The Last Movie Stars (2022) s01e01 Episode Script

1
[Horses galloping]
Hawke: Growing up in Fort Worth,
Texas, Sundays meant church.
Yeah.
And I remember one hot July.
My stepmother didn't feel well,
and she said that she was
gonna stay home.
And we're driving down
the highway, and my father says,
"You know, there's a cowboy
picture playing at 11:15.
We could go see that instead."
And it's like, "Oh, my God."
And, um, my father took me
to see "Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid."
And from that day forward,
the movies have been
the church of my choice.
Yeah, I'm leaving now.
Okay. Alright, bye.
Love you, too.
♪♪
Yo.
Yo, yo, yo. How art thou?
Good, man. Let me turn
so I'm not so backlit there.
Does it tell you
that you're recording?
[Indistinct conversations]
Oh.
I'm trying to remember
where it is that you go into
Okay.
Go to the audio options.
Look at those dogs, man.
This is Georgia.
That's Chet.
They're gonna take a nap
while we talk.
Hi.
-You're in London?
-I am.
That's Rosie,
my St. Bernard puppy.
That's what you do
in, uh, lockdown, I guess.
I'm in the country.
I've been here
for a fucking year,
and I'm thinking about
cooking a soup.
[Laughter]
But I'm good. I'm good.
I'm happy to be working.
I'm trying
to, like, not go crazy.
I mean, we're we've been
in isolation for 11
I feel like I've spent
the better half
of the last six months
on Zoom.
What happened to Ryan and I
right before
the pandemic started,
one of Paul Newman
and Joanne Woodward's kids
approached me to see
if I would direct a documentary
about Paul and Joanne.
It's forcing me to spend
the afternoon,
the evening, whatever I do,
studying the life of two people
that excelled at our profession
beyond ordinary, you know,
measuring sticks.
With investments like this,
you will find it
is almost never necessary
to sell them.
Remember, it is better
to trade too little
than too much.
Do you remember that evening
on my parent's front porch
before we were married?
It was in the summertime.
Well,
I can't say that I do.
You read some verses
from the "Rubaiyat" to me.
You always carried a copy
of the "Rubaiyat."
It was this small.
Don't you remember?
"A loaf of bread,
a jug of wine.
And thou beside me
in the wilderness."
Oh, are we going on
with this or not?
♪♪
We got two first-ballot
Hall of Famers
who also happen to be married.
Impossible
upon impossible.
The first time I ever saw
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward
in real life,
I was 16 years old.
To come over
It was my first day at school
at a school in New Jersey
that I'd been sent to,
and I couldn't believe it.
But it turns out Paul Newman
and Joanne Woodward
had a kid that went there
and they were walking
across the campus.
And to my mind,
at that moment,
they had achieved everything
I'd ever dreamt
of accomplishing.
They seemed like
first-rate human beings.
They were both
exceptional artists.
They had love.
They had family.
They were ethical citizens.
They'd done everything
I had ever dreamed of doing.
And I just watched them walk by.
And I really wondered,
"What was it like to be them?"
The only person to be nominated
for Best Actor
I think he's one of three
and the only American nominated
for Best Actor in five decades.
But then you go
Then you go look at her career.
She won the BAFTA.
She won the Oscar.
She won New York Film Critics
twice. She won
He's a 4-time
national champion racing cars.
He made money racing cars.
And then, of course,
they gave away $500 million.
So it's it's a little bit
like, "Okay, how do you start?"
What I didn't know was
he'd begun
working on a memoir
with his friend Stewart Stern.
He's a famous screenwriter.
He'd written "Rebel Without
a Cause" and "Rachel, Rachel."
And they embarked
on interviewing everybody
in Paul's life.
I think they did
over 100 interviews
from famous people to friends
to nannies and assistants,
everybody that they'd come
in contact with.
So he would interview Altman,
he would interview Kazan,
he interviewed Karl Malden,
he interviewed Tom Cruise.
He interviewed Bruce Dern.
Tom Cruise?
What happened
to these tapes?
Unfortunately, at some point
He took them to the dump.
Paul burned
all the audio tapes,
including his own.
And no one is really
exactly sure why.
Sort of sort of
awesome actually,
when you think about it.
Sort of great.
The other day, I get a call,
"Well, maybe he didn't burn
all of them."
Or they found some of them.
Well, it turns out
they're NG, right?
I mean, they're not usable.
Okay, it was gone,
except Stewart had had them
all transcribed.
This is one box
Are you kidding?
of transcripts that I have.
Are you kidding me?
Like, it's hundreds
of thousands of pages.
I'm trying to ask all my friends
to make these audios come alive.
It's I'm trying to turn it
into kind of like a play
with voices,
a community looking back.
And so, that's what
I'm doing here with you.
And Sammy Rockwell is gonna
read the director
of "Cool Hand Luke."
Laura Linney is gonna
do Joanne Woodward.
Zoe Kazan is gonna play
Paul's first wife.
Karen Allen is playing
Joanne's stepmother.
Josh Hamilton is gonna read
the director of the stage.
Vincent D'Onofrio is gonna
do John Huston.
George Clooney
agreed to read Paul.
So we're we're having fun
kind of revisiting
the generation before us.
Ashmanskas:
I'll just read through.
I'll probably just
read through it.
You know, we'll just
go through it.
Just Just read it
through once.
Great. Great.
[Clears throat]
"I think when people
look back on this epic,
if anybody does
for any reason,
they presided over sort of
the end of the movies
as the universal
art form.
Movies have now
become taken over
by television miniseries
and are now more interesting
to the general public
than the feature film.
So I think people will
think of them
as the last
movie stars."
Man: Joanne Woodward.
Mr. Paul Newman.
"They were the last people
who were treated
at the beginning
of their careers
the way Gary Cooper,
Katharine Hepburn were treated.
And they survived."
♪♪
Allen:
"Well, when Joanne came up
on her 19th birthday
in February,
never having been
to New York before,
we picked her up
at Penn Station in a cab
and she said, 'Daddy,
can I kiss the ground?'
And he said, 'Anything you want
to do, it's your party.'
And she wanted to do
all the things.
What play we went?
Well, I don't know.
Well, I think it was
'Mister Roberts.'
And then we went
to the Latin Quarter.
We went to the Copacabana.
We heard Frank Sinatra
sing that night."
Would you care ♪
Allen: "We took the bus
and we rode
all the way down Fifth Avenue
on her 19th birthday
on a double-decker bus.
She would commute every day
from Glen Rock, New Jersey,
to the Neighborhood Playhouse
where she studied acting."
I swear I will.
Meisner: I remember
talking to Joanne
when she first came here,
and I asked her why she wanted
to be an actress.
Well, she thought about it,
and she fumbled.
And then she said to me
in a very thick Southern accent
that it was the only thing that
she knew how to do.
Man #2: 10 seconds.
Steady on one. Stand by, two.
Allen: "The first time
I saw her act
was in those little television
movies that she did.
From the day she graduated
the Neighborhood Playhouse,
she did television,
live television.
'Robert Montgomery Presents'
was one of the first
and I kept her little dress
that she wore in that for years.
I suppose the veil
of the temple
was [indistinct] from
the top to the bottom.
Woodward: I felt like
I really arrived.
Matter of fact,
I think in two years,
I must have done something
like 100 television shows.
[Loud bang]
This is the Army,
Mister Green ♪
We like the barracks
nice and clean ♪
Linney: "We met
at our mutual agent's office,
a wonderful agent whose name
was Maynard Morris.
And Maynard came out
of his office and said,
'I want to introduce you
to one of my newest clients.'
And I said, 'Fine.'
And out steps
this bandbox creature
in this gorgeous arrow collar
and in a seersucker suit
looked like he'd just
been kept on ice.
And I hated him."
Interviewer: And then the two
of you were understudies
on Broadway
during "Picnic."
"We were. We were
both understudies.
But he got the part.
They fired the actor
who was playing the part.
He got it."
♪♪
♪♪
Clooney: "'Picnic' gave me
the wishing well of everything.
I was so enthralled
with the idea
of being a professional actor
in a Broadway show.
Once it was running,
I never even went up
to my dressing room.
I'd stand in the wings
and make a hole in the curtain
and watch the audience."
"Joanne and I were understudies,
and I had to do a dance
as Hal.
It was a really sexy dance.
I couldn't dance worth a shit.
It's how Joanne and I
fell in love."
♪♪
"She'd always try to teach me
in the wings
while Ralph and Janice
were performing it.
When Joshua Logan had
staged the dance,
Ralph and Janice backed up
from each other
then kind of did a truck on in,
back up,
truck on in, back up,
truck in.
Josh had told Ralph, 'Pretend
you've got a 37-foot-long cock
and you're 36 feet apart.'
It's a terrific image
for an actor to use."
"But while Janice and Ralph
were dancing on stage,
Joanne and I would be having
our little dance of death
behind the scenery.
And soon I began to have this
terrible problem in my pants."
"She'd say,
'Oh, my goodness, what's this?'"
♪♪
"I was in pursuit of lust.
Rydell: "So Joanne came home
and told Ran and myself
she met the man
she was going to marry
in rehearsals of 'Picnic.'
I said,
'What are you talking about?'
She said,
'Well, he lives on Long Island
and he's an understudy.'
She came home with that oddly
determined characteristic
of Joanne from the first day
of rehearsal.
It was such an extravagant thing
to say.
I mean, after all,
the man was married."
♪♪
Allen: "There was chemistry
there between Joanne and Paul.
There is no doubt about that."
That night we saw him backstage
at the theater,
he had borrowed her apartment
and returned the keys.
But I-I didn't think
about that."
Clooney: "We recognized in each
other a couple of orphans.
And orphans have big appetites
for everything."
"We just banged it out together
as orphans
and left a trail of lust
all over the place
hotels, motels, public parks
and bathrooms, rumble seats,
Hertz rental cars,
swimming pools, beaches,
all of it's better left
to the imagination."
♪♪
Announcer:
"The Alcoa Hour"
brought to you live
from New York.
Hello, I'm Sidney Lumet.
I'm the director
of this production.
It's a play
that's very close to me.
McCarthy: "I saw Paul
for the first time in 'Picnic.'
I saw how attractive
and how perfect he was
for that part, stiff and wooden,
but an actor."
Walter Cronkite reporting.
We take you now to Athens
outside the prison,
where Socrates is being held.
McCarthy: "Then when I was
doing 'You Are There'
in those early
in those days,
the actors were broken
into two categories.
If they did not have
a New York accent,
they were my European actors.
And if they had
a New York accent,
which most of them had,
you know."
Man #3: Do you think
there is any chance
that Socrates
might yet be saved?
"Paul was right away relegated
to the European company
because he had
no New York accent."
Cronkite: Citizen Plato,
I wonder if you would
Not right now,
please.
McCarthy: "He was wonderful
in 'Death of Socrates.'
He played Plato in that,
and I did use him
in one American piece
if my memory serves
right with Joanne."
Chris.
Yes, I know.
"I think I found out
during rehearsals
that they were going together.
They kept arriving
and leaving together."
Hey, don't do that.
Why not?
I mean, can you imagine
having your first Broadway play
be William Inge winning
the Pulitzer for "Picnic"
and Josh Logan is directing it?
Then on your off days,
you go to The Actors' Studio
and are watching Brando
and Marilyn Monroe do scene work
and class study?
Terry: Are you training
to be a nun?
Edie:
Just a regular college.
Wait a sec.
Clooney: "The first film that
made an impression on me
was 'On the Waterfront.'
The grittiness, realism
and Brando."
Country.
I don't like
the country.
The crickets
make me nervous.
♪♪
Interviewer #2:
You're also a student
at The Actors' Studio,
Mr. Newman.
Just how important
was your education there,
your studies there?
Paul: Well, whatever I have
become as an actor,
either good or bad,
The Actors' Studio must take
either the blame or the credit,
because they are certainly
the most important single factor
in my acting career.
And I work very hard there.
Man #4: The man just coming in
is Lee Strasberg,
director of the studio.
Elia Kazan is behind him,
one of the founders.
Man #5: Well, The Studio
itself was started in '46.
Clooney:
"The closest thing to a mentor
I ever found
was The Actors' Studio."
There was no home
for actors.
"Elia Kazan.
Especially the work
of Tennessee Williams.
Tennessee didn't have to try
to be a poet.
It's who he was.
That was my great teacher.
The people I saw working there
gave me the clues
to what acting was all about
Ben Gazzara, Geraldine Page
and Kim Stanley,
Karl Malden, Julie Harris,
Eli Wallach.
I mean, you know, Marlon,
Jimmy Dean, you know."
Woodward:
And Paul was already a member,
and I didn't know what it was,
so I had no idea what I wanted
to be a member of.
But I thought it was
It sounded good to me.
I mean, everybody else
was a member.
[Laughter]
Linney: "Dearest mother,
I've been meaning to write.
I got in.
I'm now officially a member.
Anyway, then the week
really turned around.
I went to go see 'Uncle Vanya.'"
The element of character
was left out.
Clooney:
"It was not the kind of acting
that I'd been accustomed to,
to see that group of people
working without oratory,
without acting."
"While I had no measure
of what light
I was emanating to other people,
a competence must have exuded,
just competence and energy
combined with real terror."
Imaginary or emotional?
I mean, I have always heard
imaginary circumstances.
I just wanna die.
[Crying]
I just wanna die.
Man #6: It began to give
an actor the sense
that he could be
proud of his profession,
proud of what he was
Liar!
proud that he was an actor,
that an actor was was
a contribution to society.
too much!
I can't give you
anymore.
I got nothing left
to give!
But I am involved!
We are all involved!
[Screams indistinctly]
Hawke: This is the generation
that walked in
and watched Marlon Brando
scream "Stella!"
for the first time and know
that that was Tennessee Williams
and Elia Kazan
and art was changed.
Stella!
Clooney: "But these are people
that didn't consider me
an actor."
Interviewer #3: That
filmmaking career began
with something called
"The Silver Chalice."
[Laughter]
Newman:
Well, the question
is really a matter
of survival.
I was grateful
that I survived that.
It was nobody's fault.
It was just
the worst film made
in the entire of 1950.
[Laughter]
♪♪
Narrator: You stand in the
streets of ancient Antioch,
where Caesar's legions
proclaimed his pagan power.
Clooney: "I remember once
someone at The Studio saying,
'Ben Gazzara thinks you're
a Shaker Heights asshole.
It's all manufactured.
There isn't a genuine moment.'"
"And I knew"
Want to give me
my freedom?
"that if Ben Gazzara
said that,
if he said that it was fake
it was fake."
Call the guard!
Guard! Guard! Guard!
♪♪
"To this day, people I consider
the eccentric people
of the theater,
the bohemian people,
the ones whose circles
I yearn to be a part of,
people like John Malkovich,
Geraldine Page, Rip Torn,
Scorsese, Nicholson,
Brando, Huston.
The whole ilk of people.
I don't have the immediacy
of personality.
I'm not a true eccentric.
I've got both feet firmly placed
in Shaker Heights.
Those people, they were
authentically themselves.
They're not working towards
becoming something they aren't."
♪♪
♪♪
Interviewer #4: Joanne,
last Christmas,
you were still single
when we visited with you,
but I recall your saying
at the time
that the best gift you received
was a set
of carriage lamps from, uh
I think you said a friend
who knows you very well.
Did that friend
happen to be Paul?
It was.
Stahl: 36 years ago,
Newman and Joanne Woodward
were newlyweds.
He didn't remember being
on the program
until we showed it to him.
I was 33 then.
We live in what I call
an age of conformity,
where you have to travel
with the herd.
And if you don't travel
with the herd
and if you don't say yes
to that little man
who's leading the pack,
why, you're branded
as a rebel.
I am trying desperately,
I hope,
to be an individual.
I think
I don't know that guy.
I have nomemory
of the way he
I'm I'm
I'm delighted that he
That he
I don't even
Who is that?
They're just as mediocre
as the people
that they
Clooney: "My problem is
that I just remember
an accumulation of events.
I don't really have a sense
of a beginning.
There are people who have
a sense of living a whole life,
but I just have a sense
of a series of events
attached together
in random ways.
Stick the middle
in the beginning
or the beginning in the middle.
It really doesn't seem to make
either sense or difference."
Linney:
"Now we're in Venice.
God. Oh, there's Gore."
♪♪
Hawke: I worked
with Gore Vidal
when I did "Gattaca,"
which is like '95. Right?
Right.
And so that was, like, two
or three years after he won
the National Book Award.
And I'm telling you,
when Gore Vidal walked on set,
everybody got quiet.
I bet.
You keep your workstation
so clean, Jerome.
He was such a famous thinker.
This is an author who was
on the cover of "Time" magazine.
Exactly.
There were major publications
that refused to review him
because he was gay.
Man #7: He's been called
the best political novelist
since Disraeli.
He's also been called
a commie pinko fag.
[Laughter]
Wow. So this guy
is a famous radical,
and this is their best friend.
Ashmanskas: I know.
I mean, it says
everything about them.
♪♪
"One of the last
television plays I did,
I think it was '54,
I mean, 30 years ago.
And it was called
'The Death of Billy the Kid'
and a great many people
were struck by it.
It was a very strange play
and effective on television,
starring a young Paul Newman.
I liked it,
and I loved his girlfriend."
♪♪
"And I was staying
at, you know, Los Angeles,
at the Chateau.
Paul and Joan came out.
We'd all come out from New York,
and we all knew
we were going to be stars.
And we all did become stars.
There was Tony Perkins,
Jimmy Dean.
Four or five of us.
It was as if we were
all swimming
in the navel sweat of Hollywood.
We all took a house together
belonging to Shirley MacLaine
out in Malibu.
Paul and Joanne
were not yet married.
Well, of course he was married
but just to someone else.
And I was under contract
to Metro.
Paul was at Warners,
unfashionable Warners
in unfashionable Burbank,
and Joanne was under contract
at 20th Century Fox.
Holy, Thou art holy ♪
There is none beside Thee ♪
Perfect ♪
Interviewer #5: Buddy,
you signed Joanne Woodward
to a movie contract.
You discovered her.
She was obviously
a fine actress.
However, the screen is
so much bigger in scope.
We made photographic tests
of Joanne
to see how she would look
on the motion-picture screen.
Here are some of these tests.
♪♪
Ashmanskas: "Her secret is
she's a curious actress,
because for the first five
minutes she's in anything,
I go, 'Oh, no, no, no, no.
It's my friend.
Joanne is up there.'"
I'm sure they'll fit.
I made 'em the same size
as the other ones.
"She's got a curious voice,
rather flat and un-inflected.
And sometimes it suits
what she's playing
and sometimes not."
I've never felt like this before
in my whole life.
"And then
after about eight minutes,
I forget that this is Joanne."
You know something else?
What?
You're really very sweet.
Scorsese: Okay.
I feel
I feel so blessed.
I feel so happy.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
So what can I
what can I tell you?
The first thing I wanted
to ask you
was if you can remember
when Joanne Woodward,
the actress, first came
into your consciousness.
Well, um, I happened
to see, uh,
at the old Academy of Music
on 14th Street
the second-run theater,
I saw
"A Kiss Before Dying."
♪♪
[Screams]
♪♪
I mean, it follows up
immediately, same theater,
a few months later,
I guess,
or a year later,
I see "No Down Payment."
When she opens
the freezer
Yeah. Yeah.
Amazing.
What you looking for?
Well, I was looking
for the ice.
♪♪
[Humming]
[Laughs]
What's the matter?
I'm kind of dizzy.
Must have been
something I ate.
Linney:
"Acting is like sex.
You should do it,
not talk about it."
Why don't you try
a little coffee?
Who wants
to sober up?
Unh-unh.
You light it for me.
♪♪
I was too young to have
had really encountered
anything
by William Faulkner.
It was a foreign land
to me, you know,
but she fit in
so, so well.
It's where she came from,
there, you know?
I don't get it.
You ride to Memphis.
You ride back
from Memphis.
At Memphis,
you don't even get off.
Round-trip fare
for nothing.
Well, don't give yourself
any trouble about it.
I just happen
to be an eccentric.
Ashmanskas:
"Everything is instinctive.
Everything is natural.
The difference between
her and Paul as actors is
that he's constantly thinking,
thinking, thinking.
It sometimes gets in his way.
People of our generation,
you see,
there was somethingunmanly
about being an actor,
so you had to pretend
it was essentially
a very complex business.
And then you were thinking
like a physicist
or even an astronaut.
And for a woman, that's
a very natural thing to do.
I mean, particularly
for our generation,
women were meant to be actresses
in real life
as well as on the screen.
♪♪
Man #8: Ladies and gentlemen,
we have entered a soundstage
at 20th Century Fox studio
for a visit
with Nunnally Johnson.
Mr. Johnson is directing
the exciting young star
Joanne Woodward
in "The Three Faces of Eve."
There are three characters
in "Three Faces of Eve"
who occupy one body, female.
Woodward:
I know that I was in New York
and I was on my way out
on the train
and I read the script
on the train
and I got off in Chicago.
I called my agent and I said,
"I don't want to do this.
It's scary."
And he said,
"Well, you have to."
Can I speak
to Mrs. White?
Can I speak
with Eve White, too?
Eve White?
I called Martha Graham,
with whom I'd studied
at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
And I said,
"I don't know what to do,
and I would be grateful
for anything you could say."
And she said, "Pick the way
each one of them moves."
Hello, Doctor.
Mrs. White?
Woodward: How do they stand?
How do they move?
Doctor:
Alright, now, walk back.
Linney: And Joanne, you know,
she wanted to be a dancer.
That was her dream.
Her dream
was always to be a dancer.
And there is something
about a body in motion
with following music
and a body in motion.
♪♪
A good working definition
of acting for me
is that acting is the ability
to live truthfully
under imaginary circumstances.
I don't know
what I have to do with it.
I haven't got anything
to do with her.
We teach our students
to know
everything that they do
must be justified.
That something real must happen
to them to make them do it.
Woodward: A person behaves
and moves externally
because of what's happening
to them inside.
And therefore
there was Eve White,
who was a despondent
and morose woman,
and everything went in.
And Eve Black, who had no moral
compunctions about anything
and was childlike and free,
and everything was out.
You like it?
And then there was Jane,
who is completely mature
and sure of itself,
and she moved
almost perpendicular.
Oh, what about Jane?
Jane who?
I mean for my name.
Jane.
Well, why Jane?
Why not?
Scorsese: You can't imagine
the power of that performance
in a theater.
At that time,
nobody had seen
anything quite like it.
The impression she made
was so strong.
If she had never done
anything beyond that,
I got to tell you
so, so much impact.
I got a poem for you.
Jackson:
"I don't go to the movies,
but I have seen
most of Joanne's.
And I remember we took Mother
to see her
when she made
'The Three Faces of Eve.'
It's a limerick.
And of course, when she was
in that bar room
in that spangly dress
carrying on so,
Mother said, 'That can't be
my granddaughter.'"
Don't forsake me ♪
I love you so ♪
Ashmanskas: Things happened
quickly for Joanne,
not so quickly for Paul.
[Indistinct conversations]
What? What?
What? What?
You and you alone ♪
Ruffalo: "Kazan had seen Paul
in 'Picnic.'
Kazan knew his work
from The Actors' Studio.
So Kazan promised Paul
the first audition
for 'East of Eden'
Wow!
but Kazan didn't want him
for it.
Paul went through
all the casting
for Curly in 'Oklahoma!'
Paul I think
I recalled him saying
he went out
for something like 26 movies."
Ashmanskas: "Of course, he only
got the part in 'Our Town'
because Jimmy Dean
was cast in 'Rebel.'"
"Every part he did get
was a lesser role
that someone better
had passed on."
D'Onofrio:
"I mean, I guess I told you,
I first met Paul in class.
You know, I used to help him
with auditions.
He'd always bring
his girlfriend,
I mean, Joanne around.
I didn't really get to know him
until we opened 'Desperate
Hours' on Broadway."
[Horns honking]
"And that was a real tough time
for him."
Ruffalo:
"'Desperate Hours' opening,
Paul felt quite unfulfilled.
It was a difficult time,
you know,
because
of the situation with Jackie.
He didn't want to hurt Jackie.
We met at the Russian Tea Room.
He brought her there.
Beautiful.
I mean, she was so beautiful.
And they were two
very nice people
that just shouldn't
have gotten married."
♪♪
♪♪
Ethan: Um, let's see.
There's one spot in the house
that my son says
gets the best Internet,
and maybe I should
have started there.
Stephanie: No worries.
It's just in the middle
of the house.
So, um
Have you had any time
to understand
what happened between
with my mom?
I would love for you
to tell me about it.
I'll start at the time
of the divorce.
She was destroyed
by it.
She was left with three kids
under the age of 5.
I was a baby
and had to watch my dad
and stepmom
ride off into the sunset
with Hollywood contracts.
And she wanted
to be an actress.
Yes, that's
the perfect reaction.
It was It just is
It's an unbearable story.
Um
I mean, think about it.
My mom was divorced
and then
Joanne got her Oscar.
♪♪
Poltermann: "Here we are
on the 17th of March
taping recollections,
free-flowing,
whatever occurs
to Jackie.
I've read her
my questions.
So here we go."
When they were thinking about
doing this memoir
that they did
these transcripts for,
they reached out and asked his
first wife for her point of view
and encouraged her to tell
the truth as she experienced it.
And, um, it's a very powerful
thing to have.
Zoe: "Well, do you want to start
with the first question?"
"Uh, yeah, while we're
talking about it,
you said something
about Paul,
whether he was close
to people or not."
"I said, 'Well, something
along the lines
of partly because
of his background
and partly
because of my background
and probably simply
that generation of people
who got married
and their expectations,
I don't think probably
either one of us
had the faintest notion
in the world
of what closeness was.'"
"Do you think that
you were happy?"
"I probably felt
that I ought to be."
"Do you think you were?"
[Laughs]
"Umhmm.
No. I was still in the
generation you never concede.
You married this guy.
And that's it, folks.
Right? You damn well better
make peace with it
some way or another."
"What did you sense?
How ambitious was he?"
"Hmm.
When you hear about people
who struggle for years
becoming famous and they,
you know, they read that
or they hear that about him,
but as far as I'm concerned,
that
that is not the case.
It fell in his lap."
Man #9: Ladies and gentlemen,
we have just received
a special news bulletin
from the UPI wire.
One of Hollywood's
brightest young stars
was killed earlier this evening.
Ashmanskas: "Mr. Turnupseed,
who was driving
the car that got in front
of Jimmy Dean's Porsche
We always had a sort of a joke
that had it not been
for Mr. Turnupseed,
Paul would have never taken
over Jimmy Dean's part
in 'Somebody Up There Likes Me.'
And had that not happened,
dot, dot, dot,
which is known
in the trade as an ellipsis."
♪♪
Somebody up there likes me ♪
[Indistinct conversations]
Somebody up there cares! ♪
[Indistinct yelling]
Without you, I'm just nickels
and dimes. You know that?
Somebody up there
knows my fears ♪
And hears my silent prayers! ♪
Interviewer #6:
People have said
and I wonder
if it had bugged you
in your career
have drawn a parallel
all the time
between you
and Marlon Brando
and the way you act
and your manner.
Has it irritated you?
Paul:
Well, it's irritated me
because I think that
kind of
I mean,
it's much easier to say,
"So-and-so
is a young Bill Holden"
or whatever
it happens to be.
Souh
I take a rather dim view
of that.
Did he take a dim view
of it, too?
No,
he was there first.
[Laughter]
I've been lucky.
Somebody up there
likes me.
Yes, somebody up there ♪
Likes me ♪
Clooney: "In 1943,
I enlisted in the Navy,
joining the V-12 program
to become a pilot.
But when they discovered
that I was colorblind,
they sent me to basic training,
where I became
a rear-seat radioman,
a gunner for torpedo bombers.
In May 1945,
my unit was assigned
to aircraft carrier
USS Bunker Hill,
but the pilot developed
an earache
and another crew
was sent in our place.
A few days later, kamikaze
planes attacked Bunker Hill,
killing almost all 400
on board."
Is anybody home?
"When you miss something
like that,
because your pilot happened
to have an earache"
All: Surprise!
Clooney: "wow.
That's another example
of Newman's luck."
♪♪
[Applause]
Moore: I am very delighted
to introduce to you
a young gentleman who is one
of the newer Hollywood stars.
He has recently appeared
as the leading man
in the great picture
"Somebody Up There Likes Me."
Mr. Paul Newman.
Zoe: "It just all happened
so incredibly quickly
in terms of his career and
Life changes and things.
People like Josh Logan
and Elia Kazan
and William Inge,
Tennessee Williams.
Six to eight months before
those were only names to Paul."
♪♪
McCarthy:
"I think Joanne Woodward
is one of the best actresses
we've ever had in this country.
And she wanted
the part desperately.
She had such an instinct
for that part.
She had a running head start
on everybody.
And if she had the actor's fear
of working with a 'great actor,'
she met him head on.
It arrived big."
Get your legs on the other side
of the gear shift.
Both of them.
[Chuckles]
[Engine starts]
D'Onofrio:
I mean, in "Fugitive Kind,"
that outdoor scene
with her and Brando,
oh, my God.
Hear the dead people
talking?
She is just amazing.
You believe every word
that comes out of her mouth.
It's fantastic.
Dead people don't talk.
Sure they do.
They chatter away like birds
here on Wisteria Hill.
But all they can say
is one word.
And that word is "live."
Live. Live.
Live. Live. Live.
It's all they know.
That's the only advice
they can give.
It's simple.
Very simple instruction.
Please.
Let me.
Let me.
Clooney: "My meeting with Joanne
gave birth to a sexual being.
She taught me, encouraged me.
She delighted in experiment.
I am simply a creature
of her invention."
Why do you
Why do you make
such a crazy show
of yourself?
Because
I'm an exhibitionist.
I want people
to know I'm alive.
Don't you want people
to know you're alive?
I just want to live.
I don't care whether they
know I'm alive or not.
Well, I want to be noticed
and seen and heard and felt.
McCarthy:
"Was Paul jealous of Marlon?
Was Paul jealous of Marlon?
Everyone was jealous
of Marlon."
I'd love to hold
something
the way
you hold your guitar.
That's the way I'd love
to hold something.
Ashmanskas: "The great actor
of their generation was Marlon,
and Paul was always
thought of as Marlon 2."
Cannavale: "I don't think Paul
should be envious of him
because Brando
he's something else."
Sherman: "He was incredible.
Brando was the best young actor
I've ever seen."
Cannavale:
"I don't understand it.
It was like a meteor, you know?"
D'Onofrio: "I have to be frank.
And I, you know,
I mean, I guess if"
"If Paul is this, you know,
I mean,
he's right to be envious
of Marlon.
I worked with Marlon and Paul
when they were both young.
Marlon, he's a genius.
For my money I'm never gonna
work with anybody like Marlon."
Hawke: Think like
what Karl Malden said
about being in class,
like, he was in class
with Jimmy Dean
and Marlon Brando
and Paul Newman. Right?
Right.
He compares to the tortoise
and hare story
that Brando was the hare.
He just leapt out way
in front of everybody.
And there's little
Shaker Heights Paul Newman
marching like a turtle.
And he describes
sitting there watching
McCarthy: "There he is
at the beginning of his career,
saying,
'I'm not the actor he is.
I'm not the man he is.'
I don't know whether he said,
'I'm not the man he is.'
But 'I'm not the actor he is.
I'm here. He's there.'
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 it's that seeming normalcy
that fascinates me,
because clearly his life
has been anything but normal.
So it's the exact
opposite of Marlon."
Fly away,
little bird
before you get broke.
♪♪
D'Onofrio:
The way I see Marlon Brando
is the perfect example of, like,
that Acting 101
is putting yourself in the
circumstance of the character,
not pretending to be
the character.
You conjure up an emotion
caused by a particular event
or a particular somebody
as a choice
and you speak the author's words
through that emotion.
Can you give me
an example
of a line reading
without a choice
and a line reading
with a choice?
Let's just Simple stuff.
"It's not right.
Please stop.
It's not good for either of us.
Please stop."
And so right now
[Voice breaking]
I'm seeing something
that's really important to me.
Really important, okay?
And I could see it
and I can hear him.
I can just speak through it,
like, "Stop.
This is not good for you.
It's not good for me.
Stop."
And and that's
that's what method acting is.
Clooney:
"I keep thinking of myself
as kind of an empty receptacle.
You get your artificial heart.
You get your artificial dick,
get your artificial brain.
You got all those things
inside yourself
and you say, "Oh, yeah,
let's try it."
The more important
"Yet the fictitious part of me,
this celluloid persona,
is accepted all over the world,
but maybe that's not
the person."
"The person I may be
might be the one
Thomas Mann saw in himself
a terribly boring, ordinary,
prosaic, pedestrian
personality."
D'Onofrio:
You know, who am I?
Who is this guy?
He's you. He's you.
And just do that.
Yeah.
That's hard to do.
It's hard to do.
Because it's a big question,
is who am I, right?
♪♪
Kazan:
The only way I can find talent
is to do it very slowly,
to get to know them,
to take a walk with them,
to meet their girlfriend
or their mother and father
and so forth.
Their guards drop
and I find out who they are
and what what is inside them,
what their souls are,
what what materials they have
inside them for our art.
You're in the new
Tennessee Williams play,
are you not, Mr. Newman?
Yes, "Sweet Bird of Youth."
"Sweet Bird of Youth"?
Yes.
Are you producing
this, directing it?
No, I'm acting in it.
Acting. But you're not
directing or producing?
No, Mr. Kazan is directing.
But have you done any
production or direction?
Hawke: Kazan was
everybody's God, right?
I mean, he was
he was Paul Thomas Anderson,
Spielberg and Quentin rolled
into one, you know what I mean?
Cannavale: "I first became aware
of him when he was in 'Picnic.'
I went to see it and
and he was all right.
It was good.
Not an exceptional actor.
Not at that.
You see, there's something
in him that's masked."
Interviewer #7:
What's your family
Merchants
and sporting goods.
Did you feel that you have
acting in your blood
or did it come
entirely accidental?
It was a series
of accidents.
"He's nervous.
Gets nervous when he's with me.
I don't know why.
I never doubted him.
I don't know him well.
The only time I never would
I No,
I never did know Paul well,
until 'Sweet Bird of Youth,'
you know, with Geri Page.
I knew him then,
and he was very good
in 'Sweet Bird of Youth.'
You know the play?"
Announcer:
"Sweet Bird of Youth"
a powerful Tennessee Williams'
stage success.
It is a rare appearance
in a premiere
for the master storyteller,
who, in "Sweet Bird of Youth"
Interviewer #8:
Would you say
that you have
a single theme
which ran all the way
through your plays
that you can detect?
I think that I write mostly
in defense of romanticism.
Paul:
I couldn't discover
the romanticism
of merchandising.
So I started acting.
I was running away
from something.
I wasn't running
towards something.
♪♪
Clooney:
"Kazan wanted tears of grief.
He was concerned as to whether
I could deliver that.
As we began to work on it,
sometimes there'd be a trickle
of a tear.
When there wasn't,
I would stare at this light
at the rear of the auditorium.
I would stare at the light
until my eyes teared up
because I had
no tolerance for light.
I could sense a stirring down
there in the audience
as Kazan moved around
the theater,
seat to seat from front to back,
trying to see whether
or not it was real."
♪♪
"Once, when I started
the soliloquy,
it didn't seem to be working.
I noted with dismay
that the rear light
had been turned off."
"He must have been wondering,
'Is that what he's doing,
staring at that light?'"
"He was having a game with me.
I was so infuriated
that I had been discovered
that I actually wept
with frustration.
Real tears came.
Of course,
that's fucked him over
worse than anything
I could have invented."
[Indistinct conversations]
"I finally said, 'You know
what you've signed for
in 'Sweet Bird of Youth'?
An emotional Republican."
[Horn blaring]
♪♪
[Thunder and lightning crash]
Cannavale:
"There's a sense of shame
in Paul's part
in 'Sweet Bird of Youth.'
And it's, I guess,
what I emphasized a lot,
because I remember
saying that to him."
May I have something
to wash it down with?
"I don't know
whether he remembers it or not.
I remember saying to him,
'He's ashamed of himself.'"
You're not going
to give me water.
"He's not proud of himself.
He doesn't know what the hell
to do about it,
and he's stuck.
I think there was that in the
performance when you saw it.
You felt that.
You felt that he was someone
who had been raised right.
Even a mama's boy.
But also he carried that quality
all the time.
He had it."
deepens Lord, with me ♪
Clooney: "All the aspects
of guys like Chance
are in my own brain.
They try too hard like me.
They get hoisted
on their own petards like me."
♪♪
"There are deep-seated aspects
of your own personality
that you can use
if you can access them.
You don't always have to
go around looking
and doing research.
Put simply,
you use your own experience."
♪♪
Poltermann: "When did you first
become aware of Joanne?"
Zoe: "Sometime right after
Stephanie was born,
I mean, immediately after.
I certainly remember that
because I was very angry."
"I felt very betrayed
and do still to this day/
Because
UhOh.
What the hell difference
does it make?
Obviously,
I knew that there was a point
at which it all
became formalized.
I can't tell you
how that happened,
because I just don't remember.
The only thing that I remember
is that I went home alone
on the subway
to Flushing Meadows,
feeling bereft."
"Did you have
any connections with Joanne
during those years?"
♪♪
"I'll tell you something
very funny,
but you have to
turn the tape off."
[Cassette player turns off]
So were they having
an affair all that time?
It was five years.
Five years.
You know.
That's a long time.
It's a really long time.
Why are you looking
at me like that?
Like what, Maggie?
Like you were
just looking.
I wouldn't consciously
look at you, Maggie.
I was conscious of
Kazan keeps talking about
that there's an internal shame
to these Tennessee Williams men.
"Sweet Bird of Youth,"
"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
And he kept asking your father
to tap into his sense of shame.
And I'm looking
at "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"
and "Sweet Bird of Youth,"
and I'm thinking his affair
with Joanne
when he was married to your mom
was a really long time.
I didn't realize that
until I saw this.
I had no idea
it was going on for so long.
So that disgust
with mendacity
is really disgust
with myself.
And when I hear that
Nivola: "The most tenuous
situation in the world
is the love situation.
The most delicate flower
of all plants is love.
And we treat it like
it was made of steel."
I'm ashamed, Big Daddy.
That's why I'm a drunk.
When I'm drunk,
I can stand myself.
But it's always there
in the morning, ain't it?
The truth?
And it's here right now!
[Thunder crashes]
You're just feeling sorry
for yourself.
That's all it is.
Self-pity!
Nivola: "The way that I approach
making any movie
is that it's like
a battle in a war."
You're a 30-year-old kid.
Soon you'll be
a 50-year-old kid.
The truth is pain
and sweat and paying bills
and making love to a woman
that you don't love anymore.
Truth is dreams
that don't come true,
and nobody prints your name
in the paper till you die.
"And relationships become
extremely intense
and close and revealing."
Now, here.
"It's like being born
and married and divorced
and growing old
and everything else,
because the things you learn
are essentials."
Now, that's the truth.
And that's what you can't face.
Interviewer #9:
Can we talk very frankly?
Very frankly is the only way
that we can talk.
Well, to begin with,
why has there been
a disturbing note
of coldness
and violence and anger
in your more recent work?
Well, I think without
planning to do so,
I've followed the developing
tension and anger
and violence of the world
and time that I live in
through my own
Clooney: "The last night
of 'Sweet Bird of Youth,'
the emotion just got away
from me.
I couldn't control it.
I realized that I'd been
involved with a bit of history
with Geraldine Page
and Tennessee Williams
and Kazan.
And now it was gone."
[Applause]
Hawke: You ever meet Paul?
I met him once
at a charity event.
They had celebrities
pass out alcohol
and hors d'oeuvres
to get rich people
to donate.
And he looked at me
and he winked.
He said, "You want a beer?"
And I'm like, "Yeah,
I'm gonna take
a fucking beer from
Paul Newman," you know?
And I took a beer from him,
and that was it.
That was the only time
I met him. Did you meet him?
I met him one time.
He He came to see me
backstage.
I only met Paul and Joanne once.
They came to see a production
of Tennessee Williams'
"Camino Real."
And after the performance,
they came back to pay
their respect to the actors.
This is in the late '90s.
They were warm and generous.
They stood behind me
and we chatted briefly
as I stared at them
in my dressing-room mirror.
And then I remembered
an acting teacher
telling me all about
this small room in Times Square.
And I imagined a young Paul
and Joanne in that class,
reciting the actor's vow
as I was made to do.
-And I will be myself.
-I am not a cosmic orphan.
-I'm not a cosmic orphan.
-I have no reason to be timid.
Hawke: It's a vow written
for actors by Elia Kazan.
-Awkwardly, vulgarly.
-Awkwardly, vulgarly.
-But respond.
-But respond.
-I will have my throat open.
-I will have my throat open.
Woman:
I will have my heart open.
I will be vulnerable.
I may have anything
or everything
the world has to offer,
but the thing I need most
and want most, is to be myself.
Man #10:
The thing I need most
and want most, is to be myself.
Woman: I will admit rejection,
admit pain,
admit frustration
and admit even pettiness
admit shame, admit outrage.
Man #10: Admit anything and
everything that happens to me.
Woman: Anything and everything
that happens to me.
Don't cry, baby,
it's all right.
It's all right.
Man #10: The best and most
human parts of me
are those I have inhabited.
and hidden from the world.
Woman: Those I've inhabited
and hidden from the world.
I will work on it.
How come all of you
took him for a king?
I may love you, but
I don't like you at all!
Man #10: I will work on it.
I will raise my voice.
-I will raise my voice.
Woman: I will be heard.
Man #10: I will be heard.
♪♪
Clooney: "The glue that held
Joanne and me together
was that anything
seemed possible."
♪♪
"With all other people,
some things were possible,
but not everything."
"The promise of everything
was there
in the very beginning."
♪♪
Allen:
"I think she was, um, torn,
torn between
You know what?
You see, when Paul came out
and told Wade
that he and Joanne
were gonna be married,
I can remember he was telling
Wade he had three children.
And Wade said, 'Well,
I'm telling you one thing, Paul.
These three children
didn't ask to be born.
And if I ever see you mistreat
them or not take care of them,
you will have me to answer to.'"
♪♪
"And Paul said, 'You will never
have any problems with me.'"
♪♪
I had a dream
that you were mine ♪
I've had that dream
a thousand times ♪
But I don't answer questions ♪
I just keep on guessing ♪
My eyes are still open ♪
The curtains are closing ♪
But all that I have ♪
Is this old dream
I must have had ♪
A thousand times,
a thousand times ♪
I've had that dream
a thousand times ♪
A thousand times,
a thousand times ♪
I've had that dream
a thousand times ♪
A thousand times,
a thousand times ♪♪
Shadoobie, shadoobie ♪
Shadoobie, shadoowah ♪
Shadoobie, shadoobie ♪
Shadoobie, shadoowah ♪
No, this ain't the end ♪
Shadoobie, shadoowah ♪
We will laugh
as friends again ♪
Underneath the pines ♪
Shadoobie, shadoowah ♪
We'll be singing ♪
Hallelujah ♪
Here in the dark ♪
Well, you can't see
the stars ♪
They're sailing away ♪
Just like you always say ♪
I won't let up, let up ♪
I won't let up ♪
♪♪
Across a crowded room ♪
You'll hear me yell ♪
I don't let up ♪
I tried to find you ♪
But I don't know how ♪
I don't know how ♪
I don't know how ♪
I won't let up,
let up, let up ♪
I won't let up,
let up, let up ♪
I won't let up,
let up, let up ♪
I won't let up,
let up, let up ♪