Saturday, September 27, 2008

Death of a Giant

"...If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.

He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless.


Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into a craggy, charismatic old age even as he redefined himself as more than Hollywood star. He raced cars, opened summer camps for ailing children and became a nonprofit entrepreneur with a line of foods that put his picture on supermarket shelves around the world.

Mr. Newman made his Hollywood debut in the 1954 costume film “The Silver Chalice.” but Stardom arrived a year and a half later, when he inherited from James Dean the role of the boxer Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” Mr. Dean had been killed in car crash before the screenplay was finished.

It was a rapid rise for Mr. Newman, but being taken seriously as an actor took longer. He was almost undone by his star power, his classic good looks and, most of all, his brilliant blue eyes. “I picture my epitaph,” he once said. “Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.”

Mr. Newman’s filmography was a cavalcade of flawed heroes and winning antiheroes stretching over decades. In 1958 he was a drifting confidence man determined to marry a Southern belle in an adaptation of “The Long, Hot Summer.” In 1982, in “The Verdict,” he was a washed-up alcoholic lawyer who finds a chance to redeem himself in a medical malpractice case.

And in 2002, at 77, having lost none of his charm, he was affably deadly as Tom Hanks’s gangster boss in “Road to Perdition.” It was his last onscreen role in a major theatrical release. (He supplied the voice of the veteran race car Doc in the Pixar animated film “Cars” in 2006.)

Few major American stars have chosen to play so many imperfect men.

As Hud Bannon in “Hud” (1963) Mr. Newman was a heel on the Texas range who wanted the good life and was willing to sell diseased cattle to get it. The character was intended to make the audience feel “loathing and disgust,” Mr. Newman told a reporter. Instead, he said, “we created a folk hero.”

As the self-destructive convict in “Cool Hand Luke” (1967) Mr. Newman was too rebellious to be broken by a brutal prison system. As Butch Cassidy in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969) he was the most amiable and antic of bank robbers, memorably paired with Robert Redford. And in “The Hustler” (1961) he was the small-time pool shark Fast Eddie, a role he recreated 25 years later, now as a well-heeled middle-aged liquor salesman, in “The Color of Money” (1986).

That performance, alongside Tom Cruise, brought Mr. Newman his sole Academy Award, for best actor, after he had been nominated for that prize six times. In all he received eight Oscar nominations for best actor and one for best supporting actor, in “Road to Perdition.” “Rachel, Rachel,” which he directed, was nominated for best picture.

“When a role is right for him, he’s peerless,” the film critic Pauline Kael wrote in 1977. “Newman is most comfortable in a role when it isn’t scaled heroically; even when he plays a bastard, he’s not a big bastard — only a callow, selfish one, like Hud. He can play what he’s not — a dumb lout. But you don’t believe it when he plays someone perverse or vicious, and the older he gets and the better you know him, the less you believe it. His likableness is infectious; nobody should ever be asked not to like Paul Newman.”

But the movies and the occasional stage role were never enough for him. He became a successful racecar driver, winning several Sports Car Club of America national driving titles. He even competed at Daytona in 1995 as a 70th birthday present to himself. In 1982, as a lark, he decided to sell a salad dressing he had created and bottled for friends at Christmas. Thus was born the Newman’s Own brand, an enterprise he started with his friend A. E. Hotchner, the writer. More than 25 years later the brand has expanded to include, among other foods, lemonade, popcorn, spaghetti sauce, pretzels, organic Fig Newmans and wine. (His daughter Nell Newman runs the company’s organic arm.) All its profits, of more than $200 million, have been donated to charity, the company says.

Much of the money was used to create a string of Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, named for the outlaw gang in “Butch Cassidy.” The camps provide free summer recreation for children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Mr. Newman was actively involved in the project, even choosing cowboy hats as gear so that children who had lost their hair because of chemotherapy could disguise their baldness......

In an industry in which long marriages might be defined as those that last beyond the first year and the first infidelity, Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward’s was striking for its endurance. But they admitted that it was often turbulent. She loved opera and ballet. He liked playing practical jokes and racing cars. But as Mr. Newman told Playboy magazine, in an often-repeated quotation about marital fidelity, 'I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?'....."

~By ALJEAN HARMETZ


A Few Quotes:

“We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

"If I ever feel like I'm doing something I've done before, I scrap it and start over again..."

"When I realized I was going to have to be a whore, to put my face on the label, I decided that the only way I could do it was to give away all the money we make. Over the years, that ethical stance has given us a 30 per cent boost. One in three customers buys my products because all the profits go to good causes and the rest buy the stuff because it is good."

"Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why." Reminds me of when open a new book for the first time (or an old one... lol)

"I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. You don't want any woman to look under the carpet, guys, because there's lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, 'Mr. and Mrs. Bridge' comes closest to who I really am. I personally don't think there's one character who comes close . . . but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don't have a solid opinion about."

"I've repeatedly said that for people as little in common as Joanne and myself, we have an uncommonly good marriage. We are actors. We make pictures and that's about all we have in common. Maybe that's enough. Wives shouldn't feel obligated to accompany their husbands to a ball game, husbands do look a bit silly attending morning coffee breaks with the neighborhood wives when most men are out at work. Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends and not impose on the other...You can't spend a lifetime breathing down each other's necks." Thanks Paul! At least someone shares my opinion! Here I thought I was being a feminazi ...

"I've been accused of being aloof. I'm not. I'm just wary..." Bingo, more people should be like this...

"I picture my epitaph: 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.'"

"Once you've seen your face on a bottle of salad dressing. it's hard to take yourself seriously."




The Fourth Screen

Nokia Nseries Commercial... creatively good idea, yet simple:



P.S. If you liked this, youtube some more of the Nseries commercials. Theyre quite good. I am Nokia, Listen ... also if you like the song, its In My Heart by Moby (for whome I have a soft spot in my heart on account of his ancestry :) )

Friday, September 26, 2008

Out of the thousands of hilarious things i come across over at List of the Day .... here's one from the archives that really made me laugh...

Obituarys CNN has already written:

Roy Horn
When a tiger tries to rip your head off, it generally succeeds ...unless you're able to withstand its attack through the powers of magic, like Roy, one-half of that Ambiguously Gay, German Duo, Siegfried and Roy. Whether Montecore, the tiger, was truly trying to attack Roy or merely use him as a Pez dispenser remains a matter of some dispute. What can't be disputed, however, is that CNN is still ready to publish their Roy obituary the second he finally takes a Lufthansa flight to the Great Wienerschnitzel in the Sky....

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

For the Rainy Days...

Because sometimes you just need a little Miles and Coltrane....


Monday, September 22, 2008

Now would be the time I would like to write -- when I need to write, to get all these things out of my head and onto paper in some sort of a cohesive fashion. Get something flowing; anything, whatever it is. A poem, hiding in those deep recesses, waiting to be treated properly, brought out in the light where it belongs. A thought that has been hibernating, but never has the chance to see the spring or summer. But now is also the time when I can't write, because I haven't the time. I haven't the clarity. There is always that paper, those papers, in the back of my mind, due tomorrow, but against which my very being rebels. I don't really have the time to write it, because I'm tired and it's been a long day, but if I did have the time, would I write it? I don't even have the will. What happened to me? When did I stop loving this? It was all I had left... and now? That idealism that used to be my fuel is all but turned to cynicism... I don't know. And winter is come again...

More Firefox stuff

I love when people figure things out....

Block Facebook Adds

...more to follow on this subject when I get a minute to think...

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The Onion is great :D



Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life


Totally reminiscent of one of my favorite Monty Python Skits:

Friday, September 5, 2008

WoRdLe!!! lol ok, this is just some silliness, but kind of fun. Ive always been a calligraphy fan, so this kind of caters to that hankering for word art :) This is a wordle from CaughtintheDawning


Image created by: http://wordle.net/

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

I Met the Walrus

Beautifully done and thought provoking... besides the fact that I love the Beatles :)
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace :

Also, here is an interview with the Josh Raskin, I couldn't find it the other day, but i ran across it accidentally again. Yay!

Editing John Lennon: Josh Raskin on Making I Met the Walrus

Monday, September 1, 2008

You're Insane! No one uses Microsoft Works!!!

Sorry this gets cut off GRRRRR... go watch it here: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766