No Tricks in My Pocket: Paul Newman Directs

In his restrained yet emotive recent film version of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie , director Paul Newman strove, in his own words, ``to make cinematic virtue of claustrophobia.'' An experienced cast aided his efforts: his wife Joanne Woodward as obsessive matriarch Amanda Wingfield; John Malkovich as her son Tom, the drunken poet; Karen Allen as Tom's fragile sister; and James Naughton as the ``gentleman caller.'' In this day-by-day log of the film rehearsals, Stern, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and a friend of the Newmans, records seemingly every nuance, every set direction, every argument. Although this diary has the cozy, self-indulgent feel of a home movie, cinema and theater buffs will watch with interest as Williams's drama is translated onto celluloid. (July)