good-bye paul

paul newman died today. (well, technically yesterday.) i was a fan. this is one of my favorite pictures of him, standing alongside robert redford, outfitted for the 1969 film 'butch cassidy and the sundance kid.' this may be my second favorite picture of him. my all-time favorite image was a portrait my mate jean-lucien drew a long time ago. he drew paul newman from 'the sting.' the likeness was photographic, right down to the cool life in his legendary blue eyes. since i don't have access to that incredible portrait, i decided to use this one. i have some very personal, special memories associated with 'butch cassidy and the sundance kid.' like the weekend i was dogsitting in a great old house for a friend of mine. i was there all alone. that movie was on. i watched some of it sitting up to my neck in bubbles in an old-fashioned claw-footed cast iron bathtub. it kept me from getting the 'house creeps' too hard. man, the house was way out in the woods. anyway, that's only one of the fond memories i have of the great paul newman. i guess its corny to talk about how much i love the bicycle sequence with katherine ross. oh well, enough said, i suppose. sleep well, paul. you did just about everything right and you looked beautiful doing it. thanks.

f is for fox ...james fox (and fonda)

okay, this is a little unfair to james fox. you'll see below that i just paid a sincere and dignified tribute to james' older brother edward, and i was going to be equally sober in paying tribute to james, but then i found this photo. it was taken during the filming of the 1966 arthur penn film 'the chase.' that's james there on the right. the dude holding up janie's other buttcheek is robert redford who also starred in the production. i've never seen the whole movie, so i can't say much about it, but i thought this picture was such a 'backstage party' scream that i just couldn't let it go. swig on, with that brown bottle of beer, janie baby! man, i can only imagine what deep emotional scars might have been left if one of the male co-stars had commented upon setting her back down, '...wow, honey...you're a lot heavier than i thought you would be.' it does kind of look like james is having a hell of a time keeping her up there. i should be fair to james and mention he sparkled and rocked as chaz in one of my all-time favorite films, donald cammel and nicholas roeg's 1970 counter-culture masterpiece 'perfomance.' i guess little miss janie deserves her own 'F ' spot, doesn't she? (mmm, am i the only one who think that sounds eee-dirty?) click to enlarge.