Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Paul Newman is dead.

This video is from one of my favorite films: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Liz Taylor and Paul Newman are on fire, spitting such hatred at each other that you know it could only come from love gone horribly, horribly wrong.

You can't hate anyone like someone you still love. Indifference is simply impossible. Newman spent this whole movie feigning indifference, but the anger under the laconic surface was palpable--it breathed off the screen like the fumes from the liquor he consumed.

Liz Taylor was more than a match for him here, but still I love his portrait of a broken man. Newman was too beautiful--had he not excelled at playing damage, anger, and steel under it all, he'd have been Tom Cruise. But when he was matched against Cruise in The Color of Money he made the younger man look like nothing.

The Hustler may be my favorite Newman movie, my favorite portrayal of a downward spiral, an adrenaline junkie just one false move away from bottom, but this scene above was too close to my heart not to post.

And since I wrote just a few posts back about humbling myself, I had to use Maggie the Cat, not ashamed to beg for her man. Is Maggie really stronger than me, after all? Less afraid of pain?