Pool Party By Fearless Young Orphan The Hustler (1961) Directed by Robert Rossen I saw it: November 29, 2009 Why haven’t I seen it yet? Good question. I’m not sure why I haven’t seen it. Hustler I should have enjoyed The Hustler. I like psychological studies, moody films, stories about quests to be the best at something. I think Paul Newman is a great actor with a screen presence surpassed by no one. I can list for you now all the things I know that The Hustler got right. I just didn’t like the damned thing. I have no desire to see it again. There is it, my pedestrian slip is showing. Is it possible to understand why a film is a classic and still not like it? I couldn’t wait for it to end. I thought it was a story of miserable people doing lousy things to each other, and what redemption there was to be had was anticlimactic. Here’s the tale. If you haven’t seen The Hustler then you probably at least know that it’s about a pool hall hustler who is eager to prove himself to be the best. Whether he wants to be the best pool player or the best pool hustler, I am not sure, and I don’t think the two are the same thing. His name is Fast Eddie Felson, and he’s played by Paul Newman, who does a flawless job portraying the young man. Eddie is handsome and charming, overconfident about some things and not nearly confident enough about others. He has cloudy problems about him: hints of a largely unhappy life, hints that without a pool cue in his hand he’s probably not very interesting, strong strong hints that he is incapable of having a healthy relationship. Eddie is fixated on squaring off against Minnesota Fats, the best pool player he knows of, and beating him. This face-off was all I knew about the movie coming into it. I thought the whole film was supposed to be about this rivalry. Well, it is, and it’s not. Eddie gets his wish to play against Minnesota Fats early in the film. Fats is played by Jackie Gleason. Gleason is rather like an island in a sea of troubles in this movie. Classy and distinguished, he seems rather the master of zen pool. He has very few lines but a remarkable presence. I think he was the best thing in the movie. There are two pool games between Fats and Eddie, one close to the beginning of the movie, and one at the end. A whole lotta minutes of film pass in the interim. The first pool challenge between these two is a grueling task; the film implies that it lasts at least 24 hours. Fats is winning, then Eddie is winning, then Fats is winning again . eventually Eddie sort of collapses and/or runs out of money and Fats still looks like he could play well into next week. The contest is over and Fats has won. That Eddie is a better pool player than Fats does not seem to be the issue. As sleazy gambler Bert Gordon (played by George C. Scott) says, Eddie seems to have lost because he lacks character. This is a hazy area of the movie for me. Is pool honestly a game that requires a lot of character? Is hustling? I don’t know; maybe it’s out there as a metaphor for life. Whatever the reasons, Eddie is crushed and he slinks away with his tail between his legs, and looks for all the world like he may be planning a long, slow suicide. Into his long, slow suicide comes Sarah Packerd (Piper Laurie, whom I know only from her portrayal of the hyper-religious Margaret White in Carrie) a sort of spooky, boozy, nearly- suicidal-herself woman Eddie meets at the bus station. Here comes the next section of the movie, which feels eight hours long. These two recognize each other as just the kind of pain they each deserve and they fall into a relationship that has problems written all over. Sarah says as much because even though she may be drunk, she’s not stupid. In no time, Eddie moves into her apartment. They don’t talk much, or do much, except drink and have sex. When they are not together Sarah goes to school and Eddie lurks out to bars to hustle a little money. He ends up getting his thumbs broken when he hustles the wrong guys, and this provides him the opportunity to act even more childish and self-centered than before. The portrayal of their dysfunctional love story is also flawless, but that doesn’t make it interesting or enjoyable. I felt for Sarah, maybe because she seemed to be the one who was at least dryly aware that she was acting destructively, but I liked neither one of them, and liked even less the disastrous couple they made. Well yes, they love each other, in the way that people love each other when there is no one else for them to love. But this love is only going to work when they are alone in her apartment, as is soon discovered. Bert Gordon finds his way to Eddie, sensing that he can make some money off Eddie if he can teach Eddie a thing or two about how to behave. Bert is every bit as detestable as Eddie and Sarah but without the self-loathing, so he’s a nice switch. Anyway he takes Eddie on a road trip so they can hustle pool and Sarah guilt-trips her way into coming along. Girl should have stayed home; I could have told her that. On the road together, with third-wheel Bert in the mix, the strains of her relationship with Eddie rear their ugly heads. The Hustler There is a lot more of this . than there is of this. It’s still not about the pool game yet. We’ve got to watch the self-destruction a bit longer. Eddie is too shallow and self-involved to see what’s happening or do anything about it; Sarah is too sad to rescue herself; Bert is a sleazebag who dislikes Sarah and insults her but also wants her. Dramatic events occur. I won’t divulge them all here. They seemed inevitable to me; but by the time it all went down, I was so sick of these unhappy people that I no longer cared much. All this melodrama is leading us back to the final confrontation between Eddie and Minnesota Fats; when Eddie has finally matured enough to face his ultimate challenge. The final pool game is much shorter than the first. Jackie Gleason walks away with the scene once again. So, in the wash, is Eddie a winner or a loser? That would be up to your own definition of the words. It winds up with me saying, “What a technically-intriguing, professionally-acted, well- written movie about people I hate, with problems I don’t care about.” I apologize profusely to the film’s legions of fans; we’ll have to chalk this one up to my personal tastes, which certainly must be as fallible as anyone else’s. Companion Movie: The Color of Money (1986) Directed by Martin Scorsese I saw it: December 1, 2009 Nice for my purposes, that I hadn’t actually seen this sequel to The Hustler. Or maybe not so nice, since I didn’t like this movie much either. Once again I found myself watching a movie that seemed technically sound and well acted and, I suppose, adequately written, and finding it ultimately uninteresting. Paul Newman reprises his role as Fast Eddie Felson, 25 years later. Banned long ago from the pool scene, he is a liquor salesman and seems to be a good one. We only have his word for it and the evidence of some snappy duds and a luxurious car, though for all we know he might live in a cardboard box somewhere. No, I think it’s only natural that this guy would be a good salesman. What else is hustling, after all? Eddie has a nice woman in his life, Janelle (Helen Shaver) and they have plans to build a comfortable future together. Then into Janelle’s bar comes a very young pool ace named Vincent Lauria. Vince is played by Tom Cruise in his early years as a blockbuster star. Top Gun was released earlier in the same year, to give you some perspective. Looking over Mr. Cruise’s list of movies since then I was actually rather surprised that he’s made as few movies as he has, because since Top Gun it seems like he’s been in about ten movies every year for the past thirty years. Not so. He’s just seems to permeate culture. I’ve never been a big fan of his, although he’s been in some movies I really enjoyed; nevertheless he and I are close in age and I feel like I’ve known him for a long time. This was like looking at his baby pictures. He was round- faced and apple-cheeked, with an awful, 80’s-style mushroom hairdo that is perhaps meant to increase his height by several inches. Vincent Lauria as played by Mr. Cruise is gifted but vacant, thinking no further than his own ego and his instant gratification. He has a girlfriend with him. Her name is Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio).