“I’d rather saw my fingers off”: The Paul Newman movie ‘Winning’ Quentin Tarantino never wants to see again
One of the many issues Quentin Tarantino has with modern cinema is the gradual demise of the movie star, with movies more inclined to sell themselves on brands and franchises than the names and faces on the poster.
It’s entirely true that the list of actors who can open a film based on nothing but their inbuilt appeal, enduring popularity, and bankability has been growing increasingly short in an era where studios are cannibalising every piece of valuable IP for all it’s worth, but Tarantino’s desire to return to a time when stars sold pictures doesn’t mean one of Hollywood’s most iconic gets a free pass.
The two-time Academy Award winner has praised regular collaborators Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio for keeping the flame burning, and he’s carried an infatuation with Clint Eastwood since he was a kid. Stars have rarely come as magnetic, charismatic, and altogether talented as Paul Newman, but he’s evidently nowhere near the top of the writer and director’s all-time favourites list.
He was nominated for ten competitive Academy Awards, won a ‘Best Actor’ trophy, netted two honorary gongs, and seared himself into cinema history with his piercing blue eyes, decades-spanning filmography overflowing with classics, and status as one of America’s greatest-ever actors, but Tarantino harbours an intense disdain for at least two of Newman’s films.
The first was one of his most successful after he admitted he could barely comprehend how the “awful” disaster epic The Towering Inferno landed on the ‘Best Picture’ shortlist. Newman admitted that it wouldn’t be remembered as his finest hour in front of the camera, but the second film Tarantino despised was much closer to the leading man’s heart.
Race car driving and motorsports enthusiast Newman starring as a race car driver and motorsports enthusiast was obviously a passion project, not that Tarantino gave a shit. In fact, when casting his eye over the best and worst, the subgenre had to offer with Adam Hay-Nicholls, a 1969 high-speed drama, was right at the bottom of the pile.
“Le Mans sounds like it should be fantastic, but to be honest, I’m not sure I ever managed to watch it through to the end without blacking out. It’s very pretentious and very boring,” he said of the movie starring Newman’s great rival Steve McQueen before focusing his ire on the former. “And Paul Newman’s Winning is even worse. I’d rather saw my fingers off than sit through that again.”
Tarantino is adamant that if the choice boiled down to rewatching Newman’s driver struggle with confidence issues, family strife, an unfaithful spouse, and a dangerous rival on the track or removing several of his own digits, his most difficult choice would be whether he wanted it to be his left or right hand placed in the firing line.
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