That language came courtesy of screenwriter Nancy Dowd, who based the picture on her brother Ned’s experiences playing minor league hockey for the Johnstown Jets. “Since Slap Shot,” he added, “my language is right out of the locker room.” ![]() Newman told TIME Magazine that he rarely cursed in his private life before taking on the role of washed-up player/coach Reggie Dunlop, boozebag leader of the losing Charlestown Chiefs, a middling minor league hockey outfit in a dying factory town. For a lot of these guys, swearing is all they have left. Decades later, the language in the picture is still appallingly funny and possibly even more shocking, as abrasive as The Last Detail in its articulation of how powerless men tend to express their aggression in the crudest possible terms. And most of those quotes aren’t safe for work. It’s endearing to see a scholar of cinema like Scorsese get the giggles when talking about Slap Shot, because I don’t know many men who don’t instantly start quoting the movie whenever it comes up. But then Scorsese’s face lights up, noting that seven years later Newman made “the wonderful picture Slap Shot,” which the maestro wisely notes is basically the same movie as WUSA. ![]() ![]() (What an outlandish idea, I can’t imagine any cable news demagogues doing that today.) The heavy-handed film was one of the star’s biggest bombs. Self-consciously advertised as “a picture for our times,” the overwrought affair reunited Newman with his Cool Hand Luke director Stuart Rosenberg in the story of a cynical radio host riling up his audience with reactionary rants he doesn’t personally believe, claiming he’s just giving the audience what they want. One of my favorite moments in Ethan Hawke’s delightful documentary The Last Movie Stars finds Martin Scorsese discussing Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s little-seen 1970 political drama WUSA.
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