From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- It Ain’t About The Pool, Fast 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 Newman, 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 with everything you owned in the Great Depression or not having gotten your fill of blood, 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.

Put it plain. 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. And like those sainted brothers, beat down, beat around, beatitude beat, beat six ways to Sunday beat looking for the hook to show the world your wares, your blue-eyed , if you had blue-eyes and okie look said you did, Adonis wares ready to take on six kings before supper. Hell it was easy, wasn’t it. Just ask king Neal riding the clutch, and nothing but the clutch around some dead man’s curve, riding easy, like some Spanish dancer, or matador flaying the cape gently before the kill. Ask million word king Jack, writing those log roll be-bop words for a hungry world to hear in the deadened go-go night, no hero he, but some Frankish Adonis kindred flaying at typewriters, and taking notes on small Woolworth pads. Ask king Allen who proclaimed the empty night, who heralded the empty night, who sang Kaddish to the empty night to those who sought fame instead of truth. And, in the end, ask Fast Eddie, ask Fast Eddie what he proclaimed, what he heralded, what empty night he raised his sword against.

For 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. Hanging out in white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide bucket belt, whipsaw ready, holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety store , 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, or 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. And it started early. Maybe it was hunger started stealing milky way candy bars at mom and pop’s, or maybe just a soft touch from some mislaid mother’s purse. Easy pickings.

But hunger, gnawed hunger, festering hunger is a tyrant, a hard and cruel tyrant, when you have Fast Eddie appetites. So maybe a round of jewelry store “clips” for some teenage tart with visions of femme fatale and you are the practice. Later, older later, some midnight auto takedown for whiskey shots. Easy stuff but with tight margins and guys, cops, hoods, and hard boys ready, willing and able to cramp your style. Yes, Fast Eddie, 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 (and enough intelligence to see clips, stolen hubcaps and armed robberies would eventually put a crimp, a very big crimp, in his Adonis wares), had something else, he had some talent.

After dismissing from his mind 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 a chance 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 eternal DNA connection genes to prove it). And, mainly, they had gotten 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, a wayward shoulder here or there, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot like he and the balls were one, and maybe they were, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then go on those runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to hanging off that wall at the 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 with some hard-pressed corner boy in some back alley, and getting kicks out of smelling the sweat, the special criminal metallic 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. Got Pharaoh with his blood up, with his king hell king no prisoners blood up. Jesus Fast Eddie 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, about round ten, took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Fast 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, that no quote nine to five 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 had 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, to carry. 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 too much hunger pieces. To curb his hunger a little, maybe, and also to disturb his sleep. Some called her a tramp, an easy lay, a place to hang your hat while you were nursing your fresh wounds but Fast Eddie never, even from minute one, at the bus station diner saw her that way. And even wild corner boy sullen guys like Eddie who couldn’t say the right words knew she was no whore, no dish rag to dirty and move on.

She wasn’t beautiful, not that way beautiful, not Fast Eddie blue-eyed Greek Adonis beautiful with flashy moves, more like our lady of the lord Madonna drink her in like fine wine beautiful. More like those women you see, hear or read about that make you say to yourself that you had better hold on to her Mr. Blue-eyed Adonis 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 her bed. Polite society had called her a tramp, hanging on to a succession of beat down corner boys for dear life, maybe for her life. What could they know 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, he knew it, she knew it, 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 not 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 with no looking back.

Sarah, Fast Eddie’s lifeline Sarah out of some biblical prophecy, out of those million books read, out of her own dark street past, knew the ten percent men, knew their clawing and scratching away at a man’s soul, at a woman’s soul too when they got their blood up. She knew, back streets knowledge knew at a heavy price, and a couple of off-hand bought drinks, that their price was too much to pay for fifteen minute fame dreams. Knew from her own much abused bed they had no pure Fast Eddie dreams, no Fast Eddie soul, just clawing away at more than their ten-percent cut. But would Fast Eddie listen, hell, not our boy, and so the dice were cast.

But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, forget some formless woman, let’s call her Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie’s lifeline, can’t live in the real world. Can’t live in the world of dirt and dust, and blood and still take breathe. And can’t live in the world of big dreams. Big monstrous dreams. So Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hungers. Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to nevertheless 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 down in some southern California pool hall way out of his element in the 1950s be-bop night. 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 –paid for victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Still shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool like your life depended on it.