Old Blue-Eyes
An Interview with Paul Newman
By Antony Teofilo
As he sat down and surveyed the huge bank of microphones and tape recorders perched eagerly before him, Paul Newman pierced the crowd with his signature ice-blue gaze and deadpanned, "Geez. None of these are loaded, are they?" A cadre of jaded newspapermen and magazine women chuckled warmly.
Paul Newman playing to a press corps is something akin to a lone snake charmer lulling four score pit vipers into a mellow summertime daze.
Yes, his answers come a bit slower now. Yes, he's losing his hearing, so you've got to speak up a bit. But as the conversation rolls on, and Paul Newman weaves a spell with that still-present Butch Cassidy smile and sardonic air, it becomes obvious that while Newman may be settling comfortably into the twilight of his career, there is nothing dull about his wit, or his choice of roles.
PRESS: Could we consider this movie a swan song for you?
NEWMAN: It's probably closer to a vulture than a swan song. [Laughs] I keep trying to retire from everything and have discovered that I have retired from absolutely nothing. I tried to retire from the racing business, and I'm back racing. I tried to let somebody else handle the spaghetti sauce, and I'm back doing the spaghetti sauce. I don't know if I'll ever get a swan song. Maybe I should get a different swan.
PRESS: Will you ever do another movie with your wife?
NEWMAN: I'd love to do something with Joanne, and we're looking at something down the pike. I can't really discuss it right now. There's a little vinegar left in the old dog yet.
PRESS: What are your feelings on working with Tom Hanks?
NEWMAN: He has the quality of not dodging things. He's as true off screen as he is on screen. There's no fancy footwork. What you're looking at is what you get. That's refreshing.
PRESS: You're an icon ...
NEWMAN: No, you say I'm an icon. My grandchild does not think I'm an icon.
PRESS: Well, at this stage of your career, do you think it's tough being a matinee idol of your magnitude?
NEWMAN: The spaghetti sauce is good to think about, morning, noon and night. [Laughs] I think about hustling other people to buy the spaghetti sauce. I have a new motto: "The only thing we need to shred is lettuce" [meaning money, a reference to Newman's philanthropy. The crowd is silent as they try to get the joke].
Jeezus, this is a tough house. [Laughs] I don't think about any of that stuff. What you're able to achieve on the screen has nothing to do with [your life]. I think you pick up certain mannerisms from characters that you play, and they can affect how you present yourself. The only two things that ever stuck to me come from Rocky Graziano [SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME]. I never used to spit in the street. I was with Rocky for about nine weeks before the picture began filming, and I spit in the street. It sickens my wife. I never used to swear, I never used foul language. Now [I do]. It's funny ... of all the attributes that could have stuck, those were the two that stuck the strongest and the longest. I don't take much of it seriously.
ANTONY: You have a great moment in ROAD TO PERDITION in which you play the piano with Tom Hanks. Originally, you were supposed to Irish dance during the funeral sequence, but Mr. Hanks told me you have no rhythm. Can you respond to those allegations?
NEWMAN: The piano scene was great fun. We worked very hard at it. But that moment isn't about playing the piano [or dancing]. It's about doing something together.
PRESS: What do you hope audiences will take away from your performance in ROAD TO PERDITION?
NEWMAN: I just hope it will have the ring of truth about it somehow.
PRESS: Does rehearsal help you in preparing for a role?
NEWMAN: I insist on rehearsal. I insist on two weeks of rehearsal, which I give for nothing. That has happened on almost every picture I've done. In rehearsal, you learn a lot [about your character] on your feet. If you don't have any rehearsal, anything that happens on the screen is by accident.
PRESS: Did The Actor's Studio have a big effect on your career?
NEWMAN: I certainly wasn't on the cutting edge of Stanislavsky or The Actor's Studio. I came in late. I had a fairly long and formal education in theater at Yale and Kenyon. Almost everything I learned about being an actor came in those early years at the Actor's Studio. [But] there's not a performance that I can look at comfortably with complete satisfaction. It's been a learning process. The Actor's Studio has spread now overseas, and I suspect now they do it better than we do. They also have the advantage of very formal training in the classics, which our actors don't have.
PRESS: What about ROAD TO PERDITION appealed to you?
NEWMAN: Unlike other gangster films, it wasn't about explosions. It was about a family, but not even in the sense of Mafia family, it was really just about family and relationships, and I can understand that.
PRESS: You have a reputation as quite a practical joker on the set. Did you pull any jokes during the production of ROAD TO PERDITION?
NEWMAN: That's a part of my life, thank God, that no longer exists. Actually what happened was that [Robert] Altman and I had a series of confrontations that he lost. He was there first with [a practical joke]. After he pulled it, I said, "You made a big mistake, Bob, for two reasons. One: I'm richer than you are, and two: I have more time than you have." I pulled one on George Roy Hill that really frightened him, and we had a terrible confrontation. He said, "In every practical joke, there is an element of malice." That pulled me up short, and slowed me down to one or two a year.
PRESS: What was the joke you pulled on Hill?
NEWMAN: There was a house, and he was behind the camera [in front of the house]. I had complained a day earlier about the brakes on an automobile. I came around the corner with three people in the car, and threw my hands up in the air as I approached the house. The prop guys had a huge collection of tin cans and garbage cans and cracking metals and sledgehammers. For someone who couldn't see what had happened after the car passed the house, it looked like a terrible accident. He came around the corner and thought that three or four people had been killed. So he didn't think it was very funny. Actually, we creamed the car.
PRESS: You've had an extraordinarily successful marriage. What's the secret to so many years of wedded bliss?
NEWMAN: I don't know what she puts in my food. [Laughs]
PRESS: You've participated in a great deal of philanthropy over the years. Do you think that more celebrities should get involved in charity work?
NEWMAN: This is not a celebrity issue, this is a political issue. The concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn't hurting, holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet. In 1987 the average CEO against someone who worked in his factory made 70 times the worker's wage. It's now 410 times as much. Aristotle said that the greatest government is the government that has the least amount of people on each end [of the spectrum]. I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble about being philanthropic, it's the other attitude that confuses me.
PRESS: What motivated you to go back to the stage after so much time?
NEWMAN: Joanne is the artistic director of the West Port Country Playhouse. Have you ever read LYSISTRATA? [Laughs}
PRESS: This is a movie about fathers and sons. What was your father like?
NEWMAN: My father was a partner in a sporting-goods store, probably the best sporting-goods store west of the Appalacians. He was the oldest continuous seller of radio in the United States. During the Depression, eighty-five percent of the sporting-goods stores went out of business. In the middle of the Depression, he came to Chicago and bought a hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods from Spaulding and from Wilson on consignment. The reason that he got two hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods was that both of those companies knew that if he sold a baseball glove for four dollars and twenty five cents, there would be a check in the mail to Spaulding or Wilson for two dollars and eighteen cents that they were entitled to. He survived because his reputation was impeccable.
PRESS: Can you tell us any good stories about shooting movies in Chicago?
NEWMAN: We shot COLOR OF MONEY and we were staying at a hotel. I'll never forget the Chicago Bears had just won the Super Bowl, and I had to get up at five o'clock in the morning. The cars were streaming down the streets with their horns blaring and I couldn't sleep. I looked out the window 15 floors below me; the streets were still slippery from the snowfall. There, splayed out on the hood of a car, up against the windshield, was a football fan. The car was going 50 miles an hour. I've always wondered if that guy survived.
ROAD TO PERDITION opened in theaters July 12, 2002.
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