09.29.08

Thanks, Paul Newman

Posted in write tight, writing craft at 6:44 am by Bill Brohaugh

I can add no greater praise to Paul Newman than what fans, critics and colleagues have already eloquently delivered. I have rarely used the phrase “American treasure.” I heartily apply that phrase to Newman.

Two thoughts related to both Paul Newman movies and language use come to mind:

First, the classic line from Cool Hand Luke. In an obit for Newman, I saw this line:

The movie was one of the biggest hits of 1967 and included a tagline, delivered one time by Newman and one time by prison warden Strother Martin, that helped define the generation gap, “What we’ve got here is (a) failure to communicate.”

At first, not remembering the movie precisely, I thought the insertion of “(a)” was some sort of quibbling, but the writer was actually aggregating two versions of the quote. Strother Martin, the chain-gang Captain, first says “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Paul Newman as Luke, far later in the film, says “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” I don’t know if the placement/nonplacement of the indefinite article was intentional, but I like to think that it is—transforming the general, euphemistic failure to communicate early in the film to a specific, climactic failure. (Based on the novel by Donn Pearce, by the by.)

Second, the powerful writing of Nobody’s Fool. Here I’m talking about both the Paul Newman film and the Richard Russo novel it’s based on. For an exercise in artful condensation, compare the novel with the film product, which artfully compresses incidents and characters to fit a movie timeframe. Treat yourself to the novel; treat yourself to the film. Both are excellent. I’ve not had the pleasure of enjoying another Russo-Newman pairing in the the novel and the video versions of Empire Falls, but I believe I shall now stop this little bit of blog-writing to engage in that pleasure.

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