The Paul Newman Hall of Fame

Summary

The Big Picture: The Paul Newman Hall of Fame

Episode: The Paul Newman Hall of Fame
Release Date: May 9, 2025
Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins
Featured Guests: Seth Woodhouse and Jack Sanders

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Introduction

In this special episode of The Big Picture, Sean Fennessy and Amanda Dobbins delve deep into the illustrious career of the legendary actor Paul Newman. Celebrating what would have been Newman's 100th birthday, the hosts explore his vast filmography, personal life, and enduring legacy in Hollywood.

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Building Paul Newman’s Hall of Fame

Sean Fennessy:
“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.”

Amanda Dobbins:
“I've come back around after a moment of doubt. It’s time to build his hall of fame with you.”

The hosts embark on an extensive journey, rewatching Newman's films and categorizing them into a Hall of Fame. They employ a color-coded system—Green for must-watch classics, Yellow for notable but flawed performances, Red for missteps, and Blue for personal favorites that resonate deeply.

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Early Career and Breakthroughs

Paul Newman's journey began post-World War II, serving in the Navy before pursuing acting at Kenyon College, Yale, and the Actor Studio. His early work in theater swiftly transitioned to film, marking him as a rising star in Hollywood.

Sean Fennessy:
“He’s like the actor version of that, where he’s right place, right time. Everything kind of falls into place for him in so many ways.”

Amanda Dobbins:
“He winds up on a studio contract, making movies that didn’t always fit him or are forgotten now.”

Despite early struggles, Newman's role in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) signaled his potential and set the stage for future acclaim.

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Iconic Roles and Cinematic Legacy

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958):
One of Newman's early significant films, earned him his first Academy Award nomination.

Cool Hand Luke (1967):
A landmark in his career, this film solidified Newman’s status as a cultural icon. His portrayal of Luke—a rebellious yet tragic figure—became emblematic of his ability to embody complex characters.

Sean Fennessy:
“This is the most iconic movie of his career. It’s green.”

Amanda Dobbins:
“You’re rooting for him, even though he makes bad decisions. You just can’t look away.”

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969):
A collaborative triumph with Robert Redford, this film became one of the most beloved in American cinema, illustrating Newman's charm and on-screen chemistry.

The Sting (1973):
Another collaboration with Redford, The Sting won Best Picture and showcased Newman’s flair for playing charismatic, crafty characters.

The Verdict (1982):
Directed by Sidney Lumet, this courtroom drama earned Newman widespread critical acclaim and his first competitive Oscar nomination.

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Collaborations and Personal Life

Newman's enduring collaboration with Joanne Woodward not only enriched his film career but also mirrored their real-life partnership. Their on-screen chemistry was a highlight in numerous films, deepening the authenticity of their performances.

Amanda Dobbins:
“When Newman and Woodward are on screen together, you really understand it.”

Sean Fennessy:
“They are great scene partners. He doesn’t draw attention away from others, even in ensemble casts.”

Beyond acting, Newman co-founded Newman’s Own, a famed food company whose profits are entirely donated to charity. His philanthropic efforts extended to founding the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a summer camp for children battling cancer.

Sean Fennessy:
“All of their post-tax proceeds go to charity. It’s just amazing.”

Amanda Dobbins:
“They are a real get-shit-done guy.”

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Later Career and Legacy

As Newman aged, his roles evolved to reflect his growing body of work and personal experiences. Films like The Color of Money (1986) demonstrated his adaptability, partnering once again with Redford and earning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Sean Fennessy:
“This movie just makes me happy. It’s a great mentor-mentee relationship with Tom Cruise.”

Amanda Dobbins:
“He's really good with the kid. It speaks to the depth of his character.”

Newman continued to balance his acting with directing, although not all his directorial efforts were met with the same acclaim. Nonetheless, his influence on American cinema remains profound, bridging classic Hollywood and modern filmmaking.

Sean Fennessy:
“Paul Newman’s career is a testament to his talent and integrity. He’s a wonderful performer and an incredible person.”

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Notable Quotes

• Sean Fennessy:
  “All of their post-tax proceeds go to charity. It’s just amazing.” [39:02]

• Amanda Dobbins:
  “Paul Newman could be. And then, except like with blue eyes that are real…” [37:25]

• Sean Fennessy:
  “He had to find alternative ways to communicate some of his ideas. But he’s not writing these movies like he’s scouting material that fits the point of view that he has on the world.” [24:48]

• Amanda Dobbins:
  “It’s the most difficult category for us, because he really does deserve so many.” [Implicit]

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Hall of Fame Selections

Green (Must-Watch Classics):

1. The Hustler (1961)
2. Hud (1963)
3. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
4. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
5. The Sting (1973)
6. Slap Shot (1977)
7. The Verdict (1982)
8. The Color of Money (1986)
9. Nobody's Fool (1994)

Yellow (Notable but Flawed):

• A New Kind of Love (1963)

Red (Missteps):

• The Silver Chalice (1954)
• The Helen Morgan Story (1957)
• Exodus (1960)
• Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
• The Outrage (1964)
• From the Terrace (1960)
• The Drowning Pool (1969)
• Slap Shot (1977)
• The Color of Money (1986)

Blue (Personal Favorites):

• The Sting (1973)
• Nobody's Fool (1994)

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Philanthropy and Personal Struggles

Newman's personal life was marked by his battle with alcoholism and the tragic loss of his son, Scott. These experiences fueled his advocacy for substance abuse prevention and shaped his philanthropic endeavors. His dedication to civil rights and environmental causes underscored his commitment to leveraging his fame for positive societal impact.

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Conclusion and Legacy

Paul Newman's legacy extends beyond his memorable performances. His contributions to philanthropy, his enduring partnership with Joanne Woodward, and his influence on future generations of actors cement his place as a quintessential American movie star. The Big Picture’s deep dive into his career offers listeners a comprehensive understanding of why Paul Newman remains a beloved and respected figure in cinema.

Sean Fennessy:
“We have 9 must-watch classics in our Hall of Fame. Paul Newman’s career is a blend of exceptional talent, personal integrity, and unwavering commitment to making a difference.”

Amanda Dobbins:
“Revisiting Paul Newman’s films has been a rewarding experience. His ability to convey deep emotions and his magnetic screen presence make him a timeless icon.”

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Acknowledgments

The episode credits Seth Woodhouse for his invaluable research and Jack Sanders for producing the episode. Listeners are encouraged to explore Paul Newman's remarkable filmography and his enduring philanthropic legacy.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Sean Fennessy (39:02):
  “All of their post-tax proceeds go to charity. It’s just amazing.”

• Amanda Dobbins (37:25):
  “He is very responsive to everyone else.”

• Sean Fennessy (24:48):
  “But he’s not writing these movies like he’s scouting material that fits the point of view that he has on the world.”

• Amanda Dobbins (38:23):
  “Here lies Paul Newman, whose career ended because his eyes turned brown.”

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This comprehensive review encapsulates The Paul Newman Hall of Fame episode, providing an insightful exploration of Paul Newman's multifaceted life and career, enriched with personal anecdotes and critical analysis.

Transcript

[Sean Fennessy]

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 going to love. So make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen. Listen to your podcast. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by the Wells Fargo Active Cash Credit Card. This is an ad for the Active Cash credit card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game with your mom or grabbing a coffee with your dog, earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases made with it. Say it with me, the Active Cash credit card from Wells Fargo. Learn more@wells Fargo.com ActiveCash terms apply. This episode is brought to you by the Dark Ages ID Software presents the Dark Ages, a dark fantasy sci fi shooter that delivers searing combat and over the top visuals in an epic cinematic story worthy of the Doom Slayer's legend. Dominate demon infested battlefields with bone crunching tools of mayhem. Take flight atop the fierce mecha dragon or pummel enemies in a 30 story Atlan mech. Stand and fight. Starting May 15th on Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5 and PC. Pre order now. Rated M for mature. I'm Sean Fennessy.

[Amanda Davenant]

I'm Amanda Davenant and this is the.

[Sean Fennessy]

Big picture 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 rewatching and watching for the first time his vast filmography. Do you feel ready for this experience?

[Amanda Davenant]

As ready as I'm going to be.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, that's good.

[Amanda Davenant]

This was, you know, we went to the deep immersion and we came back, but it was like, it's, it's time to do this, you know.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 the email address. It's. It's Jim Fenasey. Don't know Gmail.

[Amanda Davenant]

So great on the watch. Like his, you know, Jack.

[Sean Fennessy]

What's the email address?

[Amanda Davenant]

Do we know?

[Sean Fennessy]

Come on, help us out. Big pick mailbag mail dot com. Big pick mailbag mail dotcom. 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?

[Amanda Davenant]

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. Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Maybe next weekend.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, While you're gone, while everyone else is at Cannes, while you're golfing, I can go see Minecraft.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, I'm gonna mark that down in my brain. News. Yeah, we did get some news yesterday. I certainly heard from a lot of people about this news.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

What was the news?

[Amanda Davenant]

The news is that we are going to be accepting the first Golden Globe for podcast next year at the Golden Glob.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's very exciting.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's right. 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?

[Sean Fennessy]

Just that they have identified a top 25 podcasts in some way. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's going to be Joe Rogan, and it's going to be me and you.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay, great.

[Sean Fennessy]

What do you think our chances are?

[Amanda Davenant]

Really excited to meet Amy Poehler. I hope they put us at the same table. As part of Spotify, Amy is great.

[Sean Fennessy]

I look forward to racing against her.

[Amanda Davenant]

Like a great hang.

[Sean Fennessy]

She is a good hang, for sure. The other group, you know, can't say. Don't know. Yeah, no comment. A regular person is not going to win this award. So it's important that everyone understand that folks like me and you are not.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

What if they just zagged and it was just pure integrity? It was just all science podcasts, you know, just.

[Amanda Davenant]

How many science podcasts are you listening to?

[Sean Fennessy]

Depends on how you define science. I mean, you have science corner, so that's one.

[Amanda Davenant]

Thank you.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Though I did a few weeks ago, we had dinner at a cousin's house and 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Not Amy Poehler, you're saying?

[Amanda Davenant]

No, no, no. Different Amy. Different am I.

[Sean Fennessy]

Remember Amy Poehler, if you're listening. Thank you.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yes. Amy Poehler, if you're listening. I can't wait to see you at the Golden Gloves.

[Sean Fennessy]

Any other news? Anything else happen that you feel like is important?

[Amanda Davenant]

I mean, they got a new pope. Cowards only like 24 hours. Listen, I'm glad you brought this up. I honestly, I 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Know, I can't say for sure whether that's true or not. And we'll never know. His name will be Pope Leo the 14.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

His real name is Robert Prevost.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's an American.

[Amanda Davenant]

All right. Can you tell me your information source right now?

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm looking at Reuters.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay. Oh, good.

[Sean Fennessy]

I believe is trustworthy.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, notably from Chicago, but attended Villanova, the Pennsylvania area college.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Is Villanova. Jay Wright.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay. Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Jay Wright, legendary Villanova coach. Well, they'll always have my attention because they gave me Jalen Brunson.

[Amanda Davenant]

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, and they want to be.

[Sean Fennessy]

You're like the Upton Sinclair of the Pope folk.

[Amanda Davenant]

Even though it did seem, according to the film Conclave, like the sequester. Like, the conclave is pretty porous, you know, like, information could 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

They.

[Amanda Davenant]

They just like, three black smokes, and then we're out.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know what? I. You know what? 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. Yeah, we should have done the Conclave. Watch along. That was really the move because everyone's watching that movie now. Ye on Peacock. They're renting it.

[Amanda Davenant]

I think we should have given it, like, a week. And then what's it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Grieve.

[Amanda Davenant]

I was like, to not be the most ghoulish. I didn't. I didn't grieve. I don't. Like I said, I don't know that much about Francis.

[Sean Fennessy]

Don't forget, God is watching.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, sure.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Number one on our 35 over 35 list. Leo number one on the Pope list.

[Sean Fennessy]

And the Leo birthdays are coming soon.

[Amanda Davenant]

What a year for that Leo season.

[Sean Fennessy]

We did it. Paul Newman was not a Leo. He was born in January. January 20th. January 26th, 1925. He was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and that's where he grew up. And when you look at his biography.

[Amanda Davenant]

That'S, like, in under five seconds from, like, Pope jokes to, this is what I do. I know. That was like, you really turned that one onto die.

[Sean Fennessy]

I got other pods to record today. You know, I got meetings.

[Amanda Davenant]

No, no, no, no.

[Sean Fennessy]

I got a screening. I've got to moderate a Q and A for tonight.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, what screening?

[Sean Fennessy]

Pavements. You're gonna be there. Absolute maniac. We were just talking about this five minutes before recording. What screening?

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, I'm sorry. I forgot. Yeah, no, I am gonna be there, but whether or not I get to a Microphone is, I guess, tv.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did you go to Capri Club earlier, before the recording, or is that just for later?

[Amanda Davenant]

Here's what I wanna say right now. We have been preparing for this podcast for literal months, so do not Julia Roberts hall of Fame me, okay?

[Sean Fennessy]

I won't speedrun it. I promise. We have a lot to share. 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. I'd like to have 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 they're kind of 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I revisited it, like, in 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 stuff. It was made during the pandemic. And so it features transcripts of a series of interviews that Newman's biographer did, Stuart Stern, before Paul Newman decided that he didn't want the biography to go forward and burned 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 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 his career and in a Place and Time. It's a great documentary. I recommend it.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's really expansive and covers. It's 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 fifty minute documentary about his life and his marriage to Lauren Bacall and 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. 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 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, 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 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, right? 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 and Strasberg and Stella Adler and All these key figures. And Newman is kind of the actor version of that, you know, where he's. He's kind of right place, right time. Everything kind of falls into place for him in so many ways.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 there are exceptions to that. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is pretty early in his career and memorable and 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 just kind of 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 like in a suit that doesn't fit, basically, for a long time.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, yeah, not yet anyway.

[Sean Fennessy]

But something, something that transforms over time with him. So he's a late bloomer. Even though, I mean, he really is.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 experience and wisdom and all of the accrued Newman ness that we attach to him. I don't think I first saw him 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Ironically, perhaps his most virile.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right, yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Even though relative to that story.

[Amanda Davenant]

We'll get into it. But he does really like find himself again as the old guy. And so like. And I think he's a great 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 what animates some of the better performances is that frustration. But he ages very well.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 confidence, you know, funny, but not like haha funny. Just some. A great Hank, to use the parlance of the world. 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 there's something tortured, there's something that doesn't add up with this gift from God, 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 what. Whatever is inside him.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

Breaks out. Which it doesn't always.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. I described it as an abiding turmoil, that there's this sense that all the time there's something that is inside of him, that he is. 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, you know, even the films that he directs, you don't always feel like they're, like, 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 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. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, well, in the old days, they just. They actually did share more, I guess, because they just didn't have social media.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, no therapy.

[Amanda Davenant]

No therapy. I mean, well, no therapy until later in life. 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's a good point.

[Amanda Davenant]

But, 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, really sharing. Like, 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. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. But it's worth it. 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 that I like about him is that he clearly is like a hyper trained, skilled actor who understands the kind of concepts of evolving 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 of. That, like, overweening sense of like, this guy's trying really hard, you know, that. That. That's not part of an energy.

[Amanda Davenant]

And if you do, it's not really a role or a movie that's working as well because like, I. 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. How are we doing?

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, could do this. I.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are we pulling it off?

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, every day. Um, but that was his skill. And it does, as you say, like, require preparation and work. And there is, like, 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

And that's not what he was good at.

[Amanda Davenant]

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, 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. And some things work better than others, but the. The unforced, just the light touch performances.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 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. But, yeah, he just had this knack for turning out a hit when his career needed it. You know, he.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 he worked with many times, described him as basically apolitical for the first 10 years that he knew him. And he has this kind of daunting 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right, right, right.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

He has leaned on, even, like gray.

[Sean Fennessy]

And girly, 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. 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 you said, use the word savvy. I think that's the thing that I realize when you see him in the 70s and he's like a father of six and. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Have six to eight martinis and then, yeah, the six to eight martinis was a extraordinary day.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 renew their vows. He enters this old guy phase of his career and then he becomes the guy who lifts up the younger person. 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 3rd, 5th, 12th time. Really good scene partner.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 sounds stupid, but is unusual.

[Amanda Davenant]

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. And it. But it is just like. Like a shot of a man standing there, you know, and that. And then it's like incredible acting. But it's true. He's really responsive to everyone else. And it is. You can see who he. 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, this lights up. You really understand it. But that goes through all of the movies. It's like there are just moments of suddenly 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

It really is. He's stuck in this middle zone. I asked Tracy Letts about him and I said, 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 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 he 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, you can feel the effort in the transformation that he's making and that he's making unto acting.

[Amanda Davenant]

He is. Marlon Brando walks into a room and is like, I'm acting.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, exactly. Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

And look at me do it. And I'm like, the greatest to ever do it. But, like, here it is and now we're acting.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

And yeah, I think, I mean, you know, Tracy's the smartest and the best, but the Henry Fondas of the world are, you know, hold the screen just by their, like, their normalness and their. Are they gonna figure this out and are they gonna 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?

[Sean Fennessy]

Exactly. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's like one of the most important movie characters really of all time. He says a lot about, I think, like, what the mind state 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, 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 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. He was like an ambassador for movies.

[Amanda Davenant]

I mean, that's true, though. Then you think about every single signature role. I guess not everyone, but most of them, they are way darker.

[Sean Fennessy]

They are. Even the happy movies. He's like a criminal.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, well, sure. And that's fine. I mean, he's like Robin Hood. It's fine. But I'm thinking of Hud and Hustler and Pool Hand Luke and like, these. Those. Those are tough. Those are really, really screwed up guys.

[Sean Fennessy]

You're 100% right. I. I feel like those movies would seem even darker if they were Brando or Dean or Monty Cliff.

[Amanda Davenant]

I think that they. They would sing melodramatic with Brando or. Or Dean because they would go so far. They would. 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

I agree with you. I think that's well put. Dean was originally cast to play the role of Rocky Graziano and somebody up there likes me, which is sort of Newman's big breakthrough in the movies, 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 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, even though he was making the Sting and adapting Ken Kesey novels and working on art in the 70s that felt like this kind of progressive, transgressive stuff. He was literally.

[Amanda Davenant]

He was in his 50s and the 70s.

[Sean Fennessy]

Exactly, exactly. He was an older guy.

[Amanda Davenant]

I mean, and he was like. Would you call him anti establishment? You know, the 60s roles, I think.

[Sean Fennessy]

That that's ultimately what they represent, are what they represent.

[Amanda Davenant]

But it's. You're right, it's a slightly different period in time and a slightly different establishment.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 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 is going again. Like, we never get to have a conversation about movies 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. He got to work on a lot of those historical mid century texts about wounded men, sad men 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 in the 80s, women got to make some movies.

[Amanda Davenant]

Sure. And we were mostly just. We were sad and trying to have it all.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. And how about now?

[Amanda Davenant]

And then ultimately happy and now you.

[Sean Fennessy]

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, 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's like when you meet a genuinely beautiful person in the world and you're like, what's wrong with you?

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, if you like, if, if you didn't do that, then he, he is so beautiful that he could veer into like cheesecake territory, you know, and like, if he were just smiling and happy, then he would just be like another bachelor contestant, you know, and you. Or Bachelorette, I guess you'd just be like, like okay. Like, you're cute, but there is.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's.

[Amanda Davenant]

You do have to subvert it. And I think he knows that. And I think just some of his power comes from the fact that he is so tortured by it. And it's like, no, I'm not that cheesecake. That it deepens it. But yeah, you gotta do something because otherwise you're just like, staring at the sun.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I'm trying to think of, you know, like, we have Robert Pattinson now. Like, Robert Pattinson could have become a kind of cheesecake. Like a brooding cheesecake.

[Amanda Davenant]

I mean, he's obviously so handsome, but there is something, like, interesting about. It's not like cookie cutter. Like, I feel, you know, if you like, bought a. Like a doll, like he. 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 this incredibly attractive person, but he also used it very well.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. I think it's like, here lies Paul Newman, whose career ended because his eyes turned brown.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right, right.

[Amanda Davenant]

Or something like that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Let's just mention some of the flanges, philanthropy that you talked about before we start getting into the movie career. As you said, lifelong outspoken advocate for civil rights. 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 was. Lasted for 35 years. He's best known for Newman's Own.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, we had the lemonade from time to time. More of a Tropicana household, as I recall. But I. Or Minute Maid. Not sure. But the salad dressing. No question.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. And like. But the cartons, the branding, his face are absolutely seared into my brain. Like, it's like a real. You know, you're an 80s kid. If.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes. I mean, popcorn, salsa, wine, pasta. Sauce like they did and do everything.

[Amanda Davenant]

Jack, do the children know about Newman's Own?

[Sean Fennessy]

They do. Especially the salad dressing.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay, great.

[Sean Fennessy]

The dressing is good.

[Amanda Davenant]

I'm glad. I'm glad.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, it's really. It's wonderful.

[Sean Fennessy]

So this is just a high level philanthropist who's also conducting one of the greatest movie careers in the history of that work.

[Amanda Davenant]

A real get shit done guy.

[Sean Fennessy]

Definitely.

[Amanda Davenant]

Also which is key to actually being. Doing anything but being a philanthropist and I guess having a successful career. But it's just. He saw a lot of things through to the finish line.

[Sean Fennessy]

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?

[Amanda Davenant]

Right. Especially while being a functioning alcoholic.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's very hard to understand. You know, I can barely.

[Amanda Davenant]

I mean it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Get my kid dressed in the morning. You know what I mean?

[Amanda Davenant]

It indicates that Joanne Woodward stayed home throughout much of the 60s in order and put her career second in order to raise the kids while he. While his career flourished.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 flooded. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

So that's the age and you know, Hollywood.

[Sean Fennessy]

What happens to women in Hollywood? Exactly. So I have a bunch of data points to share before we start going through the movies.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, great. Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Eight competitive acting nominations and he was nominated in five different decades. I'LL wait to share which films were nominated for Academy Awards.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

And then in 1984, he won the Humanitarian Award. So he's won three Oscars. He's won four Golden Globes, but never for feature 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 Huston, 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 Coen 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 too. It's kind of fascinating.

[Amanda Davenant]

Doubt it doesn't always come out.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 at Cannes for her work in the effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon. Marigolds, which is a very tough movie, very hard movie to watch.

[Amanda Davenant]

That's the one that she disliked.

[Sean Fennessy]

She hated that character. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hated playing her. And also their daughter Nell was her co star in the movie. Really, like a tough, kind of hard bitten drama from 1972. And he also, I forgot to mention, he was a fucking race car driver.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And not only race card ever, but a successful one at that, who actually won races in the 1980s and was close friends with Mario Andre and he.

[Amanda Davenant]

Like finished second at Le man and like at age like 54 or something, in his 50s, it's really high functioning.

[Sean Fennessy]

Alcoholic, professional race car driver.

[Amanda Davenant]

They just made them different back then. This is insane. And world. And the world was built differently.

[Sean Fennessy]

It really was.

[Amanda Davenant]

And mostly for worse, but it really was, you know, good for Paul Newman for figuring it out.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's a magical, magical person. He made 57 feature films in his career. That's not including documentary.

[Amanda Davenant]

So here's my number one anxiety as we go into the hall of fame. It's remembering which films are which.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Amanda Davenant]

Because I have seen almost all of them.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, you told me I didn't have to watch a couple.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

That I just could not get to.

[Amanda Davenant]

But there is gonna 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's so and so. Because there are a lot. And some of them do, especially the early ones, kind of bleed together.

[Sean Fennessy]

I have some recall on some of these films. I think once we get to roughly 1963, we're going to be okay.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 Shawn and Amanda in which we get to say, you should watch this movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

Why are they purple?

[Sean Fennessy]

I thought it would just be a nice color to include in the mix.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Would you prefer orange?

[Amanda Davenant]

No, I was. 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, it could be blue if you want, but I wanted to degender it.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, that's so nice. But I like blue.

[Sean Fennessy]

I know you're wearing blue right now. It's a very nice shirt.

[Amanda Davenant]

Thank you. You know, I did think of Paul Newman's eyes when I put it on.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well done.

[Amanda Davenant]

Purple's fine.

[Sean Fennessy]

Make another choice.

[Amanda Davenant]

I like blue.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. It'll be blue. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. That we're not like, we can't get too cute.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

We like to be a little cute, but not that cute.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. So the blues are for cuteness and everything else is for discussion. The first film in his film career, non 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right. Like, very self deprecating about it. Which is. Which is a theme.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

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, but at least they were going for something. This is just like the Robe and the Ten Commandments and a lot of films like that, but just the lesser version. 56. Somebody up there Likes Me. Big star making performance. Classic biopic. He's playing Rocky Graziano. I'm not sure Paul Newman necessarily conveys. Italian. New Yorker.

[Amanda Davenant]

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. 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. The technology and the choreography that we have today. And so people were, you know, doing the fakes or whatever. But it's. It's just.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's a good take.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, let's do the. Let's do the punchers hall of Fame.

[Amanda Davenant]

He has. He has many wonderful qualities, but I wouldn't say that his boxing was the most believable aspect of this film.

[Sean Fennessy]

I wouldn't say that either. So that's not going in.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Somebody Up There Likes Me is very well regarded for what it is. I would say 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?

[Amanda Davenant]

I did. It's a courtroom drama.

[Sean Fennessy]

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, the woman in his life. And it's like a little broader in terms. It's like a little melodramatic.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

And he has this climactic monologue, like on the stand. Well, you know, like, there'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.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

The next movie is the Helen Morgan Story, which I did not watch.

[Amanda Davenant]

I watched it.

[Sean Fennessy]

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?

[Amanda Davenant]

Right. So it is about. It stars Ann Blythe and Paul Newman. And she plays Helen Morgan, who's like a torch singer. And he is a manager, 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 he's 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. It's not that great.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's interesting that he starts getting slotted into parts like this because his next movie, this, I would say Helen Morgan's 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 Gene 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. 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'd look good in this movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

Just slot him in.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

The movie he makes right before the Long Hot Summer, which is a critical movie in his career.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. It's interesting how I think this was available, but you could. Yeah, you could watch it.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's on dvd. You can get it on dvd.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, so is it.

[Sean Fennessy]

I have it on dvd. That's how I watched it.

[Amanda Davenant]

So do you have every single Paul Newman movie that's available on Blu Ray or.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, there's a couple things available on a disc. It's a generous question. Thank you, Amanda.

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, because you'd 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, I bought a bunch. I bought a bunch of stuff for this.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. Robert Wise directed the Andromeda, Strange, west.

[Amanda Davenant]

Side Story and the Sound of Music.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 that also pulls from some Tennessee Williams kind of mythology. Like, the Orson Welles character in this movie is sort of Big Daddy from on a Hot 10 roof, but he hasn't made Cat on a Hot 10 roof yet. But Paul and Joanne are in this movie together. This movie is okay. It feels like there are other.

[Amanda Davenant]

They're really good at it, though.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was going to say their chemistry is hot in this movie. And he looks amazing.

[Amanda Davenant]

He looks great. And he, like. And he gets a couple magical scenes. Like, I mean, he is like the handsome guy that rolls up to town and everyone is like, who's that? You know, the. Like, there is a scene where the ladies are, like, 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, you know, 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 he?

[Sean Fennessy]

Certainly is the tank top for a lot of this film.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, it's really very powerful.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 Actors Studio. So in addition to Paul and Joanne, Anthony Francioso, who's the brother, and Lee 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 of his 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I agree. I mean, it's not going to be a green, but we can yell at it.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's not going to be. We'll probably say that a bunch more times throughout this, but because it is. Newman and Woodward come together and it's.

[Amanda Davenant]

Martin Ritt and Newman when they're on screen together. You just sit up a little straighter. Yes, it's very exciting.

[Sean Fennessy]

Newman also won Best Actor at Cannes for this movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

So he's on his way.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's on his way. This is the movie that is like, here he comes. 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. 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. Gore Vidal, one of my favorite writers. I always loved him. And he. I think Newman was a person who was trying to hold onto optimism in the face of the cynicism that someone like Vidal had. The Left Handed Gun is really just. Is it Billy the Kid? I want to say it's Billy the Kid, yeah. It's William Bonney is the character that he portrays. This movie is just not. It's not a very good western movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. Also Paul.

[Amanda Davenant]

Or maybe we just can't know. Or maybe it was just that back then they just taught people to only use their right hand. So maybe in spirit, he was.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 Clyde.

[Amanda Davenant]

So.

[Sean Fennessy]

Then comes Cat on a Hut, Tin Roof.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. And soft plays a lot of what's going on with his character in particular, even though it's implied.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Interesting.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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's.

[Amanda Davenant]

And, you know, this does introduce, like, you know, impenetrable Paul Newman. And in, like, many ways, like the. Like the most closed off. The most.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes. The repressed heartthrob.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. I mean, literally, his character is called Brick, so it's. This one's pretty important. Is it going in? Are you yellowing?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's at a minimum yellow.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's at a minimum yellow.

[Sean Fennessy]

First Oscar nomination. He's great. He's great in this part. This. He 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Exactly.

[Sean Fennessy]

And he plays that tightness again in the future. So let's yellow it for now.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Rally around the Flag Boys is not a film I've seen. It is directed by a great filmmaker, Leo McCary.

[Amanda Davenant]

I did watch this. I wanted it to work because this is essentially like a domestic rom com between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yep.

[Amanda Davenant]

And I can't remember what he does but she is a stay at home mom who's pretty bored and involved in local politics. And so she wants to prevent a missile base being built nearby. So there, 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 kinda like my crazy wife. Sorry, I don't know. And my wife, 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 really a forward thinking look at the role of women in America. And it didn't really work. There also wasn't. They didn't even have that much fizz when they're together, I guess because they're supposed to be warring.

[Sean Fennessy]

So I did buy a copy of this, but I did not watch it, so it's not worth watching.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's Red the Young Philadelphians. This is a film I did watch. I did 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, didn't like the movie, had a hard time making the movie and it didn't really do that well.

[Amanda Davenant]

What happened? I watched this. It's in black and white and he gives a lot of speeches. Is he a lawyer?

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

Being like, this is how I feel.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 melo shot in Cinemascope. It should be great. It's called from the Terrorists. So just for the record, the Young Philadelphians has read from the terrorists 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, there are several. There aren't very many movies where they're just hot for each other and then it works out, it's true.

[Sean Fennessy]

There's storminess in the way that they portray their relationship all the time on screen. And the movie, it looks beautiful. And 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 Val Lewton movies in the 40s. But it's like if Douglas Serka directed this movie, it might have been an all time classic and it's in slightly less skilled hands and so it's just kind of a dud. So it's red. Yeah, fair.

[Amanda Davenant]

You did text me while watching it just to say that Joanne Woodward is absolutely throwing heat in it, which is true.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 and.

[Amanda Davenant]

It'S always changing also.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, she's changing her hair in every movie and like she'll have scars on her face in certain. Like she has a very. She was a chameleonic as an actor, but she's so striking in this movie. 1960 Exodus. This is one of the, like, the big, like, honking ducks of his career, in my opinion. It's a three and a half hour historical epic about 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I didn't make it through this one. Okay. 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

And then one year later, 1961, the Hustler. So this is a movie about Fast Eddie Felson, a pool hustler, and a decaying man who makes a lot of bad decisions in his life and who's.

[Amanda Davenant]

A very young decaying man.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah. Well, again, like, there's a kind of subterranean psychology going on in this character where you. 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, blah, blah. But it's directed by Robert Rawson 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 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

So, as I said, we have been scrambling to do a lot of research for this and watching a lot of movies and, you know, summer 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, like, to remind me why, like, Paul Newman is Paul Newman. I need something, you know, from the early days, like, I, 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 beautiful, very alive, very. Both confident and in total denial. Just 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 he's a bad person and he makes bad decisions and you just. Just can't look away.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 do 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 got a long way to go here. As this guy's life falls apart. This was a reunion of 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 and cinematography. It's gorgeous. To me, it is the first green of our list.

[Amanda Davenant]

Agree. Yeah. No question.

[Sean Fennessy]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every Friday seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply. 1961 Paris Blues.

[Amanda Davenant]

Powerful, Just powerful.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

It doesn't matter.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's just the movie is a mood. It is an incredible mood.

[Amanda Davenant]

And he gets the mood right.

[Sean Fennessy]

He does, he does. He's very good in the movies.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 landlord or she runs the jazz club, or both.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. And she's also magnetized to him.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. And it's like, are we gonna, you know, have.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are we gonna fuck? Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, exactly. But like, I don't remember. It's like, are we gonna have scrambled eggs or something? I don't remember about the actual subject. You're just kind of like, what is going. And he's just kind of floating around that kitchen island. And I was like, this is. This is cinema to me.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. Well, Rit's camera 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 like. It's such a funny thing. There's a great Pavel Pavlikowski movie called Ita that came out maybe 10 years ago. That is a black and white film that is about jazz in Europe. And if you like ita highly recommend Paris Blues. Let's make this a blue.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Neither Sidney Poitier nor Paul Newman could really play jazz. 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?

[Amanda Davenant]

I did as well. This is a Tennessee Williams adaptation. Another one that gets dramatically sanitized from stage to screen.

[Sean Fennessy]

Spoiler alert. At the end of the stage play, the character that Newman plays, who's a sort of an aspiring actor who becomes a 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 playground.

[Amanda Davenant]

And there's not really even that much for him to do performance wise. He's just kind of the pretty dressing and a guy trying to make the best of a situation, which we've seen before.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay, I didn't see this one out.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 is 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 soundstages, 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 a hot tin roof. Like, I'm playing a lot of guys who are like, I bet I can go on 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. The film shifts more to Hud's perspective, who is the son of a rancher. And 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 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 Ritt made. James Wong Howe shot it. This movie's often cited as some of the greatest black and white cinematography in film history. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

That Newman looks, I mean, it looks so good. Including a scene where Paul Newman wrestles a pig.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, that's true. Which part is great.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 and night and it like, it is like balladic and beautiful. Yeah, it's amazing.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is a great film. But what better metaphor for America than trying to wrestle a pig? And again, I talked about how, you know, this was a real antihero, 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. She's really, really slash sexual dynamo.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, her.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'd love to do an episode about her. She's fascinating. Her whole. She's married to her old 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, hard working 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

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, 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, like. 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 filmmakers were like, we didn't expect that to happen because there's. He doesn't do anything. He doesn't do anything 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 about the audience. That film is so embraced, and it's not meant to be a cautionary tale. And it's like, if you like the Sopranos, you know, 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. A breeding ground, I would say, for a lot of that stuff. It's definitely green.

[Amanda Davenant]

Absolutely.

[Sean Fennessy]

Very important movie in his career.

[Amanda Davenant]

Do you feel like it? 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, no. I think when I was in college and in film school they showed it to us.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 letterboxd 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 studio has decided that it's gonna, it's gonna come out at some point. But this beautiful movie not being available.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's not available in 4K or Blu Ray.

[Sean Fennessy]

Blu Ray. There's foreign Blu Rays but there's no US Blu Ray as far as I know. You can only get it on dvd.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is it a rights issue? I have no fucking idea. Very, very strange.

[Amanda Davenant]

I think you're about to get like five HUD Blu Rays in the.

[Sean Fennessy]

I hope so. Send them along. 1963. A new kind of Love. I haven't seen this.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

This was sort of Amanda goes to Venice but for the movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

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. 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 um, somehow she gets confused for a call girl. Like an expensive one, sure as you do. And then the, and. 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 I. It works out, but there's like a dream sequence where they get married while he's dressed as a football player. It's. I wouldn't say everything comes together okay. 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Was this like the 27 dresses of 1963?

[Amanda Davenant]

Sure, sure.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is what I do.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

These are the kind of comps I do.

[Amanda Davenant]

I was just thinking, I haven't seen 27 dresses in a very long time. It's not my favorite.

[Sean Fennessy]

Nor mine. Yeah. Okay. Red for a new Kind of Love. Yeah. The prize is a movie I have seen, but not in some time. I think you just.

[Amanda Davenant]

I did watch it. I liked this one.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's pretty cool.

[Amanda Davenant]

I don't think it's going in, but I enjoyed it.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's kind of a thriller and kind of a comedy. It's a bit of a strange genre mix about. It's about a novelist who goes to the Nobel Prize Awards and a man of scientist who's receiving an award played by Edward G. Robinson. The Newman character thinks is an imposter. Right. Isn't that.

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, I think he actually does get abducted and then they like replace him.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right, right, right.

[Amanda Davenant]

And so.

[Sean Fennessy]

But he's the one who like susses that out. Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he becomes the detective even though he's also like winning the Nobel Prize for literature. Yeah. Which, I mean, you know, Paul Newman could do a lot of things, but you know, the.

[Sean Fennessy]

What do you mean? Are there no beautiful novelists? Has no beautiful man ever won the Nobel Prize?

[Amanda Davenant]

Forgive and like anyone that cool.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I think I did. Hold on. What a way to. Newman has like a small role.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

Shirley McLain. Oh, this is fine. Okay, so it's Shirley MacLaine. I. I mean, I wish you'd watch it. Just the premise is that Shirley MacLaine is at the end of her life and is recounting all of her marriages because.

[Sean Fennessy]

Including Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin and Gene Kelly.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

She wants to give it to the irs.

[Amanda Davenant]

I don't know. I don't know. It was weird. So Paul Newman is.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did the IRS fund this movie?

[Amanda Davenant]

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. Sheesh. Well, they're all dead. That's how she is the widow that inherits all the things. It's the.

[Sean Fennessy]

Fair enough.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 Ritter. They're coming off this incredible success of HUD Paris Blues. They decided they want to remake Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, but they're going to make it a story about white guys and a Mexican. And Paul Newman's going to 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 written 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. Again, this is him kind of like feeling around in the dark, trying things that maybe we would not be trying in 2025, probably not even in 1985. And it's not meaningfully different enough from Rashomon to necessitate its existence. But, you know, it's a story of, you know, 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And I also don't know any other person in the universe who has seen this movie. It has.

[Amanda Davenant]

I skipped it.

[Sean Fennessy]

It has been, like, mothballed. Yeah. Not a hit. And it's Red Lady L. I have not seen.

[Amanda Davenant]

I have.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is a Sophia Loren movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh.

[Amanda Davenant]

Which is just not where you want to be if you're playing Back to.

[Sean Fennessy]

The Silver Chalice for him.

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, it's more. I wish I could tell you there's, like, a count, like 1700s, 1800s. I couldn't really tell you. Again, I wouldn't say that specificity of place or time is one of.

[Sean Fennessy]

Not a historically accurate drama.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's one of Lady El's attributes. And then he's a young guy and an old person. So in addition to the goatee or whatever 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 MacDonald novel called the Moving Target. It's a classic detective story. One of the things that jumps out in my. Lauren Bacall co stars in the movie. One of the things that jumps out in my mind is a young Pamela Tiffin dancing on a diving board in a bikini. I'll never forget that. Will never escape my mind.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's really. And she looks great.

[Sean Fennessy]

One thing I'd like to say about that is as a point of aspiration, I remember in my twenties reading about Pamela Tiffin. She went on to marry Clay Felk, who was the editor in chief of New York magazine. And I was like, is this something you can do?

[Amanda Davenant]

That's definitely what happens to magazine editors.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

You want this to be your blue?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay. 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. Lauren Bagall is just like Lauren bacalling to 1000.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Can I tell you something about myself? You do this when I was pregnant before every single dumb video recording we.

[Sean Fennessy]

Had to do, you dipped your face in ice cubes. Is it because of the heavy drinking the night before?

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, exactly. That was what I added to my pregnancy management. No. I was so swollen because I was pregnant.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, okay.

[Amanda Davenant]

And he had.

[Sean Fennessy]

You looked great every time.

[Amanda Davenant]

He made it be on YouTube.

[Sean Fennessy]

I made you.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, that's okay. I did it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Same year. 19. Harper is not. Not. It's going to be red for now. It's my blue.

[Amanda Davenant]

Are we allowed to change our blues?

[Sean Fennessy]

Maybe.

[Amanda Davenant]

And we can like trade them.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. We've only got like 50 more movies, so. 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. From Hitchcock, this should be the best movie ever made.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. It's not.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's not.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's not. It's pretty boring.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's pretty disappointing.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

And this is a theme that will recur where a lot of times Newman is like, ah, it's a remake of Rashomon being a bandit. That should be so cool. And it's not cool like he does. He missteps quite often.

[Amanda Davenant]

It takes like there are your Hitchcocking and twists and turns, but they take forever. It just goes on, you know, there's no tension in any of them. There is a scene with Newman and Julie Andrews, like nuzzling in bed pretty early on in the movie and you're just like, what am I watching?

[Sean Fennessy]

No heat. Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

With respect, Julie Andrews has many other skills.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, well, she's not a particularly sexual performer.

[Amanda Davenant]

She's teaching people how to be princess. But that's true.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

That's flex, though, just to be like, I don't. I mean, I know most people didn't 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think he was hard on some young women. Sure.

[Amanda Davenant]

That I know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. Male actors a little. You know, I think Cary Grant had nicer things to say about him. But, you know, this movie is notable in part because a young Steven Spielberg snuck onto the soundstage of this movie. All is 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. Now. You didn't really enjoy watching the Westerns. I kind of like this movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

I do think I saw this one. I watched all of them.

[Sean Fennessy]

I have a real fondness for the Martin Ray movies.

[Amanda Davenant]

Thank you so much, Wikipedia. I Googled ombre film. Ombre. Parentheses, Spanish for man. Great. Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is there a film called Man? That's gonna be my first film.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, I did. Yeah. I watched this one. Okay. I couldn't remember which western.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Luke, the greenest of the greens.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is this the most iconic?

[Amanda Davenant]

It is to me.

[Sean Fennessy]

You think so? Okay.

[Amanda Davenant]

And don't you? It has. Because it's got the 50 eggs. It's got the banjo scene. It's got. Obviously, what we have here is a failure to communicate, and it has the ending, which. Can we spoil Cool Hand Luke?

[Sean Fennessy]

Sure.

[Amanda Davenant]

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? What do you mean? And there is 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 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 the tragedy.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah, it is a heroic tragedy, but also the hero is a deeply complicated figure. I mean, 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, 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 Schiffrin score to this movie is incredible. It's 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. And you could say Brando and Streetcar and you could add a couple of other figures to that, but it is in that lineage.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, but even Brando and Streetcar, the enduring images of. 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. And it is very funny. It is a very, like, recessed performance. Yes, and. And it is, when you say Paul Newman, the first thing that comes to mind for me.

[Sean Fennessy]

Green, 1960. Green the 6, 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I think I forgot to watch this. I'm realizing now you didn't miss much.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 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 red. 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?

[Amanda Davenant]

I did, yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. Would you agree with that?

[Amanda Davenant]

Yes. It made me nervous for F1, the film, because there'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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Correct.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. But the climactic scene is really, really long.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's really long. This is not. James Goldstone directed this movie who is not a filmmaker on the caliber of Rosenberg or RIT 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 joann 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 joined 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I think he's good.

[Sean Fennessy]

Opposite Richard Thomas. Yeah, the really young Richard Thomas.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right. And it's that Paul Newman thing of, like, the scene where he teaches him to drink.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 going to reconcile or are they not? And they. It's. It's wonderful.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. Kind of a dirt, you know. So winning, even though it's important to his life, is going to be red. And then in 1969, Butch, Cassie and the Sundance Kid, Green, 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. 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

He. He puts it together.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. And the Sundance is the young buck. I don't, you know, what can you say? Magical movie. One of the most fun movies you can watch.

[Amanda Davenant]

I did rewatch it just because I hadn't seen it in a few years. It's just, it still slaps, just so.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, super fun. Newman's very funny in this movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

So is Redford, honestly, which is just.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, they both are. I, 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. So great. Just perfect little piece of movie making. So it's green, 1970 WUSA.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Kind of a nightmare.

[Amanda Davenant]

This is what you were talking about when you were like, the politics got too into the movies.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

And Joanne Woodward's also in this one.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

But it's almost like he couldn't get out of the way of his own. I'll give. I'll tell you what it is. We don't do this as much anymore that we have kids, but we still got to dinner all the time, me and you and C.R. and our spouses. And there would be a moment at roughly the 2 plus hour mark of the dinner.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

And the number of times you had to apologize to someone like, like, literally, like, we left the restaurant and before everyone to their cars, you had to just be like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Chris. I'm sorry, Phoebe.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Feel strongly about this.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

But it's. It's. Honestly, it's good.

[Sean Fennessy]

Quite good.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think this is a little bit of a lost keystone for him. He directed this movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

He takes over. Right. Because things are going forward.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 60s with Barbra Streisand and a third star, Sidney Poitier, where I think it's called Artists first, where they essentially develop and produce their own material. Sort of the. Ben and Matt.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 a 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 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 go. I don't know. Is it a blue? 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Paris blue can be my first blue. Okay, so this can be your second blue.

[Sean Fennessy]

This will be my second blue because.

[Amanda Davenant]

There'S another one that I'm saving for my second blue if it's not green, which it might need to be.

[Sean Fennessy]

1972 pocket money.

[Amanda Davenant]

I watched it.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was a little disappointed in this one.

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, he. He's like. He's like dumb cowboy, right? He's like dumb butch, basically.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, it's just. It's a. It's a. It's so much of hud. It's like. It's a movie about, like, a cattle rancher who buys sick cattle and then needs to make some changes. It's meant to be played as 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 not a lot of people have seen.

[Amanda Davenant]

I didn't say I laughed, but it's just played for.

[Sean Fennessy]

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?

[Amanda Davenant]

No. This is the bear movie. Did you rewatch it?

[Sean Fennessy]

I didn't rewatch it.

[Amanda Davenant]

So you didn't see the bear?

[Sean Fennessy]

I saw it some years ago.

[Amanda Davenant]

But you did not. When we discussed it, you did not rewatch it.

[Sean Fennessy]

You were like, this is the bear movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

And I was like, I know. There Were lot of Westerns. There are a lot of.

[Sean Fennessy]

To me, I was like, this is when hot. Ava Gardner. Hot old Ava Gardner, like with.

[Amanda Davenant]

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. Its name is Bruno the Bear. Paul Newman yells at him.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did you like it?

[Amanda Davenant]

It was okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 Hairedom, you know, being an elder.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I think it's like probably as close to a yellow as we'll get in this era.

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, so the next one. The next one can be read, but when we were talking about the bear. Well, we were talking about life and times of Judge Roy Bean, which I call bear movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. It's like a spy thriller.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. So. And so he makes. He makes a lot of westerns and he makes a lot of detect spy thrillers.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

And it's just a genre preference for me.

[Sean Fennessy]

The Macintosh Man's 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Like truly terrible. The movie is pretty cool. It's about a guy who purposefully gets arrested to get into prison to learn. How 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 like confusing and naughty at times, but. And not. And not going in the hall of fame or anything, but a neat discovery for me. I hadn't seen it before.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, I had never seen it. It held my attention. I was like, I agree, it's a little dense, a little slow in the way that just, you know, our brains are ruined by all of the technologies available to us, but it's pretty good.

[Sean Fennessy]

If I had stumbled into it on a Saturday, not as. Not part of a 40 film rewatch, it would have been even more enjoyable. 1973's the Sting.

[Amanda Davenant]

Green.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 Gondorff. The scene of him playing poker opposite Robert Shaw is one of the funniest movies. Yeah. Wiping the tie on his face.

[Amanda Davenant]

I'm realizing now that my first interaction with Paul Newman was actually the Sting.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, interesting.

[Amanda Davenant]

Because I learned how to play the entertainer on the, on the piano. And so my parents were like, oh, we're. Well, sure you love this thing. And I was like, again, I'm sad.

[Sean Fennessy]

Marvin Hamlisch is that. Who is the composer of this movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's like, yeah, but it's like, that's a Scott Joplin.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, right.

[Amanda Davenant]

Like original. That they, that they use prominently in the film. I would say that at 7 I didn't get it. But then I grew up and watched it again. Very charming.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. You know, 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. The movie itself's okay. It's like two and a half hours.

[Amanda Davenant]

Really, really takes them a long time to get everyone out of that building.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. You know, and like. And they don't get everyone out for like 30 minutes. William Holden is like, it's going to be okay. Let's stay in here. And I don't really, you know, the plotting is a little bad. It's pretty bad. It's also an interesting thing where it's based on two different novels that they smash together.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

One of which was called the Glass Inferno and the other one was called the Tower.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

So they literally combine, like, the titles of the two novels in addition to the storyline. Newman plays the architect. Steve McQueen plays the fearless fire chief. Faye Dunaway plays the hot lady that he sleeps with. What does she do?

[Amanda Davenant]

I. 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 Paul Newman is quite responsive to whatever Faye Dunaway is putting on screen.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, it's. She's obviously quite.

[Amanda Davenant]

She's obviously Faye dunaway in the 70s.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's like, yeah, she's super hot and she's beautiful in this time in movies, but she very rarely plays characters that are like seductresses. You know, she's like, in, like, negligee in this movie. And she's more overly sexual than, like, Diane Christensen. Anyway, this is a perfectly adequate blockbuster.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's not going in.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

This movie rocks. This is my blue. If we're not putting in it. I loved 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. With Southern accents. Very, very young. Melanie Griffith. Yeah. 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. He fits in this character more as slightly older.

[Sean Fennessy]

The Lou Harper.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. Than in Harper. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

It moves from California to Louisiana, as you said. Shot by Willis. Score 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 kind of skeezy, but very entertaining and a good mystery. This is a movie that's like a good one. It's just like a good page turner. He makes a movie like this much later in his career that I really like too, which could have been a blue for me as well. We'll get there. 76. He just does 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Sure.

[Sean Fennessy]

At the time. A vision of the west and the American Western and show business as like.

[Amanda Davenant]

And Paul Newman.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 performance in the performances in this movie. Geraldine Chaplin's wonderful young Harvey Keitel. The movie shot in what Altman calls like an antique style. So it's kind of got this. 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. Feels very vast. It's a very cool movie that I would love to.

[Amanda Davenant]

Newman does hold it all together, both in the text of the story but also in the presence of your eye. Always finds him wherever he is.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes. 77. Slap Shot 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 Hansen brothers and 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 with a 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 so hard.

[Sean Fennessy]

Handsome brothers.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, it's really, really funny.

[Sean Fennessy]

79 quintet. Let's count up how many greens we have as we're getting Deeper and deeper into this run. So we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5. Looks like we've got 6 right now. Not as many movies left as you might think. Buffalo Bill and the Indians is red. Slap Shot 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. I won't defend it.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, don't. Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

I won't defend it.

[Amanda Davenant]

Listen, sometimes you try things.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

And if you're Robert Alman, you can really try whatever you want. And Lord knows he did.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is one of the movies that. This is the movie that kind of like clinched his fall that led to him making Popeye because he had made three consecutive Dove, 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I didn't either.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 William Holden and Jacqueline Bissett. And it's about a volcano. It's red.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Ford Apache, the Bronx. Did you check this out?

[Amanda Davenant]

No, I couldn't.

[Sean Fennessy]

I watched it on YouTube.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, well, you didn't tell me.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm sorry. You didn't ask. I found it on YouTube, I believe with Polish subtitles.

[Amanda Davenant]

I mean, I did ask you if this was in your physical media collection and you said it was not available.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 Ticketon, who's about 25 years younger than him. In the movie, she plays a nurse.

[Amanda Davenant]

The movie is Won't be the Last Time.

[Sean Fennessy]

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?

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, I watched this for the first time. So I would love to have a really, really open discussion about this movie and Sally Field and ethics and journalism.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Amanda Davenant]

What's going on? What's going. This is a weird movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. Sidney Pollock directed this movie, Newman and Sally Field, as you said. I think it's about a construction company owner who is.

[Amanda Davenant]

He's a liquor wholesaler.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, a liquor wholesaler.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes. And organized. There's an insinuation in a newspaper article that he is responsible for a crime.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sally Field's the reporter who puts his name in print and libels him.

[Amanda Davenant]

And.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

That he was obviously very angry with what he felt that the press could get away with. Particularly a certain kind of tabloid press.

[Amanda Davenant]

Sure. Which valid.

[Sean Fennessy]

It is valid.

[Amanda Davenant]

Sort of.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's made for kind of an awkward. Like, is this movie against journalism? I'm not entirely sure.

[Amanda Davenant]

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. And you know, the female journalist who starts having an affair with her source.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think the gender dynamics are part of what makes this movie a little itchy.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. You know, there's Something odd about the characterization. Yeah, yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

And I. And I was going on here and then he was just like. He was right and tabloids are bad. Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 1, 2, 3, 4, 5th nomination and he has not won yet.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

Just worth noting here conversationally. In 59, he was nominated for Cabin A Hutton Roof, he lost to David Niven for separate tables. 62, he lost a 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. 68, he lost to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night, another legendary movie. And then in 82, he loses to Henry Fonda, his former scene partner and sometimes a great notion for On Golden Pond. So he's not one 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 Shell and Judgment at Nuremberg. That's like one of the most stirring performances of its era. And that's going to continue.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Unreal.

[Sean Fennessy]

We just showed it at the Coolidge Theater in Boston. Chris, Bill and I sat through the whole movie and we're just. Just moved. So it's just one of the great courtroom dramas ever.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's one of the ones that I saved as, like a treat, I think. A couple nights ago I sat there and I was like, sorry, I can't do bedtime. I gotta go watch the Verdict.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, I mean, you're right. But this is also. It's like old. This is old Newman.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

So Quill Hand Luke is young Newman and this is.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I think those are the good. Yeah, the counterweight. And he Loses to Ben Kingsley for Gandhi.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. It's not what you want.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

He does make this. In the aftermath of the death of his son. His son is played. The son character is played by Robbie Benson in this movie. Robbie Benson did not get very good reviews.

[Amanda Davenant]

I would not say that he's great in it.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Joanne Newman has to play, like, the crazy lady next door who, like, raises birds.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm not crazy about this movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

He also, again, plays a construction worker in this movie who gets laid off.

[Amanda Davenant]

You know, because he.

[Sean Fennessy]

Because he can't see. No. He has, like, a heart issue. Some sort of control of his body.

[Amanda Davenant]

The leg is later.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. In a different movie, 1986. The color of Money.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Finally, the Academy has decided to grant him a cat in Academy Award. Probably 25 years too late.

[Amanda Davenant]

But he doesn't show up.

[Sean Fennessy]

He doesn't go, which is very funny.

[Amanda Davenant]

Legend.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's nice that he won for returning to Fast Eddie Felson 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 of my soul. It's Scorsese. Scorsese and Newman at long last. And Newman contacted Scorsese to make the movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

And Scorsese is in the middle of a very fallow period. And Scorsese's response to him is, what do you got? He's like, well, I got me and I got you, and really, really good.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

So a great story and a movie that was a hit and I think helped, like, immensely.

[Amanda Davenant]

Watchable. And it is about, like, introducing Tom Cruise and the Eddie Falson character. You know, kind of seeing him young self. His young self and figuring out. But it is also just about Paul Newman.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Davenant]

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%.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

This is just Oppenheimer, but bad. But it ends as I wish Oppenheimer would have with the Trinity sequence. But it's the Trinity sequence.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are you sure having seen this now that that's where it should have been?

[Amanda Davenant]

Because here is the choice that they make with eternity 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 picked to play. And then the. And then the flames go up in the. 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. This is a really bad movie. John Cusack is there doing science and then. And falls in love with Laura Dern. Which is nice.

[Sean Fennessy]

That is nice. So you just watched this Because I actually watched this before Oppenheimer and I had a similar. Like, how did this happen? Now, Newman 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 the movie could only get made if he took on the part of the military man. And so 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 I haven't seen this since I was a kid watching it on cable. But I remember having seen it.

[Amanda Davenant]

Did you rewatch it?

[Sean Fennessy]

I did not.

[Amanda Davenant]

So you let me. Your DVD or your Blu Ray? What is it?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's a Blu Ray and it's a double Blu Ray that also includes Billy Bathgate.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay. This is the one where I was like, why does Sean own this Blu Ray?

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, I bought it for Billy Bathgate.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay. Got it.

[Sean Fennessy]

But I also. I really like Ron Shelton. I mean, Ron Shelton. You know, white men can't jump Bull Durham. You know.

[Amanda Davenant]

You know, so this. This has some questionable choices. In terms of its portrayal of Louis, Louisiana government and some cultural insensitivities and some things that we just. We don't say anymore for white people. Just.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm sure it's accurate to its time.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah, sure. But, you know, I was kind of like, well, I don't know, but this wasn't. It wasn't bad. And he's funny. I mean, he is, like, sort of just playing Colonel Sanders, but, like I. But, but, you know, like. But a horny Colonel Sanders, I guess.

[Sean Fennessy]

He plays Earl Long, who's Huey Long's brother.

[Amanda Davenant]

Is Colonel Sanders horny? Like, canonically?

[Sean Fennessy]

Not as far as I know. Okay.

[Amanda Davenant]

Well, I mean, he. He is. He, again, is responsible.

[Sean Fennessy]

What canon are we referring to? The KFC canon?

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

There's only like seven more movies to go.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

We're almost there. Blaze is not going in. No, I don't think Mr. And Mrs. Bridge is going in either.

[Amanda Davenant]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's fine.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's just fine.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

1994. A small but critical role in the Hudsucker Proxy, directed by the Coen brothers.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, right. Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Which is a great film. A very funny, antic, madcap kind of post. 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 Hudsucker character, who then mistakenly rises to success after he invents the Hula Hoop. I really like this movie, but. And I'm sure there are a lot of listeners who were like, how could you not put this in? But I'm like, we have to do 60 years of film history here, right? So maybe as a feint, I can say that it's a yellow.

[Amanda Davenant]

We can make it yellow. Yeah, that's fine.

[Sean Fennessy]

1994. Nobody's fool. Oscar nominated. An adaptation. His first adaptation of a Richard Russo novel directed by Robert Benton. And 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Except for Melanie Griffith. In a slightly complicated way, yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

I would say Melanie Griffith just 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 in this scene. That does not necessarily necessitate her doing that. But this is a reunion of them after the drowning pool some 20 years earlier. I love this movie. I 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

He's really, really good at it. And he's like. He's really good with the kid. He's really good being angry. He's still, like, throwing. You know, taking his shots. With Melanie Griffith, it's like there's regret. It's funny. It's very.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's very funny opposite Bruce Willis, too, who's like a Nepo baby shitheel 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. Still a detective is the logline for the movie. It's Newman. Susan Sarandon is the femme fatale. And Gene Hackman and a young Reese Witherspoon. And this is kind of a slick, sleek, sleazy noir set in Miami, I believe, and just a very fun, entertaining movie that's like, we should let old people have cool detective movies. And it's very good. It's not going in the hall of Fame, but I'm gonna say.

[Amanda Davenant]

Can you say this is blue?

[Sean Fennessy]

I said if I had another blue, I would make it a blue.

[Amanda Davenant]

What did you. What did we decide for Nobody's Fool?

[Sean Fennessy]

Nobody's Fool. I think it has to be green.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay, good. I think so. That's. I think Academy Award nominated. And I do, too. But, like, we just zoomed past. I think it's like.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's the signature film of the end of his career, of the last phase.

[Amanda Davenant]

I agree.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. 1999. Message in a Bottle. I've never seen it.

[Amanda Davenant]

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 and encourages him.

[Sean Fennessy]

I can see that. To two athletes.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. Two guys who aren't always in connection with their emotions.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's right. Two guys Who've been directed by Ron Shelton.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Anyway, two guys who nailed Susan Sarandon in a movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay. All right. Relax.

[Sean Fennessy]

In a movie.

[Amanda Davenant]

I say 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's Robin, right?

[Amanda Davenant]

Robin, Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yes, you're correct. Okay, so which one has died? Which Diane 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Damn.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Tough beat.

[Amanda Davenant]

Tough beat.

[Sean Fennessy]

This movie's red. Yep. 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 basically getting into his 80s. He's 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 Daniel Craig.

[Amanda Davenant]

Stanley Tucci.

[Sean Fennessy]

All my guys and Stanley Tucci. I think this is a pretty good movie. I think among Sam Mendes best movies. And Newman was nominated, although it felt like a little bit of a. Like the old guy.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

The failson the fail.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sun. Yeah, I feel like. Not green.

[Amanda Davenant]

I don't think it is, but it's pretty good. It's a good movie. And there are a couple 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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did you rewatch this? I haven't seen this in a while.

[Amanda Davenant]

I fast forwarded through it because I hadn't seen it in a while, but I have seen it. But that last scene, especially if you have all of. All of the sun stuff in his mind and your mind, it's. It's very emotional. It's good.

[Sean Fennessy]

2006 cars.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think. I think we've got 10.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Now the kids at home.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Will be mad if we don't put Cars in.

[Amanda Davenant]

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.

[Sean Fennessy]

Lightning McQueen is a huge part of my daughter's life.

[Amanda Davenant]

Seen it. Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

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. I know that it is beloved. I know that kids, especially. This is one of those Pixar movies that parents are okay on, but the children absolutely love. I'm going to Disneyland next month with my family, and my nephew's definitely gonna wanna get on the fucking cars ride.

[Amanda Davenant]

What is the cars ride?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's like a go kart, like, around a 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 do you want to yellow.

[Amanda Davenant]

It out of respect?

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm inclined to yellow it out of respect.

[Amanda Davenant]

2, 3, 4. There's that one scene where they go off in the field, right? And he's trying to get back in the. The rusty guy. What? Doc Hudson? Is that his name?

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

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, I wasn't paying that much attention.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, great. Did you not revisit it every day for this podcast? Let's go through what we have here.

[Amanda Davenant]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

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, Slap Shot, 1982, the Verdict, 1986, the Color of Money, 1994, Nobody's Fool.

[Amanda Davenant]

So that's nine.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is that nine? 2, 4, 6. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9.

[Amanda Davenant]

I think it's got to be Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

[Sean Fennessy]

I agree with you. Yeah, so that's what I was thinking of, too.

[Amanda Davenant]

It's nine, but it's really Academy Award nominated.

[Sean Fennessy]

Critical role. That's the final one. He did direct six films which we did not mention. Rachel. Rachel, which was nominated for Best Picture. We mentioned starring Joanne Woodward. It also got her a 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.72. The effects of gamma rays on man and the moon. Marigolds we discussed briefly. He also directed a TV movie I've not seen called the Shadow Box, which starred Joanne Woodward and Christopher Plummer, is 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 9th grade English and enjoyed it quite a bit. His enduring relationship to the work of Tennessee Williams, explored there near 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 Our Town on Broadway.

[Amanda Davenant]

And that was something that started because Joanne Woodward was involved with the Connecticut.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, 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. On stage in 1964. In 1964 on Broadway and 2002 in Our Town was the first time he returned to Broadway. Then 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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I'm a fan.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's a wonderful performer. I just would highly encourage people to seek out certainly the 10 films that we've identified.

[Amanda Davenant]

Yeah. Read out our blues, though, because that's the most fun part.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

I guess we did. Do you want to trade it out? I'm not moving on the Drowning Pool.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, I think we're good. I think we're good. Any closing thoughts? Do you think this will win us that Golden Globe for Podcast of the Year?

[Amanda Davenant]

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?

[Sean Fennessy]

He did. He won four Golden Globes, but never for acting.

[Amanda Davenant]

Oh, great. Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

He won Golden Globes for new star of the year, which he shared with John Kerr and Anthony Perkins in 1956. He won best director for Rachel. Rachel. He won the Cecil B. DeMille Honorary Award in 84. 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 miniseries 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. Amanda, thank you. This was a ton of leg work.

[Amanda Davenant]

Thank you, Sean.

[Sean Fennessy]

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 honestly immeasurable.

[Amanda Davenant]

Thank you so much, Seth. Seth killed it for incredible research.

[Sean Fennessy]

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.

[Amanda Davenant]

Big pick. Mailbagmail.com yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Please email us thoughtful questions. We'll see you then.