Sketch o’the Week
This week’s subject is the late, great Paul Newman. When Newman passed away last year it occured to The Lovely Anna and I that we had never seen many of the movies that made him famous and were heralded as high points of his career. I had seen “Cool Hand Luke” a few times,¬¨‚Ć “Slap Shot” (one of the greatest sports movies of all time) and a few other Newman films from the 80’s on, but not many of his older movies.¬¨‚Ć So, we made it a point to rent some of his classics. “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” were the kind of films I was expecting, where Newman plays a rascally but ultimately likeable character with wit and depth in equal measure… the type of character I associated him with. “Hud” and “The Hustler”, on the other hand, were surprisingly depressing. Newman’s characters in those films are not very pleasant men. Considering the extreme likeability of his persona it took a lot of talent and guts to accept roles like those… it would have been a lot easier for him to just play the movie star and not take those kinds of risks. No wonder he was considered one of the all time great film actors.
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Nice one Tom – if you ever have the chance, check out The Color of Money. Great movie, where he reprises his role, from The Hustler.
Yeah, Hud’s tough to watch. He’s not an anti-hero, just an a-hole. Check out The Verdict, which I strongly recommend, screenplay by Mamet.
ha, great. i’ve seen plenty of caricatures of Newman lately, many which have caught his expression, but i like how this sketch does that but adds a lot of humor too, making it slightly more goofy.
Your sketch took me back to college. I took a course on translating books into film. We could choose from several novels, and I picked “The Hustler”. The movie’s one of the very rare instances in which the film makers improved on the book. I think Mr. Newman( along with George C. Scott and the fantastic Jackie Gleason) were some of the reasons for this. Great drawing!