(ANSA) - ROME, OCTOBER 10 - A mythical couple from Hollywood, the giant Paul Newman and his wife, Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward, truly the last stars of the Golden Age cinema and a child's passion turned tenacity in creating a monumental work to be delivered to posterity, to yesterday's cinephiles to today's young spectators.
It is a gem that comes from the Cannes Film Festival, the Hbo Max series presented at CannesClassics, THE LAST MOVIE STARS which after the applause of the Croisette is ready to receive those of the Rome Film Festival (13-23 October), which has chosen the couple for the poster journal of the 17th edition.
The series is presented at the opening, directed by Ethan Hawke and produced by Martin Scorsese.
An epic saga in six episodes that will then be exclusively on Sky in December and instreaming on NOW.
Ethan Hawke, 51, 4 Oscar nominations, is the ex-child with a maniacal passion for Newman, born at 10 when - he said - with the complicity of his father one Sunday morning he skipped mass to shut himself up in a cinema ("my church" ) to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Newman and Robert Redford.
He has cultivated this cult for Paul over the years and convinced the family to entrust him with a real treasure.
Newman (who died in 2008 at 83) at some point in his old age had decided to write a memoir, had hundreds of friends and colleagues interviewed, but then decided not to carry on the project and burned all the tapes after they had been transcribed.
The Newman family gave those transcripts to Hawke - who called the gift "an incredible blessing."
The series is truly precious: not only for the images of Newman's film that runs almost without interruptions, but also for the first-hand stories, archive interviews with protagonists such as his first wife Jacqueline, some directors such as Martin Scorsese (also co-producer), Martin Ritt , SidneyLumet.
(HANDLE).