A little known fact about me is that I love old movies. When I saw that Ethan Hawke directed and released “The Last Movie Stars,” a six-part documentary on the lives and love of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, I was immediately sold. And I binge watched the whole thing.
At the beginning of the first episode, Hawke relates the story of how Paul Newman had his friend Stuart Stern record interviews with friends, co-workers, and other movie stars during the late 80s. Around 1991, Newman asked Stern to stop working on the project. In 1998, Newman took the tapes from the interviews and set them on fire. A few years ago, Newman’s daughters recovered the transcripts of the interviews. Because apparently Stern knew well enough to keep a paper-trail. The Hawke documentary and the completed autobiography both came from those transcripts. And that brings us to my most anticipated book for the fall of 2022:
“The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir” by Paul Newman, coming October 18th
Why I’m looking forward to this book
The autobiography isn’t related to the documentary series that Ethan Hawke directed, but I certainly hope that it will have answers to some of the questions I had after watching the series.
Like: “What kept him motivated when he felt that he wasn’t as talented as Joanne Woodward and Marlon Brando? How did that envy of his wife affect their relationship? What was his take on what happened to her career after she was ‘mommy-tracked‘?”
“Was the decision to put his face on the ‘Newman’s Own’ products driven by his ambivalence about his looks and ultimately a brilliant way to raise money for charity?”
“How exactly did that five-year affair with Joanne Woodward play out because five years is an awfully long time?”
and “What insights did he have about addiction after struggling with his own alcoholism and losing his son to a drug overdose?”
“The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man : A Memoir” will be released on October 18th.
