[ 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 no...memory 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 something...unmanly 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 ]
"Um...hmm.
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.
So...uh...
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.
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...
Uh...Oh.
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 won't let up, let up, let up ♪