“Why, you crazy … the fall will probably kill ya!” The big jump from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Paul Newman passed away Friday night.
** ENCOMIUMS FOR PAUL NEWMAN. The encomiums for Paul Newman continue to pour in. My recollection of the man is that he would welcome them, but with a big shaker of salt. The current hagiographies would have caused him to gag.
Warren Beatty, who knew Newman well and considered playing the Sundance Kid (ultimately played in his breakout performance by a fellow named Robert Redford) — which would have meant he’d have to wear a cowboy hat, one of his least favorite things to do — told me this weekend that Newman was “a sweet, unpretentious guy.” And the gold standard for younger actors like Beatty coming up in the seminal 1960s.
We never got the chance to appreciate Newman’s great contemporary and (mostly) friendly rival, Steve McQueen, in the fullness of his life. McQueen, who lived for a time down the hall from Beatty on the penthouse floor of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel — what an interesting elevator that was — died a most untimely death at the age of 50, way back in 1980. Also from cancer.
Newman earned five Academy Award nominations after that, including his Oscar win as best actor in The Color of Money. I was pleased to have met both Newman and McQueen back when they were vying for the crown of top box office star in the world. They both starred, and nobody is mentioning this movie, merely one of the biggest hits of the era, in a movie set in my home town called The Towering Inferno. Newman played the architect of the world’s tallest building (in San Francisco!) and McQueen played the fire chief out to save it.
A thoroughly silly film, which also starred the great Faye Dunaway, a Beatty discovery. Which megastar had the top billing, Newman or McQueen? Well, it depends on how you look at it. Literally. One had his name on the left, mindful that in English, you read left to right. One had his name slightly above the other’s. Which was which? Bygones.
Let’s hear it for Paul Newman, one of the most enduring stars in history, well into this era of disposable celebrity. A gentleman with a deep sense of humor, who turned in some of the most indelible performances in some of the most classic films of the post-war era.
** IS THIS WEEK THE DECISIVE WEEK? This coming week may be the the decisive week in the presidential race. Barack Obama has taken the lead in the race, even before his debate performance Friday night, which polls and focus groups — if not the ponderings of pundits — show was won by him over John McCain. Even though this was the debate in which John McCain was supposed to shine.
There seems to be a deal in place in the Wall Street bailout, with both candidates in various forms of support, notwithstanding the anger of most of the country toward the rocket scientists of Manhattan.
But the deal, if it is passed in short order, will not mean that the economy is out of the woods. The obvious mismanagement of the US economy by the Bush/Cheney Administration, coupled with its obvious mismanagement of two wars, will continue to be a dominant issue in the campaign. Can the McCain campaign distance itself? It certainly hasn’t so far.
** SUNDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Detroit, Michigan.
Joe Biden is in Detroit, Michigan.
John McCain is in Washington, DC.
Sarah Palin is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, off the campaign trail cramming for her vice presidential Thursday night against Biden.
** ANOTHER POLL SAYS OBAMA WON THE DEBATE. The new USA Today/Gallup Poll shows Barack Obama defeating John McCain in Friday night’s debate, 46% to 24%. Obama did even better on the question of who has the best proposals to solve America’s problems, out-pointing McCain, 52% to 35%.
** TINA FEY TEES OFF ON SARAH PALIN AGAIN. Tina Fey, fresh off her Emmy wins last weekend as a comedy actress and writer, did her dead-on impersonation of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin again on Saturday Night Live. Most of Fey’s dialogue is actually lifted from the real Palin interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric. With a few further amusing tweaks.
** FAR RIGHT GROUP BACKS OFF SCHWARZENEGGER RECALL. The far right California Republican Assembly (CRA) voted yesterday to “investigate” the recall of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger threatened by the state’s prison guards union. The union, which once ran roughshod over state politics, has been working without a contract for two years. CRA president Mike Spence, who came onto NWN last year to defend his characterization of then Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez as “a Communist fellow traveler,” backs the recall on account of Schwarzenegger’s insufficient conservatism.
Paul Newman, seen in this classic scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, has passed away.
** THE GUY IN MY REFRIGERATOR. The man whose picture has been in my refrigerator for 25 years has passed away. That would be Paul Newman, who said of his Newman’s Own salad dressing: “The sad thing is that the salad dressing out-grosses my films.” He was being amusing, as usual. The proceeds, incidentally, went to charity.
Paul Newman died of cancer last night at his home in Westport, Connecticut. His illness, which came on this year, had been kept private. He was 83.
Newman was one of the biggest stars in the history of movies, equally adept at playing the hero and the anti-hero. Like his mostly friendly rival, Steve McQueen, Newman set the standard in the ’60s for the action-oriented matinee idol. Like McQueen, he was also a top race car driver, finishing second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and running a US racing outfit for decades. Yet offscreen, he was a staunch political activist. He said he was prouder of making the Nixon enemies list than he was of his 10 Academy Award nominations.
Among his classic roles: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke (“What we got here is failure to communicate”), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (perhaps my boyhood favorite), The Sting, Absence of Malice (not an inducement to journalism), The Verdict (not an inducement to lawyering), The Color of Money (in which Newman won the Oscar he was nominated for in The Hustler by playing the older-but-wiser Fast Eddie Felson, who can teach that whipper-snapper Tom Cruise a thing or three), and Road To Perdition (his last Oscar-nominated role, in which he plays the current 007′s dad).
Newman was a great gentleman, a Hollywood oddity in that he was married to the same woman, Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward, for 50 years. “When you have steak at home,” Newman quipped, “why go out for hamburger?”
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it this way: “Paul Newman was the ultimate cool guy, who men wanted to be like and women adored. He was an American icon, a brilliant actor, a Renaissance man and a generous but modest philanthropist. He entertained millions in some of Hollywood’s most memorable roles ever, and he brightened the lives of many more, especially seriously ill children, through his charitable works. Paul was one of a kind.”
The Fox News focus group in Las Vegas had Barack Obama as the winner of last night’s presidential debate over John McCain.
** FRIDAY NIGHT’S DEBATE: ADVANTAGE OBAMA. As I predicted yesterday, Barack Obama emerged from last night’s debate with the edge over John McCain. Neither candidate did what I thought they needed to do. McCain, I felt, needed to find a way to distance himself from his own deregulationist philosophy. I suppose he did, in a way, by going on and on about earmark reform. But, at $18 billion total, that’s Potomac-speak that most voters don’t relate to, and a drop in the bucket when it comes to the federal budget. Compared to his hundreds of billions in proposed tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. As Obama pointed out.
Obama didn’t really depart from his cool persona, which many find off-putting, but others find authoritative. He didn’t need to start waving his arms and shouting like Hubert Humphrey or Huey Long, but a more visceral identification with “they,” as he referred to the middle class, by which he means “we” before he became a best-selling author, is advisable.
But Obama did enough. He was very strong right out of the gate. At 18 minutes in, I texted a friend and told her Obama was owning the thing. Since the financial crisis portion of the supposed foreign policy debate went on for 40 of its 95 minutes, it was a real advantage for the freshman Illinois senator. Even though he stopped being aggressive by linking everything back to McCain’s support of the Bush/Cheney economic program and let McCain argue on Republican grounds, increasingly content to counter-punch. Nevertheless, Obama had the clear edge over McCain in the first roughly half of the debate.
And he was quite good in the geopolitics portion, showing in-depth knowledge and a cool command of the concepts. He was especially good when McCain tried to make the Iraq surge his winning issue, withering the Vietnam War hero with a barrage of reminders of how inaccurate his assessments of Iraq had been when it came time to invade in 2003.
Obama did struggle some with McCain’s effective attacks on Iran and Obama’s advocacy of talks “without preconditions” with its leader and those of other hostile nations. But McCain did himself no favors by getting the name of Pakistan’s new leader wrong and by repeatedly mispronouncing the name of Iranian boogeyman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
He also committed a gaffe by claiming that Pakistan was a “failed state” when Musharaff became president. That’s a term of art that applied to Afghanistan, which is what I initially thought he said, but not Pakistan.
McCain looked frequently angry and was continually condescending. Obama was friendlier, on the surface, repeatedly agreeing with McCain on something and then slipping the knife in.
Having a sense of where the undecided independents and fringe Democrats are on these things, it was clear that McCain’s pique toward Obama — which I noticed and wrote about in May – was getting the better of his performance.
The two public polls, CNN and CBS, bore that out, with both showing Obama to be the winner.
Next Thursday night is the vice presidential debate, between Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Biden, incidentally, was on all the news nets last night spinning for Obama in the debate’s aftermath. Palin, in contrast, after her unintentionally amusing interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric, was nowhere to be seen.
SATURDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Greensborough, North Carolina, Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Washington, DC. He and Joe Biden have big rallies in battleground states North Carolina and Virginia.
Joe Biden is in Greensborough, North Carolina, Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Washington, DC.
John McCain is in Washington, DC, working on the Wall Street bailout.
Sarah Palin is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with no public events. I presume she is studying up for her debate, but she’s doing so badly I hesitate to ask.
** SCHMIDT’S ARRIVED. The guests on Sunday’s Meet The Press are former President Bill Clinton, Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, and McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt, who ran Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 re-election campaign.
** THAT FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE WE’RE NOT HAVING. Let’s face it. This has been a disappointing campaign. Two very interesting candidates. Some of the biggest issues going, both within and without the US, and they have to blow up in our faces to get much attention. Then there’s the ridiculous media coverage. Which brings us to tonight’s foreign policy debate, which is finally back on.
Part of the problem is what it’s called. Because foreign policy is not “foreign,” it’s geopolitics. The underlying essential dynamics of geopolitics deeply affect domestic politics. In the flows of energy and capital and products and people, in our military budget, and in flash-point electoral politics. When there is debate, we end up debating symptoms — illegal immigration from Mexico, a surge in Iraq — rather than systems. … From yesterday’s Huffington Post column.
** F1 SUNDAY. The globe-spanning Formula One racing circuit moves from Europe to Asia for the Singapore Grand Prix. England’s own Lewis Hamilton, the first black driver in F1, continues his duel for the world race driving championship with Brazilian Felipe Massa of Ferrari. With four grand prix races to go — Singapore, Japan, China, and Brazil — Hamilton leads Massa by one point. The race starts at 5 AM Pacific on Speed TV.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA. Here is my series of five columns for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, whose columns are also included.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed Friday at $106.89 per barrel. The global oil market is reacting to the proposed massive American move to stabilize Wall Street. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
The drop of over $41 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
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| Comments (55) |
This is a wonderful remembrance of Paul Newman.
The fall will probly kill ya.
I love that scene. Great reminiscence from Warren Beatty, too.
Is there something confusing, Carole, about 56 to 39?
I thought you were back in reality.
carole w:
How do we know California voters will trend according to the polls? What influenced the last primary to go to Hillary Clinton , when the polls claimed Obama was winning the state? What is the historic accuracy of poll samples versus actual winning votes? Is that the calculated 3% error margin? What does Schmidt have up his sleeve next? Will either
What new video today?
Excelente Blog, suas dicas me ajudaram muito.