Two Hollywood classics and a little reflection on life
In the summer of ‘19, a few friends and I were making conversation on a patio—ice cold soda in tow. On impulse, one fellow recommended that we go shoot pool at a nearby dive. One thing led to another, and what followed was a summer of regular games and good times that’s become as sentimental as it gets. Two obsessions have lingered since then too: A continuing love affair with the good game of billiards (“you name it, we shoot it” in the words of Eddie Felsen), and an interest in two films which have become regular favourites on my rewatch catalogue.
Initially, their appeal was largely derivative of my hobby—I liked pool, I liked shooting pool, I liked watching pool, so here I am watching dramas orbiting around pool. My admittedly technical interest in these movies, though, proved but an entry point. What bloomed was an appreciation for them as great works of cinema, not just as pool movies. I first saw The Hustler (1961), based on the Walter Trevis novel and brilliantly realized by an ensemble cast of Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason (of Honeymooners fame) and George C. Scott. The other—a sequel—is an oft-forgotten “lesser Scorsese” that hardly earns its due: The Color of Money (1986), also adapted from a Trevis novel and again with Paul Newman, but now co-starring a young Tom Cruise.
Though either one seems like any other sports movie, each conceals rich filmmaking prowess guided by themes that are so simple, yet so resonant. Even more impressive: they’re twenty-five years apart, stylistically very different, and don’t share the same director nor screenplay writer. Cliché as it is to say, their thematic throughlines have only gotten better with age and its attendant life pivots.
The Hustler is a forgotten classic of American filmmaking that’s an antecedent to the closers of the so-called ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ and its classical drama, while carrying a sorrow and generational existentialism that anticipated the late 60s upstarts of New Hollywood. The sport around which the film centers—straight pool, a challenging points-based game of pocket billiards enjoyed during the heyday of pool hustling, but now a relic in the modern scene—is but the medium for the human drama that grounds the tragedy of Eddie Felsen. The man is absolutely swallowed by an obsession to be the best, signaled entirely by him attempting to defeat the greatest player around: Minnesota Fats. Fats is one of those men who carries himself with a dangerous humility: He holds court at a big-time pool hall in a small-time town, giving off the impression of a slow but well-to-do wanderer who only plays “now and then.” He’s magnificently realized by the late, great Jackie Gleason—a prime, early example of a riotously funny comedic actor transitioning perfectly into a chillingly excellent dramatic role—now a familiar sight à la the likes of Adam Sandler of Uncut Gems or Bob Odenkirk of Better Call Saul.
The Color of Money saw Newman reprise his role as Eddie Felsen, older and seemingly in a more prosperous place, but still vicariously seeking the thrill of money games by stakehorsing some pool action on the side. That thrill-seeking consumes Eddie when he comes across Vincent (Cruise) and sees in him what he could have been all those years ago at those Iowa pool halls. He unknowingly becomes a lot like George C. Scott’s character in the first film: A sinister manager who ends up warping his prodigy, albeit with a different modus operandi and apparently as a well-intentioned mentor—unlike Scott’s colder, businesslike managerialism.
I’ve watched the two films many times since they first found their way onto my screen: I struggle to rank either because they’re each stylistically distinct—as well as quite special to me—in different ways. But over time, I’ve had the privilege to reread these movies and observe them from a different perspective on life. The Hustler’s tragedy is to me a very personal one: Being compelled to contemplate your place in life, and whether pursuing your passion is really getting you anywhere. As romantic as it would be to say that it was also pool for me like it was for Eddie, it wasn’t. Like Eddie, I’ve had a love for pursuits and dreams and goals and ambitions that laid a road towards happiness in my mind. I, too, had the chance to start getting good at what I did, and think to myself that the path forward was so linear—if it only were ever so easy. But I too, like Eddie, got told at the end to “never walk into a big-time pool hall ever again.” To be compelled out of what you love before you really get started. “It was over for me before it even really began,” he proclaims in Color.
That exact lament is what’s become of Eddie in The Color of Money: a resting Great White around pool sharks who’s semi-retired and without the drive to rediscover. But it’s also where that redemption, that optimism finds its way back into his life. Here an older, greying Eddie Felsen is further ahead in life and yet very successful—stable sales career, money in hand, a fine glen check suit and a camel coat, and a pearl white Cadillac Brougham. Even with that, a hunger persists, and it takes a long and personally exhausting journey for Eddie to realize a love that lay dormant in him all his life—a love and appreciation for the game of pool which always eluded him but one he could never capture. Eddie was exiled from the game, but it also took that long wait and the hard lessons of Color to learn that hustling isn’t its totality: in fact, it’s hustling that destroyed him in the first place back in the first film. It’s only after a lifetime of pilgrimage across many a dim-lit and smoke-filled pool hall from coast to coast that he learns that, and comes to love the game in a different, more satisfactory way. That’s when he’s truly back.
Beauty is always in the simplest of messages. Be it pool or otherwise, the heart always finds a way back to its true passions. For a lot of us, law school often does feel like an interregnum—a bit of a redirection away from an undergrad in which we invested a great deal. There’s a lot of comfort in knowing that legal education isn’t the end though: That’s up to you, of course, but it can simply be a detour on the way to a long-awaited return.
At the end of The Color of Money, Eddie—hovering over a table where he’s up in rematch against his former prodigy—simply states: “I’m back.” I can’t help but be in tears right after that proclamation and its succeeding freeze-frame. I cry out of joy for Eddie Felsen, finally resting on the laurels of a hard found passion after a lifetime of uncertainty and lament. But I also cry because, one day, I know I too will be back.