but you gotta be cool, that's part of the job.
And then on this grey-blue September Sunday I decided that Paul Newman needed a bigger piece of the pie than a simple pic-date'n-link post.
Paul Newman has been a very important man in my life. I must've seen Cool Hand Luke when I was eight years old, Lion King posters tacked on my wall. It became a fast fixation, and that old Luke Jackson the model of aspiration. Cool Hand's an American Legend in his own right, a figure of honor, rebellion, damnation and resurrection. I named a stuffed dog after him, a set-haunched German Shepherd with a lolling tongue and alert glass eyes. Cool Paw Luke palled around with a rusty flat-faced slit-eyed mongrel named Frank Morris, after Clint Eastwood's '79 portrayal of Alcatraz's only escapee. I really had a thing for those bustin'-outta-prison movies.
I've only recently become privvy to the legend of Paul Newman himself. An early morning in Dublin City--an early Dublin City morning being somewhere 'round eleven,--I found myself wandering the cobbled ragtag streets of Temple Bar. Above a rasta shop with the scent of sagey musk and dyed linen, there was a little place that sold every poster I could ever want, the walls tacked with Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen and Robert Deniro. I'd never usually buy anything, just stand there and turn in circles, but that day was different. On a chipped corner table there was a sparse selection of books, tagged eight euros apiece. One of which was a shabby round-cornered hardcover coffeetable number entitled Newman: A Celebration. A gasp. I convinced myself it was around ten bucks and started flipping the pages, wanting to stop, to save some for later but I was a fiend in the grips of satiation.
"Paul Newman, huh?" asked the young fella behind the counter. I clutched the book to my chest and stepped over. I squinted into my dark purse and did the eight-euro dig.
"How can I say no to Paul Newman?"
Back on Camden Place, I sat in the brand-new part of our house before it became riddled with treachery and newcomers, and read on the sun-warm squeaky black couch a tale of Kenyon College's young leatherhead quarterback in 1948 Ohio who punched a plainclothes cop in the chops, started a barroom brawl, got expelled and became one of the most revered, beloved actors in cinema on equal parts luck and ambition.
Ah, to be a young star in the midfifties! Yet another aspect of the man I fiercely romanticize. When Thunderbirds were good, rock and roll was forefronted by Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, and there were still trace levels of cocaine in soda. In Newman, there is a
Kazan: (off-camera) Go ahead, you queens.
Newman: What, what, what, what?
Kazan: (to Dean) Do you think you can hit the Bobby Sox league?
Dean: Depends on how many want to go.
Kazan: Do you think the girls will go for Paul, Jim?
Newman: It's a point of whether I go for the girls.
Kazan: Paul, do you think the girls will go for Jim?
Newman: Oh, wow!
Dean: (to Newman) Kiss me.
Newman: Can't here.
On Youtube, there is a video.
of an East of Eden casting call featuring an obviously-nervous Paul Newman and a cool-as-ice James Dean. On Youtube, there is a video.
There's something in my deepest soul that just aches for a Midwestern suburban hopeful, wanting to be worldly but eternally cursed with the gold heart of a half-rube. About a man who claims that his ambition was bigger than his talent. Who speaks hearts of sentences when he does. Like Cool Hand Luke, legendary purveyor despite it all, Paul Newman's a man I'll always live by. And when I woke up this morning and saw that picture on the wall, cut from the inside-jacket of that book on the top bunk I lived on one fall, I was reminded of All This, and went to the computer.
Paul Newman has been a very important man in my life. I must've seen Cool Hand Luke when I was eight years old, Lion King posters tacked on my wall. It became a fast fixation, and that old Luke Jackson the model of aspiration. Cool Hand's an American Legend in his own right, a figure of honor, rebellion, damnation and resurrection. I named a stuffed dog after him, a set-haunched German Shepherd with a lolling tongue and alert glass eyes. Cool Paw Luke palled around with a rusty flat-faced slit-eyed mongrel named Frank Morris, after Clint Eastwood's '79 portrayal of Alcatraz's only escapee. I really had a thing for those bustin'-outta-prison movies.
I've only recently become privvy to the legend of Paul Newman himself. An early morning in Dublin City--an early Dublin City morning being somewhere 'round eleven,--I found myself wandering the cobbled ragtag streets of Temple Bar. Above a rasta shop with the scent of sagey musk and dyed linen, there was a little place that sold every poster I could ever want, the walls tacked with Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen and Robert Deniro. I'd never usually buy anything, just stand there and turn in circles, but that day was different. On a chipped corner table there was a sparse selection of books, tagged eight euros apiece. One of which was a shabby round-cornered hardcover coffeetable number entitled Newman: A Celebration. A gasp. I convinced myself it was around ten bucks and started flipping the pages, wanting to stop, to save some for later but I was a fiend in the grips of satiation.
"Paul Newman, huh?" asked the young fella behind the counter. I clutched the book to my chest and stepped over. I squinted into my dark purse and did the eight-euro dig.
"How can I say no to Paul Newman?"
Back on Camden Place, I sat in the brand-new part of our house before it became riddled with treachery and newcomers, and read on the sun-warm squeaky black couch a tale of Kenyon College's young leatherhead quarterback in 1948 Ohio who punched a plainclothes cop in the chops, started a barroom brawl, got expelled and became one of the most revered, beloved actors in cinema on equal parts luck and ambition.
Ah, to be a young star in the midfifties! Yet another aspect of the man I fiercely romanticize. When Thunderbirds were good, rock and roll was forefronted by Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, and there were still trace levels of cocaine in soda. In Newman, there is a
Kazan: (off-camera) Go ahead, you queens.
Newman: What, what, what, what?
Kazan: (to Dean) Do you think you can hit the Bobby Sox league?
Dean: Depends on how many want to go.
Kazan: Do you think the girls will go for Paul, Jim?
Newman: It's a point of whether I go for the girls.
Kazan: Paul, do you think the girls will go for Jim?
Newman: Oh, wow!
Dean: (to Newman) Kiss me.
Newman: Can't here.
On Youtube, there is a video.
of an East of Eden casting call featuring an obviously-nervous Paul Newman and a cool-as-ice James Dean. On Youtube, there is a video.
There's something in my deepest soul that just aches for a Midwestern suburban hopeful, wanting to be worldly but eternally cursed with the gold heart of a half-rube. About a man who claims that his ambition was bigger than his talent. Who speaks hearts of sentences when he does. Like Cool Hand Luke, legendary purveyor despite it all, Paul Newman's a man I'll always live by. And when I woke up this morning and saw that picture on the wall, cut from the inside-jacket of that book on the top bunk I lived on one fall, I was reminded of All This, and went to the computer.
