Author/critic/columnist Shawn Levy wrote today that one of the things he discovered while writing about Paul Newman for his book Paul Newman: A Life (Harmony, May 5) “was that he had a [nearly] 30-year feud with the New York Post.” Which has now come back around and bitten Levy’s book in the ass, albeit in a cheap and petty way.

The feud started “when Newman was filming Fort Apache: The Bronx> in New York. Newman came to feel that the Post had deliberately stirred up community animosity toward the film. A few years later, Newman and the Post were fighting about — of all things — how tall the actor was (the Post said he was no more than 5’7″, whereas Newman held he was 5′ 11″).

“During these battles, Newman was outspoken in his disgust with the paper: ‘I wish I could sue the Post,’ he told a rival publication, ‘but it’s awfully hard to sue a garbage can.’ And the Post gave as good as it got. For some years, Newman’s name could only appear in the pages of the tabloid in a negative light; this even extended to the TV listings, where Newman’s name was left out of descriptions of his films (The Hustler with Jackie Gleason and George C. Scott; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Robert Redford and Katherine Ross, etc.).

“I found all this amusing and reckoned that the war of words would have died with Newman last fall, but I underestimated the pettiness and vindictiveness of Post publisher Rupert Murdoch and his “Page Six” hatchet man Richard Johnson. Over the weekend, the Post published a wildly sensational account of my book — representing it as a tale of multiple infidelities, non-stop drinking, profane outbursts and rivalries with other movie stars.

“All of those things are in there, yes, but to declare that the book — which is rather square and includes 22 pages of notes and bibliography — is about all those things is like saying that The Godfather is a movie about killing horses or Austin Powers is a film about Burt Bacharach.”

I read teh Post piece last weekend, immediately recognized the tawdry and salacious tone and decided not to write about it for fear of giving credence to any suspicion that Levy’s book, which has been carefully sourced and written in a brisk, clean style, might be some kind of icky Hollywood-star bio, which it absolutely isn’t. But as long as Levy’s run his piece, whatever.

Newman was 5’11”?

Not bad but…what is this, 15 months late? That’s excessive. Photo from failblog.org.

Responding to this morning’s riff about Russell Crowe‘s Maximus haircut in Robin Hood, a guy who gets around and hears things wrote the following: “Apparently everything you’ll be witnessing in Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood — the hairstyles, the music and the aesthetics — will make it play like an unofficial sequel to Gladiator. This is no accident. It’s a commercial mandate and was part of the scripting delay. Expect a lot of mano y mano duels.”

N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply has written a who-cares? piece about the Marlon Brando trustees — movie producer Mike Medavoy, accountant Larry Dressler and Avra Douglas, Brando’s former personal assistant — doing what they can to keep the Brando name from being inappropriately commercialized.

(l.) Approaching Brando-owned atoll of Tetiaroa; (r.) 45 year-old Teihotu Brando, the late actor’s third-born son.

The article does, however, mention the ongoing development of the Brando, an “ecologically friendly” resort on the Brando-owned atoll of Tetiaroa, in the South Pacific. But the complex, according to Medavoy, is unlikely to open before 2012. It will include 40 or more bungalows designed with a “masculine quality,” according to developer Ramez Toubassy , and will cost between $50 million and $100 million after all is said and done.

If you know anything about construction an estimate of $50 to $100 million will ultimately cost at least $150 million if not $175 million. Just watch Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.

At least Cieply’s article reminded me of a fascinating Maxim piece about Tetiora by Julian Sancton, who normally presides over the daily postings at vanityfair.com. Called “Last Tango on Brando Island,” it was researched last summer and appeared sometime last fall. Here’s a taste:

“Overrun with tropical weeds, the airstrip on Tetiaroa — Marlon Brando’s private island in the South Pacific — is barely detectable from the sky. It was shut down in 2004, the year the actor died. Now it can only accommodate a helicopter. From above, the atoll, which consists of 13 white-sand islets encircled by a coral reef, shimmers like a turquoise amulet. Once the retreat of Tahitian royalty, it became the island kingdom of one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic figures.

“On the ground a Polynesian man dressed like an L.A. gangbanger waits for us to land. He is sitting in a wheelbarrow, a peculiar but fitting throne for the new king of Tetiaroa. At 45, Teihotu Brando, Marlon’s third-born son, has his father’s noble profile and a hint of his generous waistline. Teihotu lives on the remote island alone with his wife and the youngest of their three children, surviving on the fish he spears, the fruit he picks, and whatever pro¬≠visions his occasional visitors can bring from Tahiti, 30 miles away.”

And while we’re at it, here’s a fascinating recent column by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy about a visit to Easter Island and Tahiti, and featuring a discussion with longtime local journalist Alex du Prel.

“A fabulous character who might have walked out of the pages of Graham Greene,” McCarthy writes, “du Prel arrived in Tahiti 35 years ago, after having sailed solo from his native Virgin Islands through the Panama Canal to Hawaii, then on to Tahiti, where he lives high up in the mountains of Moorea.

“Du Prel has seen it all. Arriving as the post-Bounty enthusiasm for the islands peaked and with experience developing resorts in the Caribbean, he worked for Brando, trying to guide him in properly nurturing his private island before quitting in exasperation.

“While running the Bora Bora Lodge, he became very close to, and fond of, David Lean and Robert Bolt during the six months they spent there plotting their unrealized Bounty double feature.

McCarthy visiting Rapa Nui

“He then dealt, successively, with Roman Polanski, Dino De Laurentiis and Jan Troell during the shooting of Hurricane (he was even given a speaking role as a villainous American naval officer).

“When Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins came to Moorea to shoot The Bounty in the early ’80s, the ceremonial sequences were practically shot in du Prel’s front yard.

“In each case, du Prel — while gazing over Cook’s Bay, named after the great English navigator who became the first white man to visit the island 235 years ago — recalled that these productions had a gigantic effect on their locales, at first for the good, long term perhaps not so much.”

In a 4.20 column, Marshall Fine notes how two semi-major studio movies released within a week of each other — State of Play and The Soloist — are (a) about print journalists and (b) are naturally including glimpses of the downsizing and death of the newspaper business. Talk about your rivers of sadness and finality.

“In last week’s State of Play,” he writes, “Helen Mirren, as the editor of the Washington, D.C., newspaper where Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams work, admonishes them about the fact that the paper has new owners — and they want stories that sell copies. The message is that the bottom-line-oriented business people who have taken over the nation’s print media are more interested in profits than truth, in making money than serving the public trust. Shocking.

“And in this week’s The Soloist, Robert Downey Jr., as real-life L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, watches as one colleague after another packs his belongings into boxes and is escorted from the building by security guards after being downsized. Lopez himself — and his ex-wife/editor, played by Catherine Keener — never seem in danger of a similar fate, but it’s still disconcerting to see it happen to friends.

“[But] as canary-in-the-coalmine moments go, these movies are pretty tepid, because movies have such a long lead time. It’s one thing for Law & Order to pull plots from the news and rewrite them as crime drama — and even then, there’s a lag time of months. With movies, however, the lag is measured in years.

“Which means that whatever these movies are showing about what’s happening to newspapers, it’s much, much worse at the moment. Indeed, if you read the headlines, print media are pretty much on life support.”

Okay — no more Robin-of-Fatsley jokes. But I don’t care for the short hair. Scissors were mainly for the wealthy or royalty in the medieval days, and I’ve never heard of barber shops in Sherwood Forest. Was Friar Tuck the Merry Band’s designated stylist? Did he carry a rusty pair of crude shears in his knapsack? Whatever the 12th Century hair trends might have been, Crowe’s Gladiator/Maximus haircut doesn’t look right.

Russell Crowe as Robin Hood in a just-released still from the Ridley Scott/Universal release, which will hit screens on 5.14.10.

All of the big-screen Robin Hoods (Kevin Costner, Errol Flynn, Cary Elwes, etc.) have had longish manes. Why can’t Crowe and director Ridley Scott just go with the flow? They went along, after all, with Costner’s concept of heavy suede-and-leather Robin Hood garb. Are they trying to be different just to be different?

I refuse to illegally download films for any reason. It just seems sacrilegious. On top of which I can’t abide watching films on my desktop or laptop. Not visually satisfying, and certainly not after banging away at the column all damn day. I guess I”ve become spoiled by watching films on a 42″ plasma so it’s that way or the highway. (Unless you’re talking a 52″ LCD, which I now wish I’d sprung for.)

When the option to download Bluray-or-better quality movies from an Apple TV-like box becomes widespread and affordable, maybe. As long as extras options (commentary, making-of docs) are also offered.

But honestly? If I could easily download my favorite missing films now (Betrayal , The Outfit, Play It As It Lays, etc.) from a pirate site, I might conceivably change my tune. That is, as far as these particular titles are concerned. Because they’re not obtainable any other way. Not from Warner Archives or any other site along these lines. Unless I’m missing something.

And we all know where that could lead. For “once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing,” wrote Thomas de Quincey, “and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.” I could go there, in short, despite my general opposition. The thin end of the wedge.

Which is why I feel at least a measure of sympathy for Farhad Manjoo‘s 4.17 Slate piece on illegal downloading, called “My Mythical Online Rental Service for Movies — Why Hollywood is so slow to catch up on offering all of its movies and shows online.”

“I would gladly pay a hefty monthly fee for [a Pirate Bay-like] service,” he wrote, “if someone would take my money. In reality, I pay nothing because no company sells such a plan. Instead I’ve been getting my programming from the friendly BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. Pirates aren’t popular these days, but let’s give them this — they know how to put together a killer on-demand entertainment system.

“I sometimes feel bad about my plundering ways. Like many scofflaws, though, I blame the system. I wouldn’t have to steal if Hollywood would only give me a decent online movie-streaming service.

“In my dreams, here’s what it would look like: a site that offers a huge selection — 50,000 or more titles to choose from, with lots of Hollywood new releases, indies, and a smorgasbord of old films and TV shows. (By comparison, Netflix says it offers more than 100,000 titles.)

“And don’t gum it up with restrictions, like a requirement that I watch a certain movie within a specified time after choosing it. The only reasonable limit might be to force me to stream the movies so that I won’t be able to save the flicks to my computer. Beyond that, charge me a monthly fee and let me watch whatever I want, whenever I want, as often as I want.”