Sam Mendes Remembers

Road_To_Perdition.jpg

This is one of the most moving personal remembrances of Paul Newman I have yet read – it’s by Sam Mendes who directed Road to Perdition.

I am not sure why I have found it the most moving – I’ve read them all … but I believe it is because it is so specific. I love the bit about Newman standing on his hands to entertain the kids in the cast (at age 76) and bringing in steak sandwiches for the cast to try. Right after breakfast.

And then there’s this:

There was another occasion when we were rehearsing and I offered to hang by and pick him up in my car. So my driver stopped, and I told him we were picking up Paul Newman, and he got nervous — visibly nervous. So then Paul got in the car and suddenly, having driven very normally until this point, my driver takes off like an absolute lunatic at 80 miles an hour through the center of Chicago! Because in his book he’s not only driving Paul Newman the movie star but also Paul Newman the race-car driver. And Paul’s just sitting there calmly reading the front page of the New York Times. He perused the paper very casually as we were ducking and diving through the center of Chicago. And we finally screeched to a halt and Paul put down his paper and looked over his little specs and just said, “Nice driving.” He knew exactly what the driver was doing — showing off. Paul must have gotten that all the time.

Go read the whole thing.

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3 Responses to Sam Mendes Remembers

  1. Bernard says:

    I love the walking on hands story. That tells volumes, doesn’t it?

    Road to Perdition is one of my favorite movies, as much for the cinematography as anything. Wasn’t that Conrad Hall’s last movie? It’s almost as though an atmosphere of wonder and longing–a premonition if you like–suffuses the way he filmed it.

  2. Noonz says:

    Man, everyone should be as classy as Newman was.

    And you know that driver held his head a little higher for the rest of that day…

  3. red says:

    Noonz – I love that Newman immediately picked up on the fact (probably from the first moment the driver put the pedal to the metal) that the driver was showing off … and so he gave him the props at the end of the ride. But not in an overly gushing way that could have come off as condescending … just a quick blunt comment, “Nice driving” – which probably would resonate MUCH better with a driver than any other kind of compliment. So classy.

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