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Yosemite morning
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Paul Newman
He was a great human being and a very good film actor, not a genius like Brando, or Montgomery Clift, but very good nonetheless, if i had to pick one film of his to watch it would be "The Verdict"...
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4 comments:
Loved hudsucker proxy...
Two words Grumpy: "Oh brother"
you know, i didn't mean to take anything from Newman, believe me, he was terrific, i loved Hud, The Verdict, Butch Cassidy, etc (thanks for the tip on Hudsucker, Rbt), it's just that Marlon and Monty, for me, occupy the very highest rung on the ladder, along with Bogart for sure, maybe Hoffman and DeNiro, too...
10/05/88
Speaking as a lawyer with 32+ years of practice now behind me
(35+, if you count the three years of law school) - and having, as "experienced and long-time veterans" in any profession will say, "seen it all" - I can only say from the heart (and from the "combat fatigue" which inevitably comes with those long years of practice, and which brings with it a quiet state of near-serene calm, understanding, and acceptance - such as occurs in the endings of many of Henry James' short stories, or what Wallace Stevens (who was a surety bond lawyer for most of his working life with The Hartford Accident & Indemnity Company) called that state of perception where one finally deals "...not [with] Ideas about The Thing, but with The Thing itself") - that the two films which are at the unchallenged head of my list for the truthful (not the wishful, nor the imagined, but the truthful) depiction of lawyers and the actual (and frequently bloody) practice of the law are "The Verdict," starring Paul Newman, Jack Warden and James Mason (directed by Sidney Lumet, screenplay by David Mamet), and "A Civil Action," starring John Travolta, John Lithgow, Robert H. Macy, James Gandolfini, and an ice-cold, "dead-on" Robert Duvall (who plays a senior litigation partner in the blue-chip Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr - which amazingly allowed large parts of the film to actually be shot in its headquarters offices)(produced by Scott Rudin, Robert Redford and Rachel Pfeffer, directed by Steven Zaillian, screenplay by Steven Zaillian after a book by Jonathan Harr).
These two films absolutely show you, in "high definition," the real face of the legal profession. Newman is superb in his depiction of Frank Galvin, a down on his luck, once-Boston establishment "on track for Partner" high-stakes lawyer, but now fallen into being a seedy, solo practice "ambulance chaser," an alcoholic, and having lost all but a faint glimmer of his personal integrity and self-respect. He gets a chance for redemption with a medical malpractice case, which he refuses to settle, but doggedly pursues all the way to trial. His short closing statement to the jury is pure life-weariness, pure honesty, and, if you will, pure prayer.
"A Civil Action" is another comment, for another day. Suffice it to say that Robert Duvall is someone that I have sat across the negotiating table from many, many times. Like Dick Cheney, when you are looking at him, you are looking at "stone-cold reality - and amoral venality" straight in the eye.
RIP, Paul. We have lost "one of the righteous."
JudgeRoyBean
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