Coach, Teammate, Linemate: Michael Ontkean on Paul Newman

Showbiz Hobo screenings are about more than just watching a film — they're a chance to understand how it got made, and if possible, to hear from the people who made it. We've built real connections with the cast and crew behind the films we screen, and those relationships are what make these evenings special.

When we presented Slap Shot, I reached out to those involved in the film who are still with us. You don't always hear back — but with Michael Ontkean, we did. The man who played Ned Braden of the Charlestown Chiefs wrote back personally, shared his gratitude for screening Slap Shot, and sent this:

"Last year, the primary host of TCM, Ben Mankiewicz, celebrated and crowned Slap Shot as 'the greatest sports movie ever made!' That may be the first time a heavyweight Hollywood player who's not Canadian, and not connected to the world of hockey, has made such a definitive and formal declaration. Newman was a lifelong friend. I miss him every day."

Mr. Ontkean also sent along a piece he'd written about his journey Slap Shot, and his lifelong friendship with actor, producer, philanthropist, entrepreneur, racecar driver and all-round legend, Paul Newman. We're proud to publish it here — with his permission — making Michael Ontkean the first actor from one of our screened films to appear as a featured writer on Showbiz Hobo. Enjoy!

-Paul

Coach, Teammate, Linemate

by

Michael Ontkean

Paul Newman in The Left-Handed Gun, Warner Bros., 1958

Paul in The Left-Handed Gun. This was the first performance by any actor that really caught me up.  I was 12 and used to go to the cheap inner-city movie houses (a double or triple feature for 50 cents).  B-movies mostly, and some far below that low bar. These movies were the orphans of the film industry –  the studios that made them didn't have any faith in the completed version, so they released them without spending any money on promotion.  

Toronto in the late 1950s was one of the places where Hollywood studios would lump batches of their lesser movies together and drop them into urban markets, a notch above the grind-house circuit.   For me, the experience of seeing them was simply a chance to be lost inside a wide variety of stories unfolding.  The various genres were displayed in all their off-the-rack glory.  

However, on rare occasions, there was a gem.

Individual performances were never anything I ever paid attention to. Never until The Left Handed Gun.  Paul, as Billy the Kid, was captivating in a very direct way. He was genuinely expressive in a way that was immediate and completely believable. Brash, cocky, shy, humorous, fearful, exuberant;  he exhibited a range of emotions that were all real to me.  

I had seen dozens and dozens of westerns, but had never seen a cowboy express any impactful remorse in the aftermath of actually killing someone. Paul (with first-time director Arthur Penn)  opened, and pulled back, a lot of curtains, giving a young kid growing up without a father the sense of a full person who displayed a variety of responses to life. Someone to literally look up to. And I kept looking, whenever one of his movies would roll into wherever I was living: Montreal, or Toronto, or Vancouver. There were other actors I appreciated;  Marlon Brando and James Dean come to mind,  but I didn't connect with them in anything like the same deep way. I just couldn't identify with them. It wasn't until many years later that a possible reason started to come into focus.

Paul radiated health, even when playing a troubled or tormented soul.   There was never a neurotic undercurrent with Paul. Whatever the specific story had him contending with, his character would always do battle directly and openly. Whatever inner demons existed in Paul, or in his characters, he did not lean on the crutch of a personal neurosis.   He was grounded in his manhood. Pauline Kael, in her New Yorker review, called Paul's performance in Slap Shot  "a true artistic breakthrough.”

In her eyes, with this one indelible role, he graduated from "a leading-man movie star  to a leading-man character actor."

Paul Newman as Reggie Dunlop in Slap Shot, Universal Pictures, 1977

Paul himself did not see the character of Reggie Dunlop as an opportunity "to stretch".

He simply fell immediately in love with the originality of the screenplay and with the truck-tire marks on the body and soul of this very spirited man. A man with wildly negative qualities and boundless appetites. Paul had a palpable zest for life, and he figured this irreverent, quirky, subversive script had potential to be a lot of fun. He was right.  Right on every level.  Every possible level that one's imagination and willingness could embrace. In fact, he made a point of going on record countless times in his life, saying  Slap Shot was "by far the most fun I ever had making a movie."

There's no way to begin to describe how much Paul opened up the world for me without giving a bit of the context surrounding our first real-life encounter . . . .

In 1975, I was living in southern Maine, making a couple of dollars above minimum wage, repairing motorcycles.  I somehow heard  (via what we here in Hawaii call "the coconut wireless")  about a hockey movie being made. I had no agent, no manager.  At that time, I was an industry untouchable,  having had a very serious dust-up that burned down the bridges of working in any more B-movies, and also having committed the cardinal sin of walking off a hit TV Series in the era when there were only 3 networks and no cable or streaming, anywhere.

Tryouts for Slap Shot had been going on for a couple of weeks by the time I showed up with my equipment and crashed the gate at the Pickwick skating rink in Burbank. Future stars hand-picked by Universal Studios, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Nick Nolte, Kurt Russell, Tommy Lee Jones, had not survived to varying degrees the rigorous and essential skating drills.   Apparently, it was akin to A Chorus Line on ice.

The director, George Roy Hill, definitely wanted all the actors to be completely convincing as professional hockey players. George wanted a strict documentary feel with an overlay of his savvy cartoon sensibility.   Fortunately, there was a genuine pro hockey player in the rink that day, a guy I had played against in Montreal. Before waving me onto the ice, he spoke at length to the stunt coordinator running the session – Ned Dowd, another pro – who turned out to be the brother of the woman who wrote the script.  Ned had introduced his sister Nancy to the subculture of minor pro hockey.

Got my equipment on quickly in the locker room, and before anyone could change their mind, stepped onto the ice.  Within a few strides, Newman appeared out of nowhere.  Had no idea he might be there, getting in shape at Pickwick.

Every day, a new batch of hopefuls arrived to audition. After a few more weeks of weeding out all the skaters, actors, and players who were not convincing enough, there was a core group of about 20 remaining. We stayed intact to work out 5 days a week for the next month with Ned, who was now Slap Shot's Technical Advisor. This was California. There was another training and casting center for the movie at a rink in New York, and two more groups at arenas in Canada. I was hoping to maybe get hired as an extra.

I got to know Paul by sharing my love for this sport I had been playing all my life. It started with his asking me to show him some hockey moves. Surreal. The man I admired most in the world. Over the next month, Paul began encouraging me to read for the plum part of "Ned", his teammate and sidekick. I hadn't acted a single note in 2 years and wasn't ready to aim that high. We kept on rehearsing hockey moves, and he kept encouraging me. I was still blacklisted, but Paul believed I was the best guy for the role.

After reading for George Roy Hill on multiple occasions, and then for various Universal executives, I was rejected every single time. Paul never wavered in his support. Paul is a tenacious giver with a heart of rowdy and unbounded generosity. He finally wore down the director, all the producers, and the studio brass.

Michael Ontkean and Paul Newman, Universal Pictures, 1977

Clearly, I owe my childhood hero just about everything; a man who was always genuine, always devoted to excellence rather than to the shallow appearance of it.

Paul was too old to be my brother;  too young to be my father. However, he definitely became both.

A lifetime brother and a lifetime father.

Illustration by Gary Mills, posted with permission from Michael Ontkean, Slap Shot is a property of Universal Pictures, 1977

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