Ethan Hawke Explains Why Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward ‘Would Hate’ His Doc’s Title ‘The Last Movie Stars’

thewrap.com:

that will launch on CNN+, and the first chapter, “Cosmic Orphans,” is premiering at SXSW on Monday. Hawke would be the first to acknowledge though that making a movie about a lengthy, successful and happy marriage isn’t exactly the stuff of scandal or excitement.

But compared to other acting icons of their generation like Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift or James Dean, whose stories were all sad or tragic, Newman and Woodward’s careers and romance were the rare few success stories in Hollywood that were worth telling. “(Newman) and (Sidney) Poitier are really the two of their generation that really kept evolving as leaders in their community and kept continuing to grow as actors and as human beings,” Hawke explained. “So he’s a great subject matter if you’re looking to tell a story about, ‘What does maturity and grace look like?’ So many documentaries, particularly in the arts, have to do with how people burned out, or how people kill themselves or how people get lost.

So many of them end in some kind of tragedy, because that lends itself to drama. A 50-year successful marriage doesn’t lend itself to drama, but it creates this feeling that it’s impossible to do, but it’s just incredibly hard.”The first chapter of “The Last Movie Stars” looks at how Newman and Woodward fell in love with each other and with acting, and each subsequent chapter explores a different decade in their life and career.

The film then explores when they both reached the peak of stardom in the ’60s, when in the ’70s, Woodward started losing roles as a woman and mother in Hollywood while her husband became a legend.