From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- It Ain’t About The Pool, Eddie- Paul Newman’s “The Hustler”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Paul Newman’s “The Hustler.”

DVD Review

The Hustler, starring Paul New Man, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, 20th Century-Fox, 1961

Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool. Yes, Fast Eddie shoot pool like your life depended on it, and it probably will in the end. Fast Eddie, coming like hellfire out of the west, out of the wild boy, okie, arkie dust shaking be-bop west night looking, looking for something in the go-go post World War II night. Some cureless thing to take the curse off of not having made that okie trek in the great depression or gotten your fill of action and danger in the “big one.” Something to take the pain, the angst, the alienation or whatever the sociologists and psychologists wanted to call it, away. Some Neal Cassady/Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg Howl against the fates moment all gassed up to run the tables on the red scare cold war night.

To Fast Eddie it was, or it started out as, just creeping out from under that old East Oakland, Haywood, Richmond, you name the town they were all the same, all filled with restless boys wishing to break out from that corner boy existence. Wishing to, hanging out white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide belt bucket holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety, some bowling alley, hell, some glass-fronted pool hall wall to break- out, jail-break out but just then waiting , yeh, waiting.

So it was hell’s angels big hog cycles and whipsaw chains beating down terrified citizens (or each other) for pocket change and a three to five stretch courtesy of the California penal system, break of dawn at some smoke-filled factory making widgets with after dinner corner boy nights holding up storefront walls or going on the hustle. Join the drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters and make a name, a small name for yourself, in the fifteen minutes of fame world and then fade. Small dreams fade.

Not our boy Fast Eddie though he wanted more, he wanted way more, he was hungry, really too hungry. He wanted to be the king hell king of the pool hall night, small dream in a big dream world but it was his dream and he was sticking to it, come hell or high water. Jesus was he going to stick to it. See Fast Eddie besides his dream had something else, he had some talent. After dismissing those big hog wild boys from across the Sonny Barger street as nowhere and after wiping up the poolroom floor with half the half-smart blond, blue-eyed faux hard guy surfer boys in California he wanted to beat down pharaoh like a lot of okie, arkie guys had been trying to do since Egypt time (although their names were different then that is what they were and Fast Eddie had the DNA connection genes to prove it). And, mainly, getting busted up by pharaoh’s boys for their troubles. Still Fast Eddie had talent and that is worth something in this wicked old world, something okay.

To watch Fast Eddie when he was fast and loose was a sight to behold, shifting those hips just this way and that, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then the runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to that mom and pop variety store corner that he crawled out from under. Rich guys too, rich guys looking for cocaine kicks, maybe some off-hand roughhouse sex, and smelling the sweat, the special criminal sweat of guys who had done time while they were at Saint Mark’s, or someplace like that hanging around reading Nelson Algren or Jean Genet , with their boyfriends. Hell, Fast Eddie would relentlessly faggot tease them (even if they weren’t) and they would lap it up. Jesus. Still he wanted pharaoh.

And he got Pharaoh, got pharaoh in spades. Got more of pharaoh that most men, even hard corner boys, would ever want. Jesus he looked good for about ten rounds though all loose and Fast Eddie-like, making juke moves like some fancy dan pro football player, cocky, hell, cocky, calling strange shot combinations and drinking high-bench bourbon to steady his nerves. Beautiful. Pharaoh about that time took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Eddie –like moves of his own and some ballet-like combinations that had Fast Eddie reeling. Pharaoh- by a knock-out. The boys who watched most of the play, and they had watched Pharaoh up against some pretty good corner boys, all agreed that Fast Eddie was good, but that his talent could only get him so far and that his dreams maybe should be played out in Hoboken, or Jersey City not in the bigs. One guy, who didn’t want to be quoted just in case, called Fast Eddie just another okie sodbuster loser.

But that guy had never nursed a dream, never was haunted by being there at the end hearing the other guy, the pharaoh, cry to the high heavens “uncle.” Yeh, he never heard that sweet music, and never would. And so Fast Eddie nursed his wounds, nursed his dream along too. He still had that too much hunger that comes from a rationed world, his world, his okie world. Fast Eddie was dumped back on cheap street, on the street of broken dreams.

And then she showed up, showed up to pick up the pieces, the Fast Eddie pieces. To curb his hunger a little, and also to disturb his sleep. She wasn’t beautiful, not that way beautiful, more like our lady of the lord Madonna beautiful. More like you had better hold on Mr. Blue-eyed man searching for that elusive fame. Funny how it all started, all started like with most Fast Eddie girls, with a few drinks, a few words, and some animal, not wild but not gentle either, connection that drove them to some bed. Polite society would have called her a tramp, hanging onto some beat down corner boy for dear life, maybe for her life. Who could say about a girl who wrote be-bop beat stuff, read a million books, and drank an ocean of whiskey before noon to chase away her own demons. She was Fast Eddie’s girl from the minute he sat down next to her, and that thought got her through some stuff. And Fast Eddie too.

Some dreams though are monstrous and Fast Eddie’s was just that way. And she, Sarah to give her a name now that he had shared her bed, could do nothing, nothing at all to slay that monster. It gnawed at him. And like most dreams, most modern dreams, there was a need for money, serious money to run at pharaoh again. Now if the world was just made up of mad dream men and clinging women it would be such a hard place at that. But there are in this wicked old world, especially down in the darkened lamp-less corners, down in the alleys, down in the gutters when even dreaming is against the law, outlawed no questions asked, guys, ten percent guys let’s call them, hang out. Hang out waiting for broken dream cheap street has beens with talent (those without just keep moving, moving down) to come to their door. And with nothing to lose (or so Fast Eddie thought) he bought in, bought into the bargain with the devil, and no looking back.

But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, let’s call her Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie’s lifeline, can’t live in the real world. The world of dirt and dust, and blood. And the world of big dreams. Big monstrous dreams. And so Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hunger. And Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to even the score, even the score the only way he knew how. Take on the pharaoh or die.

As it turned out Fast Eddie danced that night of the re-match, all loose and fast like old Fast Eddie when I first saw him work his magic against some scrub surfer guy way out of his element. The pockets were like manholes that night and I thought Fast Eddie was going to run the table on old tired pharaoh. He didn’t but old pharaoh, wise enough to know his play, cried “uncle” to the high heavens. That “victory”, that Sarah Packard –etched victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Still shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool.