The trouble with getting hired to do something
is I don't know what the film's about. Yeah.
You know, is it about what a stud Paul Newman is?
Is it about how women get demolished
by a male-driven culture?
Yeah. ...loving marriages?
Yes. Is it a movie about Paul or Joanne or...
And it reminds me of this thing
that you said to me a while ago
when I was asking for relationship advice,
which was that in relationships,
there's always a third person,
and the third person is the relationship.
It just creates this different person
that is the two people together.
And I wonder if the movie is about if, you know,
if you can see it as easier to make
being about one person.
If it's about that person, the person that was...
[ Speaks indistinctly ] What?
I think that's what I should do.
[ Laughs ]
♪♪
Woman: "Sometimes a Great Notion."
This was out on the set.
Paul inherited this film.
He was acting in it,
and then they fired the director,
and he had to take over direction.
♪♪
Clooney: "'Sometimes a Great Notion'
was a bad, unsettled time.
I was warring with everybody.
I was warring with my agent.
I was warring with Universal.
And I was going through difficult times with Joanne.
And I had too much pressure on me.
I was drinking much too hard."
Got a beer?
[ Indistinct conversations ]
He was drinking so much, and he was so tired.
Directing and acting.
That he would finish, look at the rushes,
and then down six to eight martinis.
♪♪
Hamilton: "I was here in New York, and I got a call from Paul
saying that, you know, 'Sometimes a Great Notion'
was totally out of control, that he'd taken over directing.
And he wondered if I could come out there
and just give him a hand."
"He was really drinking a lot."
"I asked him how much he drank.
I remember him telling me.
Hmm. A staggering amount."
George arrives and finds Paul
basically drinking himself to death.
And George Roy Hill
was a pretty heavy drinker himself.
Yeah. I mean, that's like Willie Nelson telling you
you're smoking too much grass, you know?
You know you're in trouble when he's worried about you.
Hamilton: "Paul is a very angry man. He's frustrated.
But anger is just another form of being alive.
I mean, I think you have to be angry in order to live.
You can't just lie back and let things roll over you.
and Paul doesn't. He is a principled man.
And to be a principled man, you've got to be angry."
[ Chain-saw motor revving ]
Hey! You stop --
♪♪
Clooney: "A thick skin had to be selected.
You have to control what you're going to allow to get to you
and what you're not.
That's probably the reason I drank as much as I did."
You bastard! That was my daddy's desk.
Man: "I don't know if I should say this.
You decide if you want to, you know, deal with it.
But he had one family with Joanne
and these little princesses
living in this incredible mansion
on the other side of town was this house in the Valley
with, you know, two other girls, you know, a boy.
I always felt -- I don't have any reason to feel this.
I don't have any information.
But I always felt I was projected into this situation,
that it was --
If it was me, I would be terribly guilty."
Poltermann: "So, Paul, what made your divorce
from Jackie so brutal?
50% of the American population is --"
Clooney: "Because it didn't have any class, Stewart."
"How so?"
"It didn't take the parties that we're gonna be injured aside
and give them comfort... by explanation."
"By telling them what was happening?"
"Yeah, but in a way that they would understand it.
But that's because I didn't get it."
It's not because I wouldn't have done it had I gotten it."
"How would you explain it now?"
"Well, I don't know, Stewart.
I couldn't create the scene."
[ Men singing drunkenly ]
Whoa!
That was a very good landing.
You do a job, man.
[ Laughter ]
Linney: "One night, he just fell out of bed.
I found him on the floor with his head bleeding.
And I came as close as I ever had to saying,
'Well, this is it.'"
Sorry, but I was forced to kick the crap...
"I just can't stand it. I just can't stand it."
Come on up. I forgot something.
"It was one of many, many times."
Hank. Let go of me, Leeland!
Hank, co--
Are you all right?
Whee! Whee, whee.
When I dream, I'm still a child.
I can run, I can skate.
Last night, I held hands
with the boy who sat behind me
in Miss Tristrum's class.
And I woke up, and I was so heartbroken.
I'm an old woman.
Oh.
I won't even dignify that with a comment.
My God, you're a spring chicken.
You got your whole life ahead of you yet.
It'll go by like a weekend.
There's no time for anything.
You know, sometimes I stand in the middle of my room
and I wonder what I'm doing here
with, uh, with the scissors in my hand.
The whole morning goes by,
and all I've done
is take the stockings out of the drawer.
[ Sniffles ]
Listen.
They give you a cupful of time,
you drink it or you spill it on the floor.
You think time cares what you do?
That won't have to be me.
Got everything? Yeah.
Clea: She got so upset with him
that she put us all in the car and drove us out to Malibu.
And I mean, basically left him and said, "I'm done."
Ethan: He shows up at this house and knocks on the door
and all his kids are inside and she's there and she says,
"No, this isn't your house. You don't live here.
We live here."
And he says, "I'm -- I'm coming -- coming home."
And she says, "Not unless you quit drinking."
And he's like, "Uh, I don't do well with ultimatums."
[ Camera shutter clicks ]
Clea: And, um, and he slept --
I don't know if it was, like, overnight
one night or two nights or four weeks or what it was.
But he was in the driveway sleeping,
and she would not let him in.
She's like, "There's no negotiations.
This is not a negotiation. This is -- this is it."
And finally, I was forced to ring the front doorbell.
She answered the door and I said,
"I have no place to go." [ Chuckles ]
And he says...
"How about hard alcohol?
Only beer?"
And she says, "Okay," and she opens it in.
Melissa: She was also very difficult.
"I really hate this," she complained.
"I hate everything about the promotion tours.
In fact, the only thing I like about acting is acting."
She was mercurial. She was anxiety driven.
She could hold a grudge.
She could be very dark and moody.
She could be really charming.
She was fiercely loving, all these things.
She wasn't easy.
Interviewer: I know it's not -- Well, it has to be a drama.
But what is the message?
Oh, my God. Don't ask me.
What's the picture about?
It's about two hours.
[ Both laughing ]
And he made it work with her, too.
And I think that was part of what he was so intrigued by.
Quinn: And, of course, everyone wanted to know
what it's really like to live with Paul Newman.
"We never discuss each other.
We never discuss each other's film," she would say patiently.
Clea: I mean, they were artists.
And so when they got in a fight, it was a lot of, like,
yelling and throwing, both storming off.
You know, it was very, like, romantic and high-powered.
Quinn: She begged to be off duty
as soon as she introduced her film
at the last stop of the day.
It was 6:30 at the American Film Institute.
Then she left at the hotel
where her husband, Paul Newman, was to join her.
No press allowed.
Sally Quinn, CBS News.
Man #2: Winner is Joanne Woodward
for "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Interviewer #2: There's another very important film,
"Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams."
Woodward: I thought it was some of my best work,
and I think everybody in it was wonderful
and it was not a success.
And I said, "Well, you know, it's all downhill from now
because there are not a lot of parts at that age
or past, sort of the leading lady,
unless you're Jane Fonda."
Niven: Joanne, I understand that a former winner
of the Society's Best Actor Award
is beside you waiting to give you yours.
In fact, he'd been beside you for several years.
Paul Newman, please expose yourself.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Good evening, David.
I don't know whether you know it,
but it's not -- it's not all that easy
being the husband of a famous motion-picture star.
Joanne. My love.
Clooney: "Joanne and I seem to have grown.
We've moved towards a kind of final solution
to this acting question."
She seemed to have no ego, yet there was a towering ego there,
one moment filled with the sense of worth,
and the next simply shattered.
So when she would lapse,
I'd understand and hold her blameless.
And she would understand me in the end."
Wait a minute. Hold it.
Boy, you look terrific.
So do you...
except you got a little gray over your ears there.
That's the only difference.
Everything else works about the same.
Ethan: Rilke said this, "Once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest human beings,
infinite distances continue,
a wonderful living side by side can grow,
if they succeed in loving the distance between them
which makes it possible for each to see the other
whole against the sky."
Clooney: "In protecting yourselves
and not ruffling one another's feathers,
you can become noncombatants."
I never can get these things off.
Maybe you shouldn't try.
[ Cork pops ]
"And you can begin to cater.
There's a sense of catering there sometimes."
"But whatever it is, it's equal.
I simply delight in her."
♪♪
Linney: "There were times when Paul and I both had to hang in,
when it felt like
that the marriage wouldn't last another day."
"We had to step outside of ourselves
and become aware of three things that were operating --
my ego, his ego and our ego."
"For the relationship to survive,
we had to put the his and hers on hold
and just go for the our."
♪♪
Ethan: I think the documentary should be about the space
between them,
meaning, "I'm centered and safe in my life
and we can both expand."
The love expands you, right?
♪♪
Announcer: Gentlemen...
start your engines.
[ Motors revving ]
I wore my Bubba Wallace T-shirt
in honor of Paul today.
I've been trying to learn
about racecar driving, you know?
Yeah.
Because I just don't know anything about it.
Yeah, and I don't know if I even get it.
Interviewer #3: You're quite serious
about wanting to be a racing driver.
Pretty hard to start something like that when you're 47.
Why is dance important?
Somewhere inside myself, for a brief moment,
I am Margot Fonteyn or Cynthia Gregory or...
I mean, there is something that you think,
"That's the way everybody ought to be."
Man #2: Newman worked his way into ninth
in a credible, if not satisfying,
first championship effort.
The only good thing was the bratwurst.
Field: Paul had the things he loved to do and that was it.
I mean, he wanted to go racing and get me in his freaking car.
I said, "No." [ Laughs ]
but that's what he loved to do.
So he would go and do that.
And Joanne loved her theater.
♪♪
Woodward: Who are these people?
Fans. I think they're all fans.
I can't believe how often I did this.
I mean, I was at every race.
It's what summer was all about.
It was fun.
Everybody had a good time.
When Paul won,
the kids would get to go on the victory lap
and we used to all pile in the car.
Like being a part of a circus family.
Ashmanskas: "The marriage worked so well
because they have nothing in common.
I mean, they really don't get in each other's way.
The wretched couples,
the couples that share the same desires,
beliefs and hobbies,
that is the couple that is headed towards Reno."
Is there one mutual interest between the two of you?
No.
Do we have mutual interests?
[ Speaks indistinctly ]
Not really.
Man #3: Get the fuck out of there, will you?!
Behind the net!
Hey, Hanrahan, she's a dyke!
I know, I know!
Scorsese: One of the secret sauces to Paul
is his just childish sense of humor.
[ Laughing ] Well, you see it.
You know, that terrific picture, "Slap Shot."
Him crazy. [ Laughing ]
[ Organ music playing ]
♪♪
Clooney: "I mean, 'Slap Shot' is a magical film.
I don't know what was magical about it,
just original, sideways.
Don't ever play "Lady of Spain" again!
Andretti: "Slap Shot," I can watch that -- I don't know.
[ Laughing ] There was something about it.
That's Paul, right?
You know, you could tell
that he was thoroughly enjoying that performance
because he could just let it go.
Reggie: Keep your heads on the ice out there, will you?
We all know how to play hockey.
Just play it smart.
That's right. Get out there and stick 'em!
Fuck 'em! Christ!
Let's go! Come on!
-Come on. -Let's go now.
We need this win, you know? We got a lot of losses.
Yeah, we got a lot of 'em!
[ Indistinct shouting ]
That's what we're here for, guys, to win.
Play heads up out there. I mean, let's be smart.
Man for man, we're better than any fucking club in the league
if we just put our minds to it.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
No one's better than us! Come on!
Come on, Braden. Our line's starting.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
Ethan: There's this movie called "WUSA."
He was trying to make a political film,
and he realized the movie's just too serious. Right.
And then he made a better political film
with "Slap Shot."
"Alright, I'll make people laugh,
and I'll make the same point about how fucked up we all are.
I'll be funny while I do it."
Who owns the club anyway?
I don't know. You don't know?
What do you mean? The corporation owns it.
Who cares. You get your check, right?
That's the spirit, Reg. That's it.
Clooney: "'Slap Shot's' a complicated piece.
It has to do with our social system,
using the sports world as a metaphor.
The chiseling,
the team manipulated by shadowy figures
in the background
who had no hands-on connection, no allegiance,
no understanding of that team or the individuals on it."
My accountant tells me I'm better off folding the team,
taking a tax loss.
♪ I just can't stay away no more ♪
You mean you could sell us, but you won't?
I could probably sell you, but I can't.
♪ It's alright and it's coming along ♪
♪ We gotta get right back ♪
Ethan: I mean, at its core, "Slap Shot,"
it's a complete indictment of macho assholes
written by a woman.
The same woman -- she won the Oscar for "Coming Home."
It ends with them all getting naked, you know,
skating around, like, in brassieres.
-Right? -Right.
Clooney: "The striptease at the end of the picture,
the mendacity of it all had been so outrageous, so depressing.
Somebody finally had to just take all their clothes off
and piss on them.
It was an unpremeditated scream of protest against the system,
manipulation, all the deals, rituals, and garbage."
[ Burlesque music playing ]
♪♪
Cavett: Do you have any desire to be bigger?
And what does it mean to be bigger
in someone's case like yours?
Um...uh, yes.
Bigger?
I suppose they mean --
You know, somewhere along that, I think I would like
to have been, um,
yes, uh, able to do bigger roles.
Superstar films.
Yeah.
Woodward: I really like working on stage best, and I always did.
So it's kind of nice to have gone back to that.
I had never done Shaw, so I did "Candida."
And I'd never done Noel Coward, so I did "Hay Fever."
Loved it.
One of the loveliest things for me to have done
was I did "Glass Menagerie" playing Amanda.
And I had played Laura many, many years before
at the little theater
where I'd started my career as a kid.
Just a little silver slip of a moon.
Ashmanskas: When Joanne says
she doesn't think of herself as a star,
she means that she's not considered
by a studio bankable.
...is taking a nap.
I support the maid, too!
You wake up Maria, Sonny, I will...
We fired Maria! This is another Maria!
But she is eternally a star
in the sense that she is a famous actress
and one of the best actresses and witness.
She's constantly in demand.
Field: Now, I had had almost an impossible journey
out of situational-comedy television
because I was in a television situation comedy in the '60s,
and you just simply didn't get out of that.
So by the time "Sybil" came along,
no one wanted me there.
You could feel it in the room.
"What, are we wasting our time?"
And I will never forget it.
She was sitting on a kind of armchair.
There was no moment between, "How do you do?"
We were two actors that went...whoosh.
[ Crying ] I'm scared.
Sybil?
I hate Sybil. I hate her.
Who are you?
I can do anything. I can do anything I want.
And I'll never forget.
At the end of this one scene, I was on the ground,
and I crawled over and I was crying.
And I laid my head on her knee,
and she touched the top of my head very, very slightly.
And I took her -- She had a long scarf on.
I took her scarf and wiped my nose on it.
And I had heard -- Stewart told me
Joanne had turned to them and said,
"If it isn't Sally, then I'm not Dr. Wilbur."
That's Vanessa,
and she's got all your music for safekeeping.
And i-it changed my life.
And all of a sudden, I saw one ant
who was struggling to pick up this grain of sand
that was far too heavy for her to lift.
And he struggled and he struggled.
And pretty soon, another ant came by
and together, the two of them
lifted the grain of sand
and started to carry it away.
Now, isn't that miraculous,
how much two creatures can accomplish together
when they care about each other?
♪♪
Lew: I am required by law to advise you guys
that my hands are registered
in the state of California as lethal weapons.
Do you understand?
Oh, really? Black belt, huh?
You betcha.
A little "Show me yours."
♪♪
Uh, it's a different ballgame.
I was just -- I was just kidding.
I'm a brown belt, actually. Where do you want me to sit?
Man #1: That was a very difficult time for him --
"Drowning Pool."
I remember once we were shooting in New Orleans
and his kids came to visit.
You know, listen, you're gonna have to decide
whether it's useful or not to use this, but --
Because I think it's terribly personal what I'm about to say,
and I'm not sure I should.
But, you know, I remember his son came to visit
and his two daughters.
And we had the streets roped off,
and we had the police there.
Everybody in the world was out to get a glimpse of Paul Newman,
the giant superstar.
And I don't know what caused the argument,
but he had an argument with his son
and his son, in very loud terms so that people could hear,
started putting Paul down.
And I was amazed.
I was just -- I was destroyed.
I mean, I don't think I want to tell you what he said.
It was so personal and private that I just --
I don't think that I should.
I don't think I would like to remind Paul of it
because it was so disturbed.
♪♪
Woodward: Scott sky diving.
Strange.
♪♪
I never understood the desire to do this.
♪♪
Kazan: "I mean, I've had a lot of people
say to me now, you know, 'What could you have done?'
And there's still a large part of me
that feels I could actually have done something.
And I think that Paul,
for whatever reason of his own, wanted him to be
a macho little boy, an unafraid little boy,
a boy who could drive cars, ride horses,
all which Scott did and all of which Scott
supposedly was crazy to do, but I got to tell you
that there was a large part of me that wonders.
Just as I have always wondered about Paul's desire
to drive cars."
Woodward: There's Paul's car, which was a disaster
and broke down and crashed and did everything except win.
Kazan: "To me, it's like a big man playing a little boy.
That's the way it is."
Announcer #2: ...gain this experience very rapidly.
The more experience he gets on the track,
the better he's gonna do.
Poltermann: "And Scott got in trouble
at Valley Forge.
You were so shaken that you couldn't drive down there.
It was the only time I've ever seen you
unable to drive."
Clooney: "He had a girl in his room.
That's what it was.
It came hot on the heels of a wreck
that he'd had in Connecticut.
He wrecked a car after making promises
and going back to school and he brought chaos again."
"I remember at the end of your talk,
after you came to some sort of an agreement
with the headmaster and Scott hugged you
and you said that you felt forgiven.
It was such a strange reversal that you needed forgiveness,
and he was the one at fault."
"Yeah."
Hamilton: "I developed a real affection for Scott
on the film 'Waldo Pepper.'
He was not particularly well-liked by anybody else."
What are they doing?
"He was alternately brash and reticent,
and there were times when he went a little crazy.
And Paul tried everything he could to straighten him out.
I felt sorry for Scott."
We put her up on the wing --
Yeah, and she'll fake being afraid. Right.
And the wind will blew her clothes off. Yes!
"He always made a special place for Scott in his mind."
Jesus Christ! It's one of our men.
Oh, God.
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
"But you don't do anybody any good by feeling sorry for them."
Poltermann: "Do you remember anything
about Scott's therapy?"
Kazan: "I remember
that his doctor tried to point out to me
that what I had really better focus my attention on
was Scott's relationship with his father.
He asked Paul if he would be willing to come out
and, um, sit with us.
The doctor had a small, round-like coffee table,
and Paul never met this man before in his life.
He took off his shoes, put his stocking feet up on the table,
and sat back like this."
"The doctor was furious, and he told me afterwards
that Mr. Newman's attitude made it perfectly clear to him
that he was not interested in getting involved
in Scott's therapy in any kind of constructive way."
♪♪
"Oh, God. [ Sighs ]
I vowed I would never do this.
[ Chuckles, sniffles ]
Get angry over this lack of coming to grips with Scott."
"I feel very guilty
that I didn't come to grips with Scott."
♪♪
Clooney: "When Jackie says that therapist judged
that I didn't care about Scott because I put my feet
on his desk, I asked him, 'Why did I fly to California?
Why did I come to his office if I didn't care?'
Putting my feet up relaxes my tension
or helps mask my anxiety.
Does that mean I'm any less interested
in what the hell he has to tell me?
How dare he say I don't care?
He was looking at things through the lens of his own information.
I am one of those people who don't know things.
My body, my mind just doesn't get them.
There's a lot I don't know about myself.
I know that I could have done better with all my children.
I could have been worse.
I could have put them all in closets
and kicked the shit out of them
or performed incest on them or beat them up.
But I didn't do any of those things."
"I could have been more consistent.
I could have been more understanding.
I could have been more patient.
I could have stopped work or never gone on location."
"I could have done things that might have made them different."
"How different it would have made them, I don't know."
"It just would have had to have been a different person."
♪♪
"I was heartened recently when Stephanie remembered
that when she came to visit us one summer,
I would come down when they were in bed and say,
'Oh. What's this? A bag of potatoes?'
Roll them up in blankets and carry them around,
slung over my shoulder.
They played with delight."
"I don't even remember doing those nice things."
"All I remember is telling ghost stories."
♪♪
Melissa: I'm thinking of a photograph
that's in their apartment in New York,
the gallery wall of photographs jammed in,
and my dad did it all himself with a hammer and nail.
One of them is this picture of my parents
on the Aspetuck River in a yellow raft."
"I'm probably not imagining that my dad has a beer.
Pushing off and floating down the Aspetuck together
when they just needed to get away.
It was just those moments which I think, you know,
are the -- really the fabric that held them together."
Fairest voice, softest hair,
eyes the color of the starlit night.
Most beautiful woman in all of creation.
That's who that is.
[ Gobbling ]
Paul: I don't want to get academic about this,
but we have a tendency in this country
to make legends out of a great many characters.
Roy Bean is something of an example of that.
I mean, we make -- They become fairy tales, really.
The ancient Greeks
worshipped at the feet of Aphrodite.
They loved mortal women as well.
The same goes for me.
Cavett: How about the "Time" review?
Paul: Of what?
Of "Judge Roy Bean." They haven't told you about it?
[ Laughter ]
It was a very good review for the bear,
and a rather poor, shabby review for myself.
Hey, you, bear! Hey, bear!
[ Growls ]
I'll have your hand as well!
I know! I know! I know!
Paul: That is kind of interesting
because it really shows
a complete ignorance about acting.
I mean, there is no --
Cavett: What? You're better than the bear?
No.
If you -- if you're worth your salt as an actor,
you stand back gracefully and give the bear the scene.
[ Laughter ]
Interviewer #4: Who do you think is the best-adjusted star?
Someone who is not a prisoner of fame.
Do you know what I mean?
I think my father's real good.
You think he's really good at it? Yeah.
In what sense? I really do.
He's very down to earth.
He seems to separate his professional life
from his personal life fairly well
and maintain some level of sanity in the middle.
Yeah. Do you think he's proud of you?
He loves me.
Yes, I think he is proud of me.
Interviewer #5: You know, when your life
is so much playing roles,
it seems like the idea of being a movie star
is almost like another role to play.
Do you ever feel that?
I feel that, but I don't play it.
That's -- that's a real drag.
Ashmanskas: "In this business, the division of a star
is somebody like Newman.
He says he'll do a picture,
and you can get $20 million to make a picture.
That's a star.
But then at the same time, so is Liberace."
This is it. This is the big one.
This is "The Towering Inferno."
This is the picture, ladies and gentlemen,
that we here at 20th Century Fox believe
will be the biggest grosser of next year.
Bigger, we think and hope, even than "The Poseidon Adventure."
Man #4: How many fuse terminals did you check?
[ Laughing ]
How many fuse terminals did you check?
How many do I have to?
What was it that actually attracted you to this part
in "Towering Inferno"?
Can you talk about that?
There's this interview with Paul where he's --
They're asking why he's doing "Towering Inferno," right?
It's like, "Look,
it's all anybody wants to make right now."
It's gonna be frightening.
It's original in that it deals with, uh...
The adventure is -- is cloaked in an original envelope,
which is the height and fire.
And you feel him -- and I see it in some of his weirder movies --
longing to do something original.
[ Bugle playing reveille ]
♪♪
Narrator: Robert Altman and Paul Newman are making a film
about the selling of an American legend.
Together, they are re-creating
the greatest Wild West extravaganza ever staged.
Man #5: "He kept saying that he was playing himself.
He was Buffalo Bill."
That's my star.
He belongs to all of us.
Our star.
America's.
"He kept saying, 'I'm not playing Buffalo Bill.
I'm playing Redford, I'm playing McQueen,
I'm playing Newman.
I'm playing movie stars because that's what Buffalo Bill is.'"
♪♪
Paul: I just looked upon him as the first movie star
and went from there.
There's nothing the matter with laughing at your heroes.
And the reason that I'm enjoying this,
probably more than any other reason,
is that it really murders me and Redford and Gable
and Tracy and McQueen because there's simply no way
that a human being can sustain
what has become legendary about him over the years.
Man #5: "It's about the beginning of celebrity,
of show business and who makes it out?
The agents, the writers, the PR people, the producers."
Buffalo Bill: You was just in Europe, wasn't you?
Give my regards to the queen?
Yes, they're still talking about you, Bill.
Can't wait for your return.
Bill, this will be our biggest year.
We're gonna gross over $2 million.
Did I ever tell you that I hold the record
for continuous riding of Pony Express,
322 miles in 18 days?
"He was determined to strip
any sense of admiration out of the man,
the frightened man inside the shell of a star,
a man who had tremendous scorn for himself."
Can he ride that horse right?
But if he ain't...
How come all of you took him for a king?
♪♪
Considine: Whatever was happening,
at a certain time every night,
I noticed Paul excused himself and disappeared,
and I finally asked him, "Where do you go?"
And where he went was back to his room every single night,
and he'd call Joanne
and he would talk on the phone for, like, an hour to Joanne.
I said, "You do that every day?"
He said, "Every day without fail."
[ Singing operatic aria ]
♪♪
Linney: "Dear love, what a terrible invention
of the telephone.
At least for me.
Tonight I felt as though I were intruding
and that you really didn't want to talk.
I loathe my extrasensory perception.
I miss you.
I don't know who you are.
But I miss you anyway.
I just wish you were happy
and that you could say what you feel,
not just what you think.
Me."
Clooney: "My love, I'm on board the plane
to Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
I stopped off to the P.J. Clarke's
for a hamburger before embarking,
and I must say I was filled with nostalgia.
I remember sitting on the curbside singing songs
at 2:00 in the morning.
The Third Avenue "L" still in operation.
Your apartment on 51st Street and 11th Street.
Dancing backstage at 'Picnic.'
No one can deny that these moments exist in time and space,
and for all we know, may be recorded
at electric energy for eternity at 180 million miles per second.
"We have access to all kinds of facsimiles.
Tomorrow, next week, next year.
When we get scratchy,
get going with bad solitary dialogs,
we ought to remember that we had the option
to choose good solitary dialogs also.
The years bear witness to that."
"Funny thoughts at 22,000 feet.
Kisses. Paul."
♪♪
"P.S. Got news this morning.
Scott went on another bad, destructive bender.
Is he gonna survive or not?"
"One wonders."
Now, ladies and gentlemen, here he is,
a chip off the old engine block
of his racing-champion father Paul Newman,
the young actor Scott Newman.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
[ Engine revving, tires screeching ]
Announcer: Scott Newman has successfully
jumped his sports car over three automobiles.
♪♪
Man #6: The geometric shape of the universe
reflects the scheme of life.
You've been taught that they are the same.
You've been taught that the universe is bounded
by five sides
and that life has but five stages.
Premium the pain of birth.
of the second some.
Clooney: "Someday the force of it's gonna hit me.
All of it. It still hasn't."
"I don't know what will trigger it,
but it's still not resolved."
"I did everything I could to avoid recognizing
that this had happened.
I got a call very early in the morning
and went to some kind of a brunch.
Didn't say anything to anybody."
"The whole thing had been blunted by all those phone calls
over the last six or seven years,
every one of which seemed to say it's just around the corner.
Something terrible was gonna happen.
There's been a crash. He's missing.
Nobody can find him.
Calls from his doctors, from Susan.
It just seemed like there was nothing
that was ever gonna stop that locomotive.
You kept waiting for the final call."
"But when you finally got it, you almost didn't believe it."
♪♪
"I had many times gotten down on my knees
and asked for Scott's forgiveness for that part of me
which provided the impetus for his destruction."
"I want to embrace the responsibility for that."
And you can't unload your skis when you can't dance,
when you can't hit a tennis ball
or read the signals about your son
until the condition is beyond reversing it.
And if you didn't get it,
then you are someone who doesn't get it.
The only thing you can do is say, 'Forgive me.'"
"And the energy up there that represents that kid will say,
'What am I supposed to do with that?'
and give you the finger."
♪♪
Linner: "Paul went straight to the mortuary.
He said it was a totally complete experience.
He said he just really had to go there and be with Scott.
And he said, 'I suddenly knew him
and I was able to weep and look at him and love him.'"
♪♪
"I kept trying to get myself to go see Scott
in the mortuary.
The night before I was going to go,
I dreamed one of the most vivid dreams I'd ever had in my life.
Clea and Emily, who were little girls in the dream
and not the ages they were at the time,
they were going with me to the mortuary to see Scott.
We went up some stairs into a room where Scott was lying,
and he sat up and sort of threw his legs
over the edge of the coffin.
He was sitting on the side and we talked."
♪♪
"It was very warm, very loving.
And after we've been talking for a good while, he began to glow.
And he realized he was glowing.
And he said, 'I think you better go now.'"
And I said, 'But Susan and Lissy want a lock of your hair.'
And he said, 'Alright.'
His hair turned into leaves.
And I remember cutting it and thinking, 'How strange.
Now, how am I gonna put this in a locket?'"
♪♪
"I really, really believe and still do
that that was a clear visitation."
♪♪
♪ Fire in a nameless town ♪
Hamilton: "When I heard the terrible tragedy with Scott,
I went to his dressing room, his trailer.
And we embraced.
I said, 'Paul, I don't know how to --
I don't know what one says to a person.
I mean, I can conceive of anything in the world
but losing a child.
I just don't know what to say.'"
He just said, 'Okay, sport.'
♪♪
Man #7: I don't have a great memory about some things,
and I can't tell you exactly what he talked about,
but it was the first personal conversation I'd ever had.
It wasn't a deep conversation.
It was really just a conversation
about how tough it is
to be the son of someone who's an achiever.
You know, he said,
'I don't think I'd want to be my own son.'"
"And this racing thing that he's done, I mean,
to start at his age...'
♪♪
"You see, I think people who do these things must see living
as very, very dangerous.
It's a dangerous thing to get up in the morning and live.
It's very dangerous and you can't do much about that.
But you can get into a semi-dangerous situation
that's controllable."
Announcer #4: This last year, Paul's fascination with racing
has been such that he's competed in more events
than he ever has before.
Some people think he's spending more time
with his racing career now than with his movie career.
Woodward: I was worried about it.
I really was seriously concerned.
His whole career looked as though
it was gonna go down the drain
because all he wanted to do was race.
Man #7: "Life is a minefield.
You can be hurt very badly,
and you can be killed emotionally in a way.
Or I think that's what people fear.
I know I do.
You cannot make life controlled. You cannot control it.
You cannot master life.
You can't master the technique of life."
♪♪
Woodward: He's not a lot of spins.
And there's been a couple of times
when we didn't come around.
I'm sitting, waiting, and saying,
"What happened? Where did he go?"
[ Announcer speaking indistinctly ]
Man #7 "If I do the wrong thing here, I'm gonna crash.
And if I learn how to do it right, we're not gonna crash."
"Then it's gonna be beautiful.
We're gonna fly away."
♪♪
Just drive the race and try to stay alive.
♪♪
♪ Unwind ♪
♪ Your watch ♪
♪ Shut your eyes a minute ♪
♪ 'Cause your heart ♪
♪ Killed mine ♪
♪ But now I close the distance ♪
♪ Wild hunger, strikes into me ♪
♪ Rise up with a crash ♪
♪♪
♪ Last night, our kiss ♪
♪ Kept haunting me, kept me hoping ♪
♪ Still with a thousand miles ♪
♪ My heart was always open ♪
♪ Wild hunger, strikes into me ♪
♪ Rise up with a crash ♪
♪ Wild hunger, wild hunger ♪
♪ No more ♪