HBO’s ‘Last Movie Stars’ is the best six hours

Lengthy earlier than the road “Who’re these guys?” turned a working gag on “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child,” audiences questioned the identical factor about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

Thousands and thousands knew them, particularly him, with out understanding something concerning the inside workings of their affiliation. Outlined by the 15 films they made collectively, a number of with Newman directing his spouse, they turned the business benchmark for relationship success. Different well-known {couples} fell aside. They remained coupled. “But it surely hasn’t been simple,” Woodward as soon as advised an interviewer. “I do not suppose any legitimate relationship is.”

“The Final Film Stars,” premiering July 21 on HBO Max, does a unprecedented job of unveiling the opposite facet of the facade, with out flattery or long-winded summaries of judgment. That is six of probably the most compelling hours of tv I’ve seen this yr.

Right here is the origin story. Within the late Eighties, Newman started work on a memoir with screenwriter Stewart Stern. They recorded a whole lot of hours of interviews with Newman and Woodward, their pals, co-workers and members of the family. They talked to administrators (Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, Martin Ritt, George Roy Hill), well-known actors and writers, non-famous individuals. A highschool hunk from Woodward, for instance.

Newman was indignant with the e-book venture. At some point he struck a match and burned the tapes, although not earlier than transcribing them on paper. As soon as Ethan Hawke seemed on the transcripts, he knew he had a film. He employed actors he knew to learn among the excerpts, in character.

Early after which all through “The Final Film Stars,” we see Hawke on Zoom Calls, within the midst of a pandemic, explaining his strategy to Laura Linney (who voices the Woodward materials), George Clooney (Newman), and a deep bench of an ensemble that features Sally. Subject, Sam Rockwell, Oscar Isaac and so forth. There’s sufficient of Hawke speaking concerning the venture, whereas we’re watching the venture, to court docket catastrophe. The director needs “The Final Film Stars” to be a real-time account of his personal filmmaking course of, in addition to doing the proper factor by Newman and Woodward.

Inevitably, there are occasions whenever you suppose: OK, how about we get again to enterprise? Miraculously, nonetheless, all six components come collectively and construct in wondrous methods. The episodes are expansive sufficient to accommodate every little thing Hawke (whose earlier directorial work contains the attractive “Seymour: An Introduction”) has in thoughts. And foremost on his thoughts is his fascination with two fascinating puzzles, right here, pleasingly, made rather less enigmatic.

Amplifying the treasure trove of audio transcripts, “The Final Film Stars” attracts on a number of current movies and stills from Newman and Woodward, spanning the many years. (Woodward continues to be with us; Newman died in 2008.) Within the formidable coaching floor of the Actors Studio, Newman, from Shaker Heights, Ohio, felt fully outmatched by wild hares like Marlon Brando, James Dean, Ben Gazzara, Rip Torn . They had been all “assured and energetic… no talking, no ‘performing’.”

Woodward, a local of Thomasville, Georgia, was accepted into the ranks of the Actors Studio early on. The pair had been forged in William Inge’s demurely sultry drama “Picnic,” which opened on Broadway in 1953. Newman performed the nation membership milquetoast Alan, although he longed to play the stallion Hal and ultimately changed Ralph Meeker within the title function.

As Hal’s understudy, he practiced the attractive dance duet together with his fellow understudy, Woodward, backstage throughout performances. They could not preserve their palms off one another. Newman’s spouse and her three kids lastly came upon what was happening, years later. Within the documentary, Newman’s daughter, Stephanie, says that she felt “disgusted” by her father. However she provides: disgust “wasn’t the one feeling.”

Woodward married Newman in 1958, a number of months earlier than they had been paired on display in “The Lengthy Sizzling Summer season.” That movie, launched simply earlier than Newman co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Sizzling Tin Roof,” cemented Newman’s blue eyes and sweaty torso within the eyes of an avid viewers. Woodward’s attraction was not the identical. Neither was her rank or her unadorned authenticity. She knew who she was and find out how to play her who she wasn’t. Newman was extra cautious by temperament and by expertise. At one level, Clooney-as-Newman confesses to feeling like “a set of outdated characters (that I’ve) performed,” united “right into a type of human being.”

For Newman, the early, unflattering comparisons to Brando and James Dean had been an excessive amount of to disregard. His luck, which he says started “by being born white in the USA in 1925,” continued when he bought his massive break within the films as Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Favored Me (1956). He bought the half solely as a result of Dean, initially forged, was killed in a automobile accident.

“His group emotionally was common,” says director Martin Ritt at one level within the documentary. “Or lower than common.” However he labored onerous and bought higher, and by the point of “The Hustler,” “Hud” and “Cool Hand Luke,” Newman had change into his personal type of film star.

Director Hawke addresses Newman’s probably alcoholism (nothing “probably” about it, in line with a minimum of two of his sons) and, extra obliquely, an affair that coincided with Newman’s admittedly low level and highest consuming. All of this arises from, and thru, the themes of “The Final Film Stars” as components of an entire. Hawke’s editor, Barry Poltermann, is a wizard weaving collectively newsreel footage; stills (at one level we see Newman within the backseat of a limousine with an uncredited Roger Ebert); Display screen zoom; and judiciously chosen examples from Newman and Woodward’s movie careers, from the earliest reside tv exhibits to “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” (1990).

To Newman, Woodward was the actual actor within the household, not a fraud or pretender like himself. She was profitable lengthy earlier than him, profitable the Academy Award for greatest actress for “The Three Faces of Eve” (1957). She then delayed her personal profession to boost her three kids, along with the three from Newman’s first marriage. “If she needed to do it over again,” says Linney (as Woodward) at one level, “she may not have had kids.”

The non-public correspondence between Paul and Joanne brings out an intimate and silent high quality of confession in marriage. “I miss you,” Woodward writes to Newman at one level. “I have no idea who you might be. However I miss you anyway. I simply want you had been joyful and that you possibly can say what you are feeling, not simply what you suppose.” You do not have to be Joanne Woodward or Paul Newman to acknowledge the emotional terrain of that panorama. “The Final Film Stars” is greater than only a mash word; it is a triumph of cinematic love, in addition to an incisive exploration of two fully completely different personalities that made excellent and imperfect sense collectively.

“The Final Film Stars” — 4 stars (of 4)

Content material ranking: TV-MA (language)

Execution time: Six episodes, roughly six hours.

Tips on how to watch: All episodes premiere July 21 on HBO Max

Michael Phillips is a critic for the Tribune.

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Twitter @phillipstribune

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