Fun
Knit to This: The Last Movie Stars
Dear Ann,
If you’re looking for a reason to re-up with HBO Max for a while, here’s a good one: The Last Movie Stars.
It’s a documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, directed by Ethan Hawke, and produced during the pandemic.
The circumstances of its making are extraordinary. One of the pair’s daughters called Hawke and asked him to make the documentary. In the later years of his life, Newman had worked with screenwriter Stewart Stern to record interviews with people who had known the couple well—children, family, friends, and colleagues, among them many famous Hollywood names, including themselves. Newman later changed his mind about the project, and burned the tapes.
But the interviews had been transcribed. The absence of the tapes opened a path to something more interesting: a documentary that feels like a play, or a film, in which the parts are read by actors. Newman and Woodward are voiced by George Clooney and Laura Linney, but we also hear their real voices, on talk shows and in films.
Throughout the six parts of the documentary, Hawke chats and reminisces, enthuses and puzzles—all on Zoom, with everyone looking very Zoom-y. He cuts back and forth between passages from the interviews and perfectly chosen scenes from the couple’s films. It’s wildly entertaining and deeply moving. The children’s impulse to reveal a fuller picture of their parents was an act of great love toward them. It was also a generous gift to everyone who loved their brilliant acting and idealized their long marriage, but sensed a more complex humanity beneath the movie star glamour. The truth of their lives does not diminish them one bit, quite the contrary.
We’ll forgive the producers for mentioning Woodward’s love of knitting (yay!) while initially showing her working on a needlepoint or counted cross stitch (sigh!)—eventually we see the knitting.
Love,
Kay
I’ve been looking forward to this- I realize they were real people, with human foibles – but I’ve had such a deep love for them all my life (in that way you can love artists you do not know personally).
This looks fantastic…thanks for sharing!
Might have to trade Hulu for HBO just for this.
FANTASTIC SERIES!!! Watched it on my own then watched it again with hubby.
Glad to see your thoughts Kay. I’ve read/heard such mixed reviews that I have not dived in yet.
It was a wonderful series. I immediately watched “The Three Faces of Eve” and “Hud” after I finished. Great movies.
I look forward to watching this, especially in light of the daughter’s fight against the Paul Newman foundation. One has the sense that they loved their parents and are trying to do right by their memory.