I was shocked and saddened to hear this, even though I knew he announced a few months ago he was too ill to continue acting and retreated in seclusion to his Connecticut home. He was a sensational talent, an irresistible screen presence, a blue-eyed delight. He was one of my favorite actors, and starred on some of my all-time favorite films: Cool Hand Luke, Slap Shot, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Road to Perdition. He’s been in many, many others films I’ve liked, but those four are part of a set of movies that are just special, awe-inspiring, and even deeply personal to me. These are films I’ve seen so many times I can’t count: I own them on DVD, and I’ll pop them into the player every once and while for inspiration.

Newman seemed ubiquitous throughout his career, but in fact he wasn’t: According the the IMDb, Paul Newman had an acting career that stretched back fifty-five years, and he appeared in sixty-four films (he had seventeen additional appearances on anthology or live drama television shows). This is one and one-sixth movie per year. If you figure a time commitment of four months per movie, he kept a darn casual work schedule. Plenty of time for car racing, inventing salad dressings, and an impressive body of charitable work.

Part of this was probably being choosy about his roles. every marquee-level actor has the misfortune or poor judgement to wind up fronting the occasional turkey, but Paul Newman managed to keep his bad film quotient very low. He probably has the highest number of quality performances in excellent films by percentage than anyone of his caliber. In fact, he considered his very first starring role his worst: The Silver Chalice (d. Victor Saville, 1954).

The Paul Newman films I’d call ill-considered on his part were really just curiosities, rather than examples of out-and-out bad cinema. And at least the ones I’ve seen there is a solid reason he consented to star in them. Paul Newman was not an “anything for a paycheck” actor: in fact I think these films were a reflection of his loyalty to his movie-industry associates.

When Time Ran Out (d. James Goldstone, 1980) was an overblown, silly bit of bombast, the door slamming closed on the disaster-film craze of the 1970s. It was produced by disaster-movie maven Irwin Allen, and by all accounts he had everything to do with that dumptruck full of money they backed up into Newman’s driveway for appearing in The Towering Inferno. Newman knows how to repay a favor, apparently.

He also co-starred with Lee Marvin in a nearly forgotten low-budget movie called Pocket Money (1972), an intensely boring little movie about shady cattle dealings in Mexico. A strange, Western-feeling film with an improbable jazz soundtrack and a theme song done by Carole King. Paul Newman probably consented to do this movie for the director: Stuart Rosenberg, the director of Cool Hand Luke. It also featured a few of his co-stars from that earlier classic: Wayne (”M*A*S*H”) Rogers and Strother Martin.

There is an interesting relationship between Paul Newman and Strother Martin (1919-1980). One of the finest character actors of his time, he worked with John Ford and Sam Peckinpah on big-budget Westerns, as well as starring in wonderful schlock like Ssssssss (1973) and The Brotherhood of Satan (1971), he appeared four times with Paul Newman (Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Pocket Money, and Slap Shot). In fact, you can define Strother Martin as a character actor by his on-screen relationship with Newman: “What we have here… is failure to communicate.” Strother Martin’s acting career started roughly the same time as Paul Newman’s, but he appeared in twice as many films and TV shows. I guess character actors have to work harder.

You could define Strother Martin without Paul Newman, but he would seem less compelling. The same goes for Paul Newman and Hollywood: His presence and influence made the movie industry a much better place. The same goes for all of us: Everyone who appreciated and enjoyed Newman were made a little better for having known and loved his work.

–Skot C.

Evidence of Doom: Yes Man (Christmas 2008). “Jim Carrey Stars as man who must say ‘yes’ for a whole year.” Wow, such a familiar premise… The trailer shows the story is a little more reality-based and biographical than, say, Liar Liar, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Not nearly, nearly, nearly enough.

Further Evidence: The Love Guru (out and gone) and Meet Dave (out and gone). These seem to be cut from the same chintzy cloth as Yes Man: More-of-the-same comedy-star vehicles. I’m tempted to throw in You Don’t Mess With The Zohan as an additional example but that thing did nearly $100M in business: Guru and Dave will be lucky to cover advertising and distribution costs.

Interpretation: The comedy-star stalwarts have been completely hamstrung by Judd Apatow. He introduced a completely new form of movie comedy: smaller, more intimate, relationship-based. Made the stalwarts efforts seem almost quaint (and certainly tone-deaf and clueless) in comparison.

Evidence of Hope: Watchmen (2009). A remarkable graphic novel from the 1980s gets it’s turn as a motion picture. I have maintained the thing is pretty much unfilmable– but that was until I saw the trailer. Pretty much shot-for-panel, and definitely keeping in the 80’s alternate-universe spirit of the original. Best of all: no big stars. Billy Crudup, Jackie Earle Haley, and… Matt Frewer? (actually, Matt “Max Headroom” Frewer is a casting signifier: When he is in a film it means “this movie was made in Canada.”

Further Evidence: Star Trek (2009). It’s biggest star is Chris Pine, or maybe Simon Pegg. More for the effects budget.

Interpretation: The technology is more or less in place to bring comic book or sci-fi movies to startlingly realistic life. Filling these movies with lesser-known or lower-listing actors is a guarantee the money is going to be spent wowing the audience, rather than lining already-stuffed pockets.

And people WANT to see comic-book movies– I think The Dark Night is going to top $200M in less than a week. We have an IMAX theatre here in SF, and I REALLY want to see it in that format, but I have still not been able to get a ticket for it, even at midnight. Good sign indeed.

–Skot C.

Last fall John (the co-writer of the thing) and I took a free half-hour of advice from Robert Hawk, a New York indie heavyweight. He suggested a staged reading. Sounded like a good idea, so when we had draft thirteen locked, we got the ball rolling.

It’s been an interesting experience, and we haven’t even put the thing on yet.

It started with auditions: Sixty-five applicants, mostly women (the majority of roles in the screenplay are for actresses) narrowed down to eight: One exceptional actress to read the protagonist, four fine actresses to read the 30-odd other female roles, two excellent actors for the male parts, and a leather-lunged voice-over specialist to read the “left-hand:” The scene headers and descriptions, about 16,000 words.

After the very first table reading with the full cast, John and I made a crucial discovery: A film script may jump off the page when it is being read silently, but when it’s being read out loud by a narrator and actors those little left-hand descriptions that seem so important to a scene’s definition mostly killed the actor’s momentum. So a big job two weekends ago was to produce a special “Staged Reading” version of the script with lots of left-hand blah-blah cut out to allow unbroken stretches of dialog.

This is all new to us. I can’t tell you who is least experienced with the world of live theater, me or John. Well, I got some Children’s theater work in during High School, and I took a course in direction in college, but neither of us as far as I know has ever taken an acting class.

The most interesting aspect is how the thing has mushroomed in terms of the importance of the event. It was originally intended to workshop the script– just the actors, John and I, running the whole script to find out what works and what doesn’t. As things have turned out, events have somewhat overtaken us: The buzz the story generated (as I mentioned a while ago, it kills every time we pitch it) has got some people interesting in attending the reading. L.A. people.

It’s set to go off in less than two weeks. Stay tuned.

–Skot C.

Really, nobody needed convincing: the short was shot and edited in 1080 HD. However, the Mill Gallery preview screening was from a standard-def DVD. For the time being, SD is the format most people will see this film– as a screening or general-release DVD.

Just last weekend the editor of “Arrangements” prepared a QuickTime version of the final cut. Since it was in HDV format, the file fit just fine on a standard DVD-R. That’s one of the things I like about HDV: the data stream is comparable to standard-def DVCAM, yet has six times the resolution.

This QuickTime, with a little shoehorning and a streamlined data path, laid back onto an HDV tape just fine. This tape is the definitive submaster of “Arrangements,” with resolution and color space matching the final cut exactly. Unfortunately, the Santa Cruz Film Festival requirement for HD projection called for an HDCAM tape master.

HDCAM is the tape standard for high definition broadcast, an update of the Betacam and Digital Betacam form factor. HDCAM decks are exceedingly expensive: a decent recording deck with a useful suite of features runs about US$75,000. No, we don’t have one of those yet. But a dub house in San Francisco owed my company a favor or two and they got the HDCAM dub done for a nice discount.

On the other end of this process, having an HDV submaster meant I had the ability to screen the film easily and in full resolution on any HD monitor. This brings us back to the preview screening at the Mill Gallery: When I left that first screening I thought of Guy’s Movie Night at my friend Daev’s place in Santa Cruz. Weeks before, as noted here, we watched Live Free or Die Hard there, projected from a top-flight, fine-resolution Panasonic video projector onto a 120” diagonal screen.

A few phone calls and some coordination with Chip and another screening was organized. This one was smaller in audience than the Gallery preview, but all in attendance (who included Chip the director; Faye the producer; Matt the DP; Summer the art director; and Gina Marie the star) got to really see the film for the first time in it’s finest, most artistically true form: 10 feet wide, in insanely detailed 1080i, straight from the HDV submaster.

The subtleties of the production could be easily seen in this screening, elements that due to presentation difficulties were hard to see in the preview screening. The clarity of the image complemented the subtle acting in the longer scenes, and made the short montages more startling and lively. Summer’s art direction also became readily apparent, and the level of detail her department put into it was remarkable. the custom-made text on medicine bottles and written forms were easily read: the prop and furnishing placements were also proportional and realistic.

It was nice to be able to facilitate a screening that immersed the filmmakers so throughly in the world of their creation. If anything, it showcased what is possible with High Definition cinema: the technology now exists to allow independent filmmakers to produce images on par with their high-budget kin.

Next up: The SCFF premiere. This phase could prove quite interesting…

–Skot

Something…

But there was definitely, definitely something I liked about one of the later shows. Something that sort of drew me back, again and again…

Something…

I believe it was some sort of intangible element, something that transcended the writing and storytelling. It was a new sort of angle for the Star Trek franchise, one that breathed new life into the space opera (hah!) and had a positive effect on ratings.

Something…

Nah. It’s gone. Can’t recall. I really need to get my research in order before I post stuff like this.

Something…

Whatever it was, it was pretty great.

–Skot C.

p.s. “ST: Voyager” can be seen late at night on SpikeTV, at no predictable time.