On this episode of the Dogwatch we have the true pleasure of visiting with James Cox, who is an environmentalist, business leader, and someone who is a main character in what is possibly the most iconic watch story in the history of wristwatches. We discuss the meaning that can be contained in watches and objects, James’s relationship with Paul Newman, how Newman gave him what is now known as the Paul Newman Paul Newman watch, and the thinking behind eventually putting it up for auction. In the end, this is an episode about ways in which life can be lived, and what we can learn from others. And James even has an incredible surprise in store for the Dogwatch host at the end of the episode.
Our feature today is the Paul Newman Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, reference number 6239. The watch that set this story in motion was purchased at Tiffany’s in New York by Joanne Woodward for her husband Paul Newman. This watch was one of four Rolex reference numbers that are now known as “Paul Newman” Daytonas. The actual watch that Newman wore and eventually gave to our guest James Cox in the 1980s had a cream dial with black sub-dials. Although it sold on a steel bracelet, it became famous on a black leather bund strap. The watch sold for 17.8 million at Phillips auction house in New York in 2017.
Podcast #28 Transcript
Michael Canfield:
Hello. This is Michael Canfield, and thank you for joining us today on The Dogwatch. A Dogwatch is an evening shift of earlier late duty for the people who undertake it. This Dogwatch considers the natural world and the things that help us experience it, from dogs to watches and everything in between. Ultimately, it’s a place for us to go wherever curiosity takes us. On this episode of The Dogwatch, we have the true pleasure of visiting with James Cox, who is an environmentalist business leader and someone who is a main character in what is possibly the most iconic watch story in the history of wristwatches. We discussed the meaning that can be contained in watches and objects. James’s relationship with Paul Newman, how Newman gave him what is now known as the Paul Newman Paul Newman Watch, and the thinking behind eventually putting it up for auction in the end. This is an episode about ways in which life can be lived and what we can learn from others. James even has an incredible surprise in store for The Dogwatch host at the end of the episode. Our feature today is the Paul Newman Rolex Cosmograph Daytona reference number 62 39. The watch that set this story in motion was purchased at Tiffany’s in New York by Joanne Woodward for her husband, Paul Newman. This watch was one of four Rolex reference numbers that are now known as Paul Newman Daytonas. The actual watch that Newman wore and eventually gave to our guest James Cox in the 1980s had a cream dial with black Subdials. Although it sold on a steel bracelet, it became famous on a black leather bootstrap. The watch sold for $17.8 million at Phillips Auction House in New York City in 2017. Without further Ado, let’s get to our conversation with James Cox.
Michael Canfield: James, thank you for joining us on The Dogwatch.
James Cox: So happy to be here. It’s a beautiful evening in Santa Cruz. I’m actually watching the sun set over Monterey Bay right now. And right before we called and connected, I took a walk out to check the surf. And the waves are small, but the smiles are big. Everybody’s out there just having a great time. So you’re literally, like steps away from the beach and surfers right now. Yes. I can turn my body about 100 degrees, and I can see the Monterey Bay and the waves right from my house. I have a better view now because they just tore down my neighbor’s house, which is kind of great for my view, but it is kind of a symbol of what’s happening to a lot of these small towns, especially here in California. I mean, we in Santa Cruz are a 30 minutes drive from Silicon Valley and Apple headquarters in Google. And so there is this amazing pressure that was even more so through Covet, where folks that didn’t have to go to their office decided they’d moved to Santa Cruz. So it’s put a lot of pressure on real estate. A lot of the little scrappy houses are getting torn down and bigger houses are going up. So it’s changing. Like most kind of cool little cities around the country are experiencing this in general. And I think also because more of cobbt, I mean, whether it’s Flagstaff, Arizona, Taos, New Mexico, Boulder, all the cool little towns are just feeling more pressure. I’m sure you’re feeling it too. Are you feeling in your town, Minneapolis?
Michael Canfield: Some, for sure, but basically building out right. So the farmland around, et cetera, building a lot of developments and stuff like that. But there’s some of that for sure. And again, I’m sort of in a place now where I’m out of the housing market in the sense that we’ve finally got a place and haven’t been watching it super carefully in a sort of established neighborhood and stuff like that, whereas when you see it happening around you, it’s really different. I’m curious, do you have the sense that they’re going to build another house where that house was?
James Cox: Certainly, and I’m sure taller and more grand. I mean, these situations, they’re buying tear downs for a million six and then probably having to put two or 3 million in. So the result is now a $5 million house sitting on the ocean. And if you have those resources, that’s fantastic. But it is squeezing the community a lot and changing the community. And that’s good and bad. I love some of the new faces I see at the cafes because there’s people from other places mostly who have been successful at one thing or another. Hence they can have a five minute house. And if you don’t bring a lot of judgment to that, they’re great folks. But it is changing. So I live here part time. I also live in Las Vegas, which has really surprised me as a community. My background is environmental stuff, science, maybe we’ll touch on that. And I always thought there’s like no reason for anybody to live in the desert. What is Vegas? It’s just this experiment that shouldn’t be there. And that said, it’s also so close to so many amazing things. If you enjoy the desert landscape, high desert, the Southwest, and general Vegas is a great jumping off place, and many people don’t think of it that way. But you can usually fly to Vegas very cheap because things are subsidized and have a nice meal, see a show in the morning, wake up, rent a car, and within two or 3 hours you’re in Southern Utah or 1 hour you’re on the Colorado River and there’s Hot Springs. And it’s a gorgeous jumping off place that’s misunderstood. I mean, it certainly has its tacky seedy side, but there’s great community, there tons of nature. And I’ve been there kind of part time since 2017 and really enjoyed it and surprised us.
Michael Canfield: That is kind of surprising. We were out in Utah and did the parks, you know, sort of the Arches to Zion, which was absolutely fantastic, and ended up we flew into Salt Lake City and then flew out of Vegas. So I can see what you mean. It’s so beautiful and you’re in this beautiful place and then all of a sudden you’re in Las Vegas, right. It’s not far, so that’s fantastic.
James Cox: Yeah. I think they’ve done a fairly good job with water issues out of necessity. But they have I mean, it does rain. There is water there, but typically you would have a flash flood situation in that type of landscape. The ground can’t absorb the water. But what they’ve done is they’ve created opportunities to capture that water, let it sink back into aquifers and they’ve actually been able to kind of refill aquifers instead of having things to evaporate lots of other water measures, too. So it’s really not as awful in that way as I thought from a planning situation.
Michael Canfield: Well, kind of sticking with the theme of places that James has been, I want to start out, kind of getting to know you a bit. And I read one of the early articles about sort of finding the Paul Newman Paul Newman, and it said that you grew up, it sounds like just outside of New York City ways and that you actually met Paul Newman as a child. So can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and maybe that moment?
James Cox: Sure. Yeah. I mean, it’s funny. When I tell this story, a lot of times I feel like it’s not my story. I had an opportunity to have this experience and responsibility around this experience, and that the story kind of happened to me, but it’s not my story. And then I back up a bit and go, actually, that’s not entirely true. There’s elements of my life and attitude that led me on this path that let a lot of these things happen. So I guess that’s the excuse to talk about myself for a second.
Michael Canfield: It’s important. Yeah. I want to hear about yourself. Like, it’s interesting to get to know you, so feel free.
James Cox: Well, and again, I think that there’s parts of the story when I tell it that I think are good for other people to hear when some people meet me and say, oh, my God, you’re so lucky, or you’ve had all these great experiences. And I think back, I’m like, well, yeah, but I just paid attention, and I think these experiences are there for everyone. So maybe that’s the theme to think about. So for me, I mean, the quick history. I was born in New York. I was actually put up for adoption and adopted by a family that lived in Westchester and had an adopted sister as well. And probably from age ten on, my parents that adopted me got divorced, and I was pretty much a latchkey kid, just very independent. And my mom had to get a job. And so I was alone a lot. And I think that combined with being adopted, just has always made me extremely independent and really resourceful of just taking care of myself. I think that’s just kind of the hardwiring that I felt. And I think a lot of people who were adopted also feel as you try to figure out where you fit in the world. On the one hand, I think it can be difficult and kind of debilitating on the other. For me, anyway, it was an excuse of like, well, Geez, I can be anything I want because I’m here on my own and what do I want to do? And I think that’s the attitude I took and was just very independent. I fell in love with birds and I got into bird watching super early, spent tons of time in the woods. And my dad, who adopted me after they were divorced, we’d always get together, like every couple of weekends, and he’s always looking for something fun to do with me to keep it exciting. And once he took me to Lime Rock Raceway in Connecticut to go see a car race because I loved cars. And at the time, Paul Newman was racing cars. He had just started racing several years before. And I was into photography and I saw him. I was out walking around the paddocks by myself, and I saw him sitting there in a chair drinking a Budweiser. He had just finished racing. He was all sweaty and there was like nobody around him at that particular moment. And there was a barricade between his car where he was sitting and where I was, and he looked over and saw me taking a photo of his car. And then he kind of gestured to me to come under the barricade to get a better shot. And I think I was really young at this point. Am I like eleven or twelve? And I go take a photo of the car and then I took one shot of him and then I just kind of backed out and went under the rail and gone. And I knew he was a famous actor, but at the time obviously didn’t know much about him other than they just won that race and it was a cool car. And then fast forward, I go to College in Maine, and because of my love of birds, I went to the College of the Atlantic.
Michael Canfield: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. I wonder how you ended up at the College. It’s an awesome place, but it’s specific, right. As far as natural history. James Cox: Cool place, very specific. And well, my Ornithology love birds and ornithology. I discovered this guy named Bill Drury who was teaching at Cornell. I think he was the head of the ecology Department at Cornell. And he had left Cornell with a couple of other professors from Harvard, and they went to Bar Harbor and founded this College called College of the Atlantic. And it was going to be a school of human ecology, which I think at the time was brand new. There were no other schools with that degree. And it was going to be this experiment, this combination of studying ecology, but tying it more in with the human experience and human elements. So not just natural systems, but how humans interact with them and that sort of thing. So it was really Bill Drury that drew me up to the school. And it was very alternative, very small. I think there were 130 students and 33 faculty when I joined. Wow. Yeah. And I qualified for scholarships and took out tons of loans because we had zero money. But I was just determined to go there. And I was not a good academic student in high school. I mean, I was terrible at everything, but I was passionate. And this kind of a school was a place that somebody like me could actually survive, that professors could realize that I had some gifts, even though I was completely couldn’t spell and dyslexic and completely useless in other things. But it was a smaller school that would let those obstacles kind of be less important. So I get to the school, and I’m there the first week, and I’m standing in this driveway. I’m about to go into this building where I’m going to live in. This car is coming down this gravel driveway really fast. And then I just kind of get out of the way, and it comes in, and this car spins a little bit. Like, whoever is driving hits the Uber, spins the car out, and then out pops this girl with a six pack of St. Paulie girl beer, like, marches past me and looks at me like, what are you looking at? And I was like, wow. And this girl looks. She had really short hair. She looked like a really handsome, sexy David Bowie, basically. And I was like, oh, man, I’m going to get to know that girl. It turns out she was on my same floor. There were, like, three rooms, and she was right on my first week of school. This was literally, like, the first week.
Michael Canfield: Welcome to College. If we could all be so lucky.
James Cox: Oh, man, I was excited. I’m like, this is going to be great. But clearly this girl is out of my League. But what do I know? So we end up there’s only, I think, five or six people living in this building. And this building is an old mansion on the coast of Maine that this College was. They found a couple of old buildings and got them donated and cleaned them up. So our classrooms are literally, like, in old bedrooms with porches overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Quite majestic, but it’s funky. I mean, there’s, like, we’d have a library. We didn’t have sports teams. It was, like, hippies, but really intellectual hippies. And then there was me.
Michael Canfield: Wait a minute. And then there was me. What do you mean? Like, you are distinct from that. Who is James relative to the funky hippies and intellectuals? Did you fit into that? Do you see what I mean? Like you said. And then there was me. I just wonder if you mean like I was part of that, or were you distinct at the start?
James Cox: I think I was sneaky. Fake it till you make it, which is kind of my life in many ways. I felt like I got invited there. I got really lucky with scholarship. I wrote a really good essay that made me seem competent enough to join the school. And my mother at the time was working and publishing in Manhattan. She was the publisher of Yachting magazine, I think, by the time I graduated. But she had access to people who could write really well. I remember one of them editing my application. Okay, so I can write really well, but I really need an editor. But I think that’s what I meant. The kids that I met there when I got there were just really smart and interesting, and it came from, like, had just had. They’re really good students, and I was not a good student, but yeah, so that’s what I mean. I just was like, I’m going to see if I can figure this out. And then again, the fun part of the story is that I end up really falling for this girl. And her name is Nell Potts. P-O-T-T-S. She’s got this funny name, and we end up hanging out, and we end up kind of dating in that first year in College kind of way. And then one night, and she was also a really good Cook. And the whole house was down in the kitchen sitting around a table, and we’re cooking dinner. And on the table is a bottle of Newman’s own salad dressing, which was hers. And she was making salad. And I look over at it, and I say, oh, I met Paul Newman once when I was really young at a car race. And he’s like, he’s a super nice guy. And everybody at the table busts out laughing because they all know at this point that Nell Potts is actually Nell Newman, Paul Newman’s daughter. And I’m like, oh, wait. And I put it together. Nell had a photo of her dad wearing a racing helmet in her dorm room, but you couldn’t see who it was. It was just a guy who raced cars, so it was cute, and it was also awesome brownie points for me because clearly I just liked the girl. I didn’t know anything about her family. And that was a clutch move to get the relationship off. And we ended up dating ten years. From that moment forward, we were together for ten years. And the reason you and I are on this call today, is just that relationship really started at all. But I mentioned earlier that the kernel here, the kind of personal side that I think is kind of interesting as I think back, is that here I am not what was me, but like, okay, adopted, no money, no resources, not good at school. I did trades work after high school or during high school. I mean, I washed dishes, I did construction work, just trying to make money. I was just like a regular dude. But the theme here is that almost the girlfriends I had in high school and then this in College led me to interesting families, led me interesting opportunity, led me to interesting fathers and mentors. And I think that I was always seeking that mentorship. And I mean, it sounds corny to say it, but like, who’s my dad. Right. Like looking for that role model. And I would find it in my girlfriend’s families. I needed to eat dinner in high school and there’s no food. So I’d go find a friend and Mooch off their family. And I kind of got really good at recognizing that these families are open to somebody. I mean, if I’d show up and I was nice and I did the dishes, they would welcome me back, and I could get fed. And then if they had a cute daughter, I could date her. And then if their dad was cool, her dad would like, let me fix something in the house that was broken. And this kind of early lessons that just really accelerated. And of course, Nell was just beyond expectations. I mean, here I was in love with this super cool girl who turns out had a super cool family. I mean, it’s just magic. I think what you say, too, will be kind of a theme that I’ll ask more about, et cetera, with Paul Newman specifically.
Michael Canfield: But I think what you’re saying, too, is that finding people who when you put yourself out there and you interact with people, especially as a young person, but even as older people finding people to learn from. Right. And you said mentorship, et cetera. But that’s not an accident. Oftentimes that leads to more opportunities or more involved relationships, et cetera, and often good things when you’re open to that and put yourself in those positions. And you said sort of it’s luck or that first story of you meeting Paul Newman wasn’t so much about you, but actually a lot of kids wouldn’t have had a camera or wouldn’t have been interested or wouldn’t have made eye contact or whatever. So that’s an interesting feature. And I’m kind of curious we’ll come back to that moment and that aspect of you dating now and kind of with Paul, but I’m curious just to know a little bit more about the arc. So you dated now for about ten years, and that would have been you started College in the late 80s or something or early 90s what about was that what sort of general? Yeah, like early 80s. There’s a chunk of time in there. Okay. But then what was the rest of the arc to now for you? We’ll talk about some of the features that relate to Paul Newman, but I’m just curious what else you’ve done, like, what are your other interests, et cetera, that aren’t solely about again, we’ll talk about the Watch and related to the Newman family, but that’s not your whole existence. So I’m just curious, like, what else have you been interested in? Have you sort of done professionally, et cetera, since then?
James Cox: Well, I think picking up in College, and I was there studying ecology, which was that school was cool and that it let you define human ecology as you wanted to. And I got really into fluid dynamics and fish propulsion and bird flight. And I had an amazing professor who had a PhD in Oceanography and mechanical engineering and some interesting combinations. Yeah. And he was another mentor, incredible guy that just we started jumping right into fluid dynamic stuff. And I met him meeting it one morning, and he looked at me like, I’m trying to do this math stuff. He’s like, you don’t have any idea what you’re doing, do you? He’s like, you’re just completely close. I’m like, yeah, but I get it. I mean, I understand the principles, so he really held my hand a lot. And before you know it, I was doing advanced calculus from a guy that couldn’t do basic math. And he just kind of showed me that if you really love something and understand it, it’s amazing what you can do. And he basically was showing that math was just this other language that I just instead of challenging it, I just need to accept the rules of it and then start speaking it. And so I got really into flu dynamics, and then this was in the Eighties. So at the time, like, biomimicry and stuff wasn’t really a buzzword, but I was interested in Dolphins dorsal fins and how efficient they were and how to design a propeller. So that’s a good example of taking ecology and making it human in the sense that what can we learn from animal design to do better human design? That specific task that I did in College trying to study the efficiencies of vortexes. Basically what we’re trying to do is say, let’s make a propeller that doesn’t cavitate, which is cavitation, is noise and a sign of inefficiency. And Dolphins obviously have that figured out. And we never did design a better propeller, but there was a lot of great learning in the process. And years later, I was involved in a Windmill project trying to prevent birds of prey from crashing into windmills. And the opposite was trying to be applied. How do we make a blade cavitate to produce a noise that a Falcon might be able to see and avoid. And that was a whole nother project that came out of that, which is its own interesting story. But back to school, I think in school, I basically just got confidence. I learned to ask questions, which is, I think what’s so important about College, it’s like, you don’t always have to know what you want to do when you go. But I think learning how to ask questions, learning, meeting other at this time scientists and going, wow, you’re a scientist. So I guess I’m a scientist, too. It’s just kind of like bring it makes the humility come down, and everybody can kind of get stuff done. And I was fascinated. And I was actually really hell bent on going to Duke for a graduate program in biomechanics, and probably could have pulled that off, even though I was kind of sketchy academically because I did such interesting work as an undergrad. And then I went down to Duke and looked at the program, and everybody was just so, no offense to nerds. I know you’re really nerdy, Michael, but no, I mean, everybody was so not even close. Everybody was so focused. And I was like, wow, I’m going to learn more and more about less and less if I do this. I’m going to get so focused. And I had done so many cool things as an undergrad, and these folks haven’t read the same books. They were just so focused. I was like, I don’t know if this is for me. I took a break, and I went to California with Nell. We actually were living in New York at the time, and she was working for the Environmental Defense Fund. And we were both like, I think we need to go to California. And we jumped in her car and drove cross country. And within a couple of weeks, I got a job at the North Face, the outdoor company. And I started working there, just inspecting dirty tents. It was like warranty Department, like the lowest job they had. But within four years, I was running the equipment design Department. I mean, I moved up fast. I had really good ideas. I was bringing my biomechanics thinking to backpack design. And Buckminster Fuller was already a big influence on North Face tents. And I knew about his work. So again, fake it to make it. I found myself running the design Department for equipment at North Face at 20 something going, oh, my God, I had to work all night long, all weekends to try and figure out how to make patterns, how to sell. I knew none of that shit, so way over my head, but I did some cool stuff. But actually one really interesting thing that happened working in North Faces. I realized we’re making all these outdoor products, and in the process, we’re using all these petrochemical fabrics and dyes, and we’re actually really stirring up the environment so that we can make toys to enjoy it. And then I quit the North Face. And I started a company called Terra Packs in 1992, and that was all natural fibers. And I basically went around the world and found technologies pre nylon, and linens and hemps, and made a very classic line of travel bags and briefcases. And it was too far ahead of its time. In 92, the world did not really care about that stuff, but I had zero waste. Everything was shredded and made into paper. It was all sustainable working with farmers in Hungary and then Yugoslavia trying to grow hemp organically. So it was a really neat project that lasted about ten years. And then I think I got frustrated with it because nobody cared about the environmental side of it. They thought they were cute bags, except Japan. I sold a lot to Japan, and the Japanese really understood that. And also Patagonia really understood it. I was kind of friends with Yvonne Chanard, founder of Patagonia, and I showed him the bags at one point. Well, actually, when I first started the idea, I brought him the bags. I said, what do you think about this? He’s like, this is great. He said, just use thick thread, which I did. And then he called me like eight months later. He was like, hey, are you going to do that project if you’re not? I’m going to. And at least he gave me a heads up. I’m like, no, please, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it. And we were actually the first non Patagonia product sold in Patagonia retail stores back in the day. And that was quite an accomplishment. And then I wish the fate was that Patagonia bought my company. They didn’t. Somebody else did because that would have been a great marriage. But we did influence. I like to think that one of the best things that came out of my company was that we really, I think, influenced Patagonia back in the day with organic cotton and organic hemp. And I look at their product lines now and go, yeah, that had a lot to do with my company being there. And I took their buyers to our sources and really helped them out. They probably would have done it anyway. But I think we were influential. And sometimes that’s what you have to look at. You look at an experiment, you do a project, and oftentimes you may not succeed directly, but you do influence the world around you, right? Yeah. I think the theme there is that I was always trying to find a way to do business and ecology, that the combination was important to me that you can do well and do right. And then this was also the time that I was hanging out with Nell and Paul. And of course, Paul Newman had already founded his salad dressing and spaghetti sauce company and was giving all the charities, all the money to charity. So here I am like, that’s an influence in my life. I’m doing this product that’s all environmental and compostable, and it’s so cool. It would probably work today maybe, but in 1992, it was just too far ahead of its time. But that was the theme and that’s kind of foundational to me, you can do the right thing and be successful and help people. And it was just a good fit. Well, again, I think that kind of helps us understand who you are and kind of how you came to sort of orbit in that group that now was a part of, et cetera.
Michael Canfield: I think now what you’re doing, you work with the Nell Newman Foundation. You have this project called My friend James. And again, I’d like to talk about some of these other features of the Watch and Paul Newman, because that’s what we signed you up to do today. And I want to make sure I have truth and advertising to you. But at some point it might be even great. I’d love to ask some more questions and really delve deeply into some of the work you’re doing on projects around climate change, etc. And so if we don’t get to that, I may come back to you and say, can you please talk more about those things? Because it’s super interesting. And I think the meaning behind those projects and what you’re saying, I think will come, I do think relates to this Watch, etc. In some ways, and I want to get there, but I want to be respectful of your time, too. So can you remember the second time that you met Paul Newman then?
James Cox: The second time was him driving in the driveway up to visit us at school. At that point, I was already kind of dating his daughter, and she was six years older. And I’m sure I looked very young, and I think I had long hair and it was a little nerve wracking. At that point, I knew he was Paul Newman and he pulled up in his Volvo and Joanne, his wife, was with him. And I think we’re all going to go to dinner that first night. And Joanne had already been prepped that her daughter, Nell, had a new boyfriend. And so there I am, this young, kind of dorky, long haired guy, not nervous as much because it’s Paul Newman and Dread Woodward because I still even at that point did not completely understand how famous these people were. It’s more just their girlfriend’s parents. That’s always scary, right? I’m 18 years old and I’m going to meet the girlfriend’s parents and the girlfriend’s six years older. This is a lot of pressure. And then we went to dinner, I think somewhere in Bar Harbor where the school was, and it all went really fine after that. Although I do honestly think that Nell’s mom, Joanne, I think she had her sights set on like Prince Charles or somebody much more fancy for her daughter than this scrappy guy. From New York, but the family was lovely. And that’s the whole theme here, right. These people are just so accessible and so lovely. And for the next ten years, I was part of their family. And I don’t think I went home to my family ever again after that. I mean, I was barely there as a kid. But you have a choice of going back to an apartment in New York or going to the Newman’s in Connecticut where there’s good food and dogs and lots of fun. What are you going to choose?
Participant #1:
Yes. That was the second time. Yeah. So you then over the next ten years or so, probably even more like we’re around pulling him in a good bit. Right. And would see him periodically, et cetera. And got to know him, right? Yes. And missed opportunity for me and a funny or a nice way to look at our relationship. So I’m his daughter’s boyfriend, and he’s super respectful. And I remember when I went back to their house in Connecticut for the first time, it was the first summer that I went back and we’re all sitting in the house together, and they let me stay in her room, which is like amazing. I’m 18 years old, and I get to stay in my girlfriend’s bedroom in the same house with their parents. That’s pretty cool. Pretty progressive. And coming down in the morning for breakfast, and there’s Paul making breakfast. Hey, he wants to make a kid. I’m like, okay, this is super cool. And they just were so welcoming. And I was a respectful kid, too. I’m like, I went out and I washed all the cars. I really contributed because that was my mom. I’d learned that in high school, like, hey, you want to get fed by the neighbors? You’d show up and do the dishes. So I was a respectful person, but it was also extremely cautious of Paul. And here’s a man who’s so famous and everybody thinks they know him. And we go out to dinner and everybody wants his autograph. And you start to learn that you kind of want to run defense and literally sit up from the table if you see somebody coming to get an autograph and kind of block them, not in a rude way, but it’s like, please, can we have dinner? And we would do all these things to sneak Paul around. Like, we would literally put him in the trunk of the car.Yes. He got in the trunk of Nell’s car a few times to sneak out of a place without people seeing them. Or he’d like, we’d go see the movies downtown Westport, but the movie would start, and then he’d come in the back door. And so I think being around that I was so respectful of his privacy that I missed opportunities where he would say, hey, kid, you want to come do such and such? I’d be like, no, that’s okay. You can go. And they were genuine offers for me to get to know him more and participate, which I didn’t take because I was over compensating. And we had that kind of sweet relationship. And in retrospect, he really was open, and he really wanted to connect with me more. And that’s one of the few things that I regret in my life is that I didn’t take more advantage of that. There’s one sweet story that really shows how sweet and sensitive Paul is and how caring that one summer I ended up rebuilding this tree house for the family on the family property, and that was how I was going to make some money. And that summer, Joanne Woodward was off doing acting somewhere. And Nell has five siblings, five sisters, and they were all gone, and Nell was gone. So it was just Paul and I for the entire summer. And he would frequently have visitors come visit him during the day, whether all these famous people, I’m assuming they were all famous at the time. I had no idea who they were, like Martin Scorsese or whoever. And they would come over and check on my progress at the treehouse and see what I was doing as, like a break from their meetings, whatever. And I remember once him coming up and he introduced me to somebody, and he said, this is James. He’s family. And I kind of said something like, oh, almost family. And I just made that comment. And like, two days later, Paul comes over and he’s talking about something, and he says, hey, I just want to say you. I didn’t mean to offend you by calling you family the other day. And I was like, oh, no, that was fine. This is Paul Newman, right? Okay. Superstar, famous guy. Lots of shit going on. And somehow he picked up on that his care. I might have offended this 18 year old kid that’s my daughter’s boyfriend and building my treehouse. That just shows you how attentive he was and caring. You’d never expect that. And of course, I was flattered. I was just embarrassed. You call me family, that’s fantastic. But I think that’s a sweet story. And it really shows, like, how attentive he was and how sweet he was. And then our relationship where he had a son who died a few years before I met the family and is Scott, who apparently was a pretty amazing guy. And I could look back and go, I don’t know, did I have an opportunity to kind of fill some role there? Maybe I was like the one dude around. And again, I wish I had that perspective at the time because I would have leaned into it more. And I think there was a lot more available. Yeah. And it seems like it was an interesting place.
Michael Canfield: I wanted to talk a little bit more about the tree house, but the VW and the Volvo that were all souped up and it seems like a lot of characters there, which would be fun to sort of learn more about. But it sounds like the treehouse also has a different feature with this story, especially of the watch. Like, you weren’t a watch where or you didn’t. I think when people think about this watch and come from it from one angle. And again, for listeners who haven’t yet sort of picked up, there’s a watch which I’ll describe in the introduction, too. But now it’s known as the Paul Newman Paul Newman or the Paul Newman Daytona, which is sort of iconic watch, maybe the type specimen of especially vintage watches. Right. But in our story, it’s just something that you came by, and it has to do with the Treehouse. So I wonder if you could kind of let us know how that all started.
James Cox: Yeah. Just one afternoon I’m working on the Treehouse, and Paul wanders over, as he frequently did. And I don’t know, in retrospect, did he script this? Was it spontaneous? I imagine it was fairly thought out. But he basically just said, hey, kid, you know what time it is? I said, no, I don’t have a watch. And then he takes this Rolex off and says, well, if you remember to win this, it tells pretty good time. And hands it to me. And I’m like, Holy smokes. And I’m like. And I put this thing on, and I’m like, thanks. And then he actually shows me how to wind it. And that was a really nice little exchange. And at the time, I was like, wow. I knew Rolexes were fancy watches, and it was this personal gift, and I wore it for the next 30 years. And the back story there is that Joanne, his wife, had purchased this Rolex Daytona for Paul when he started racing cars because it was the obvious choice at the time. I believe she bought it at Tiffany’s in New York, and it was not an expensive watch at the time. I think it maybe was three or $600 or something. And she engraved on the back, drive carefully me. He wore that watch racing cars, and it was used as a real timepiece for that purpose. I mean, this is early, right? This is what they used to time lapse and things. And then what happened was that summer, Joanne had bought him a new Daytona Rolex, and she inscribed in the back, drive slowly, Joanne. And that was kind of the evolution of their relationship, too, because she was always telling Paul to slow down whenever we went anywhere. She’s in the back seat knitting, and Paul’s driving like a race car driver into Manhattan. She’s go, Paul, Paul, please slow down. Paul, please. So there was a little bit of humor, I think, between them. And so because she gave that new Rolex, Paul obviously was like, well, I might as well give this one to the kid is how I think it went. And at the time, knowing that he and I were becoming buddies, I mean, it’s only been like the first year of my relationship with his daughter, but he and I were hitting off. So it was a wonderful, generous thing for him to do. And I coveted that watch from that moment forward.
Michael Canfield: You obviously weren’t a Rolex wearer before that, but did you know about it? I mean, I think it was in winning and was sort of already a bit of an icon on his wrist, I think, although I don’t know all the history. Did you know about the watch? Did you I mean, you probably seen it on his wrist, but did you know that it was sort of part of his persona or not?
James Cox: No, I did not at the time, and not for many years. I was not. You know, again, I had no money. I mean, it was the only thing I ever owned that was important to me, and I didn’t know for many years, although you’re right. I believe the timeline, the watch had already become somewhat famous. There’s a photograph that’s the most iconic of Paul wearing the watch, putting an earpiece in at a car race that was featured on an Italian magazine cover. And I think that many in the watch world would argue was the one photo that really got the vintage watch collecting world going. Some say that’s why this particular watch was the Holy grail of all watches, because it was so pivotal in getting the whole collecting movement going. But at the time now I knew it was a cool watch. It was at the time the only thing I had of any worth or interest. And I wore it every day for years and years. And it wasn’t until many years later that I finally got clued in that this watch had a whole nother thing going on in the world. So a couple of really quick follow up questions. So it has that inscription on the back. Did you see it right away or did you find it later? Do you remember when you realized it had an inscription on the back? I think I saw it that night. I wound the watch. I put it on, and that night I took it off and saw that on the back. But he didn’t say anything about it. It wasn’t discussed. And I was like, oh, that’s cool. Drive carefully, me. And even at the time, I don’t think at the time I even knew it was a gift from Joanne and that she had put that inscription on there. I really don’t think I had that. It was just like, oh, this is cool, you know.
Michael Canfield: And then. So you wore it for like 30 years, right? And someone who doesn’t wear a Rolex or wear a fancy watch, they’re meant to be worn, right? At least maybe I should qualify that. I think many people would say, like, if you have a watch, you should wear it. Right. And that’s what it’s for. So you did that. It sounds like Paul gave you this watch. You wore it for 30 years. It’s kind of funny now when we think of what it is, it’s this incredible, iconic. I don’t even know what you call it. It’s like this valuable multi million dollar thing. Right. But it’s also just a watch that back then you just wore. So did you have close calls with it? Sounds like you wore it like doing construction projects. Is that true? Like you just wore it around?
James Cox: Yeah, I wore it just every day everywhere. I don’t think there was a time I really didn’t wear it. And this is kind of a neat thing, too, because beautiful design and things that are made well and are meant to do their jobs are just that. And once I sold it, which is later in the story, I guess it kind of changed my relationship to a lot of the things in my life. I’m a minimalist. I always get the nicest thing. I can afford the best thing because it’s just. And that’s what your listeners and the people you’ve had on your podcasts are like that too, right? They’re just people that love good stuff. And that’s the conversation I had once with Evans. The quality of the economics of quality, just do it right the first time. And the watches are that. And cars can be that. And rather than covet things and just make them beautiful for the next guy, I’ve been enjoying them more. So actually I’ve had a Porsche for a poor guy. I’m talking about a poor guy. And I’ve always had a Porsche, but I’ve had really crappy Porsches. I’ve had 2800 point 914 that just caught on fire all the time. But it was a Porsche. But I used to just take such good care of all my cars that whenever I finally sold them, the next guy got a great example. And finally I was like, you know, I’m going to treat this more like my watch. I’m just going to enjoy it more and drive that car and beat it up and drive in the snow and let it get dirty. And that’s when the stuff really starts to shine. And the Rolex is in that way. It was meant to be worn. I never got it serviced. It was just patinaed in a beautiful way. Yeah, it’s just incredible. And that’s why I wanted another one. When mine went away, I was like, what kind of watch am I going to get next? And I swear I could have called Omega and they would have been like, we’ll give you whatever you want if you switch brands. But I was like, no, I think I want to Daytona. And that was not easy to get. Yeah, we’ll get to that part of the story because that’s a fascinating one. I just wanted to kind of to complete this cycle. And I know you’ve told the story at other places, too, but I want to make sure. So it sounds like you didn’t fully appreciate. And that’s not a criticism. That’s a compliment. What was going on around the watch. Right. That like there were people who saw that photo and the driving magazine, etc. And sort of understood this piece as something in the watch world. Right. You told the story. I heard you about being in Japan, I think, and starting to realize that this was an iconic watch. Can you explain what happened? Yeah. Well, that was the first time I think I really woke up to this, and I was at a trade show, and actually it was in Salt Lake City. Oh, I see. Okay. A Japanese buyer who spoke very little English, and I was talking to him about my bags, my Terra packs company, and he looked at my watch and he’s like, he said, Paul Newman watch. Paul Newman watch. And I was like, Whoa. I’m like, how do you know that I have Paul Newman’s watch? And that’s when we couldn’t communicate very much about it. We moved on to something else. But that night, I was like, okay, this watch, something’s going on here. And that’s when I don’t know if it was then or shortly thereafter where I found out my watch had its own Wikipedia page, and that’s like, wow, this is a force. And it all made sense very quickly. But I’d been oblivious to it. To me, it was just my watch, but it was that one connection that was just profound. Again, I think it speaks to Paul. It speaks to watch had this enormous thing going on that I was just oblivious to. The watch itself was important enough to me on its own.
Michael Canfield: Yeah. So I think that’s one of the questions I have. Right. So it’s kind of weird to talk in this conversation and call the watch the Paul Newman Paul Newman. But the Paul Newman Paul Newman is obviously a beautiful watch. It’s a Rolex. It’s done its service and continues to it’s an excellent piece of machinery, but it’s taken on this life of its own and kind of a brand. But it seems clear that the reason that it came to be that is to a great degree about what Paul Newman meant to people, to meant to our culture. And I’m curious because some of our listeners will remember Newman really well. Right? You obviously knew him, et cetera. Others, not so much, especially younger folks. They might not really understand who Newman was. And so it seems clear they’re good reasons to learn about Newman, et cetera. So what do you think that watch then says about Newman in the sense that it could have been someone else’s watch that sort of lit fire. But it was a large degree because it was on Paul Newman’s wrist. So why do people and did people love him and feel like and you’ve described him as your greatest mentor? What are those things that made you and other people sort of look up to him?
James Cox: Yeah. I mean, for those that knew him and certainly friends, the guy was just amazing. I mean, nobody can say anything bad about Paul. Normally when somebody passes away, you read like somebody comes out and says something bad, and nobody can say anything bad about Paul. The guy was just he was so humble. He achieved so many great things. It wasn’t that he was an amazing actor. I mean, he would not describe himself as that. I think he felt very fortunate, very lucky. He’d always joke like, what if I was born with Brown eyes? He might have been that simple. He wouldn’t have made it. I mean, he was good, but it was just his connection with people that I think just accelerated him. That the kindness which he treated me, this 18 year old dating his daughter. I mean, who the hell was I? But it just showed how attentive and kind he was and how much humility he had. And he never, ever took for granted the fact that it became famous. He was at the very end still just like, wow, I’m so lucky to have this opportunity, and I’m going to share it. And that’s when he did the salad dressing company, he was like, this started off as a joke, and all of a sudden he makes a salad dressing company, and it’s doing it well. He’s like, well, Geez, I’m going to give all the money to charity, and I don’t know if that’s ever been done. How many companies give 100% of their profits away? And I think they’re up to 450 or 500 million to charity. It’s just unbelievable. So he just kept rolling in this way. It was like his style that was successful for him, that made him a great father. It made him have a great relationship with his wife Joanne, and everybody around him was just about integrity and humility and trying to do the right thing every time he could. And where he got that, I don’t really know. But that was him, and it was real. And there aren’t a lot of people like that on the planet. I mean, there are a few, but it was that real. I’m not making this shit up. Every time you looked at different things he did and the decisions he made, you bring some crazy question to him and you think about it and be like, I wonder what we could do here no matter what. It was like, was there a good play? And I think that’s what his acting was like. He’d get into the character, and he tried to figure out something unique about the character, even if it was not a great character, but something redeeming that would have him carry it through. So if you wake up every day and you have that attitude, and then you get famous, and then you have more opportunities, and you keep applying that. It’s like a magic. So the watch is just a piece. It’s this thing that is on his wrist, and it’s with him through this journey of his acting and then becoming a race car driver. And then you think about where that watch was, like, how many dinners with all these other amazing people. And it just started taking on a life of its own. And I think not to be too touchy feely, but it’s like the watch did have, like, kind of an energy of itself because it was just in all these places. And he got into racing cars, I think, because it was just more real and tangible. I think the acting was a lot about opportunity and luck and having blue eyes and good roles and good scripts. But the race car driving, although it was a team, at the end of the day, it’s him behind the wheel, and it’s just. And I think that was just so visceral. And it was a way for him to demonstrate to himself that he really could do something amazing. You combine all that. It’s so curious. I mean, it’s a watch, right? Like you said, there are other examples that look very much like it, but this one was just magic. And I think when I realized that and coupled with all the learning from him and seeing him as, like, the most significant mentor of my life, the obvious thing to do with this watch was not to keep it. When I learned that it was that iconic and had all this power, the idea was to do something with it. And I’ve told this story elsewhere. I said, if Paul was alive and I had this realization, I would go to him and he’d be like, well, that’s cool, kid. What are you going to do? Like, you’re not going to keep it, are you? I mean, he would immediately scheme about what we could do with this. And he wasn’t alive for that conversation, but I had it with them on a different level, and I had it with his daughters. And they all agreed, yeah. And then obviously it’s sold for whatever, $17.8 million at Phillips. And it sounds like part of the reason that you decided to do that and to do something good with it comes from, in effect, that conversation. It wasn’t a real conversation, but what you took from Paul, is that fair to say completely? I think it was several things. It was meeting some folks in the watch industry and realizing that there was this incredibly quirky group of people around the world that were obsessing over this watch and didn’t know what had happened to it. I could jump on chat groups and listen to people saying, Where’s the watch? And did it have this dial and all this stuff. I was like, wow, these people are just nuts over this thing. And that’s fun, right? And so, hey, let’s tell a story. And it seemed also the timing. I mean, Paul died in 2008, and it had been a while. I felt like the lessons that he taught the business world and philanthropy world and just a lot of younger people don’t know who Paul Newman is. And I felt like there’s a good opportunity to bring this stuff back into the public discourse and remind people. And we can tell this story and we can figure out I can go meet all these watch geeks all around the world and let them touch this thing and talk about it. And I think the team we put together to tell the story, the folks at Phillips, Paul Butro Box, Paul Lerner from Optimist Consulting in New York, these folks kind of came together and we said, let’s tell the story and let’s tell it to the world at large and celebrate Paul Newman. And we did it over the course of about a year. I mean, we took the watch on tour. We got really good coverage from the Wall Street Journal and other Michael Clerizo from Wall Street Journal told the story beautifully. And you can Google that in 2017. And the world listened. I mean, if you Google top ten stories, Wall Street Journal 2017, we were like number five. And that just showed me like, oh, my God, this is such a cool story. And for all the right reasons.
Michael Canfield: Right. That’s why I wanted to reach out to you in a lot of ways because not so much about talking about the actual watch and how many dials it has and what the patient is like, et cetera, which is interesting for people who are really into watches. But so many times when there is something iconic or very valuable, there’s not a lot behind it. Or the meaning is often somewhat empty that somebody wore it somewhere or it was so and so yacht or whatever. Right. But the meaning kind of stops there. And it seems like I would say from your stories and your commentary here, there’s a lot of reasons to learn more about who Paul Newman was. Not so much just like the filmography and looking to see which movies he did. And although they’re fun and Slapshot is amazing for a father of hockey players, et cetera. But it’s about the meaning of who this person was, how he lived his life and how his family lived their lives and what we can take from that. And it sounds like you’ve taken some things from it, and I think there’s a reason for us to learn about him. And the watch is any kind of touchstone to do that, to say, oh, this is cool and a kind of symbol, but it’s not the end in itself.
James Cox: Yeah, completely. And again, I started this by saying, you know, it’s not really my story, although there are obviously elements of it. I’m kind of the storyteller of this event that happened, but I felt like I was just a steward of this thing. Like it was given to me and I took care of it and appreciated it as a family heirloom and a connection to Paul and then the immense responsibility of this thing and the opportunity that it had this power in this story, and we didn’t expect to get so much money from it. I mean, that wasn’t the point. The point was more, let’s tell the story. I mean, I remember calling now and saying, I think we should just go tell the world and we should take some time. And that was super fun to go do that. And we agreed to do that. We set an auction and we said, Geez, if we can make some money from this, we should take that energy and push it forward in the world and do cool things with it, which is exactly what Paul would want us to do. And the night we did the auction, well, the night before the auction was just so moving. We packed this Gallery in New York City at Phillips Auction House, and they were used to much smaller events, but I think there were 400 people jammed in there, and Mario Andretti was there and Nell was there, and I was there, and we basically talked about this whole process. And that event was kind of scripted. We had a lot of things to talk about. There were more like, you mentioned the mechanics and history. But at one point I just stood up, I think, and broke the code and was just like, people, this is insane. I’m standing here in Paul Newman’s tuxedo, which I was wearing that he had last worn at the Oscars, and it fit me pretty well. I’m like, and this is just about the man. And this watch is so cool. I was so silent. I think my host was kind of frightened as where I was going with it, but I was just like, this is cool. We’re all here together because this watch has this history. But it’s really like you say, it’s the man that made it. I passed that watch around and it just had a vibe. I mean, there were other Rolexes around, but you held it. It was just not the same. And I can give it to people on tour who won’t even watch people, and they’d be like, Whoa, this has got something going on here that sounds a little you’re a scientist. That’s a little cosmic maybe, but actually, no. I mean, I think that we can have objects, can have meaning, right? Michael Canfield: Absolutely. And what they were, who they belong to. Humans can have things have symbolic meaning, no question. And it’s nice when something is so cool on its face, right? I mean, a Rolex watch is amazing, right? Again, it’s a beautiful piece of machinery, and it has all these things behind it that we can get behind and that are good to get behind. So I totally agree. I don’t think there’s anything to take issue with there. Even as a scientist, I think that absolutely has tons of meaning. And that object is incredible. I think even as scientists, there’s the magic in the world of stuff that we don’t understand, you’re ornithologist et cetera. Sometimes you just look at an organism and you’re like, wow, that is not just this little thing that evolved over millions of years. It’s a sort of stack of DNA and cells. That is a beautiful phenomenon.
James Cox: No. And one of my favorite things is that trees talk to each other, and that’s something that we didn’t know that many years ago. And if you said to people 20 years ago, hey, you know, the trees are having a conversation through chemicals in the ground soil, and they’re warning each other about pests and all this stuff. You’ll be like, oh, you’re crazy trees and talk to each other. And yet they do, and now we can understand it. So you start to think that way, like anything is possible. And there could actually be something going on with that watch that Sophia Loren at dinner touched it, and she rubbed her little DNA in it. And that’s why it’s sexy. I don’t know if you’ve been following any literature on kind of psilocybin and some of the shift in that Michael Pollan’s book on how to change your mind. A lot of that stuff is really fascinating. And that’s a whole other topic, obviously, but it’s about opening up to new ideas and perceptions. And I kind of have this very not well thought out idea that maybe when you take psychedelics or psilocybin and stuff like that, what it’s actually doing is showing you what’s really there. People say, oh, you see strange colors, you see dragons. It’s actually well, they’re actually already there, like the trees talking to each other. We just don’t see it because we’re so stuck on certain concepts and we have certain limits in our cognitive ability, and these natural properties are there to do just that, change your mind, open your mind. And perhaps again, this sounds very cosmic, but some of that energy in the watch is storytelling and scripting, and some of it is the actual thing that was just around this super cool human. And that’s why it was so valuable. And then fast forward, we sell the watch in New York, and it sells for 17 point something million way higher than we thought it would ever go for. And Nell and I were already like, well, we’re going to take this and put it in our foundation, and we’re going to go do amazing things with it again. That’s a whole other story, like a small foundation. Nell was helping her dad with the Newman Foundation, which is salad dressing money. And for years she and I would direct it to all the scientific stuff and deep AG and Organics, which we were in love with. Paul was much more like into humanitarian issues, and we were into environmental stuff. And then Nell eventually founded Newman’s Own Organics, which was a subdivision of Newman’s Own with the idea of, hey, if you’re going to give money away to charities, especially her dad was giving money to camps of terminally ill kids. And we were under the auspices of a lot of those kids are sick for environmental reasons. Food, agriculture, pesticides, let’s grow organic food and do the right thing in the beginning and then also give money away. That was kind of our take. And it didn’t take a lot of convincing for Paul at the time for Nell to start that company, but it was wildly successful and was right before Whole Foods existed a lot of those companies. So Nell was pioneering in that way. And that came out of our College experience of like, again, trying to do the right thing. Like, hey, we can grow organic. And organic food was not so much about the health benefits of organic food or impact on our biology, although that was part of it. It was more about taking care of soil and farmers and birds and insects. So that, again, is another beautiful outcome of the Newman family and Paul’s direction and Nell going off and pioneering Newman’s Own Organics and then giving tons of money to charity while also fostering organic agriculture, which is hugely impactful. So that’s another beautiful side of this. And then the foundation that Nell and I run together using proceeds from the Watch, we are very nimble. We do tiny little grants. We really go find little organizations that have big potential impact that are having trouble getting funding. And then we help them with marketing and we help them get matching grants. And if you go to Nellnewmanfoundation.org, you can see a list of projects, and they’re really I mean, that’s a whole I could talk for hours, literally on the projects that we’ve done and how impactful.
Michael Canfield: Again, I’d love to have a conversation that is a whole other episode, really. And again, I don’t know if you’ll after being On the Dogwatch once you’ll consider it eventually, but, boy, the work you’re doing environmentally and otherwise is incredible. Some of those stories on both My Friend James site and the Nell Newman Foundation, I encourage people to get a load of those. They’re incredible. And again, we should all sort of take a pause and say, well, okay, that’s the tradition, right? That’s what Newman was about. That’s what you guys are about. Like, it’s something to imagine that one can do, one can participate and be part of that. So again, I think that’s a fantastic thing that you’re up to. I have just kind of two more things, and I want to, again, be respectful of your time and make sure that I get the questions answered in this thread. The first one is this. So earlier in the podcast, you’ve made a sort of offhand comment about me possibly being nerdy, which it’s funny because I often get mistaken for a surfer from like, Santa Cruz or something. It’s amazing. I can’t say that with a straight face, but regardless of how you describe it, sort of Newman was on the early side of what it meant to be cool, right. And now it sounds a little bit funny if I said that to my kids, it’s like, cool. What are you talking about, dad? But we’ve talked about some of them. Right. But what made him cool, too, right? That’s an interesting thing. Like, he was a good person, right. He was invested in the greater good, clearly took action to better other people’s lives. And he also was really a cool person. Like, he had style from being around him. Do you have any advice for people like me? What are the things I should pay attention to that made Paul Newman cool? Just because it’s always good to be a little bit more cool, stylish, et cetera. What made him that? Do you have a sense? I mean, you were around him a lot. Like, what were those things?
James Cox: Yes, I think. What is it, Keith Richards? It said something like, if you’ve got to think about being cool, you ain’t cool.
Michael Canfield: And pretty much just described me. So this might be for listeners who have a better shot.
James Cox: Well, but again, I think and Paul would never think of himself as that. I mean, even though he did that movie Coolhand Luke, and that’s in the narrative there. But it’s something about just being so authentic all the time and so real that you’re just an attractant. And I think that’s again, the lessons here. Right? Like, who am I? Like, I’m not special, I’m not rich, I’m not that smart. I figured I found my way in life, and it’s like paying attention, being respectful, telling the truth, looking for mentors. People who are successful want to share, they want to help. You just have to ask. And I didn’t ask enough. I mean, I ended up having this incredible repertoire of people around me, and I was almost too shy to go, like, bang on the door more. And Paul was so available to people, and I think it was like a genuine life. I mean, he was not opposed to in any way, and he was respectful. If you just Google some of his quotes and stuff, you can just realize, like, what a cool guy is. He just thought it was so important to be attentive to people who had less than you had. They were less fortunate. He recognized his success and his luck, and he appreciated other people who were still fighting it out, whether it was kids who had illnesses, whether it was me, just like, I think the advantage I had meeting him at 18 and not being starstruck at all just made me kind of a safe place. And there were definitely tender moments where I was hanging out with him and he felt comfortable, and that was a good feeling, even though sometimes that was awkward because he’s my girlfriend’s dad or he’s famous, but he was just so humble. I think that’s really what it comes down to. And for me, I got lucky, and I think we all have that. Like, we can look around our world and say, who are the people that impress us, who are doing good work, and they’re probably more available than you think. And a lot of my younger friends, I tell this to, if they’re hanging out with a bunch of losers doing nothing, I’m like, you got to change up your friend group because that’s what’s going to elevate you in life. And Paul was inclusive that way. Like, he would pull in the misfits, and he was accessible. That’s fantastic and really fun to think about being part of those things and trying to be more like it. Right. And trying to embody more of that yourself and finding ways to do that. So that’s a really good way to sort of remember him and think about how he can affect other people.
Michael Canfield: So my last question, I think a lot of people with someone who has had this original Paul Newman, did something good with it, sold it, etc. And then you didn’t have a watch. And again, I’ve never owned a Rolex. I don’t know if I’ll ever sort of be in that place. Right. But I’m curious how it feels for you now to no longer have this watch. And then what’s taking its place on your wrist? What are you wearing now? And kind of, how is that going for you?
James Cox: Yeah, well, I missed it terribly, and it was actually gone from me for over a year and a half during the sale process and taking it on tour. And I would meet up with it at various showings under the good guidance of Philips and those folks in New York. They take it around the world, and it would be under high security, et cetera. But I meet up with it and get to put it back on again, which is always like, I’m like, do you mind if I put it on? Like, Paul Boutros is always like, no, you could put it on, James. It’s okay. It’s like technically it’s still your watch. I’m like, okay. But then it sold. And again, the power of that was so overwhelming that I was like, this is the right thing to do. And I didn’t feel at a loss for that. But I did want another Rolex, and I wanted Daytona for the obvious reasons, and they were not easy to find. In fact, I couldn’t get one. And I think the sale of my watch really made the market nuts and made them even harder to get. Ironic. Yes. And I had done so much for the brand, and I actually met the then USA President of Rolex. I met him, I think, in New York, something maybe around that event. And he promised to help me get one. I was like, I’m happy to pay for it. I just want to get one. And that never materialized. So finally, a dealer in Vegas that I went into and told the story had some pity on me. And they called me first with an Explorer, which they called me and said, we have an Explorer. That’s not a Daytona, but it’s a nice watch. I said, great, I’ll come get that. And I knew Ed Viesturs, who is their poster boy climber. Amazing man. I knew him from my days at North Face and Mountain Hardware and just such an amazing, accomplished human. And he had been wearing a Rolex Explorer for years. That’s his thing, right? And it’s a beautiful watch. I thought, okay, well, I know Ed, and it’s super cool. And it’s what a great watch. And indeed, all of those things are true. And I got the white dial Explorer, and I wore that for a couple of years. And it was my Rolex, and I still lost for Daytona but couldn’t find one. And then eventually the same dealer in Vegas called me and said, hey, we have a new Daytona. It’s a white gold blue dial Daytona. And would you like it? And of course, I just said yes immediately. And then I Googled it. And I was like, oh, my goodness, that’s like a very heavy, blingy, expensive watch. But I’m going to go get it anyway. And so I literally went to the I think I flew down to Vegas to get it and put it on. And I’m actually wearing it right now, but it is heavy. The white gold is substantially heavier than the steel Daytona. And the blue dial is great. But I thought it was too blingy. And I’m like, gosh, can anybody have this is like a $40,000 retail watch who can wear a watch like that around? Which is kind of silly since I was wearing a $17 million watch. But anyway, that’s what I was wearing. And then more recently, I bumped into another dealer in Madison, Wisconsin, who heard my story and also felt pity that I didn’t have a steel Daytona. And then when a black dial steel Daytona came up in his shop, he called me and I purchased that. So now I have two Daytonas and an Explorer. So I went from not being a watch guy to having some gorgeous watches. And you said that you haven’t had a Rolex. Is that true?
Michael Canfield: No, I’ve never put one on. Yeah, it’s not an experience. Okay, well, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to put my black dial Daytona in a FedEx box. We won’t tell anybody when I’m going to ship it so they don’t go rob it off your doorstep. But I’d love to send you this Daytona. You should just wear it for like a month or two. It’s such a cool experience. No, I think you should totally try it. And it actually reminds me of Michael Clarizo, who from the town Wall Street Journal. When he first interviewed me about the watch, I was like, Michael, you have to go wear the damn thing. And at the time, it was like sitting in a vault in Switzerland, and he’s interviewing me over the course of it was like the Wall Street Journal did an amazing job, like the fact checking the story. It was incredible. So it was a big process. But I’m like, you have to put this thing on if you’re going to write about it. And he agreed, and I don’t remember the details. I think he was already in Europe at the time. He might have been in London or something. My watch was in a vault in Geneva at Phillips, and he literally made a journey. And I said, Michael, you need to get a really nice bottle of wine from the 70s or something from the air of the watch and a cigar and go sit in the vault and hold that watch. I don’t think he did the wine, but he did actually go put the watch on, and that just changed everything for him. You know what I mean? He got some of that vibe. So back to you. I think you should wear a Daytona for a while, because I have for a few months. So I’m going to send it to you because I can’t wear two at the same time. I’ll be really tacky, and you should just have it. And then we’ll do another podcast and you can reflect on your experience.
Michael Canfield: Let’s do it. Let’s do that. And then we can talk some more about some of the other things that are really important that we haven’t gotten to, especially around the other work you do. That would be cool, I have to say. Thank you. I would enjoy that tremendously. And also, it’s a nice connection, too. I really appreciate that because it’s a way to get to know each other better and all that stuff. And I never thought I’d ever wear a Rolex, actually, to be honest, I never thought I’d put one on my wrist.
James Cox: Yeah, it’s really fun. And when I meet people and tell them the story, I immediately take my watch off and hand it to them, make them put it on while I’m telling the story, because it’s kind of fun. And I like to share if you were in town, I’d let you drive my car, too. We got to share these things short. So let’s do that. And then anybody listening that wants more information, I think, like going to the Nelnewmanfoundation.org or myfriendjames.com and you can learn some of the projects because this power has continued on. We’ve done amazing Things. We’re not done. We’ve got years worth of work to do. And it’s all in the spirit of this super cool man who made this watch iconic and not really maybe we’re done, but there’s a quote that I’ll read that for some reason it’s on my computer. I don’t know why it was here, but it’s just a quote from Paul that one of the last ones from him before he passed away and just see if I can read it without getting choked up. I’d like to be remembered as a guy who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one Another, tried to find some decency in his own Life, tried to extend himself as a human being. And that’s really Paul man. He’s just such a beautiful man. I think again, we can all be this cool. It’s really not that Hard. You just have to lean into it and be honest and be Humble. As Paul would also Say, when you see the right thing to do, you better do It. And I really think that’s the fork in the road that he would keep taking again and Again, whether it’s in his career or whether it’s a charity, and every one of us can do that. We can all do that and define what school is because you can’t define It. You just have to live it and all of a Sudden, somebody might look at you one day and go, wow, that guy is actually pretty Cool. And you become that way by following this kind of Path. I think that’s the lesson of Paul that I’m trying to emulate and yeah, it’s Cool.
Michael Canfield: James, I don’t think I can say anything Else. I think that is a great way for us to finish this part of the Conversation. I wanted to thank you so much for being On the Dogwatch, for sharing all of that, especially that last Quote. It’s just a great way to sum it up. So thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
James Cox: You’re so welcome. I really enjoyed it. I love telling Stories. Thank you for your Time, Mike. Appreciate it.
Michael Canfield: Thanks again to James for such Meaningful and Memorable Conversation. We’ll look forward to having him on the show Again in just a few months. Don’t forget to write a short review of The Dogwatch on Apple Podcasts and to subscribe as it helps us get the word out to others. Our music credit today is Whiskey on the Mississippi by Kevin McCloud, courtesy of Creative Conan until our next shift. This is Michael Canfield. Thank you for joining us on The Dogwatch.
