BIG'S BIG MOVIE LIST

     I was never a very good pool player. My grandparents had a small table in their basement that I never really got any time on, and I stayed out of the pool hall at the local arcade growing up because it was smokey and dimly lit (and I was more into coin op arcade games at the time). As an adult, I come across a felt every now and then, but I almost always lose. I suppose if I had the access to a table and I put in the hours, I could become a passable pool player. I doubt very much that I ever rate among the likes of “Fast” Eddy Felson or Minnesota Fats in Robert Rossen's “The Hustler”, but I think it would be a nice feather in my cap to win more games than I lose.

 

     “Fast Eddy” Felson (Paul Newman) is our titular hustler, out for money and glory as he descends on Ame's pool hall to challenge the legendary “Minnesota Fats” (Jackie Gleason) to a high stakes marathon match. Eddy is a born pool player, taking Fats for almost twenty grand, but in the end, he drinks too much, pushes his luck too far, and loses almost all of it to Fats.

 

     After all the glamor of winning fistfuls of cash at pool had run its course, the audience saw who Eddy Felson really was: a two-bit loser living out of a bus station locker. Eddy meets and promptly shacks up with drunken “college girl” Sarah (Piper Laurie), and frankly, if I had the statuesque physique and lagoon blue eyes of a 36-year old Paul Newman I'd probably be shacking up with girls like Piper Laurie too. Eddy works to regain a foothold on his game, and repair his ego in the wake of his loss to Fats, taking a hard look at winning, losing, and character along the way.

 

       One could say this was a movie about pool, but they'd be wrong (it is called “The Hustler” after all). I was a bit disappointed that the amount of pool playing drops of significantly after the first act, as the film becomes more of a character examination of a greasy hustler. In spite of some slow-moving pockets of time, the story is very enjoyable. The films scenery is a showcase of shitty dives and pool halls that are well selected, and the intermingling jazz soundtrack sets a near perfect tone for it all.

 

     Interestingly enough, most of the pool shots made in the movie were actually shot by the actors themselves (Jackie Gleason was a skilled player going into production, and Paul Newman had never held a pool cue, so he replaced his dining room table with a pool table so he could practice and sharpen his skills). Only a handful of shots were “stunt shots” performed by someone else, one of which was the fabled Massé shot, which requires incredible skill and is explicitly forbidden in one pool hall according to a sign posted on the wall. The stunt shots were performed by 14-time world champion billiards player Willie Mosconi, who also has a cameo in the film. The film's release in 1961 garnered critical and popular acclaim, and was reportedly responsible for a nationwide resurgence of the popularity of pool.

 

It is also one of the first films in which the word “bastard” is used.