Central Casting Part III

Paul Newman and Elke Sommer in The Prize (1963)

First of all I want to say that Paul Newman was by all accounts a very good man. Everybody from the town where GSL spent his early childhood, Westport Connecticut, has an anecdote about how kind and considerate he always was which stood in stark contrast to how Martha Stewart carried herself when interacting with the neighbors. Paul Newman gave zillions of dollars to charity and stayed married to the same wonderful woman, Joanne Woodward, all the way to the end.  But why on earth would they cast him as a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in The Prize (1963)...and when he was only 38? Paul Newman was fabulous in Cool Hand Luke, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, The Hustler, et al. I'd like to recommend two movies he made with his wonderful wife Joanne Woodward,The Long Hot Summer and the very charming, and often overlooked A New Kind of Love about Fashion Week in Paris. Paul Newman was great as Fast Eddie and Cool Hand Luke but to play a Nobel Laureate requires a bit of gravitas that wasn't in his repertoire.

Leo in Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York was supposed to be Martin Scorsese's magnum opus that was delayed for years, ran tens of millions of dollars over budget, and his financial backers were getting more than skittish so I feel this led to the poor decision of casting Leo Dicaprio as the young street tough Amsterdam Vallon.  This was not long after his huge commercial and critical success in Titanic and he was good in that role and several others as well.  The movie was a big disappointment for a lot of reasons and some of the blame should be on miscasting Leo. Colin Farrell would have been much better in the rough and tumble milieu of lower Manhattan in the 1860s. Daniel Day Lewis was superb as Bill the Butcher in a performance that left you feeling rueful for what might have been.

*** A couple of days ago Leo emerged from one of his 4 homes (that he ferries to via private jet when he isn't renting the world's 5th largest yacht from a United Arab Emirates oil billionaire) to go to the United Nations to lecture the rest of the world about how we need to lower carbon dioxide emissions.

Dustin Hoffman and Nicole Kidman in Billy Bathgate (1991)
 

Dustin Hoffman is the male counterpart to Meryl Streep. A great acting talent who has been very good in a number of roles but I can never stop feeling him acting. Like Ms Streep, he loves to do accents and they always sound as if he's been talking that way for about 3 hours. In Billy Bathgate Hoffman sounded like little GSL circa 1970 doing his Edward G. Robinson Little Caesar impersonation for the girls medley relay team.  This role would have been much better suited for Hoffman's old roommates when they were all just starting out back in the mid 1960s: Gene Hackman or Robert Duvall who I rate as the two best American actors.  Hackman and Duvall actually look and sound like guys who could kick somebody's ass.  Hoffman was convincing in Midnight Cowboy but I really don't think he could make Mrs. Robinson go coo-coo-ca-chew.

Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967).