When Paul Newman tortured a director for an entire shoot: “I’m richer, and I’ve got more time”
Acting is often a serious business, but that doesn’t mean the actors aren’t allowed to have fun during their downtime. While some prefer to remain in character, Paul Newman had a habit of pulling pranks on his co-stars and colleagues that occasionally went too far.
While he was immensely dedicated to his work, reflected in his legacy as one of American cinema’s all-time greats and ten competitive Academy Award nominations, Newman was also a mischievous bugger. Whenever he found himself getting bored, he decided to make his own fun.
One of his favourite things to do was to fake his death, which he did several times to leave various directors on the brink of a heart attack. He staged a ‘fatal’ car accident when shooting Slap Shot, and dropped a dummy from a great height to convince Otto Preminger and John Huston that he’d plummeted to his demise on Exodus and The Mackintosh Man, respectively.
For a split second, it looked as though he’d met his match when he worked with Robert Altman for the first time on 1976’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson. The auteur was fond of the odd bit of shithousery on his sets, and landed the first blow when he filled Newman’s trailer with so much popcorn that it poured out when he opened the door.
That was a mistake he’d come to regret. “You shouldn’t have done that, Bob,” he was told. “I’m richer than you are, and I’ve got more time.” It was an ominous warning, and Newman lived up to his threats by spending the rest of the production making Altman’s life as miserable as possible.
After seeing that the director wore gloves on location to protect his hands from the chilly Canadian temperatures, Newman seized them, had them breaded and deep-fried, and served them to Altman on his lunch break. When he discovered the filmmaker’s fondness for Chablis, he was aghast.
Describing the beverage as “goat’s piss,” Newman acquired a goat, placed a sign around its neck that read, ‘Now you can have your own vineyard’, and gave it to him as a gift. Was he done there? Of course not, because he then conspired to avenge the popcorn prank by putting hundreds of chickens inside Altman’s trailer, causing a stench that lingered for the entire shoot.
Having already told his opponent that he had more money and more time, Newman proved it by hiring a helicopter to fly over the city of Calgary, dropping invitations he’d made to a party that directed anyone interested in attending to the private residence where Altman was living during filming.
For his final flourish, the Oscar-winning icon orchestrated a fake news report that was performed as if being read out on a local radio station, informing the listeners that not only did Buffalo Bill require an additional 2,500 extras for the following day’s shooting, but they’d be paid almost ten times the going rate if they showed up.
Adding a heinous exclamation point, the reporter told any aspiring extras to call a number, which was, of course, Altman’s phone. Newman arranged to have it played on the radios on set, so when Altman heard it, he’d think it was legitimate. “Bob just turned white,” he recalled. “Pure white.”
The lesson is that nobody should ever have gotten into a prank war with Newman, never mind fire the firsr shot, and Altman was no doubt thrilled and relieved when Buffalo Bill was over and done with.
