FILM · 1981
Absence of Malice
60 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (60)
- #001
While promoting The Verdict (1982), Paul Newman once said of this film: "I'd rather have the freedom to make films like The Verdict (1982)… I enjoyed throwing the beejeezus out of the press in Absence of Malice (1981)."
- #002
Around the time the film was released in theaters, its star Paul Newman said: "I'd say 90% of what people read about me in the newspapers isn't true. Ninety percent of it is garbage. [Reporters] are expected to find something sensational every night of the week to bury their readers' noses in the pages, and you tell me. If nothing is happening, what do you do? Well, in their position, they make it up."
- #003
According to Frank DiGiaomo, Paul Newman considered this picture a direct attack on the New York Post because it published a headline featuring a photograph of Newman, a headline Newman stated was inaccurate. An argument broke out, and the Post allegedly banned his name from appearing in the paper.
- #004
One of the film's posters/press ads carried a long, explanatory introduction: "Suppose you picked up this morning's newspaper and your life was on the front page… And everything they said was accurate… But none of it was true. The prosecutor, the feds and the police set her up to write the story that would turn his world upside down. Now he's going to write the book on getting even."
- #005
Paul Newman and director Sydney Pollack were gourmet chefs and held a cooking competition during the shoot in which Sally Field served as judge. At first she was a good sport, but Field grew tired of eating gourmet meals every night and began begging to be relieved of her judging duties in favor of hamburgers and omelets at local restaurants.
- #006
Sally Field's character tells a story about her father waiting for her in the front yard. As seen in Field's autobiography, this was a real-life anecdote about her stepfather, Jock Mahoney.
- #007
In the DVD feature The Story Behind Absence of Malice (2004), writer Kurt Luedtke says the film's story was inspired by the media-law case Times v. Sullivan [that is, The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)]. Luedtke summarized the case by saying that, because of the precedent it set, American libel law showed that the truth is not always required in journalism involving public figures. A newspaper could therefore effectively make a bad mistake and harm a publicly known person, and the latter could not always collect damages for it.
- #008
In the DVD documentary The Story Behind Absence of Malice (2004), director Sydney Pollack says that, except for a single shot and a reshoot for a dialogue sequence in which Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman) tells Megan Carter (Sally Field) that he might see her later, the entire film was shot outside the studio. This came in response to a suggestion by Frank Price, then president of Columbia Pictures, that, in the Hollywood romantic tradition, there should at least be a hint that the two leads might come together romantically in the future. Test audiences had previously given negative feedback about the main characters not ending up together at the end of the picture.
- #009
Michael Gallagher's assault on Megan Carter caused a minor injury to actress Sally Field. In the DVD documentary The Story Behind Absence of Malice (2004), Field said the neck pain was "beyond sore" and compared it to "whiplash." Field did not let actor Paul Newman know about her injury and continued working on the film.
- #010
This was the first screenplay by writer and former reporter Kurt Luedtke to be made into a feature film. Luedtke had previously been part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at a Detroit newspaper. A seasoned journalist, Luedtke based Michael Gallagher (played by Paul Newman), the film's protagonist, on the real-life son of a well-known gangster in Detroit. The alleged gangster was tried and convicted on labor racketeering charges. During his retrial, potential jurors were asked whether they had seen this film, in order to determine whether they would be biased in evaluating the evidence. The man and his associate were ultimately convicted and sent to prison.
- #011
Screenwriter Kurt Luedtke reportedly resigned from his position as managing editor of The Detroit Free Press and moved to Los Angeles to write a screenplay about the newspaper industry, which ultimately became the script for this film.
- #012
Except for the film's 15-minute final sequence, the entire film was shot in operating restaurants and bars, banks and government buildings in Miami, Florida. Some of them dressed for the occasion. A large warehouse on Biscayne Bay convincingly became "Gallagher Imports," while the back of the Flagship National Bank on Brickell Avenue became the front of the fictional "Miami Standard" newspaper offices thanks to temporarily painted Gothic lettering.
- #013
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1982: Best Actor in a Leading Role for Paul Newman, Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Melinda Dillon and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Kurt Luedtke, but it won in none of these categories.
- #014
Gallagher's boat is a 12-meter classic cruiser built in 1941, not in the 1930s as stated. Its real name is "The Optimist." Because of weather and wave problems, the Biscayne Bay shoot stretched over three weeks.
- #015
The car driven by Megan Carter (Sally Field) is a Mazda RX-7. In the early 1980s it was a popular automobile known for the novelty of its innovative rotary (not piston) engine.
- #016
Sydney Pollack initially wanted Al Pacino to play the role of Michael Gallagher. Pacino was reportedly cast but later withdrew.
- #017
Paul Tatara of the Turner Classic Movies website notes that there was a press conference/luncheon attended by [Paul] Newman, [Sally] Field, [Sydney] Pollack and others at the Tavern on the Green restaurant in New York City. What began as a glowing ember of discontent among the reporters turned into a raging fire by the time Newman and Field finished answering questions. When a reporter from the sensational tabloid The New York Post introduced himself, the actor replied to Field: "Wouldn't you rather say you came from somewhere else?" — even though the actress had recently taken part in a highly intimate interview with the paper. Later, when Newman was introduced to the Post's Diana Maychick, he said plainly: "I hate your newspaper."
- #018
This was actor Luther Adler's last theatrical film.
- #019
The film's closing credits sequence shows the Intracoastal Waterway stretching as far as Massachusetts. So Michael Gallagher's comment about heading north and east is correct.
- #020
This is the only film Paul Newman made for Columbia Pictures.
- #021
The machine seen behind Paul Newman's credit at the beginning is a platemaker. A first-generation digital typesetter outputs the content, such as the title shown here, and then a layer of hot paraffin wax is applied via a moving belt as shown. The waxed item is then placed on the newspaper page's "pasteboard" template as shown. The image is exposed onto a large film sheet to create a negative. The negative is placed on a thin metal plate coated with a water-soluble, light-sensitive material and exposed to light, which hardens the exposed areas. An acid bath removes the unexposed material. From this the plate is cast in magnesium to create the final product. After printing, the molds are melted down and reused. Within a decade this process was updated with flexible metal plates coated with light-sensitive material. Over the following decade the entire process would become fully digital.
- #022
Both Sally Field and Paul Newman studied at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.
- #023
The male lead was initially conceived as a man of Italian descent, which explains why the producers approached Al Pacino. The show-business trade paper Variety's March 11, 1981 issue reported that the character originally had a father who was part of the mafia. When Paul Newman was cast, the character's ethnicity had to be changed, as did the character's name, to Michael Gallagher. At that point it was decided to drop the character's mafia connection entirely.
- #024
The ending was changed slightly after preview screenings. The relationship between Paul Newman's Michael Gallagher and Sally Field's Megan Carter was left open-ended. This is an old Hollywood film trope: if the love interests do not explicitly get together, there must be a suggestion that the couple could come together romantically after the film ends. This was producer and director Sydney Pollack's explicit intention. This production account was reported in the November 23, 1981 issue of New York magazine. Moreover, the same ending suggestion occurs at the end of Pollack's Tootsie (1982), where Jessica Lange's and Dustin Hoffman's characters part and then walk down the boulevard at the film's end, and Hoffman puts his arm around Lange's shoulder at the close of the final scene.
- #025
The Miami Herald's offices became the offices of the film's fictional "Miami Standard." During production the company, part of the Knight-Ridder chain, shared its production facilities with the Cox newspaper the Miami News. The Herald, which first began publishing in 1910, had more than a million readers in Florida and in major cities of the Caribbean, Central and South America at the time the film was shot. The production company's primary location was the main newsroom and its adjoining executive offices, used between midnight and dawn to minimize disruption to the newspaper.
- #026
Diane Keaton turned down the role of Megan Carter.
- #027
The June 10, 1989 issue of the US TV Guide reported that Paul Newman, a star who loved playing pranks on film sets, secretly put 200 live chickens into the office of the film's production manager, Ronald L. Schwary, during principal photography.
- #028
The film reunited actors Melinda Dillon, Josef Sommer and Bob Balaban, who had all appeared in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
- #029
Paul Newman and Melinda Dillon also appeared together in the hockey film Slap Shot (1977).
- #030
Director Sydney Pollack and screenwriter Kurt Luedtke shared an agent, and Pollack is said to have learned of Luedtke's screenplay this way.
- #031
Screenwriter Kurt Luedtke reportedly sold the film's screenplay to Orion Pictures for $250,000. The film deal included a $100,000 back end and a share of gross box-office revenue after the picture broke even. Orion Pictures was not credited for the film because it was not the studio that made it, even though it had been in development there for some time.
- #032
Gallagher makes spaghetti for Carter. Paul Newman was not only a great Italian cook; a year after this film's release he and his wife founded a food company called "Newman's Own," offering a range of Italian sauces and salad dressings. He also established a foundation that donates after-tax profits to children-focused charities.
- #033
The film won an Honorable Mention at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival in 1982.
- #034
Megan Carter (Sally Field) mentions that her father was an investment banker. He apparently helps his 34-year-old daughter. She lives in an apartment on Biscayne Bay furnished with new furniture and (for the time) high-tech gadgets, and drives a new sports car. The building used for her apartment still exists (see Filming and Production), and units averaged half a million dollars in 2020. No street reporter is paid enough to live that way.
- #035
The screenplay was initially 250 pages long, and director Sydney Pollack had concerns about its length. Despite the excessive length, he had faith in first-time screenwriter Kurt Luedtke. The November 12, 1981 issue of Marquee magazine reported that Pollack felt Luedtke was still a talented writer despite his inexperience in screenwriting and the script's lack of strong visual elements for filmmaking, and that the film's concept was compelling.
- #036
The newspaper in the film is the fictional paper "The Miami Standard." Its interiors were portrayed by the real newspaper The Miami Herald.
- #037
This major motion picture was shot entirely in Miami during the winter of 1980-1981.
- #038
This is the second of three collaborations between actor Wilford Brimley and director Sydney Pollack. The films are The Firm (1993), Absence of Malice (1981) and The Electric Horseman (1979).
- #039
This film's director, Sydney Pollack, was known for making numerous films with actor Robert Redford. Paul Newman and Redford famously starred in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), but Absence of Malice (1981) was the only film Newman and Pollack made together.
- #040
The film's charity world premiere was held on November 15, 1981 at the Eisenhower Theater of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, with proceeds to be donated to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
- #041
(About 10 minutes) In what may be a nod to another journalism-themed film, All the President's Men (1976), the same photograph of Kenneth Dahlberg receiving a medal from Hubert H. Humphrey appears in the newspaper microfilm Meg reads.
- #042
The August 20, 1980 issue of the show business trade paper Daily Variety reported that director Sydney Pollack had approached Al Pacino and Diane Keaton for the roles that Paul Newman and Sally Field would ultimately play in this film.
- #043
This is the only theatrical film collaboration between actor Paul Newman and director Sydney Pollack.
- #044
The Vizcaya Gardens provide a pastoral counterpoint to the key scene between actresses Sally Field and Melinda Dillon. At the time of filming, the gardens, then the Dade County museum, were part of an estate belonging to the late industrialist James Deering. The mansion was completed in 1917 after two years of construction, but work on the 10-acre formal landscaping halted when America entered World War I, and the gardens were not completed until 1922. Diego Suarez adapted the formal aspects of the Italian hill garden to Miami's subtropical climate.
- #045
Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman) angrily comes to the reporter's desk after his story is published. He is so startled that his coffee spills all over her desk. But even in the 1980s, especially at a newspaper the size of The Miami Herald (the Miami Standard in the film), no one could simply walk into the newsroom. They would have to pass security and be directed (and often escorted) to their destination by a security guard.
- #046
At one point Paul Newman's character Michael suggests spaghetti to Teresa (Melinda Dillon) for dinner. A year after this film's release, Newman founded "Newman's Own," a nonprofit food brand specializing in spaghetti sauces.
- #047
The film's screenwriter, Kurt Luedtke, initially pitched the film idea to an agent at the Ziegler Diskant Agency and then began developing the film with director George Roy Hill, who would later leave the project.
- #048
The film's California benefit premiere was held on November 17, 1981, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles, California, with proceeds to benefit the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California.
- #049
Sally Field, who stars here alongside Paul Newman, had previously appeared with Newman's wife, Joanne Woodward, in Sybil (1976).
- #050
This is the first of three theatrical film collaborations between director Sydney Pollack and screenwriter Kurt Luedtke. The films are: Absence of Malice (1981), Out of Africa (1985) and Random Hearts (1999). Both Luedtke and Pollack won Oscars in their fields with Out of Africa (1985), which won 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Pollack) and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Luedtke).
- #051
Director Sydney Pollack and star Paul Newman died five months apart in 2008; Pollack on May 26 and Newman on September 26.
- #052
At the end, as Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman) is about to leave Miami, Megan Carter (Sally Field) asks him where he plans to go. She remarks that the whole country seems to be heading south and west, so she thinks he will go north and east. This may be a sly nod to Newman's next film, The Verdict (1982), in which he plays a Boston lawyer.
- #053
The film's cast includes two Oscar winners, Sally Field and Paul Newman, and two Oscar nominees, Melinda Dillon and Bob Balaban.
- #054
This is one of two feature films for which actress Melinda Dillon was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; the other is Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Columbia Pictures produced both films.
- #055
Principal photography lasted about three months.
- #056
The October 1, 1980 edition of the show business trade paper Variety reported that this film's screenwriter, Kurt Luedtke, had been a reporter at The Miami Herald between 1963 and 1965. The newspaper's office interiors served as the interiors for the film's fictional newspaper, 'The Miami Standard.'.
- #057
The November 19, 1980 issue of the show business trade paper 'Variety' announced that Paul Newman had been cast in the male lead of Michael Gallagher, following reports in September and October that Al Pacino was still being considered for the lead role of Gallagher.
- #058
Paul Newman had previously played a character named Michael in Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966).
- #059
Paul Newman and Josef Sommer would appear together 13 years later in Nobody's Fool (1994).
- #060
Absence of Malice was also a novel by Kerry Stewart, the pen name of Linda Stewart, who has also published other novels under her own name.
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