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So Long Luke-Paul Newman 1925-2008 by Blahgzilla on Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:12 pm |
Paul Newman died Friday following a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was 83.
I had an aunt that loved movies, and one of her favourite actors was Paul Newman. Like most women, she was enamored of his famous blue eyes. I can remember reading an interview that Newman gave once, where he was asked about the fact that female fans would always want to look at his eyes whenever they saw him. He said he always felt it was something of an intrusion, akin to "asking a woman to show her tits.".
This was part of Newman's charisma, the attitude that he brought to his movies. Cool Hand Luke was one of my aunt's favourite movies, and after watching it myself, I could see why. Luke was a man who did things his own way, and he wasn't going to conform to the rules of the prison farm he was sent to , becoming an idol to the other prisoners, and a thorn in the side of the "Bosses" who relentlessly tried to break him. "What we have here is....failure to communicate!"
He gets worn down to the point that he becomes compliant, but is he really, or is it merely a means of achieving non-compliance? At the end, Lucas Jackson's spirit could not be broken, and this is what resonates with many. The idea that you can break my back, but you won't break my heart.
This is how Newman lived out the last months of his life, continuing to do his charitable work and even taking a race car for a spin around the track one last time. His greatest legacy, Newman's Own, will continue to generate much needed money for a number of charities, among them, the Hole In The Wall Camps. This organization was particularily close to Paul's heart, as it gave children with serious illnesses a chance to go to camp; to escape the reality of their situation if only for a while, and to laugh and enjoy life.
A lot of us at one time or another have been Lucas Jackson, or at least we hoped to be anyway. To endure tortuous hell and... [ Continued ]
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