The Last Movie Stars, about power couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, also proves a devastating portrait of an era
The synopsis of The Last Movie Stars, HBO’s new six-part documentary about Hollywood power couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, doesn’t look promising on paper. Filmed at the height of Covid, it is directed and hosted by Ethan Hawke and threatens us with a long list of A-list actors appearing via Zoom to assume various characters. The source material – hundreds of hours of transcripts from interviews commissioned by Newman for a biography that never materialised – tells the story not just of the couple and their careers, but of an era, a marriage and an industry. All of which sounds fine, within its limitations. But who has the time or appetite for six hours of this stuff?
As it turns out, watching The Last Movie Stars is an extraordinary experience. As a documentary, it’s different in form to Peter Jackson’s Get Back, the eight hours of recut studio footage from the Beatles’ 1969 recording session. The Last Movie Stars is a more conventional project, with commentary and talking heads intercut with archive footage from Newman and Woodward’s filmography. And yet the depth of the material and the sheer boldness of the show’s length invite a similar sense of immersion to Get Back. Newman burned all the audio tapes from which the transcripts derive, for reasons that, as the show progresses, become obvious: the revelations are so intimate, so startling and at times so devastating, it’s amazing they existed in the first place.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
