Paul Newman Takes the Stand

The movie star went back to work, and I went back to daydreaming. Movie sets are great places for daydreaming, for a movie company's cameras turn even more slowly than the wheels of justice. So while I watched the slow progress of this imaginary trial, I had plenty of time to imagine an imaginary trial of my own — sort of a make-believe trial within a make-believe trial. My daydream also starred Paul Newman.

I was the prosecutor and Paul Newman was the defendant. When he took the stand, I cross-examined him mercilessly. After all, I have long believed that reporters and prosecutors have a lot in common.

I imagined myself asking, "Mr. Newman, you are charged with being an actor. How do you plead?"

And I imagined Paul Newman responding, "Guilty."

ME: And how does being an actor make you feel?

NEWMAN: Guilty.

ME: You are further charged with being a movie star. How do you plead?

NEWMAN: Guilty.

ME: And how does that make you feel?

NEWMAN: Guilty.

ME: You are also charged with being a superstar. How does that make you feel?

NEWMAN: Guilty.

ME: You are also charged with being too good-looking. How do you feel?

NEWMAN: Guilty.

ME: And you are charged with making too much money. How do you feel?

NEWMAN: Guilty.

ME: Does all of this superstar guilt have anything to do with your choosing to play a character who is not a super anything? Not a super lawyer. Not a super looker. Just a super fuckup. Is this expiation?

NEWMAN: Guilty.

ME: Mr. Newman, in this movie, you try to protect your clients' rights, but in real life, you seem to want to protect the whole world. You seem to want to save the world from nuclear destruction. How do you plead to this charge?

NEWMAN: Guilty as sin.

ME: And how does trying to save the world make you feel?

NEWMAN: A little less guilty.

"I need this wall inverted," shouted Sidney Lumet, bringing me out of my reverie. "Probably without the columns."

While they were rearranging the courtroom walls, Paul Newman slipped his outlaw feet into black wing-tip lawyer shoes but did not bother to lace them up or tie them. I followed him as he shuffled through the maze of sets and props that cluttered the cavernous Astoria Studio in Astoria, Queens. When Paul Newman was a down-and-out actor trying to break into show business thirty years ago, he knocked on the door of this studio, but they wouldn't even let him in. And now he has the largest dressing room in the joint. When we reached it, he kicked off his shoes.

We sat down, and I started cross-examining him about his dual careers, the one as a movie star (which makes him a lot of money) and the other as a world saver (which costs him a lot of money). These two roles seemed to come together in a curious way a few years ago, when he visited the White House.

"I spent about fifteen minutes with Carter in the Oval Office," Paul Newman said. "God, I was uncomfortable. But that's my problem, not his."

He had gone to the White House for a briefing because he had been named a citizen's delegate to a United Nations conference on nuclear disarmament. The actor had been speaking out against nuclear weapons for years. He had also joined the board of — and given lots of money to — the Center for Defense Information, which does its best to wage a sort of propaganda war against the Defense Department. But his appointment by the Carter administration as a delegate to the United Nations conference would be an escalation of his war against nuclear war. So he did all he could to prepare for it, reading, studying — and going to Washington D.C. to meet in the basement of the White House with David Aaron, one of the president's national-security advisers. After the briefing, Paul Newman was on his way out of the White House when he was recognized by someone.

"I was just walking down the hall, and Carter came out of a door. And we just bumped into each other.

"He said, 'What are you doing here?'"

"I said, 'Nothing.'"

"He said, 'Why don't you come on up?'"