funny. He's very funny opposite Bruce Willis too, who's like a nepo baby shithead in his life. And he constantly is warring with him. Very good film, would recommend it to people. Another film, if I had another blue, I would probably throw it on Twilight,

which is a follow-up with Robert Benton. It's basically like the old guy's still a detective, is the log line for the movie. It's Newman, Susan Sarandon is the femme fatale, and Gene Hackman, and a young Reese Witherspoon. Mm-hmm. And this is kind of a slick, sleek, sleazy noir set in Miami, I believe.

Um, and of just a very fun, entertaining movie that's like, we should let old people have cool detective movies. Yeah. And it's very good. It's not going in the Hall of Fame, but I'm a fan. Did you say this is blue? I said if I had another blue, I would make it a blue.

What did you, what did we decide for Nobody's Fool? Nobody's Fool I think has to be green. Green, okay, good. I think so, right? I think so too. Yeah, listen, I do too, but like we just zoomed past it. I think it's this, I think it's the signature film of the end of his career. Of the last phase. I agree.

Okay. 1999 Message in a Bottle, I've never seen it. Wow. I watched it for the Kevin Costner Hall of Fame, so here we are. I didn't revisit it. I can tell you that Paul Newman plays Kevin Costner's dad... Yep. ...and encourages him... I can see that.

...to... To athletes. Yeah. Um, two guys who aren't always in connection with their emotions. That's right. Two guys who've been directed by Ron Shelton. Yeah. Anyway... Two guys who nailed Susan Sarandon in a movie. Okay. All right. Relax.

In a movie, I said. In a movie. Anyway, so Diane Lane and Kevin Costner... Or is it... No. Is it Diane Lane or is it Robin Wright? Okay. Message in a bottle. This is exciting. We're finding out in real time. I think it's Robin Wright. Robin Wright. Yes, you're correct. Okay, so which a bottle. This is exciting. We're finding out in real time. I think it's Robin Wright. Robin Wright. Yes, you're correct. Okay, so which one is Diane... Which...

Was Diane Lane in a Kevin Costner movie? It doesn't matter. That's a different Hall of Fame. It's... Are they going to find love? We don't know. Paul Newman encourages them to. And then I think he dies because he's old. Damn. Tough beat. Tough beat. This movie's rad. Sorry. Sorry to you, sir.

Where the Money is is a movie I've not seen. Nor have I. A small indie that I assume he made as a favor as he's kind of slowing down on his career in a major way. And he has, you know, basically getting into his 80s. This is in his late 70s at this point, and is working more sparingly. As you can see, he really starts slowing down in the mid-80s. He only makes roughly 10 movies from 1986 to 2008 before he passes.

Road to Perdition is one of them. In 2002, he makes a big fancy period crime drama with Sam Mendes opposite Tom Hanks, Jude Law, and who else? And Daniel Craig. And Stanley Tucci, all my guys. And Stanley Tucci. I think this is a pretty good movie.

I think among Sam Mendes' is best movies and Newman was nominated, although it felt like a little bit of a like the old guy. We need to acknowledge his greatness in Hollywood nomination. Jude Law I think is terrific in this movie as an assassin. Craig is very good in it as well. The fail son. The fail son, yeah.

I feel like not green. I don't think it is, but it's pretty good. It's a good movie. And then like there are a couple of really good scenes. That scene between him and Hanks at the end, when he's explaining his decision. And there's a lot of father-son stuff going. And...

Did you rewatch this? I haven't seen this in a while. I fast forwarded through it, because I hadn't seen it in a while, but I... You know, but I had seen it. But that last scene, especially if you have all of, all of the son stuff in his mind, in your mind, it's very emotional, it's good. 2006 cars.

Yeah. I think we've got 10. Okay. Now the kids at home, Yeah. Will be mad if we don't put cars in. Someone tweeted or something that us, I don't remember being like, you know,

be brave, show your children cars. As if we haven't already shown our children cars. My name is Queen is a huge part of my daughter's life. Don't be ridiculous. They've seen it. Okay? My daughter's seen all three Cars movies. We watched Cars with Knox. We're good on Cars. Cars is, I don't think that good, honestly.

I just don't think it's among the best of the Pixar films. I think for kids' movies, it's good for sure, but under the light of Toy Story and Finding Nemo and Ratatouille and WALL-E, I don't think it's really in that tier of movie. I know that it is beloved. I know that kids especially. This is one of those Pixar movies that, like, parents are, like like okay on,

but the children absolutely love. I'm going to Disneyland next month with my family. And my nephew's definitely gonna want to get on the fucking Cars ride. What is the Cars ride? It's like a go-kart. Like a round the track. Doc Hudson is Paul Newman's character in this movie. He is the wizened old race car driver who's giving Lightning McQueen, you know,

advice from the great experience of racing over 50 years. Unfortunately, Owen Wilson has not matched Paul Newman's career at this stage of his life. But I think cars is just fine. I think we already have 10, though. And so... Okay. Do you want to yellow it out of respect? I'm inclined to yellow it out of respect. One, two, three, four.

There's that one scene where they go off in the field, right? And he's trying to get back in the, the, the rusty guy. What, Doc Hudson, is that his name? Uh, Doc Hudson is Paul Newman's character's name. The rusty guy is Mater. Oh, so that's... As portrayed by Larry the Cable Guy. Okay, never mind. I thought that that was...

Who is the... But, you know, they're like racing around and he's like trying to remember how to... Okay, never mind. I wasn't paying that much attention, to be honest. Okay, great. Did you not revisit it every day for this podcast? No. Let's go through what we have here. Okay.

I think... Here are the confirmed greens. 1961, The Hustler. 1963, HUD. 1967, Cool Hand Luke. 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 1973, The Sting. 1977, Slapshot.

1982, The Verdict. 1986, The Color of Money. 1994, Nobody's Fool. So that's nine. Is that nine? Two, four's Fool. So that's nine. Is that nine? Two, four, six, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine.

I think it's gotta be Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I agree with you. Yeah, so. That's what I was thinking of too. It's nine, but it's really time. Academy were nominated, Critical Role, that's the final one. Okay. He did direct final one. Okay.

He did direct six films. Yes. Which we did not mention. Rachel Rachel, which was nominated for Best Picture, we mentioned starring Joanne Woodward. Also got her Best Actress nomination. I think it got four or five Oscar nominations. We mentioned sometimes a great notion.

What an interesting piece of work that is. Seventy-two, the effects of gamma rays on Man in the Moon Marigold, which we discussed briefly. He also directed a TV movie I've not seen called The Shadow Box, which starred Joanne Woodward and Christopher Plummer. It was also about a love triangle. We mentioned Harry and Son. And then in 87, he directed The Glass Menagerie,

which was released to not much fanfare, though I did watch it in ninth grade English and enjoyed it quite a bit. Uh, his enduring relationship to the work of Tennessee Williams explored there and at the end of his career. Did a lot of work in theater. Including all the way up till the end of his life, he appeared in Art Town.

Right. On Broadway. And that was something that started, because Joanne Woodward was the... like, was involved with, like, the Connecticut theater. Yes, in Westport, Connecticut, she was the artistic director of a theater there, and then that led to their, was involved with the Connecticut theater. Yeah, in Westport, Connecticut, she was the artistic director of a theater there. And then that led to their kind of re-engagement.

He had last appeared on stage in 1964 on Broadway. And 2002 in our town was the first time he returned to Broadway. And he also did Trumbo in Westport in 2004 when he was in his early 80s. What can you say? What a career. What a guy. I'm a fan. He's a wonderful performer.

I would just would highly encourage people to seek out certainly the 10 films that we've identified. Yeah. Read out our blues though, because that's the most fun part. I agree. I think the blues will be the good discovery for people. They'll get to better understand Lou Harper as a character. I know, I guess we do. Do you want to trade it out? I'm not moving on the drowning pool.

No, I think we're good. I think we're good. Any closing thoughts? You think this will win us that Golden Globe for Podcast of the Year? If we could reanimate Paul Newman so he could come with us to the Golden Globes, then yes, it would. Did he ever win a Golden Globe? He did. He to the Golden Globes, then yes it would. Did he ever win a Golden Globe? He did. He won four Golden Globes, but never for acting.

Oh, great. Okay. He won Golden Globes for New Star of the Year, which he shared with John Curran and Anthony Perkins in 1956. He won Best Director for Rachel Rachel. He won the Cecil B. DeMille Honorary Award in 1984. And then he won Best Supporting Actor for the last thing we didn't discuss that he appeared in, which is Empire Falls, a multi-part mini series that

appeared on HBO that he made in his 80s, a kind of another Richard Russo adaptation in the aftermath of Nobody's Fool, which is a pretty good show. Uh, Amanda, thank you. This was a ton of work. We did quite a lot of work. You know who else did a lot of work for this episode is Seth Woodhouse, who aided us in research and provided an immeasurable context. Honestly, thank you so much, Seth.

Seth killed it for us. Really appreciate his contributions to this episode. Really appreciate the contributions of our producer, Jack Sanders. Thank you, Jack. As I said, we will be back next week with a mailbag. BigPicMailbag at gmail.com Yes, please email us thoughtful questions. We'll see you then.