128. Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Ethan Hawke & HBO's 'The Last Movie Stars' (2022)

Show Notes

Ethan Hawke's meta-documentary about the lives, love, losses, and careers of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward is a worthwhile, often confounding effort with rewards and challenges alike. 

In this episode Jason talks about the origin of the documentary in the discovery of some transcripts of interviews conducted by a Newman associate in pursuit of a memoir and biography that Newman wanted to work on.  For unknown reasons, Newman later abandoned the project and burned the audio tapes.  But the transcripts survived and form the basis for actor-interpreted versions used in Hawke's documentary to varying degrees of success.  

The documentary tackles weighty issues like the loss of Newman's son Scott, the struggle within a marriage to survive the orbital tilt of Newman's level of super-stardom, and Newman's battle with alcoholism...a battle it seems he never quite won.

By turns infuriating and moving, the film is a worthy but effortful watch.  

Also discussed: Alan Cummings lip-sync performance in the documentary 'My Old School', the AI Bourdain quotes used in his posthumous doc, and Peter Jackson's use of machine learning processes to reveal (or create) conversations in 'The Beatles: Get Back'.