The Gene Hackman Hall of Fame

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture Conversation Show about Gene Hackman. The great Tracy Letts is here today on the show, and we are building the long-awaited Hall of Fame for Gene Hackman, one of the greatest screen stars of the past century, this is one of the most requested episodes in the history of this podcast. We have put in the work today. We will dive into Hackman's career and select the 10 films that best represent his work right after this. This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. The Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book, your favorite hotel site, your go-to airline, and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway, from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at wellsfargo.com slash autographjourney. Terms apply. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with the big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're having, Prime helps bring it to life. With great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime. Okay, Lutz, did you ask for this? Because it's been some time since Hackman passed, and I did a brief video on YouTube back in 2025 when he passed away, but we never did a proper episode dedicated to him. So was the origin of this episode you saying, let's do Hackman? It really started with the people. The people in the streets, the people in the middle of America, they came to me after the Duval Hall of Fame that we did, and they said, we need Hackman. They knocked on your door? How did they approach you? They let me know. They tell me in the streets. They ride down the street, and they talk to me as I ride down the street. Are you in the back of a convertible? Yeah. I talk to the people. Careful riding that way. You know what can happen to beloved men in this country. The people tell me that they needed Hackman, and I communicated that to you. The people are asking for Hackman. And here we are. And also, I'm going to be in L.A. for this window of time. Well, this is the time it worked out to do it. Yeah. You were requested for Diane Keaton. I was? Yeah, we asked you, and you said that you didn't really feel that it was going to work with your schedule to watch the back half of Diane Keaton's catalog. So I did the work solo. And you guys did it expertly. Thank you so much. I thought it was really good. For me, there was a real steep drop-off. On the Keaton filmography after a certain point. And I thought, this isn't fair. I'm going to go in and just really be pitching for these early things. It was like, it should be more across the board than that. Amanda did do the work on that episode. And these episodes are, I think, an interesting social experiment at this point in terms of what we're trying to accomplish. When we started doing them, we were doing them with a lot of. Living actors. Yeah, a lot of Gen X, early boomer types. You know, you're Tom Hanks. You're Julia Robertses. And a lot of that was about our affinity for a certain kind of movie that was maybe in the crevices of a very well-known contemporary career. And now, as a lot of these great screen stars of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s are starting to pass away, there's a heavy workload involved here. And I think what is the value of that workload is something I'd like to explore through some of this conversation. But one of the things that is very clear to me, after doing Keaton, after doing Duvall, after doing Meryl Streep, and now you're doing. is that these actors have so many movies that no one talks about ever. And some of them for good reason, and some of them for not good reason. Some of them are real discoveries and really exciting. Just earliest takeaways before we start getting into the biography of Hackman and where his career starts. What do you take away from this? Well, I said yes to this very confidently. I was like, because I know all the work of Gene Hackman. I've seen the greats. And then I looked at the. And I was like, oh boy, I'm in some hot water here because there are a lot of movies in the 70s and 80s that surround the greats that I've seen and that are, you know, classics of cinema. And I had just never heard of, to your point. And there was a little bit of like picking and choosing and trying to figure out, okay, which of the five movies in 1970, whatever, should I seek out here? And even at some point, I realized last night that I was watching a different movie than the movie that I intended to watch. And I was like, well, I've checked this DVD out of video. It's too late. I guess I'm like, I'm on the journey of Prime Cut now. So I knew that it was expansive, but I really had no idea how expansive it was. And, you know, it's interesting. We came of age in the 90s. And so I feel like we do know all the films that slipped through the cracks in the 90s and great undiscovered work. But, you know, you forget there was life before us. And in the 70s, they were just turning stuff out. Yeah. They're just like a lot of stuff. And I didn't get to all of it. I'm hoping that you're going to be our red box captain for this part. I got to almost everything. Almost everything. Just a couple of blank spots. So Hackman made 80 total features, roughly 75 features in which he prominently figures. I think because, you know, he has like a couple, uncredited parts. You know, he's got a couple of parts where he's just doing voice work. But I've seen now 69 of them. And I feel really accomplished. But right before we started recording, you said, I'm just missing a few. And I'm just missing a few as well. And now I feel derelict in my duty. And yet, man, I feel like I have a total picture of his work and the kind of actor that he is and what he means to Hollywood. And something I was saying to you yesterday was that I really see him, and I'll bet you feel this way too, as a bridge to movie history. Because he is one of the very few people, unlike, say, Al Pacino, who never took a break. He never took more than two years off from making a movie. He was pretty consistently in a meaningful box office or awards film through every five to seven years, starting in the late 1960s all the way through 2004. And so that body of work is, he's just so present persistently. And so I think that's one of the things that I think is so important to me through an almost five-decade period of movie history. So just general thoughts. You've seen almost all the movies now. Did you change your mind about Hackman? Did you think anything different? First of all, his choice of material is very interesting. And one of the reasons he's a bridge that you're talking about because he chooses work in the 90s that really speaks to you guys and your generation. You have different associations with Hackman than I do. In a way that I don't think Robert Duvall quite understands. Quite did, right? Robert Duvall receded to some extent just in the roles he was choosing, right? They paid him his money and he showed up and he played a smaller part in something. Or he did something that was a passion project but that just didn't have very wide appeal. Whereas Hackman found himself in some really huge movies from the 90s and clearly was choosing that material. It's a very different thing than watching Robert Duvall or watching Robert Redford, or watching all these, all these Hackman movies. I mean, for one thing, Hackman just doesn't have the range of Robert Duvall. You don't see him playing Watson in a Sherlock Holmes movie. You won't see him playing, oh, who's the Nazi he plays? The eagle has landed. Yeah, you won't see Hackman taking on those kinds of parts. He doesn't really do accents very often. Doesn't really transform. You don't see his hair being different. He has a mustache sometimes but no wild facial hair. He's just, he's always rumpled. And I was about to say, he doesn't do costume dramas. He does a ton of Westerns and he does a ton of time periods but always looks the same. It's true. Just kind of, the suit is hanging off him just so. And he's kind of, he's visually unremarkable, which is the point. I watched a lot of these movies with the nanny. She's, as I've mentioned before, she's 35. And she said to me, you know, normally when you put one of these on, I kind of know what, what, year, roughly what year this was made. She said, I can't tell with Hackman because he always looks the same. It's like over a 45-year career, he had 20 years where he was a 40-year-old and then 20 years where he was a 60-year-old. That's exactly right. I was going to make the same point. It's just so fascinating. And I think it's one of the reasons why he was pretty consistently, I'm not sure if box office draw is the right word for what he was, but he was bankable in a way. There was something reliable about him because he seemed to not change. He seemed to be, the same kind of person. And that is, there's an interesting point there. And he made this point in an interview with Larry King that I watched the other day. He gave very few long form interviews in the last 25 years of his career. But after he made his last movie, he talked for about an hour on King's show. And he talked about the difference between movie stars and great actors. And that there are some great actors who are great movie stars, but most movie stars get by on the strength of their personality. And he was trying to say that he tried to be a great actor while also being a movie star. And I wonder, I wonder if he did. He did. He's clearly a great actor, but and his sense of what kinds of parts he should be picking, I think, is one of his great superpowers because he knows what he can play and can't play. So the fact that he's not trying to do a Victorian drama really benefits him. He never exposes what he can't do in a smart way. Or he's not doing the way we were with Robert Redford. And the closest he gets to it goes pretty wrong, I would say. And so he is he's sort of the anti-movie star where he has a great deal of presence and charm, but it manifests itself in more in like villainous and or dodgy or can't quite trust it ways. And, you know, certainly fits with like new Hollywood and the type of protagonists that you would see in those movies. And so gives him a real lane. But he's never debonair. He's never. Even when you're rooting for him, there is an ambivalence to what's going on with most of his characters that I think. I mean, he he plays beautifully and is like absolutely needed in movies, especially the types of movies that were starting to be made in the 70s. But it's you know, it's not the classic Redford thing of like, OK, get my light just so. And here I am. And I'm going to just carry you all on my like, you know, my golden age of cinema charm. Yeah. Yeah. He's a very different kind of an actor. Do you remember the first time you ever saw him? I was trying to think of that. It might have been a bite the bullet in a movie theater or at a drive in. Wow. I just saw it for the first time yesterday. I probably saw it in a drive in and maybe didn't know fully who Hackman was or it was Poseidon Adventure on TV was a man. They ran that thing on network TV a lot. That was a real staple somewhere around there, I think. OK. And what about for you? I'm guessing Hoosiers. Just kind of timeline wise and what movies I would have been exposed to. But so it's definitely Hoosiers. And then pretty soon. Oh, and then Birdcage. Yeah. I mean, I remember seeing Birdcage in the theaters and being like, I'm an adult now because I get to watch this comedy. Right. I had, you know, some some some jokes. Jokes that I'm not supposed to understand. Yes. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's obviously Superman. Yeah. Superman is, you know, that that was a portal to understanding the Hackman persona, which like he didn't maybe exploit as much as you would have thought he would. And he's so good at Superman. We can talk about that. But I was maybe 13 when Superman came out. So I saw it in movie theaters. But I had an awareness of who Hackman was by the time I saw that. Yeah. And it was a big deal that he was cast in that part. Well, let's talk about his life a little bit before we start getting into the film. The filmography is very long. We'll try to be efficient in our time. Man, can't wait. So he's born, of course, Eugene Alan Hackman on January 30th, 1930. He's from California, San Bernardino. By the way, Duvall, Hackman, Redford, Keaton, all born in California. That's right. What does that tell you? Maybe nothing. Maybe it's total coincidence. I don't know. But it's notable. But I feel and I also feel like they're all sort of on the outskirts of Hollywood. In terms of where they're born. They're not born in Hollywood proper. Right. They're born. They're not Nepo babies. Not exactly. Yeah. Though when you look through the histories of like Redford, when you look through the history of his career and some of the connectivity that he had to certain people in the business, that always helps. But Hackman had no connectivity to the business whatsoever. And mostly grew up in Illinois, right? Yes. Grew up in Illinois. His father left when he was young. He was raised by a single mother. Left home at 16. Joined the Marines. Spent four years in the Marines. Claimed he was not a very good Marine. Always had a problem with authority. And while he was in the Marines, got interested in the idea of acting. And so he moves to New York and, or excuse me, he studies journalism at the University of Illinois after school in the GI Bill. And then he moves to New York to go study acting. And he pretty quickly falls in with a group of young actors who turn out to be a generation that changed movie acting. And there's this. Famous story where he's, while spending some time in Pasadena at the Playhouse, he meets Dustin Hoffman. Eventually he, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert Duvall become friends and they all live together in New York City. Which we briefly mentioned when we talked about the Robert Duvall Hall of Fame. But, you know, that seems like three fairly complicated guys sharing space with a lot of big opinions and maybe bad attitudes. Yeah, like what's the allocation of chores in that apartment? Is anyone taking the trash out at all? Is it they're just. Yeah, I'd like to see, you know, a real-time 24-hour documentary of the way that they shared space. What's the access to the bathrooms like? And they weren't terribly successful. Yeah. Who was scoring? Which one of them was really scoring the most? Hoffman, Hackman, and Duvall? Yeah. They've all got their positives and negatives. Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking through it. I mean, I don't think it's Hackman. With love and respect, which he then turns into a career. He's got a real wily charm, though. He does. And in his 50s and 60s, there's a sexiness to him that is very unusual for a guy like that. Totally. But you do have to wait. And we're asking about in their 20s and he's up against Hoffman and Duvall. I mean, Duvall? Probably? He might have been the most classically handsome of the three of them. Maybe. But Hoffman, obviously, eventually goes on to very quick kind of fame and explosion. And there's something interesting about that, too. And the way that he took off as an actor and maybe what that meant to Hackman. And some of their competitiveness and their friendship. By the way, Hackman, roughly my size. Roughly my dimensions. Yes. You know, he had to keep the character actor belly off of him a bit. But roughly the same dimensions as me. And imposing. And because of that, I think could play a lot of different kinds of parts that certainly somebody like Hoffman couldn't play. He couldn't, you know, he could play cowboys. He could play cops. He could play military. And those are the kinds of parts that he either was sought out for or sought out as his career goes on. And so he comes to represent, I think, a slightly different tone of American man. We talked about this with Duvall a bit. And Duvall played a lot of historical figures. Hackman doesn't really play a lot of real people. There's maybe fewer than five real men that he played in his career, which I find interesting. And maybe makes you a little bit more singular as a movie star when you're not stuck trying to imitate our expectation of someone we know. He also seldom takes roles that lead to like the really big speech, which I guess I associate with a Duvall and a historical figure and just kind of like everyone clear out because I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do some oratory at the top of my lungs. He more just does stuff. I was struck by how many of his movies and we're going to talk about all the professions that he played, but where he is just like taking apart a car or, you know, or running or trying to figure out how a machine works. Or just like using his hands and not wore his body and not speaking and jumping up and down a lot. He is like quietly way more of an action star than I had understood based on kind of like the films that I'd seen in the 90s. But, you know, he doesn't not a lot of dialogue often in a lot of his movies. And when it happens, he makes it count. But he just is it is in motion. One of the things that jumped out to me is truly one of the great voices in movie acting history. It is a great voice. Unmistakable. It is powerful. You can sense exactly how he's feeling by the way he communicates. You were saying something yesterday about what he does with words that I thought was very insightful. Well, just his line readings are impeccable. They're impeccable. Impeccably delivered, timed his whatever his operative word, his inflection is. It's that stuff is always in the sweet spot. And and of course. Mostly accomplishing that idea that this is all spun spontaneous, right? He's communicating and he's well, he's telling a story to an audience, right? It's not necessarily the way people actually speak in conversation, but it is a way to deliver a story effectively, efficiently. I think part of the way between his voice and the way he looks, he also seems like a person who's lived, who has experience, who understands things that maybe you don't understand. So he's often in these sort of like untrustworthy paterfamilias roles where there's. Like a younger person who's beside him and he knows something that they don't. And so he's going to take them through the world. But the thing that he knows is illicit. And so like he's constantly being cast in this role, even in early age, even when he's, you know, in films like Bonnie and Clyde, he's still kind of the older brother. He's still kind of the guy who knows a little bit more than the other guy, which is an interesting general idea when you're being perceived that way, because then he can't ever play the exciting up and comer, you know, like even in Hawaii. One of his very first. Movies. He's like a learned doctor who's extremely angry with everyone around him. And so there's a limitation to that, but there's also a reliability in that. That is this paradox of movie stardom that I think is always so interesting to find. You know, you mentioned that he's not Robert Redford, right? And he couldn't play the way we were, but he does do. He does do romances. I mean, he has movies where he's expected to be. In love stories. More than Duvall. You see him in romantic situations a lot more than Duvall. Yeah. And he there is. It's an appeal to him, as you said, and a charm, he ages but it's he doesn't lead he doesn't lead with it and it's not kind of like hey spotlight on me while i'm like the most handsome person in the room and that was you know that's maybe a fault of redford's performance sometimes where he's just very aware of how he looks which is as you like to say a special effect and the movies center around him as opposed to hackman where it was always a little bit surprising and that is part of the appeal of like you're like oh okay gene i didn't you know i didn't know that you had this but here it comes that's one of my favorite things in the firm is when it appears that he is you know ensorcelled with gene and and wants to bring her down to the caymans and you're like oh wow okay that's in your bag gene good for you buddy um big reach but why not uh anything else specifically about what makes him a special actor that you want to highlight before we start going through no okay can i ask you a question about acting though and like and about line readings since you identified this how long does it take to come up with a line reading for you usually your your first instinct is the best okay that's what it is oh okay usually what when you read the line off the page the instinct is a good director will say i think maybe the emphasis is here and not there and right you know but for the most part your first instinct is the best well we talked about that a little bit too his relationship to directors these guys duvall and hackman they didn't like directors they didn't want to be directed they wanted to go out and give their mostly their first take and then they felt like they were done well they both grew up in tv you'll be glad to know i didn't do review i was wondering about this gene hackman um but they both grew up in in first in theater and then in tv and of course in tv the job of the director is to put the camera somewhere and stage the action and get the hell out of the to get it done quickly and efficiently hackman constantly fought with directors bristled at being directed the stories are legion of his irascibility and his directness with how unhappy he was with certain sequences while making movies and it is fascinating because this is the sort of thing that in the contemporary times rises to the surface and gets talked about on podcasts like this and for whatever reason and i think part of it is because of what his manner was as a star you kind of expected it he always seemed kind of pissed off in movies yeah so it's not shocking that he would be kind of pissed off making movies but he made so many good movies that we were like well it's all right i like these movies but directors were terrorized by him and if they were not confident they could be really felled by him he could really i don't know if he could take over per se but if you go through the the cv and there are not many directors he worked with tell arthur penn is one of the very few he made three movies with him one bonnie and clyde night moves and target and and clint eastwood is the other one and clint he made two movies with clint eastwood and i'm not sure if there's another filmmaker i think frankenheimer i think he made two movies with frankenheimer french connection 2 and uh uh what's the skydiving movie that's franken yes of course the uh gypsy mods the gypsy mods that's right two with franken but i by the time they get to they fought terribly on french connection 2 so they're going to have to do a lot of that relationship spoiled also worth noting eastwood and frankenheimer two mean motherfuckers you know two guys who didn't suffer fools either so you could see that them at least being able to hang together but i found that so interesting and that's so different from i would say amanda 80 of the people who we've done halls of fame with where it's like the recurring work is so frequent because that's how as an actor you find a lane and a career and i mean even now that's a few times though only once as a director and then said he hated it so much that he didn't do dick tracy that's right so he said he said warren made him do 50 takes and he was none too happy about that um so you know he works in local theater effectively in the 1950s and eventually starts getting real parts on stage in the early 60s and then he makes this transition into as you said series television roughly 59 to 67 he's doing a lot of series television mostly guest spots he never realized he was doing a lot of series television but he's doing a lot of series television he really has a recurring series part um and this is he was a working actor that was that was his gig and he probably saw himself as hopeful to become a star but more likely to become a character actor and then this great thing happens where hollywood flips and a guy like him can become yeah i think he's one of the 10 most bankable male stars of the 1970s and he and he gets the part he gets the part that launches that's right which is you got to have that part where it he is recognized by his peers very early on in his film career three of his five oscar nominations come within the first five years of his movie acting career in bonnie and clyde and i never sang for my father and then he wins in 72 for the french connection which basically just meant him i mean it makes him a movie star for 30 consecutive years and he gets two more nominations after that he's won three golden globes but we should talk about the films are you ready to talk about the i'm ready i'm as ready as i'll be i i thought i was at maybe 70 scene and then we're scrolling through i'm like oh maybe it's more like 60 there's a lot of stuff here yeah a lot of stuff some really interesting stuff some not interesting stuff you we don't have to spend a lot of time on the not interesting did you watch mad dog mccall from 1961 mad dog cole it's actually mad dog cole excuse me yeah yeah i did okay tell us about it i have not seen this this is an uncredited part in which gene hackman plays policeman okay it's a pretty good little uh gangster picture okay uh starring a guy named john davis chandler as mad dog cole who was a real guy who went up against dutch schultz but the casting's pretty good vincent gardenia plays dutch schultz jerry orbach is uh ingenue wow uh telly savalas making his big screen debut no kidding gene hackman in his big screen debut no lines with telly savalas he's a cop okay okay we can mark that as one yeah tally that for the one cop yeah we're gonna go through how many military men political officials this man plays over the course of his career and cowboys the female lead is brooke hayward and she's interesting she's worth exploring had a fascinating life she was married to dennis hopper yeah childhood friend of jane fonda's and she wrote a terrorized by dennis hopper yeah absolutely terrorized by him and wrote a memoir called haywire which became a big bestseller and she's uh she's the female lead in mad dog cole it's not going in the hackman hall of fame good to know okay not a bad little gangster picture but it's a good movie it's a good picture here's an important movie yes 1964's lilith speaking of warren baity speaking of warren baity one of warren's early starring roles a robert rawson film apparently robert rawson saw hackman on stage and liked his work and cast him in a small but important part as norman who i guess is the husband of a former flame yes baity's gone baity's character has gone to war yes she was his girlfriend before the war then he came back to the war and she's back and he he hasn't kept in touch with her and she's married yeah the hackman character it's always the way he only has one scene right it's just the one scene in their home but it's good but he jumps good effective he pops and you can see there's something he's got some power and obviously this is a very very important thing to have happened in his career because he encounters warren baity who then helps him very very soon thereafter in a critical role and he's kind of a dumb guy too and which was something he had in his bag he doesn't pull it out a lot later in the in his career but he's a very good believable dumb guy yeah yeah and the guy opposed to warren baity which is also you know he is playing against the the typical hollywood handsome guy yes and warren baity has kind of an odd part in this movie where he's you know he's come back from war but he's become a therapist and he's learning about this what's wrong with emotions there's nothing wrong with i wouldn't say warren baity accesses them in the movie at a time with no experience at all you can just go into a mental institution and say i'd like a job caring for the patients a little strange yeah you're hired incredible cast in this movie though um what a great snapshot of the early 1960s and the specific kinds of actors that are coming out because it's not just baity but it's gene seberg it's peter fonda you know it's jessica walters playing his ex-girlfriend who's now married to hackman kim hunter just just a really interesting movie i think maybe one of the last movies robert rawson made his last hustler his last film um but worth seeking out i think one of the few that i saw for this that i was like oh okay i'm really glad i checked that out is it going in i don't think so i don't think so either it's too small a part i i just watched his scene which is unfair but you know well it is interesting because i guess baity was fighting terribly with rawson and and baity actually sabotaged some of his scenes by mumbling or not he's really muted in the movie it's a very odd part and to think that that's how you would make a point to a film director by being not good in a film it's just really strange he's still good he's still very he's so charismatic it's 1966 hawaii i didn't see it no way i didn't either no way but you did uh i did okay good so you know we're still covered okay i want to make sure i'm getting this right this is based on the james mishner novel i think it is um it's a george roy hill film it's a really classic uh technicolor old school long melodrama um about missionaries who come to hawaii who come to bring the good word of god uh one of whom is played by max von sedow and hackman plays a man who's been living on the island with the native people from of hawaii and he's a doctor and of course what do the christians bring when they come to bring the good word but they bring pestilence you know they bring disease and they start fucking with the lives of the Native Hawaiians. And Hackman is really good. He's only got two scenes, really, of note, one in which he is sort of railing against Von Sydow and the missionaries, and one in which he's literally holding dying people in his arms. But it's very dramatic. The movie is okay. It's a little bit of one of those kind of bloated, overdrawn mid-'60s films. It's long, right? Yeah, it's two hours and 40 minutes about. But again, just like in Lilith, it's a real, like, who's that guy kind of moment in the movie because he kind of just starts stealing scenes from much better-known actors and more accomplished actors. I don't think it needs to go into the Hall of Fame, but it's interesting that he was getting cast in a part like this because I think most people think of 1967 as the year he breaks through because of one very big part that we hinted at with Warren Beatty, but he's working. He's clearly got a reputation now as a comer because of that. based on the next few movies that we have coming. So 1967's Banning is the next movie. I have not seen this movie. I saw it. Okay. It's supposed to be, it stars Robert Wagner and Jill St. John and James Farentino, and it's set mostly at a golf club, a golf resort, a golf. Country club? Country club, thank you. Wow. Clearly not a member of a country club. Thank you for your words. Hackman plays a character older than himself. There's a golfing scandal in Robert Wagner's past, and now he's come to this country club as a golf pro. Somebody, I have to say, on Letterboxd, somebody referred to it as golf noir, which is. Wow. A subgenre that intrigues me. And you didn't watch this. I did not. This is also why I did not watch this. This was a hard film to track down, I thought. Did you rent it? How did you watch it? I own it. You own it. I think that's the only way to watch it, right? Is it on Blu-ray? Yeah. Because it's not available. It's in an imprint box. On YouTube or Apple. And that's the thing is, some of these movies are very hard to find. It's very soapy, potboiler. It's supposed to be sort of in the Harold Robbins tradition. You know, Jill St. John is very bitchy, witchy, right? Sleeping with the guys at the country club. It's not as fun as that. Okay. Hackman plays a character. He's a drunk. After the golfing scandal, he's descended into drink. And they've actually put some gray at his temples. He was a golfer? He was involved in this golfing scandal that Wagner was involved in. Well, I'm just kind of for the profession. Are we putting him under golfer or drunk? Drunk. He's a drunk. Okay. All right. No, you can put him. He's a golfer. He plays golf in the movie. Golfer. Okay. You know, it's not the last time we'll see him play golf in a movie. Do you recall the opening? Well, I won't spoil it. We'll get there. Uh, this should have been more fun. It's pretty dull. Okay. Well, I'm relieved that I didn't watch it. Uh, it's not going in. We've got four consecutive reds to start the career. Yeah. Of Gene Hackman. But we've spent, what, 15 minutes on them? So this, the pacing is going really well. We're not doing well. Um, the next film is A Covenant with Death. Yeah. A film I did watch, which is currently available on Tubi. Okay. Thank you to Tubi for their continued service, sharing the films that have been lost to time. He plays, uh, Harmsworth, a local. police chief, um, who is responsible for, I guess, investigating a murder poorly. Yeah. This movie, which stars George Maharis, I think features Hackman's single worst performance. What is the problem with the performance? He's doing an accent, which he shan't be doing. Yeah. He has changed the tonality of his voice. He's, I think, very clearly attempting to be, uh, a bit more bumbling. He has talked about this movie and how it's a little bit of a turning point for him where his primary role in the movie is to discover the suicide note slash confession of the person who's actually responsible for the murder. The film has a very kind of ornate plot. You watched this? I did. Where, um, a man is accused of murdering his wife when she, when her body is found, he's drunk on his, on a bed in the same room. Eventually, he's convicted of the murder and he's meant to be hanged. And right before he's hanged, he, he somewhat accidentally kills the executioner. And so he's then convicted of killing the executioner. And so he's basically been a double murder convictee. And then it turns out that he didn't kill his wife. And the man who killed his wife confessed to it. And the whole town is like, well, what do we do? George Maharis plays. What do they do? Well, eventually the man goes free. Poorly. I don't, the movie turns out poorly. It's a bizarre movie. Um, but the movie is not focused on really that story at all. It's much more focused on George Maharis's character, who I guess is, is a, is he a half Mexican, half American guy whose mom is Mexican. And he's got this beautiful blonde fiance, but he's drawn to his Mexican roots and a beautiful Mexican woman. And it's all about like the exploration of his identity, but not really talking about it in any sophisticated way. I was going to say, is it done with sensitivity? No, not. Okay. It's not insensitive. It's just kind of drab and dull. And it's like, this is a murder mystery movie. Why are we spending all this time with this guy's feelings about this hot Mexican woman? There's a lot going on. It feels like they tried to get too much of a novel into a, into a movie. And it's just way, it was spread way too thin. Katie Jurado, who was a great star of golden age of Mexican cinema. She plays his mom, even though she's only a few years older. She put on 25 pounds to play his mother in this movie. Maharis is also, I gotta say. He stinks. He stinks. He was a TV actor. He belonged on whatever it was he was on. Was it Route 66? You know, a few years later. He's one of the three Georges, as Quentin Tarantino very famously noted, that there were three actors named George who were up for all the parts in Hollywood at the time that like Steve McQueen was going up for. To me, Maharis always the third of the three. I think he was the first real star to appear fully nude in Playgirl magazine. No kidding. So did you track that down for this? Rock out with your kids. You're cock out, George. Coming with death, not going to Panda. You don't need to follow up on this one. Very weird movie. Now, I did not see 1967's First to Fight. I assume you didn't see that either? I did not either. I did. I saw it. This is the first military man. Let's make a note. Yeah, because Hackman, as you mentioned, he was a Marine himself. He'd spent four and a half years in the Marines, part of Operation Beleaguer, which is where they went into China. There were so many. There were so many Japanese forces in China, and so they had to go in to those occupied forces, and they had to disarm them and repatriate them. And there was some fighting, and he maybe saw some combat, some skirmishes as part of that. And so he's playing a Marine here. Chad Everett is the star. You guys probably know Chad Everett best from his great scene in Mulholland Drive, right when Naomi Watts is auditioning, and she auditions against a very, very handsome gray-haired actor who's very lascivious. Well, I know him as the star of Medical Center, which was a show that was on TV for a lot of years. Medical Center. Medical Center. What do they do there? And it's a World War II drama about a guy who is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism at the Battle of Guadalcanal, and he gets sent stateside. He gets married, but he can't hack civilian life, and he asks to go back. But when he goes back, he starts experiencing the shakes, cowardice in the face of battle, because now he's a married man. And Hackman is the guy that he is paired with when he goes back into fighting. And Hackman's like, what's going on with you, man? I thought you had the Medal of Honor. Get out there and fight. But he's a coward. Wow. We have two full pages of credits to get through single-spaced. Yeah, he plays Sergeant Tweed in the film. Obviously, First to Fight is not going into the Hall of Fame. What is his profession in A Covenant with Death? He is a police officer, so that's two police officers. Two police officers, First Military. We already have that marked down, don't worry. Thank you very much. First to Fight is pretty dull. It's pretty red. Okay. Here we go. 1967, Bonnie and Clyde. Seen it. Okay. Welcome to the party, pal. Green. Yeah. Yes. I think you have to. Yeah. I rewatched at least his parts, because I hadn't seen it in a while. I would say that there's like a little too much mustard on the death scene, personally. I think that he's really, really going for it a little more than he needs to. But, you know, it's a big movie, so. Yeah. I mean, I think for its time, it's obviously very purposefully transgressing from the expectations and that kind of a scene. There are a few other movies that he makes that are similarly brutal, and I think he sought out a kind of brutality in the depiction of violence across his movies, which is an interesting thing. I'm not sure if it was so purposeful in this one, but Beatty, of course, remembers him from Lilith. He plays Buck Barrow, Clyde's older brother. He does do a bit of an accent. It's a real performance. It's not the typical Hackman tone and personality that you expect, but he's very good in the movie. And dumb guy, right? Buck's also a dumb guy. And he's married to Estelle Parsons. That's right. We're all four nominated for acting awards, and I think only Estelle won Supporting Actress. He speaks extremely fondly of this experience. He loves Arthur Penn. He loves working with those three actors and Michael Pollard. He said that the five of them together, he thought that, this is what making movies was going to be like that it was going to be him with people that were his age having a lot of fun, doing something creatively with like old-timey cars and making contemporarily relevant stories. And he comes to find out movies are kind of sucking or annoying, even if you're high on the call sheet. Probably, by the way, in terms of the Academy Awards, probably he and Pollard split the Bonnie and Clyde vote because they were both nominated for Supporting Actor. Let's take a look at that slate very quickly. You can read more about this in Mark Harris' excellent book, Pictures of a Revolution. That's right. So, Best Supporting Actor in 1968 for 67. The nominees are Pollard and Hackman. Cecil Kellaway for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? I'd forgotten he was nominated for that. John Cassavetes for The Dirty Dozen. And the winner, of course, is George Kennedy in Cool Hand Luke, which is a great performance. Yeah. Okay. Bonnie and Clyde going in. Green. Green. A no-debate green. 1968's The Split. Yes. One of my favorite movies that I discovered for this episode. It's a very interesting adaptation of a Richard Stark novel that has one fatal flaw. It is effectively a Parker movie. But Jim Brown is playing the Parker character. Yeah. Yeah. The cast in this movie is unbelievable. It's sick. Did you watch this? Yeah, I did. Because of the cast. And I was like, oh, a heist movie? With these people? I'm in. Jim Brown stars with Diane Carroll, Julie Harris, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, Donald Sutherland, and Gene Hackman. The music of this movie is by Quincy Jones. It's directed by Gordon Fleming, who never directed another feature film again. It is based on the Stark novel The Seventh, even though they changed the name from Parker for the Jim Brown character. They always do. I don't know why. It's a very odd thing that they do. One of the early films produced by Chardoff Winkler, who went on to produce Rocky, among many other movies, and will be dramatized in a film that you star in. I play Rocky later this fall. Star in. Yeah. You star in it. You steal. I'm in the movie. Okay, you're in the movie. Pretty fun movie. Yeah. Pretty fun heist movie. Yeah. Hackman once again plays a police officer. Police officer. Police officer. Yeah. A rather untrustworthy, unseemly police officer. Yeah, that's right. I'll say, who does some very untoward things in the film. I quite enjoyed this movie. I did too. A lot of fun. Yeah, I liked it. He doesn't show up until very late in the movie, so I don't think it's going to go in his Hall of Fame. I agree with you. I kept being like, okay, Gene, Gene, you know, but that's the downside of watching these with such like a purpose-driven experiment. But there are a lot of good scenes of just Warren Oates and Jack Klugman and Julie Harris yelling at each other. I was just like, this has got some heat. Okay, that's out the split. 1969's Riot. The Blu-ray that I acquired on eBay for this film arrived today. Okay. So I have not seen the film. Tough break. Tell us about it, Tracy Letts. 1969's The Riot, directed by Buzz Cure, and it is a prison hostage then escape drama starring Jim Brown. A reunion with Jim. Jim Brown and Gene Hackman. You think they got on? Probably. I doubt Hackman would have signed up straight away to do another movie with him. Jim Brown did not get along with Buzz Cure, the director, and so sometimes Jim would stay in his trailer too long to piss off. The director, Alan Rudolph, was the first AD on this movie. No way. And so he talked about the experience of making this film. They shot it at a prison using real prisoners as the supporting characters. It seems safe. Although I wouldn't fuck with Jim Brown even if I was a prisoner. It has its moments. It's not great. It's not a great example of the genre. There's a dream sequence. Jim Brown has a dream of freedom. And there's a dream sequence in this movie that is the highlight of the film. Okay. Because it was just a great moment. I guess it's going to go into my to-watch stack even though I've already done this work. Can I ask you a question about this? Mm-hmm. When you've done one of these episodes and now that you've done a few as well, do you feel like maybe you're done with this person for a while? Of course, yeah. Like, I'm not sure I need to see another one of their movies for a good long time. Yeah, I feel like I'm done with the person and also a little bit with the concept of historical research. Like, I do then just go watch a lot of crappy modern movies for the next, you know, four days. Yeah, you need a cleanse. Well, and like a change of like the literal pacing of the films and what I'm looking for. Yeah, I don't know if I'll be sticking at Riot. Okay. I feel the same way and yet I have to say watching things since then, if Robert Duvall or Robert Redford pop up, I go, oh, hey, like I know them. Sure, yeah, of course. It's true. It's true. It breeds a real familiarity with their, I feel like I know Gene Hackman right now for sure. Riot is Red. He plays a man named Red Fraker so he's a prisoner in the film. He is. Okay. We never find out what they've done to get into prison. 1969. Now, this is a man coming off of an Academy Award nomination, one of the biggest hits of 1967 and some, you know, a little bit of a rough patch here. This movie was fascinating to me. 1969's The Gypsy Moths, the aforementioned John Frankenheimer movie in which he stars with Burt Lancaster and Scott Wilson as a trio of skydiving stuntmen. What? What in the what is this movie? I kind of liked it. It's kind of interesting. It's a really weird movie. It is really weird but it does capture something about small town life. They settle down in this one town where they're about to do their stunt show. July 4th extravaganza. Lancaster is just, he's in a mood, man. It seems like the sequel to The Swimmer. He almost feels like the same kind of melancholic character is just carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. So he stars, this is a reunion with Deborah Carr from Here to a Tour. And the movie almost feels like it picks up 25 years later after From Here to Eternity because it's about this kind of unspoken attraction that the two characters in the movie have. Hackman plays kind of the, you know, the hot foot, the wildfire guy who's number two in command and he's got a lot of big opinions and he likes strippers and he's doing a lot, Gene, in this movie. He's given a lot to do. I thought he was perfectly fine. The movie, I didn't know this movie existed before we did this project. And I'm glad that I learned about it. I'm glad that I saw it. I did watch it on a plane on the way home from Telluride. It's an extended sequence in a strip club that I didn't expect in my 1969 drama about skydivers. Deborah Carr getting naked in this movie. There's literally a sex scene with 55-year-old Deborah Carr. I was like, what is happening? So I did not watch this because I was going through and trying to pick my spots and this felt like that, what's the Redford aviation movie where it's just him like flying? Great Waldo. And I was like, oh, this is the Great Waldo Pepper, which is like they're in the air, they're doing a lot of things. But I didn't understand that there was going to be a whole strip club subplot. Because then maybe I would have, there's not that in Great Waldo Pepper. The story on the ground is a lot more interesting than the story in the air. Although the movie takes great pride in that story in the air. There's a lot of, I guess, amazing stunt work for the time that people hadn't seen. Yes, yeah. But pretty missable as far as I'm concerned. The drama on the ground is where it's at. So Skydiver and Red. Skydiver and Red. Okay. Interesting movie here. The one and only time he plays a man named Eugene, his given name, in 1969's Downhill Racer. Yes. I don't think that's the only time he plays a man named Gene. Yeah, I don't think so either. Oh, I said Eugene. Oh, well. Well. I see Gene coming, but not Eugene. Downhill Racer, as I've said five or six times on this show before, one of my favorite movies of all time. One of Michael Ritchie's first films. I believe we put it in the Redford Hall of Fame. It is one of the great sports films ever. One of the only good winter games of sports films. Gene Hackman in this film plays the coach to Robert Redford's taciturn, unknowable, gifted skier. Hackman, not a big fan of his time on this movie. Felt like he was really playing a supporting part and didn't have a whole lot to do. I think his performance is good. He's doing what he needs to do in the movie. It's a real value add for this movie. It's like, oh, and I get Gene Hackman too. Yes. I'm not sure that this really qualifies for the Hackman Hall of Fame. No, I don't think so. It does not. I think Redford, yes. And then. Maybe it goes in the Dabney Coleman Hall of Fame, but not in the Gene Hackman Hall of Fame. Dabney will come up again. So, coach and Red. Coach and Red. But we recommend. This is his first coach. Yes. So, we're also monitoring coaches as well. Well, he plays multiple coaches. Okay. So, policemen, military officers, coaches, anything else we should be keeping track of? Cowboys and athletes. Well, drunk athletes. Drunk athletes. Okay, understood. Because that's what the. We're not. I thought we were being comprehensive here. You want us to track 76 professions across the entire world? Well, we're tracking. Well, what the hell else are you doing, man? I'm doing nothing back here. I'm just hanging out. Sounds good. We've got a doctor? Well, we're about to have an astronaut. Yeah. Just an astronaut back there smoking cigs. That's what's going on. 1969's Marooned. The great John Sturgis makes one of the goddamn boringest movies of 1969. Really, really boring. What the hell? This is one year after 2001 A Space Odyssey and John Sturgis says, I want to make a space movie. We got space mania here. NASA at the top of mind in America. Gene Hackman even plays a guy named Buzz. Uh-huh. And this movie is. I turned this off. Dull. Real fast. It's really dull. Hackman did pretty good, I thought. Giving a solid performance. The actors are innocent. Okay. Yeah, remind me, who are the other stars in this movie? Richard Crenna. That's right, Richard Crenna. Not the last time he didn't collaborate with him as well. Uh. James Franciscus? Yes. Those are the three marooned astronauts. who are trapped in space. But there's another notable man on the ground. Gregory Peck. That's, of course, that's who it is. Not a memorable movie. Gosh. No, it's not. What a dud. It is a dud. It's a long dud. Okay. Astronaut and Red. Red. We got that in the booth? Yep, we got it. Okay, thank you. I see the thumbs up from Lucas. 1971, Doctor's Wives. You just skipped? Nope, I'm sorry. I skipped a movie. I always do this. You skipped a movie also that I watched. 1970, I Never Sang for My Father. To me, this is a legendary, never seen it movie. I've known about this movie forever. I've known that Gene Hackman, for his work as Gene Garrison in this movie, was nominated for an Academy Award, stars the great Melvin Douglas as his father, the titular father. And I'd never seen it. And I'm really glad I have now. What did you think? Yeah. I was pretty moved by it. And this is maybe the most surprising movie. Of the Hackman performances that I saw for this round, because he is doing something different. First of all, he is not just like accessing emotions and displaying them, but talking about them, which is something that basically does not happen in any other movies and in most movies in the 70s. A true psychological drama where the psychology is out loud. Yes, it feels very like now in terms of just a product of therapy and everybody being like, this is what my dad did to me. And blah, blah, blah. So it was interesting to see him in that register. I think he does it really credibly. And I think also, you know, it was funny to watch. I've watched countless, the entire history of cinema is men talking about their complicated relationships with their fathers, but like not saying anything. And instead of robbing a blank, like, you know, men will do anything except go to therapy. And this was just straight ahead. Like this is an overbearing father. And, and I'm having a hard time and I can't get past this. And there's that extended scene with Estelle Parsons again in the, in the garden where she's like telling him what to do and, and bossing him around. And he seems so vulnerable in a way that I don't really associate with many other Hackman performances. So I liked a lot. Very good movie. Yeah. Directed by Gil Cates, who didn't direct many movies, probably best known for directing the Academy Awards for many years. One of the more unusual, unusual examples of category fraud in Oscars history in which Melvin Douglas was nominated for best actor and Hackman was nominated for supporting actor. And they are clearly the opposite in the movie. Hackman is in almost every frame of this movie. Why do you care? How does it change things? Well, it's notable because it says something about how Hollywood sees itself. And Melvin Douglas, who's an iconic figure from the 1930s, 40s, 50s cinema would get first billing in this movie and would be positioned as the center. But the whole movie is about how this guy feels about his dad and how his dad has completely changed the way that he lives. Yeah. I liked it a lot. I think there's a case for green here. Based on a play, of course, and it's a good play. My dad, I remember my dad doing this, playing Gene in this when I was a kid. No kidding. Like a community theater. Oh, really? Yeah. And then we did it at Steppenwolf. Kevin Anderson played Gene and John Mahoney played the Melvin Douglas part. Good casting. Yeah. Really good play. I mean, a little old fashioned, I suppose. But at its time, it must have been so forward thinking. Yeah. Really. Well, he was a great, great playwright. And it's, I love the performance and I love, I love Hackman in quiet mode. I mean, we'll get, you know, the, the anger that he displays so often, right. A lot of it's a mask for sadness, which is also there. And when he gets a chance to just tap into that and play that, it's very effective. He never explodes in this movie. He does at the very end. Does he? Yeah. It's like that when he is right before he leaves, the house and I, and, and leaves for good. And they don't shout. I don't really even remember that. Yeah. Like they're in the room and they're kind of shouting at each other. Um, and, but it is, it's a very quick boil over moment after a movie of sadness and restraint and, and like being kicked around, which is the other thing you don't, Gene Hackman does not get kicked around in many movies. Uh, and so it's, it's memorable. I'd like to proffer a yellow. Absolutely. A yellow for sure. Academy award nomination. What does he do in this movie? Do we teach her? That's right. Teacher yellow. Okay. Doctor's wives, 1971. I haven't seen the film. Skip this one. Uh, another doctor's wives basis for, uh, uh, trashy romp about wives of doctors at a California hospital. Okay. They're all screwing. And, and that's the, the language of the time they're screwing and drinking and shooting up. Even, uh, Diane Cannon tells them, tells all the wives to be getting, I'm going to fuck all your husbands. And then she is shot, uh, by her husband while she's in bed with another man. And so there's some suspense for a while finding out which of the doctors it is who, who's in the hospital waiting. It's only being kept from us, the audience, who that person is, but eventually it's revealed. Uh, Richard Crenna, once again, uh, Gene Hackman here is in the, uh, there's a kind of a Virginia who's afraid of Virginia Wolf relationship with his wife played by Rachel Roberts. So, they get a couple of marital, uh, scenes. It's, it should be so much fun. And it's, again, it's just not, it's just, it's just a snooze. And he's a doctor. He's a doctor. He is one of the titular, he's one of the doctors. He is one of the doctors. Okay. Won't be his last time. So Dr. Red, it's not his first. He was a doctor in Hawaii. That's right. Um, Diane Cannon in 1971 though. Yeah. Well, Oh, you're God. Yeah. Good job. I'll have to track this film down. 1971's The Hunting Party. Clearly, the most shocking movie that I've seen. I did. I watched this also. I watched this because you both watched this fairly recently. And so I saw on Letterboxd and I was like, okay, I guess I, and I didn't have like a DVD. Nice to see you on Letterboxd. Thanks so much. Nice to have a Letterboxd pal. I was, it's nice to see you too. I'm finally your friend. It was great. Um, yeah. So then, and the DVD or the Blu-ray that I was going to watch, I hadn't made it to Vidiot's yet. So I was like, well, I guess I'll just click on this. Excuse me? And also I was like, oh, Candace Bergen. Love Candace Bergen. And I was like, this is not good. What is happening to Candace Bergen? The first of three collaborations with Candace Bergen. Candace Bergen, who routinely gave Jean Hackman enormous credit for helping teach her how to act in movies. Um, this movie is about a bastard bandit played by Oliver Reed, who abducts and rapes a cattle baron's wife. The wife of a cattle baron. The wife is played by Bergen. The cattle baron is played by Hackman. Hackman and his cronies go set out across the American West, which I believe is shot in Madrid and attempt to track down the hunting part outside the hunting party to track down this bandit and retrieve his wife and murder these, these, these bandits. Um, a truly one of the most bracing movies of the early 1970s. I mean, violent, uh, upsetting. It's sexual politics are bizarre. Really? Yeah. Oliver Reed, he's got something. He's got, he's got something. He said to Candace Bergen early in the shooting, he said, we're either going to have a sexual relationship or I'm not going to speak to you at all. And she said, well, I'm not interested in a sexual relationship. And for the rest of the shoot, he addressed her only through an intermediary. He would never talk to her directly, which is so bizarre because of the turns that this movie takes. I know. And she talks in her memoir. She talks about the fact that she was raped a lot in the early seven in the movie, movies of the early seventies. And she cites, this is the example. Like here's an extreme example of how often I was raped. And, and did audiences want to see me raped or did, was it the filmmakers who wanted to see me three, four times at least just her. And then, you know, there's just some like sideline to, you know, rapes as well. Yeah. I mean, the film is dotted with lots of very memorable, you know, LQ Jones and Mitchell Ryan, Mitchell Ryan, one of Oliver Reed's great drinking buddies. There's some great talk about that. And, and some of the, the trouble they got into during the making of this movie, you know, it's well-made. It's, it's just a really mean spirited movie. Hackman is either raping someone or, um, shooting someone like from long distance. Joy, joyfully killing them. It's kind of a great sniper movie. If you want to look at it a slightly different way. I think his profession is cattle baron sniper. Yes. Uh, for this, for the purposes of this movie, but I wouldn't say I recommend it. No, no, it's not very good, but, but it is an artifact of a time and it's red and it's not going clearly made in the wake of wild bunch. This movie doesn't happen if the wild bunch hasn't. That's right. 1971 is the French connection. Yeah. Well, the greenest green that has ever greened. That's the most green we'll get. It is Popeye Doyle based on the real life police officer, Eddie Egan. Gene Hackman was somewhere between the eighth and 14th choice for this part. And in William Friedkin's legendary movie, which went on to become a huge hit. I think it plays a huge part in the movie. I think it plays a huge part in changing American movies in terms of, you know, some of that brutality that we're talking about in the hunting party is a lot more accessible when it's in contemporary times in an American city. And so, you know, part of the, and less rape, there's less rape. Yeah. Although, you know, lots of violence and hate speech and, and, and, and realism, you know, and, and, and, and thrill in terms of the way that the movie is made. Like people in vulnerable, dangerous positions and no like true white night golden. character. I mean, there are the good guys and the bad guys, but there is a mania to to Popeye so so confession time for the Friedkin expert never been one of my movies really yeah why is that I don't know I just never really clicked with it I I admire it I think it's obviously brilliant I think Hackman is great I adore Friedkin and I consider myself like a real scholar of his work it's just never really been one of my movies and is it one you visited and revisited many times probably seen four or five times yeah and I love cop movies I know it's and I'm not really saying anything negative about it so sometimes you don't click with something and for whatever reason just not one of my things well it's one of mine and if you're listening to the big picture you should familiarize yourself with the French Connection because I think it's a goddamn five-star masterpiece I was thinking that I don't think I've ever seen it projected I've never seen it in a theater I would really really like to yeah maybe that would I have it is electric mighty good it's mighty electric so let me talk for a minute about Friedkin's relationship with Hackman on this movie so Friedkin and his producing partner Phil D'Antoni had been trying to get this movie made for a couple of years and everybody had said no to it D'Antoni had the rights to Robin Moore's book the French Connection based on the true story of the French Connection and in those two years Hackman got to know Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso his partner very well and their police worked very well the movies researched I mean Friedkin was a documentarian and with documentary accuracy. There's my new word. Eventually, Zanuck calls them and says, they're about to fire me, and I've got one point so many million dollars left to spend, and I have a feeling about your movie. Why don't you come and do it here? Let's talk about who you're going to cast. D'Antoni says, I want to cast Paul Newman. And Zanuck laughs him out of the room and says, there's no way. That's a third of the budget. You're not going to get him. Friedkin wants to cast Jackie Gleason, but Jackie Gleason had screwed them over and had been difficult for them, and so Zanuck said no to Jackie Gleason. Then he wanted to cast Jimmy Breslin, the columnist. And Breslin was like, what are you doing? I'm not an actor. I don't know how to do this. They had a week of rehearsal with Jimmy Breslin. Friedkin said he was great on the first day and got worse as each day went along. And then Sue Mingers, who represented Gene Hackman, called Breslin personally and shamed him into quitting the job, saying you're taking a part away from a real actor. And so Breslin quit, and Friedkin was relieved. D'Antoni wanted to cast Gene Hackman. They had a meeting with Gene Hackman, and Friedkin sat down with him and found him humorless and not at all a character and did not want to cast him in the part. But D'Antoni finally said, look, he's free. He's willing to do it for thirty five thousand dollars. He's got two Academy Award nominations, so I think we should do it. And Friedkin relented, basically. They go to work on the movie. The first day is the do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie scene. They start in on that scene, and Friedkin has scripted it very carefully. He had just been working with Pinter, and so he had scripted it very carefully, and he wanted the language very precise. And Hackman was not getting it, and they had a terrible day. They did thirty five takes of that scene, and Friedkin walked away. They both walked away, and Hackman called his agent and said, off this movie. It's a disaster. The next day, Friedkin got Hackman in a car and he talked to him and he said, this is my mistake. It was my mistake. I tried to be too particular about the language. I need you to make it yours. And Hackman said, I just don't understand this guy. I don't know. I'm not a racist. I'm not, I don't, right. We'd never heard cops use racist language in a movie before. It was just not, it was not heard of that the hero would speak like that. Hackman begged to get off the picture. Obviously they fought through it. They fought the entire time. In his memoir, Billy says, I never found out what Hackman thought about the movie. If he liked the movie, I don't know it, but he wins the Academy Award and he becomes a goddamn movie star. I mean, a huge movie star. It was a huge movie. All right, I'm done. I was spirited. I think that one of the reasons why I think this movie changes movies is because this is a very unlikable man, a very charismatic man, but a very rough and at times evil person, you know, eventually working towards what is right, but still sort of hyper fixated on it and, you know, has blinders and is not really taking in the whole picture before him. That obsessiveness was just absolutely Bill Friedkin's card. That was really what so many of his movies concerned themselves with. And so to put Hackman behind the wheel of that car in the car chase, that's the secret ingredient. If you've got the wrong actor that you're cutting to in those quick shots during that car chase, it doesn't work the same way. Yeah. It's so interesting because, you know, he's so celebrated and the movie is so celebrated and it's such a tough movie and it leads to this series of really tough movies. At least in Bonnie and Clyde, you can say, well, Beatty and Faye Dunaway, they're so beautiful. They're so charming. Or you think about the guys in Easy Rider. They're so, you know, they represent this kind of youthful vigor and the way that the country is turning over. This is a mean, hard movie. Yeah. And people loved it. And that doesn't really happen very often across a hundred years of American movie history. And how many movies were changed, were inspired by this or made in the shadow of this movie? I mean, we're talking hundreds, if not thousands. I mean, just real game changer. 100%. So it's green. Yeah. Cop, green. A cop. Speaking of mean movies, 1972's Prime Cut, a reunion. I forgot his second feature film with Michael Ritchie. He made two movies with Ritchie. This movie, what is this movie about again? Remind us. This is a. I saw this one too, because I thought this was something else. I thought this was one of the other Candace Bergen movies. Oh, yeah. And then it was too late and I already had the Blu-ray. So I just kept watching it. This is a crime film. Yes. One of his earliest villains. And he's. Is he a rancher or he's a. Is he a rancher or a meat processor? Like a pig farmer almost. Again. And also. Two cattle barons. Related to the mafia and a human trafficker. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's going to have to be like a slash there. Like cattle baron slash human trafficker. Yeah. How'd you like Prime Cut? Well, a lot of those. Images will stay with me. I mean, it starts with a lot of like literal meatpacking and which is pretty gross, but pretty interesting. And then the two. All of the chase scenes in the fields were very exciting and reminded me of a movie to be released later this fall. I was like, I wonder whether this was a reference point. But so I mean, it was tough stuff. And he's like Hackman is just, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't think it's like a particularly. There's not a lot of depth in the performance. But, you know, they really got up to stuff in the 70s. It's kind of what I learned from my hunting party Prime Cut, like doubleheader. I was like, wow. There was not that many notes, I guess. I love Prime Cut. I mean, the first time we see the naked girls, the drugged naked girls in the barn stalls is just like, what the hell is going. What am I watching? Here. And the fact that all the language is used in this metaphor of meat and rotting meat. It's all about. It's a very political movie. Yeah. Yeah. The rot underneath the American heartland. Lee Marvin, total badass. I will say that Lee Marvin, you know, the scene where he takes Sissy Spacek out to dinner. Carrie and I are considering that for our Halloween costume this year. I will wear Lee Marvin with the white patent leather shoes and she'll be in the booby Sissy Spacek. Sure. Blouse. I think that's great. Will you go trick or treating with your children in that costume? And I hope the first people who recognize that we are in Prime Cut, I think they'll get something. They'll get a little treat of their own. Yeah. This is Sissy Spacek's first movie. Yeah. And when I watched the movie, I was like, oh no, is that girl 16? Unfortunately, she's in her early 20s and during the performance of this movie. Prime Cut, I don't think is going in. I think it's certainly one of the more interesting movies that he made. His performance is a little one-dimensional. But is it red or is it yellow? I guess it's red. I think he doesn't have much to do. This is in the Hackman universe. It's red. It's pretty limited. It conceivably could be a blue for me at the end of this. Intriguing. Oh, right. Okay. 1972 is the Poseidon Adventure. Is this the second biggest hit he ever appeared in? Quite possibly. Yes. It was the second highest grossing movie of 72. After The Godfather. Sure. He plays a reverend in this film. He's very heroic. He's very ornery. Just not a fan of this movie. It feels like it's nine hours long. And I wasn't there when it took over the cinemas in 1972. But you saw it on television many times in the immediate aftermath, as you said. I did. In competition with the Halloween costumes from Prime Cut, Carrie and I are also considering Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stevens from the Poseidon Adventure as our. Okay. So you're just going. The décolletage is a big part of these, no matter what. I mean, you know, why not? Sure. Poseidon Adventure. I mean, any thoughts? It's a classic 70s disaster movie. You know, it was celebrated with some Academy Award nominations at its time. A lot of big stars. It led to this wave of films like The Towering Inferno, Airport. It all came in its wake. The Irwin Allen, you know, surge of a certain kind of movie. I find most of those movies fairly unwatchable these days. I was going to say, I felt about this the way that I felt about Towering Inferno when we did it for Newman, which is like, you just can't hand it down across generations because the pacing, the set pieces, what we expect from action, if you weren't there, it's just boring. It's a marvel of production design. The building of the upside-down ship that they're navigating is really something to see. Maybe won an Academy Award for that, too. I'm not sure. I think that's right. And Shelley Winters, goddammit, man. She's done a lot. She's just great. It's very big. She's very big. Even by her standards. What do you do with a movie like this? Which I think is pretty important, his stardom, you know. You can yellow it. You know, this movie comes out one year after the first one. One year after the French Connection. And he probably got paid a nice sum of money for it. Well, sure, but look what you have coming in the next three years. Yellow. Do you know the story of Ben Stiller going up to him on the set of Royal Tenenbaums and saying how much this movie meant to him? And Hackman sort of shrugged and went, money gig. Really good. It's very funny. I don't know who that says more about, that story. Ben Stiller or Gene Hackman. Okay, so yellow and reverend. Yellow and he's a reverend. I don't know if we're going to have a reverend category, if that's ever going to come up again for Gene. We're doing a full accounting. We are. Here we have another police officer. Sergeant Leo Holland in 1972's Cisco Pike. What an odd movie for Gene Hackman to have taken at this time in his career. Agreed. A hangdog, hangout, drug, sort of a dramedy, but mostly just a drama. An existential drama starring Chris Christopherson, who at that time was not really an actor, just a singer-songwriter. I think it's his first. Or at least he has. An introducing credit. I think it's his first movie as well. Karen Black plays his girlfriend, very faithful girlfriend. And Gene Hackman plays the police officer who is blackmailing him to sell a large amount of drugs that he has come into ownership of. And this is a very, this is another movie that is like kind of a totem of what people love about 70s cinema that also has never quite been one of my movies. I think it's just a little too loose to love. I do really like Hackman in this movie though, where he's playing, a pretty kooky kind of cop. Like his energy in the movie is quite weird. There's that sequence near the end of the movie where he comes over to Karen Black's apartment and he's like as hard as racing. And it feels like he's kind of losing it a little bit. Don't you feel like he's a character that Paul Thomas Anderson would readily put in just. I mean, the movie is so inherent vice. Inherent vice is pulling so much specifically from this movie. And I feel like The Big Lebowski is kind of a riff on this movie in some ways. A lot of movies from the 90s filmmaking, filmmakers who we love clearly had a relationship to this movie as a hangout LA movie. But it's not one of my faves. I didn't get to this one. I like it. I think people should watch it. I don't think it's going in the Hackman Hall of Fame. Yeah. Some great Christofferson songs. Yeah. A lot of good music. Yeah. And Sunny Terry and Brownie McGee, a bunch of their songs are in this movie. Some good music in the movie. Okay. So it's a good hang. There's nothing wrong with sitting with Cisco Pike for 90 minutes. Yeah, it's not bad. And Pike is like a. Failed musician, basically, who has turned to dealing drugs because he never quite made it as a rock star. Okay. Cop and Red. Cop and Red. 1973 Scarecrow. Yeah. Now, spoiler alert. Tracy and I have recently made some content about this movie. I won't say anything more than that. That's exciting. So our extended thoughts will be available on this movie at some point. I had never seen it. And I did watch it. You did. I mean, it was amazing. Great movie. Yeah, I'm glad that there's going to be extended content. I guess you guys can't have this be the blue. So this can be my blue. I think it's a strong case for being green. Well, sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, I guess that's true. You know, this is a movie, Jerry Schatzberg movie. The co-star is Al Pacino. I think it's the one time they worked together. Two icons of this period in movie history. And they play a couple of drifters. Two guys trying to get from one place to another, hanging out, wandering across America, encountering people and expressing their vulnerabilities or not. Max is sort of the older character who is a little bit more of a caretaker to the Pacino character. He's trying to get back to his family. Amazing performances by both of them. I mean, and in a slightly different register. And the chemistry also between the two of them. And that, you know, Hackman is the more reserved. And I guess he's like this straight man or the older person, the experienced person. Yeah. But Pacino brings out those moments of softness and like humor in him that are so. So lovely. I mean, devastating movie. That's the other thing. I just really didn't expect from the. The opening is incredibly funny. And. But I didn't know where it was going or that it was going to be that tough. So, yeah, this was amazing. I'm great with it being green. Yeah, me too. I love it. As you say, we talk more about it. We talk a lot about it. But it's. I've always loved this film. Yeah, one of the great gems of the new Hollywood. Yeah. Okay, we're greening Scarecrow. Okay, so director and green. What is Max's job again? Drifter. But he wants to open a car wash. That's right. But he hasn't opened it yet. That's right. Drifter. Okay, maybe his last drifter. 1974 is The Conversation. Yeah. Harry Call. This is also green. Sure. What a run he's on right now. It's unreal. It's quite a run. What can you say about The Conversation that hasn't already been said? A paranoid thriller from Francis Ford Coppola made between the two Godfather films about a surveillance expert who is driven mad by a particular case that he's on and maybe the semester. It's an estimation of all of the work that he has been doing over time. And he represents, I think, similarly to Prime Cut, kind of the rot that's happening in our culture of surveillance and knowingness and in the aftermath of several assassinations and the sense of guilt that maybe sits right underneath the American psyche. And he is amazing as a saxophone-playing depressed man who doesn't really know how to express himself, doesn't really have any strong personal relationships. He's committed to the work. A devastating movie. A masterpiece. After all the experience he's amassed at this point allow him to have such an inner life, right, that he can communicate so much of his inner life without dialogue. Now, he does have dialogue in this movie. He's got sort of an extended monologue at one point. But so much of what he's communicating here is just through the eyes, through his stillness, through his sadness. And it's an extraordinary performance. Was he not nominated for an Academy Award? No, he wasn't. I've looked this up last night, which is insane. I mean, but it is, there is no confidence in this. I mean, there is confidence in the performance, but no confidence in the character, which is a real departure from everything that he is doing. And it's, as you said, a person who's so shriveled up that, you know, he just is, he's watching other people on the, on the cameras and in the tapes. And like the one time he tries to venture out doesn't work and just pushes him off a cliff. So it's, it is untypical of Hackman in an amazing way. This movie was nominated for Best Picture, and yet he's not nominated for Best Actor. And this is the famous year in which your boy, Art Carney, defeated Albert Finney, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino, and Hackman not even nominated. Yeah. Should have been nominated. We were, we were, we were living good back then. And I was not alive. The conversation's in. 1974's Young Frankenstein. Now this is an indication of something that I think would become a hugely important part of his career in the final 15 years of it, which is this is his first proper comedy. He plays a blind man, Harold, in a very brief but very funny scene opposite Peter Boyle that is a very, you know, very clearly inspired by the James Whale original in which Frankenstein encounters a blind man. And, you know, it's a one-day part. Hackman famously was so funny improvising lines during this scene that he was breaking the crew and that there's a reason the movie has a hard cut when he does the espresso line because everybody laughed and they couldn't do it again. You know, I don't know, I never know what to do with something like this because he's not essential to the movie. It's a very small part, but it's very memorable. And I remember when my dad showed me this movie how much he loved this part of the movie. So it sticks in my mind in terms of his career. It's great. You know, we talk about how he doesn't have the range of characters, say, that Duvall does, but he can play style. He can play into different styles. He can play the broad comedy of, the satirical comedy of young Frankenstein. He can do farce in the birdcage. There are a couple of other style pieces we'll get to where he can, oh, Mammoth, right? And heist. He's absolutely playing a style there and he kills it. He just kills it. It's true. Well, Tenenbaums, too, right? Same thing. You can find that he can be the voice of the style. It's a great point. This may end up being my blue. Okay. So I'm going to say. It can yellow for now, for sure. I'm going to say yellow because it's a huge hit. It's another thing where it's like, God damn, Gene Hackman is all over the movies in the early 1970s. 1974, Zandy's Bride. Yes. Now, I asked you to watch this. I had not seen it when I asked you to watch it. I was seeing it for the first time as well. Jan Troll's follow-up to. his. diptych of Scandinavian dramas that were much celebrated in America and he makes a movie with an American movie star which is something that a lot of these filmmakers at the time were doing opposite Liv Ullman and it's about a man who gets a mail order bride a mean man who gets a mail order bride very mean and they have a mean old relationship and they teach each other something about living and surviving in the old frontier wasn't a huge fan of this movie what did you think I mean I guess in the context of I watched many westerns for this project more than I traditionally do and in the context of mean old man played by Gene Hackman on the frontier there is slightly more evolution in character than some of the other performances that's true and I guess I learned that life is you know survival and hard for everybody which is the point of this movie but no I don't think it'll stay with me how do you think you do as a mail order bride kind of like this of just like get your shit together sir which you know I appreciated that that there is a little bit of you know backbone in the Liv Ullman character but thoughts you saw this for the first time as well I saw this as a kid on TV I did not rewatch for this so I'm trusting you guys on this there is a very memorable sequence in which Gene Hackman fights a bear and there are a couple of moments where I'm like that's a real bear in the shot with Hackman I mean it looked like it well you can train a bear bears are trained trainable I don't think that you would never see a movie star have a scene like that I mean the fangs are bared I I It's kind of a shocking moment. And they cut around it a little bit. They do. And there is a fake bear. There's a man in a bear suit at a point. Yes. But there's one shot where I'm like, that bear's mouth is open face to face with Gene Hackman. That's because we used to be a country. This is fucking Popeye Doyle. We can't kill. This guy has to live. What are we doing? Anyway, Zandy's Bride is not going in. No. In that film, he plays a farmer. Farmer? Farmer or. Not quite a cowboy. Rancher? Are we sure? Rancher-cowboy intersection is. Are we sure he's not a. Once again, he's doing something with cattle. Okay. So could we put down cattle baron? I don't know if he's a baron. He's not a baron. He ain't no baron. Yeah. He's a farmer. He's a farmer. 1975 is The French Connection 2. He reprises his role as Popeye Doyle. Not a big fan of this movie. No. It's a no from me. It's a no from me, too. I mean, the funny thing is, if you watch it and you don't know French Connection, you go, this is a cop movie. Crime movie, yeah. That qualifies as a cop movie. Fernando Rey is back in the film, right? It's got some cop things. Yeah. John Frankenheimer doing some set pieces. And then you go watch The French Connection, you're like, oh, French Connection 2 is garbage. Yeah. It's not very good. And it's not a hit. It doesn't really work, which is quite interesting because this is at the sort of dawn of the people getting hip to sequels, you know, and the idea that this kind of thing can and should work. I mean, the original French Connection does, I guess, leave the door open. on all of the characters, but it's not a movie where you watch it and you're like, well, what happened next? You know, it's about. It's purely a money grab. Yeah. Which is why Friedkin hated this as well as Exorcist 2. He hated it. And he had some thoughts about Mr. Frankenheimer and Mr. Borman because of it. He felt it was bankrupt of them to take these things on. Just want to note at this time, Hackman is working a lot. Yeah. In 1974, he's in three movies. In 1975, he's in four movies. His second movie is one of the worst movies I've watched out of this bunch, which is Stanley Donnan's Lucky Lady. Yeah. Which is a three-handed showpiece for Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, and Gene Hackman in which they play a trio of rum runners in, is it 1920s America? And you'd think this would be a delightful film given the star power, the filmmaking, the idea. Rum running? I think. Rum running, that sounds fun, whatever that is. It's a real piece of shit. What a dud. Yeah. You know, sometimes these movies, they get this reputation. You guys talked about it some on the bombs draft you did. And sometimes you go back and you look at, right, you can go back and look at Heaven's Gate and go, oh, you know, there's a movie. You may like it or not like it, but there's a real movie there. This was a piece of shit when it came out, and it's still a steaming piece of shit. It's just not good, and Hackman isn't great. Reynolds isn't great. Liza. Liza isn't great. I had to make hard decisions at the end, and like Stanley Donnan, you know. Sure. You'd think I would at least want to check it out, but. He had some real dogs at the end of his career, though. Exactly, and it read as one of those. And then Liza Minnelli's quote about, like, all we ate was shrimp and we were miserable. And I was like, okay, well, this doesn't, this doesn't sound like fun was had. No, it's a tough one. 1975's Night Moves. Yeah. I mean, this is a green situation, right? Absolutely. Absolute banger. The most green. Of the greens. What an absolute banger. That's unreal. Just one of the saddest, darkest movies you're ever going to see. Why did we not get five Harry Mosby movies? I don't know. Why did we not get five Harry Mosby mysteries? A reunion with Arthur Penn. A seedy detective movie about a man moving through the American South trying to solve a crime. The Florida Keys. Yes, the Florida Keys. You know, it's a slightly different. Sherman's March. It's just, you know, whatever's going on down there is, I've been to the Keys a couple of times, had a nice time and it's complicated and this movie gets into it, but it is slightly different from the American South. I didn't revisit this movie. Yeah. I did watch this in COVID and I was like, this is the shit. So you haven't watched the new 4K. I haven't. I own it. I haven't popped it in. Okay. You gotta watch it. This is one of those things where this was a sacrifice I had to make to watch stuff like Bite the Bullet where I was like, what I'd really like to be doing right now is watching Night Moves. I didn't do it, but I love this movie and I don't know what, any additional thoughts you want to share about it? It's a great crime movie. If you're listening to the Big Picture Podcast and you haven't seen Night Moves, you need to see it. I will also say about, I should say about Night Moves, this is a movie that definitely benefits from repeated viewings. Agreed. There is a, if the first time you watch it, the kind of anti-mystery quality of it, where there are things about it that don't satisfy in the traditional mystery sense. The second time you watch it, all of that will be gone and you can just enjoy the movie for exactly what it is. And it's a great movie and a great performance. Hackman's great in the movie. Yes. This is Melanie Griffith's debut, but it's the same year as The Drowning Pool, which is, it occupies like a similar place. It didn't make our Newman Hall of Fame, but I think it was my blue. And Night Moves is better, but still just in terms of 70s noir. Yeah. I love Drowning Pool. Where the vibe and the hang is part of the, is the experience, even if it doesn't make you feel great. This movie was a bomb at the time and opened one week before Jaws. Yeah. Well, you win some, you lose some. Yeah. 1975's Bite the Bullet, a big roiling Western from Richard Brooks. One of his last films as well. Well known for his, his Western, his stories about strong-willed men of the American character, writer-director, unusual writer-director. Yeah. Not a lot of them in this kind of pre-auteur times. I was a little mixed on this one. I guess that you liked it quite a bit. Maybe you can talk about it. I was patting my 10-year-old self on the back because I remember as a 10-year-old seeing this and then driving and really liking it. And then I watched it again with much lower expectations and went, "Oh, I was right. It's great." Yeah. I thought it's just great. So the nanny loved it too, by the way. Okay, good. So the nanny was going to vote for it. Well, now, now I feel bad that I missed it. It's about a big- Because you are okay about when the nanny weighs in. Oh my God. The movie is much kinder to Candace Bergen than The Hunting Party. Candace Bergen's very good in this movie. She is very good in the movie. Ben Johnson is very good in the movie. I guess this is what I thought I was watching when I watched Prime Cut instead. I don't really know how that happened. James Coburn, really good cast. It's a like turn of the century, big horse race across many, many miles. The movie's pretty shambolic. There's not really a lot of story, but there's a lot of great character moments. I'm going to say it's red. Yeah. Why are you so mixed? Well, what's the mix? It was a little baggy to me. Like The Professionals is such a tight action, like brilliant action Western. And I think I went in expecting something along those lines. Or like In Cold Blood is like such an- I like Brooks' movies a lot. And this felt just a little like, unpolished to me. Jan Michael Vincent stuff. What does he do in this? Carbo. Jan Michael Vincent, yeah. Carbo the young buck. Yeah. It's okay. What does Hackman do? Yeah, what's his profession? That's a good question. I mean, he's a cowboy. Okay. I want to put it in yellow because when we go back, I may, it may be my blue. I really like it. Okay, yellow for Bite the Bullet. 1977, The Domino Principle. Cooey. So this, I, because of the cannabis, I rented it to watch on the flight home from Venice. This is when I fully fell asleep. So I don't even think that I can count as having watched this because it was so instantly like, oh, this is not happening. Stanley Kramer thriller from the late 70s. Hackman famously did not enjoy making this movie. This is his third and final feature with Candace Bergen. It is widely considered forgettable. And I'm not a fan. So I feel like this is not much to. I believe. Now, this could be apocryphal, so don't come at me. Or I should say, don't send emails to thebigpicture.com complaining about this. But I believe that Gene Hackman turned down One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Jaws, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind because he got paycheck to do The Domino Principle and March or Die. Okay. Well. This is part of the career of Gene Hackman. He was a guy who was going to get his paycheck. Was always going to get his paycheck. And listen, we already have five greens and we're only at 1977. So in that sense, he did okay. He's got one of the most awesome slate of 1970s movies of any actor from that time. Things go a little downhill from here. He's better casting, by the way, for R.P. McMurphy than Jack Nicholson. He's closer to Kesey's conception of the character than Nicholson. It's a very interesting idea. And when I mentioned that bridge note to you yesterday, I thought the only other person, who I think serves the same function for us, is Nicholson, where he was as resonant a movie star in the 90s as he was in the 70s. I'd have to give that some thought. Domino Principle is terrible. It's really bad. It was very. I fell asleep before I. What does he do? I don't remember. What does he do? God damn, I just saw it and I can't even tell you. It's a conspiracy thriller. Was he a prisoner? He's a prisoner. I believe that is correct. He's a veteran who is offered. He's offered his freedom if he kills someone for those who imprisoned him. And Richard Widmark is in it as well. And apparently all three of them were miserable in the making of this movie. Ugh, such a slog. Domino Principle's out. A Bridge Too Far, he's got a somewhat small role in this long, endless war feature. I feel like we're always talking about A Bridge Too Far on these goddamn things because everybody's in it. Everyone's in it. And it stinks on ice. We're not a fan. Sorry, Chris. Sorry, Chris Ryan. I know, he enjoys this movie. Not Going In, that's two duds in 1977. Although A Bridge Too Far did pretty good business. And then 1977's March or Die, which is also an absolute dud. Just a dud. Three really lousy movies coming off of this incredible stretch in the first half of the 1970s are all red. And he plays a military man in March or Die. He plays a military man in A Bridge Too Far. And he plays a military man, a veteran in The Domino Principle. Okay. 1978's Superman. Lex Luthor. Green. I think it's green. All right. Yeah. What? I mean, just historically, yeah. I don't. Sure. It's not my. I mean, it's a. It's the hall of fame. It's not the hall of good. Yeah, no, I'm not. Do you hear me fighting? I'm not fighting. Well, first of all, I love Superman. Sure. Second of all, it's an important movie for a performance he gives later in his career, which we can talk about. At the time, comic book movies were much more in the camp of the 1960s Batman TV series than they were in the realm of. There were no comic book movies. Yeah. Right. This is the comic book movie. Yeah. This is the one that breaks the dam. But I mean, his performance would have been fine on the old Batman TV show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's big. It's very humorous. It's a bit absurd. Right. He and Reeve have great interplay. They're like this kind of sternness and the uprightness that he has and that Hackman gets to bounce off of is great. I think it's really fun. I don't know. There is one problem, which is that if he's the greatest super. What is he? He's telling everybody. Right. He's very. He's got a sort of Trumpian ego. He's a supervillain. Yeah. And he's telling everybody what a great mastermind he is. Why is Otis his second ninja? The person who's doing the work for him is a complete bumbling moron. It's very easy to understand. He needs to feel superior at all times. But this is his downfall. Right? Right. Well, yeah. That's how the. The person he's employed is a moron. Yeah. And his girl is such a babe. Girl is a babe. But she's also. She's not the. Not the brightest bulb either. She's not loyal, right? No. She betrays him. Yeah, I know. No. No, but I love her in this sense. This is big in our house. This movie rocks. Yeah. Even a four-year-old really likes it. The kids like it. Yeah. My kids like it. Obviously, a sentimental favorite. I saw this at a very young age, but. Yeah, but it also then sets the template. Because we grow up on him being the big, broad arch villain having a lot of fun in a lot of movies. It's true. Richard Donner cut or Richard Lester cut for the second film? Oh, that's the second. That's the second film. Yeah. We can talk about that for the second film. We haven't made it to that. Fair enough. As a family. Oh. It's hard to judge because. Two's better than one. I mean, as a movie, two's better than one. Two has Terrence Stamp being incredible. Yeah. I mean, Zod is like that. Yeah. If we're talking about supervillains, that's one of the great committed performances in a comic book movie ever. It's hard to judge them because the Donner cut is just sort of incomplete. Some of it just doesn't look finished, so you don't totally get the feel for what it was supposed to be. I mean, I saw the Lester cut a million times on TV. What's the one with the cheat where he flies around the world so fast. It's the first one. Isn't it? Where he goes back in time? Maybe it is the. Yeah. I think it's like the end of the first one. Yeah. Yeah. And he's flying a lot, so we've watched that part. Can we have a little science corner on that? Oh. Well, sure. But here's the thing. The question? I tried the science corner at home with a four-year-old. Mom, stop. Didn't go over. Mom, stop talking. He's going really fast. I want to see him flying again. I was like, okay. Great. Mom, stop. Yeah. Get used to that. Yeah. Big hit, though. Yeah. Hackman basically quit the movie after Donner was fired, and so there's a lot of scenes of him shot from behind. His voice was dubbed. Not a complete Lex Luthor performance. He does eventually come back for Superman IV. We can talk about that when we get there. So Superman I is in. Superman II is read. Mm-hmm. He plays a supervillain in both of those films. 1981's all night long. Just seen this film for the first time yesterday. Same. The aforementioned Sue Mengers, who was the super agent who represented both Barbra Streisand and Gene Hackman, and also the director of this film, Claude Tremont. Was her husband, I think. Was her husband. Yeah. And what the fuck is this movie? How did this happen? Not very good. Pretty strange. What a weird movie. It was a pretty big bomb at the time. I don't think it's that bad. I don't think it's just like- It's just bizarre. Yeah. Also, this scene when they, when Gene Hackman comes back home and finds Diane Ladd with Mr. Feeny- At the very, very end. Yes. And then they're all at the table. And then Dennis- Yeah. 30-year-old Dennis Quaid playing a 17-year-old. Yeah. But did I care? No, I didn't. I thought that scene was kind of fun. That is also the scene where Hackman, who's playing sort of beleaguered, fed up, trying to start a new life and find some happiness, but a relatively sincere person in his canon, and then he turns a little mean at the table. And you're like, oh, okay, you know, and rightfully so, but- Well, Hackman got divorced in '86 from his first wife, and he takes on a few parts where he clearly is kind of working on some of that stuff and the thinking about being married and getting into the second half of your life that is kind of interesting. Can I just share a Streisand take? Yeah. I think hotter in her late 30s than in her 20s. Absolutely. Yeah. A thousand percent. I think she's beautiful in this movie. Absolutely. Incredible. I mean, she's also just wearing like- Very revealing, skimpy, yeah. You know, Marilyn Monroe dresses the whole time. She's just hot in this movie. Yeah. I think it's- That is possible for women to get hotter as they get older. Never seen it before. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good point. I agree. But I think particularly with her, I think she's thought of as like the funny girl, the ingenue who kind of explodes onto the scene. Sure. But she's like very sexy in the movie. Yes. I thought. I believe, again, Sue Menger's super agent, I believe it's the highest paycheck ever for a person, Barbra Streisand, on this movie. For a person? Yeah. Adjusted for inflation, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Up to that point. I think it was $4 million she got paid. I mean, up to that point. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. 1981's Reds. Yeah. A classic film, a five-star film. Wonderful film. Hackman has a pretty small role as Pete Van Weary and hated his time and never worked with Beatty again. And not going in his hall of fame. No. No. Too small. Did it as a favor to Beatty and then was like, "You get one?" Why did I do this? Yeah. Yeah. You get one favor. It should have been one day and I did nine days. Yeah. Yeah. 1983's Under Fire. I had not seen this movie before. A pretty interesting movie about three journalists in Nicaragua in the late 1970s, played by Nick Nolte, Joanna Cassidy, and Hackman. Hackman is playing an anchor, a TV newscaster, who's based on a real person who was shockingly murdered. And I would say pretty solid drama. Yeah. I think it's Roger Spottiswood. Right? And it's a good, maybe one of the better movies that Roger Spottiswood made. I saw this in the movie theaters in '83 and I revisited it for this and yeah, it's good. It's a little shaggy story-wise. Ed Harris, a great turn as a mercenary in this movie. He pops in this one. He really pops. Wild-eyed military man. Yeah. Nolte's great. Hackman's great. It's a good movie. I like Under Fire. You should check it out. I like it too. He's also two journalists in a row. Yeah. On a different note that in Reds. Oh, you're right. Yeah. So- Two journalists in a row. Two journalists, two Reds. he trained as a journalist all night long he's a he's a shop manager a grocery store manager he's downgraded yeah drugstore he's a I mean I'm basically he's previously employed at a higher level and is demoted in the movie he was a drugstore like executive yes and then so not quite pharma executive but just adjacent middle management okay uh so Under Fire I think is red and Superman he was super villain yeah I think we got that uh Under Fire one of those classic movies where it's like an automatic red but I would recommend it to people I agree um this three movies this year he makes Uncommon Valor next with Ted Kochoff which is a movie that's coming in during this wave of in the aftermath of Vietnam um people reckoning with what had happened in the previous decade and uh the angst and pain over a lot of loss experienced this is a movie about a man going back to Laos to find his son and he puts together a military force of his own to return and and save him and I didn't think this was very good it's not very good it's not very good it's I it's part of the um Brian Raftery's Vietnam series and so I didn't revisit it but I remember it being not something it was more of like a historical data trend point in the types of movies that were being made uh than a movie that stayed with me yeah I mean memorable early appearance of Patrick Swayze um Hackman kind of disappears from the movie for about 45 minutes when it becomes sort of this basic training preparation for the rescue but it's it feels like really more of a shoot-em-up I would say it's not very sophisticated about the complexities of Vietnam in any meaningful way Kochoff was on a run too it was it was a real misfire for him and also around the same year as Let's Get Hairy which we talked about in the Duval draft which has kind of drive-in fun about it you know Gary Busey going off and stuff this movie doesn't really have that I mean Tex Cobb come on yeah yeah okay so Uncommon Valor is red okay do you guys watch Eureka? I've seen it before I met you this morning and I I just didn't get there never seen it before I really wanted to really interesting movie yeah um considered uh a big bomb that has developed a modest cult following it's one of it's Nick Nicholas Roeg's biggest movie that he ever made um it is based on a true life story about a gold miner who struck it big and was eventually mysteriously spoiler alert murdered um named Harry Oaks and Gene Hackman plays the Harry Oaks-esque figure um it co-stars uh Rutger Hauer and Teresa Russell and the first 45 minutes of this movie are astonishing the design of the movie where he's a gold miner in Alaska in Alaska in territory who stumbles upon a brothel in the middle of the night and then has this kind of mystical experience not a sexual experience but a mystical experience which is then a lot of a lot of brothels in Hackman's filmography that's true that's true um and then leads him to the discovery of this gold which then cuts straight to the future and we see that the movie becomes this kind of parable about the quest for wealth and what it's all about and the you know lie of the American dream this movie has clearly got to be an inspiration for There Will Be Blood I oh right I mean there is so much in the lie of the American family and the you know getting rich from what's in the ground and you know the the child who doesn't totally understand the father and the fraught relationship between those two anyway it's a little all over the place the ending is a little rough features one of the most savage death scenes you'll ever see in a film um but I thought it was pretty cool and I would recommend people check it out Red check it out okay and he's his job is gold miner billionaire okay so gold baron sure okay yes who moves to the Bahamas okay the Bahamian resident I love that James Bond movie gold baron 1984 is misunderstood haven't seen it uh I saw it okay uh all right saved saved by Tracy once again this is a dark period for this yeah I'm I'm on the outside a little bit uh it's based on something else it's based on an international film that I don't have in front of me right now uh he plays a shipping magnate who uh whose wife has passed away and he has a troubled relationship with his son played by Henry Thomas is this what Henry Thomas did right before E.T. or right after E.T.? I think it's his first movie after what a great child actor he may be a great adult actor too I don't know but he was certainly a great child actor and he steals the movie from Hackman here okay Hackman it's directed by Jerry Schatzberg so a reunion with his two Schatzberg movies scarecrow director and uh he's a very sad man who can't who doesn't know how to talk to his son his son doesn't know how to talk to him uh and Hackman Hackman it's he wallows in this movie he's he's maudlin in this movie he's allowed to be maudlin and weep and uh it's not good so you said shipping magnate? yeah is he very wealthy? he is extremely wealthy yeah is it on a yacht? it's in a it's where they live in Egypt somebody one of the financiers of the film was Egyptian and convinced them to reset the movie I don't remember where it was set originally but convinced them to reset it in Egypt and the Egyptian setting is really one of the more interesting things about the movie interesting okay uh Misunderstood is Red? yeah 1985's Twice in a Lifetime boy did watch this yeah did we skip Two of a Kind? yes I guess he is in Two of a Kind it's an uncredited part in which he plays the voice of God I didn't watch it it's a is it John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John is their reunion from Greece? I forgot about this I've seen this a thousand years ago I didn't watch it this seemed like a movie that very clearly was not going in the Hall of Fame and it was if I had to skip something I was going to skip Two of a Kind I think a good choice uh let's go to Twice in a Lifetime which is a movie about a Seattle Seahawks fan who really wants to fuck Ann-Margaret and really wants to who among us who could blame him so can I tell you we were watching Bye Bye Birdie at home and Ann-Margaret is one of my gals and Zach was like Ann-Margaret not really my type and I had to rethink my entire marriage the original redhead smoke show isn't that insane that's insane I didn't want to dig deeper because whatever I found doesn't speak well of Zach and also like doesn't reflect well on me then it's not a redhead's guy you know it's like me yes Ann-Margaret no is not a conversation you want to be in there's no accounting for taste I guess so people like things and people don't like things they should like like Ann-Margaret she yeah yeah no she's in my she's in my whole family she's quite beautiful in this movie playing an older barmaid and one night a man on his birthday stumbles into a bar to celebrate with his buddies including Brian Dennehy and he makes a connection with this barmaid and he's a married man who's got grown kids he's a grandfather he's a father he's a 50 year old grandfather that was a little chilling to think about and this movie is somewhat well known for being Amy Madigan's first Academy Award nomination she since has won for her role in Weapons last year and Ellen Burstyn plays his his wife his humiliated wife kind of a fascinating little drama and you don't see many movies like this anymore not totally effective because it is so non-judgmental so as to not really be about anything it's a little a little bit of like hey yeah sometimes you do fall in love again and that's okay and it doesn't totally it's the same template also as All Night Long yeah very similar where the guy is he's he's not having a breakdown in the same way but it's like a kind of a spark has gone out marriage with a great actress of the screen and then another a daffy bombshell shows up and then off they go into the night and that's and that's it I like it I saw it in the movie theaters at the time and I revisited for this and I think it's pretty interesting in context of divorce dramas they were making a lot of them at this time it's so rare to see the man who's making this decision or woman making this decision be so clear-eyed about what it is they're giving up like he sees the satisfactions of marriage a long-term marriage of a family and so he says he says to his wife I've got a chance I've got a chance for something else and I'm gonna take it he says it to his wife in the most honest and uncruel way possible but he's just telling her the truth about the way and you see his life outside of this a shitty little apartment that's true he plays a construction worker in the film the movie no he's in a factory factory work the movie opens with his birthday party where his adult children and his entire family is surrounded him and they're just like reading him greeting cards that they got him and this is the birthday activity and they're reading the messages in the greeting cards which to me was just the like a very very sharp and depressing evocation of how boring this life is yeah and how small and he is visibly like very bored at the head of the table and Amy Madigan is reading them so loud all the time all caps you know it's a very big performance from young Amy mad again but uh so they do also show his dissatisfaction you know in a way that i guess is pretty bracing for the time i mean it's not like the rosy nuclear family it is a nuclear family but he's he's bummed about it and she says to him sex and he says of course there's sex of course but that's not why that that's not the reason of course that's a it's part of it it's a feature i i i i'm a little skeptical of this movie it's a little bit of a like have your cake and eat it too movie to me where it's trying to affirm something about the masculine idea of pursuit and make it more emotional than i think maybe it actually is here's the problem you know what people can of course fall out of love and fall in love and get remarried that's not what the point i'm trying to make the point i'm trying to make is they cast ann margaret yeah and he's like sure there's sex but it's not about sex but it's like you cast ann margaret the person is dowdy in the movie and not glamorous and they didn't give ann margaret much of a life outside of being a barmaid who is attracted him right we don't see any of her friends we don't see her husband has died so she doesn't have any of the family baggage i mean all night long is probably more sophisticated even though it's playing it for comedy in terms of it gives the diane ladd character mr feeney and you know like and and motivations outside of this you're you're right that it's just about harry being like i want more and then the movie's like good job it's it's produced and directed by bud yorkin who also paid for it which is interesting and strikes me as extremely personal and then you know jane hackman gets divorced one year later and it's written by colin welland who wrote chariots of fire it's based on a british tv movie i think it is it is very much like the movies that get made 10 years later and then forever but as a woman in the main role just being like this new you know this traditional life that was handed to me is not enough and i want more and everyone's like you go girl but it is funny that when it's a man just being like this is not everything i wanted you're like you don't go girl well i think it's in such stark contrast to shoot the moon too which we talked about on dying the dying key which is this kind of like the emotional volatility of that movie is part of what makes it such an interesting movie and this movie is like yeah and that's okay what the fuck is this is this the stuff of great drama i think we're safe to say that it's red it's red and tracy says you should check it out okay 1985's target the third and final he's a factory worker yes the third and final feature film with arthur penn in which um gene hackman plays a what appears to be a mild-mannered middle-class man um whose wife has disappeared and matt dylan plays his son and it turns out that he's a middle-class man that this mild-mannered man is in fact a former cia agent and so he needs to go to europe to retrieve his wife who's been kidnapped um kind of a dud a dud a dud and a totally implausible third act it just really goes off the rails in the third act cia agent red watch this yeah no i didn't because after cia agent i saw uh his son was played by matt dylan who like no respect no disrespect but i was like i don't really think this is going to rise to the level they don't appear to be related yeah no they're pretty good together though matt dylan's terrific actor and so so's mr hackman but it's just the even the action scenes are not handled well it's not good okay uh 1986 is power i saw this in movie theaters i re i'm moving my microphone i re so because i when it's over here i have to look at sean all the time and i'd like to look at amanda the middle spot is it's not great for your neck uh so you you sit over there i'm gonna sit here and talk to amanda okay about the movie power yes i saw this in movie theaters when it came out i re-watched it for this perplexing i can't believe it's a sydney lumet movie i don't fucking get it what happened it stinks uh it stinks i think i watched part of this several years ago when we did the sydney lumet a hundred years did we do a hall of fame it might have been for denzel oh is that when i watched it somewhat early denzel performance okay it's a movie about um a political operatives and uh a certain kind of race to power and it and in terms of that stuff it's so old-fashioned it's so out of date none of it applies anymore yes um claire hastings won the golden raspberry for performance in this film oh she she is the fifth lead i don't even remember i mean i don't know excuse me kate capshaw was nominated oh no sorry misspoke beatrice straight was nominated for playing claire hastings in the movie okay beatrice straight is not good in this film yeah uh yeah it's not a good movie and it's a pretty small hackman part too so it's red and it was supposed to be burt reynolds in the richard gear role is that right yeah he hurt himself and he he had to have certain he had to drop out and so they hired richard gear who was 15 years too young for the part so they just made him grow a mustache like burt reynolds it's just not good it's not good um 1986 hoosiers so again yeah not to be too counterintuitive here but not one of my movies okay not one of my movies now why are you looking at me like i'm just like maybe it's yours it's it's an iconic movie and a beloved movie and a successful movie and an important movie in gene hackman's career is it i think so i think i mean i do think that this was probably the first time that i saw it because i was handed down like this generation of sports movies you know with a feel good ending yes and we do work at the ringer of course yeah a movie like hoosiers foundational to the bill simmons text and story and he wrote about this movie many times over the years is it one of his movies for sure oh really yes yeah i didn't know that so it's not a bad film um i don't say it's a bad film but it's not a movie that i love but i think it would be i think it's quite hard to tell the story of his career without this movie it does it pivots i always feel like i'm the one guy in the room who's like i'm not really a hoosiers guy but now i'm in a room with three people who are not really hoosiers people jack i have i saw it when i was a kid and i liked it but i think the point you're making about it feels like instrumental to his legacy checks to me i mean it does but he also pivots back away from it you know this is kind of the one and he's still he's gruff and direct with the with the kids and then in the end is won over so it but it's not like he's playing like lovable coach types the rest of the yeah this is not not a lovable type at all he's he's a tough motherfucker and but he's not playing characters that like get won over he's not doing sincere like heartwarming things or even really picking heartwarming movies for the most part after this i think if we did not put it in it would be considered a wild zag because i think it is one of his most memorable performances yeah we did that with redford though what did we not put in redford that everyone was like what's wrong with you let's yellow it and come back to it um this is so interesting to be in this position let's think about a bathroom break okay off we go this episode is brought to you by mcdonald's even 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Let's rip. No Way Out. Oh, to the movie or to the performance? Look, I didn't revisit. I saw it in the movie theater at the time. And, you know, it was fine time. It was fine little popcorn movie, but it didn't have any resonance for me. Dead wrong. I love this movie. I don't know whether we need to put it in his Hall of Fame. I only saw it during the pandemic. And somehow I didn't know. You guys are blowing my mind. No Way Out? Really? Well, listen. I was three in 1987. Come on. That's so crazy. Isn't it like really long? Isn't it a long movie? Hour and 54 minutes. Yeah. All right. Roger Donaldson. Steamy. Sexy. Stupid. Very fun. He plays the Secretary of State as a complete horndog murderer. Yeah. Very enjoyable stuff. Show me the lie. Yeah. Kevin Costner. Probably the hottest he's ever been in a movie. I think so. Sean Young. Yeah. Seems nuts. Loving it. Perfect casting for Sean Young, in my opinion. Will Patton doing all kinds of crazy shit. Great. I love your enthusiasm. It's a fun time at the movies. Great. It's an amazing time. And he does not. Hackman does not hold back. He is willing to be as desperate and weird. It's the start of a new era. Yeah. It's the start of the horny Hackman era. Does it go in your Hall of Fame? I think it's a yellow as an act of gratitude. Sure. And maybe I'll blue. Maybe it'll be a blue. All right. But there's another. There's another blue that. It's not a deep film. It's not thematically rich. It's just the thrill. You know, it's a remake of The Big Clock. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's kind of amusing about. It's not as good as The Big Clock. Well, I don't know. Different strokes. You don't like to have fun? It'd be really funny if we put No Way Out in and Hoosiers Out. Let's just mark the time when Amanda officially said, you don't like to have fun? So, Jack reminded me that it is. We left the natural out of the Robert Redford Hall of Fame. That is the one. But, again, like another sports movie that just doesn't really. No sense of humor. Yeah. Okay. That feels a little bit faded to time. 1987's Superman for the Quest for Peace. Okay. A return to Lex Luthor. A favor done for Christopher Reeve and also The Paycheck. Did they get the piece? Disastrously terrible movie. One of the worst comic book films ever made. I think I knew it had that reputation and for that reason, not only have I not shown it to the kids, I did not watch it for this draft. No. I didn't think this would make it in. If a Lex Luthor was going to make it in, it wasn't going to be Quest for Peace. No. This movie is terrible and bombed and ended Christopher Reeve's run as Superman. Gene Hackman also voices the character of Nuclear Man in this movie, who is a supervillain who Lex Luthor creates. Who would later go on to sell products for Lowe's. 1988's Bat. Superman 4 is red, by the way. 1988's Bat 21. This is the other film I watched on my plane ride home from Telluride. Okay. This is another film in which we see Gene Hackman golfing. He's golfing at the very opening of this movie and golf is used as a central metaphor for his retrieval after he is shot down behind enemy lines and is eventually saved by an endeavoring pilot played by Danny Glover. This movie is. A stiff piece of ham. And I didn't much care for it. I had a good time. A stiff piece of. I'm just thinking through. Okay, yeah. So it's more like jerky? Not quite. Okay. It's not aged in that way. How's his golf swing? Pretty good. Okay. He looked like a golfer. Considering he retired to Arizona, I assume he could swing a golf swing. One assumes he's a golfer. Not a bad movie, but just not a movie I loved. Yeah. Better than I was. I was anticipating. Okay. Certainly red. Fat 21 is red. 1988 Split Decisions. Now, this was news to me that this was a film. Yeah, it's one of the very few times you'll see him in a non-studio film, right? Yes. It's an independent production. He plays the father of a pair of boxers played by Jeff Fahey and Craig Sheffer. He's a cop. He's a police officer. That's very right. You didn't see this movie, did you? No. I believe it's currently available on Pluto. This is one of five movies. It was in 1988. So, once again. Hash in check. Sort of. We'll get to that. Yeah, it seems like a favor. It feels like a favor to somebody. Jeff Fahey plays a hot-dogging Irish boxer who refuses to go down and is killed by the mafia, and his brother must seek revenge, his brother Craig Sheffer. It's just red. Okay. It is red. And, again, didn't know about it, watched it, kind of enjoyed it. It's not bad. It's like a ham. Yeah, definitely ham. But, yeah, it's fun. Yeah. No, there's stiff peas of ham. Okay. The boxing choreography is terrible. The boxing choreography is kind of ruinous. It's like designed maybe by a little kid. I don't know. It's like nobody has ever had a boxing match like the people are having in this movie. So interesting. I really feel like I have my arms around a lot of movie history, and then something like this pops up, and I'm like, what is this? Anyhow. Oh, Jennifer Beals, too, right? She is. Early Jennifer Beals. She's prominently displayed on the poster despite not being the fourth lead of the movie. 1988's Another Woman is one and only time working with Woody Allen. Which I would imagine he loved because Woody doesn't like to do a lot of takes. One take. Yep. And he plays a very interesting part. He plays the former lover of Jenna Rollins, a woman who is an author who has moved to a new apartment. She's in the apartment to do some work, and in the apartment next door, there's a psychoanalyst and his patients, and so she's overhearing all of these conversations amongst people. This is a very unusual movie in that it is a portrait of a woman in her late 50s having a bit of an existential look at her life and what it meant. And Hackman, once again, a very subtle, horny Hackman, is kind of like what could have been romantically, and there's a real chemistry between the two of them. Half the performance is like dream sequence or fantasy. And it's like, in a way, he's really, really good in it. Very good. Only in a few scenes. This is one of, I think, only two Woody Allen movies that I'd never seen before. And the other one is his most recent movie, Coup de Chance, which I just haven't seen. And I thought it was all right. Oh, I love it. I think it's gorgeous. And I love Jenna Rollins always. And Hackman is kicking ass in this movie. He just knocks it out of the park. Just brings such an easy masculinity to the thing. He's just what's called for in the movie. Yeah. There's no ham in it in the best way. Very subtly played throughout the whole movie. It's a very, I mean, Woody is so strange. You know, the idea of this movie coming from him is so fascinating because of everything that you think about him from the movies he's making before this. And this is kind of about to be in that Crimes and Misdemeanors era where he's much more searching, I would say, in a lot of the parts. But writing parts like this for women and God, he's such a such a cultural conundrum. Yeah. I mean, if you imagine this is just as Woody in the main part and it's just about a man that then there are a lot of similarities and it's just played in different ways. And probably with Woody Allen, we played, you know, more self-lacerating and more comedy. But I see that I see the common thread. I think some of it is just that it's Jenna Rollins and like and that he either writes the part or lets her tailor the part to her particular. Yeah. Did you like it? I did. I did like it, even though at some points I was like, what's what is happening or not in a in a plot way, but just kind of in a am I watching Jenna Rollins just sit here, do voiceover of what's going on in another therapy session? What's real and what's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I did like it. A modest movie. I mean, it's 80 minutes long. It's very short. It's red, but you should definitely. Yes. I agree. Worth checking out. Yeah. 1988's Full Moon. In Blue Water. You watched this? I did. Another movie I'd not heard of before about a man who his wife has gone missing in a swimming incident of some kind played by Becky Ann Baker. He plays a bar owner who comes across another woman in town played by Terry Gar. And I guess it's a it's a dramedy. Is it a drama? I mean, I was a bit of an odd duck of a movie. It is directed by Peter Masterson. We talked about him on the Duval. Draft because he's Horton Foote's cousin. That's right. And didn't direct a lot of movies. Didn't make a lot of movies. I think probably Trip to Bountiful is his best known film. And it's this is almost feels like a stage play. It's so bound to this one location. It's it's a it's a hangout movie. It's not a bad hangout movie. Yeah. Terry Gar. God damn, man. Just they're good together. Reunited from the conversation. Right. And from Young Frankenstein. Yeah. And Young Frankenstein. She's just great. She's just great. And just so you can just always watch Terry Gar. So if if if it's Terry Gar and Gene Hackman you're looking for, they're in this movie. It's red. Is it a happy ending? Yeah. Ish. Ish. I mean, he doesn't really do traditional. This also has a kind of dream sequence. Fantasia quality. There is a little bit of magical realism going on here. Burgess Meredith. That's right. In a wheelchair playing his father-in-law. Right. - Yes. Elias Koteas, early Elias Koteas, yeah. A lot of piss and vinegar. It's not a bad hang. It's not, it's certainly, it's not a bad hang. Another movie I'd never heard of. Yeah. Okay, 1988's Mississippi Burning. I was shown this film in AP American History. Oh. Which I think is interesting in retrospect, because my AP American History teacher was a real lefty, a real woman of the revolution. But this movie, you know, famously centers all the white people in the story. Right. And, you know, a very kind of a Tony and celebrated docudrama in its time, directed by Alan Parker, Hackman, and Willem Dafoe play a pair of FBI agents who go to investigate the murder of some student activists. Yeah, it's based on Cheney, Schwerner, Goodman. Do I have those names right? I didn't revisit this for the movie. I didn't either. Did you? I didn't either. But I do remember, that it centers the white people. And, again, Hackman is playing the kind of. The older gruffer. He's older, and he knows things. He's like, I know Mississippi, and Willem Dafoe is the by-the-book guy. And then. It's not a perfect film, but I do remember it being like. It's hard to watch. It has a lot of upsetting, you know, bracing things in it. It's both hard to watch and entertaining. Yeah. It is an entertaining movie, and it was a. It was a popcorn movie. I think, if anything, it was. People are like, you know, not sure this subject matter really should be a popcorn movie. Right. Right? You're not sure it might be too conventionally entertaining. There's also a very famous launchpad for Frances McDormand, who kind of pops in this movie in a big way as the wife of one of the men responsible for the murder, who plays a pivotal part. Red. Yeah? Yeah. Listen. Okay. Was he nominated for this? Yes, I believe so. He. He. Well, he was. He was nominated for an Academy Award and for a Golden Globe. That's why I ask, is it like, are we sure it's not yellow? I mean, you can yellow it if you want. It does feel like this is kind of where his performance style goes for a while. This particular kind of part. Let's just yellow it for the sake of conversation, okay? Okay. 1989's The Package. A lot of fun. Andrew Davis' action picture that I rewatched very early, maybe a year or two ago, with the idea of doing this. But remind me of the setup of this film. Hackman is a military officer. He's charged with bringing Tommy Lee Jones. It's a prisoner. He's moving a prisoner from one location to another. And he loses Tommy Lee Jones. Turns out Tommy Lee Jones isn't the prisoner he was supposed to be. There's been a body switch at some point. And Tommy Lee Jones is on the loose. And he's in the United States to assassinate somebody. And Gene Hackman's trying to track him down. Joanna Cassidy, again. Reunion. Yeah, reunion. Great Chicago movie. A lot of Chicago location. The whole thing shot in Chicago. A lot of Chicago actors. Nathan Davis, who you may recall me referring to on this podcast before when the bathroom door is closed. I'm taking a shit. Nathan Davis is in this movie. Andy Davis' father. I think that was, wasn't that during the Chicago draft? It was, yeah. Great moment in podcasting history. I like the package just fine. I wouldn't put it in the Hall of Fame. Agreed. People should check it out. It's fun. Tommy Lee and Gene didn't get on so well. What a shocker. They only have, they don't have enough time together. They only have a couple of scenes together. Those scenes really pop. They're really good. They're, it's funny because they're, yeah. Would we do a Tommy Lee Hall of Fame? I think is an interesting question. We probably would. They're kind of similar. I feel like Gene is considered more iconic, but they have a similar quality. I don't disagree with that. Hackman has more good movies than Tommy Lee has. Yeah, that's kind of the, and more like stone cold classics. Where do you stand on Men in Black? I enjoyed it when I saw it in the movie theater. You went to see that in the movie theater? I did. It's one of two Will Smith movies I've seen in my life. What's the other? It's Independence Day. Okay, so you did not see. No, no. Six Degrees of Separation. I've seen three. Okay. That's hysterical. So we'll be filling in on Enemy of the State is what you're saying. I'm saying I won't be doing the Will Smith Hall of Fame. Maybe I've already done that. I truly can't recall. I don't know. And then everything changed. 1990 Loose Cannons. I didn't watch this. Possibly his worst movie. Oh man, it's really bad. And you know what? It doesn't need to be this bad. Another cop. Yeah, he's partnered with Dan Aykroyd who has multiple personality syndrome or what he's really got is like SNL syndrome where he's just doing a lot of funny voices and stuff. It's just, it's such a misguided. If they just made a traditional cop buddy movie without that element, they might've had some fun in this thing. A truly annoying movie. It's not good at all. Red. Yeah. 1990s Postcards from the Edge. A small but pivotal movie. It's wonderful in this. He knocks it out of the park in this. He knocks it out of the fucking park. He plays a film director with an affinity for Meryl Streep's character. And he based this performance on Richard Donner who he worked with on Superman and Superman 2. And if you've ever seen Richard Donner speak, you can kind of see what he was thinking. I like that he does stuff like this all the time. Yeah. He takes a lot of supporting time in parts where he's like, I'm just going to take over the movie for eight minutes. It's very much in conversation with another woman, I think, in that it's very much the woman's picture. His role is to come in and just do this thing. And he just does it and just nails it. Both Carrie and the nanny had never seen this movie before. And we all watched it together. And they enjoyed the movie, but they mainly came, I mean, the movie's got, there's a lot of things we could talk about in this movie. Okay, I'd love to. Well, some of it's a little, some of it, Shirley MacLaine is an ass kicker. She's just fantastic. She's always great. Some of the drug stuff, some of the addiction stuff, I don't know that they really dug in to that. It feels a little bit like just a surface, a little bit sitcom-y. Yes. The addiction issues and the way they're played. We should say, obviously, you know, Carrie Fisher's life and her relationship to her mother, Debbie Reynolds, very much the framework for this movie and inspired by it. This is the first of two Mike Nichols movies that Hackman makes. And it's Dennis Quaid in the, again, right? Yes. As the druggie boyfriend. Yeah. You're right. That's not handled in the same way. I mean, I just think of the scenes with Shirley MacLaine performing, you know. Oh, fantastic. The singing and all of the mother-daughter showbiz stuff. Which is, and I love a Mike Nichols. I love a Mike Nichols movie. Postcards from the Edge, not going in. Okay. I would say. I don't think. It's a small part. Read? Do you read a film? I think you do. I think you read it and you say, you should watch Postcards from the Edge. Yeah. 1990s Narrow Margin. Another remake of a 1940s film. Yeah. A pretty interesting one. Great, fun. Yeah, good. You like it? Do you see it? I didn't make it to this one, which I feel bad about because I like Ann Archer. It's a pretty good thriller and it's a weird thriller in that like Ann Archer is the youngest person in it. She's probably like 45 when she makes the movie. Yes. It's not a young person's movie for the kind of movie it is. Yes. Written and directed by Peter Himes. And yeah, it's kind of, I guess it's ultimately a neo-noir about, Hackman plays a man trying to keep a witness to a murder safe. The movie has a very exciting, upsetting murder sequence at the beginning of the film featuring J.T. Walsh. A lot of train action in this movie. So it's Witness, but five years later. No Amish. No Amish community. Yeah, no barn raising, no Sam Cooke. Witness and Silver Streak. Yeah. Mashup. Yeah. Just a perfectly solid movie. Yeah. That is great. He plays an attorney. Okay. 1991, he also plays an attorney in class action. Oh, what a dud. A dramedy in which he plays a crusading attorney opposite his daughter played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. And this movie is forgettable. Michael Aptedman, just one of the most important filmmakers because of the Up series. And he sure may, and he made a couple of good movies too. I don't mean, say he didn't, but he also made some really undifferentiated studio poopy. That's true. Class action falls in that category. He made The World Is Not Enough, the James Bond film. I forgot about that. He made Nell. Yeah. He made. It's really very strange. He made The Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. What happens in that one? Is that before or after the magician's nephew is born? Way after. Aslan is like, he's really good. He also made Coal Miner's Daughter. He did. He also made Thunderheart, which I like. like. in the mist yeah it's films you don't you don't like those films you don't like i like it i was thinking of you know i worked with graham green one of the last times graham acted before yeah drop that name yeah there you go christ and i just remember asking him about thunderheart and he did not have a good experience working with val kilmer no graham green the actor no i never knew graham green the right graham green jesus christ once you work with graham well nobody had a good time with val kilmer unfortunately but graham green i loved him he's a wonderful actor okay i forgot that michael aptet also made agatha which is my dream movie except it's not good yeah i feel i feel you yeah i'm with you on that very spotty career as a future aren't they redoing some isn't there like a tv version of that happening i think so or maybe it's been released already already yeah but in only in the uk or something i gotta look into it here's a funny one um 1991's company business it is funny uh jean hackman and is a cia cia agent again um mikhail baryshnikov is in the film as a russian prisoner here's why it's a funny film when you watch company business you go through a portal and at the end of company business you realize i've never seen company business that's how little impact it makes that you actually watch the movie and the experience of watching it is not watching it yeah not having one i shot you my list of movies of his that i hadn't seen for this and the last one was i think maybe i've seen company business i could remember parts of it you might have seen it this morning and you've already come out of the other side forgetting that you've seen company business totally forgettable nothingness nicholas meyer said that in his book the view from the bridge memories of star trek and a life in hollywood about the making of this film that the decision to try to make a movie is to keep up with the changing political environment with the in the ussr during the making of this movie was suicide and while on paper the troika of hackman baryshnikov and meyer might have appeared promising in reality we were all pulling in different directions and my bouts with hackman just about wrecked me and you hear this a lot in this phase of hackman's career does baryshnikov dance in this film i don't think so that seems like a missed opportunity no you gotta watch white knights i have watched white knights we did dance trash or trash dance on this list on this episode trash trash dance company business is red that's another cia agent i think his second how many greens do we have may i ask because we're about to get into a one two three four five six oh i think we're gonna be all right i think we're in good shape i thought we were gonna okay here we go 1992 is unforgiven little bill daggett academy award-winning performance a movie that gene hackman did not want to do after the failure of the of a couple of the movies in the late 80s he said he no longer wanted to make any violent pictures and he was compelled to participate in this movie as the heavy in clint eastwood's revisionist western masterpiece um auto green yeah it's a green this movie all means a lot to all of you and i support that he's so fucking good though yeah i mean it's it's the quintessential i feel like i didn't see unforgiven when i was in 1992 because i was too small but the hackman's performance and just the sadistic nature of it but there's something identified like but there's something really good about it at this in that he's also playing a politician and the way that he kind of patrols the town with this mixture of this sadism and the charisma that he has he's very charming at times in the movie and at times he seems almost like warm to the people of the community which is undergirded for him and he's very charming at times in the movie and at times he seems almost like warm to the people of the community which is undergirded by all of this malevolence that's inside of this really violent guy is a is really impressive i think this is world-class shit from him um and i i watched his academy awards acceptance speech and it's one of the weirdest oscar acceptance speeches you'll ever see he's seems surprised he's very quiet he thanks five or six people including the screenwriter and clint and the actors but didn't i hear you wanted to give the academy award for unforgiven to another movie from this year yes because he thinks that everybody should only get one that's kind of his operating principle you wanted to give it to another film from this year and i was just did i i was so sad or a few good men oh yeah let's not get into that okay we are who we are well this is an amazing that's an amazing you want to be third chair no no you better revisit a few good men that is okay if that's the the bench i'm not gonna clear i mean this is the year of the player a movie that i adore uh is this the year of the player i'm not gonna clear i mean this is the year of the player in this race he was up against jay davidson for the crying game jack nicholson for a few good men al pacino and glenn gary glenn ross and david paymer and mr saturday night the right person won the award interesting um 1993 is the firm well this is very important to yours truly avery tolar one of the leaders of the titular firm uh who becomes sort of a mentor to the tom cruise figure this is the first of and not the last john grisham adaptation that jean hackman participated in and yeah horny hackman is back in this movie what's the i was just listening to the podcast and you were saying that you have a phrase yes what is your phrase um it's not for me it's not for you it's not for me okay mitch mcdeer it's not for me so 90s so i think we're learning 90s legal thrillers because a few good men would also follow courtroom drama you know i think maybe maybe there's something that's just not where you are tom you don't like tom you say just say it out loud say with your whole chest as they say you don't like tom what's the what say it again the phrase it's not for me it's not for me i think it's important for everybody to know what is and is not for that you know you know i i don't want to take anybody else's joy away it's not for me let me tell you this is for me this movie is so good also i mean i think that i've read the firm the novel at age eight or nine and i have vivid memories of taking it from my parents room and being like no no i'm old enough for this i mean i learned about the cayman islands from this it's the caymans right or the bahamas it's the caymans um i learned about uh mail fraud for sure that probably the mafia and my parents were lawyers so i remember a time of being like oh no is this what's happening at their firm is their firm also great question evil was it uh in in many ways yes i i i really like uh gary bucey and holly hunter in this movie i wish the movie was about them i would have enjoyed that movie more i think i like genie triple horn oh a north star for me i love her uh i worked with her on uh she's from tulsa she's my gal i love yeah wilford brimley you could say that a lot of stuff when you find a break no this movie backflips this i mean this movie's like two and a half hours it's ridiculous are you kidding oh the score oh dave grueson come on and like hackman to your point open your eyes let's play all i said was it's not for me okay you just sit there screaming this movie fucks in my face for an hour it's not for me i saw it when it came out i revisited it for this draft i showed it to the nanny it's not for me i mean listen and hackman makes the case that mitch is not around you know yeah he's not home he's not attending to his lovely wife sensitive lover and every toll in other words are available you think this should be green not based on hackman's performance no both no both i think i think he's critical to the movie because he gives the movie a sense of emotional depth that it otherwise would lack as just like a conspiracy drama about a malevolent organization that the our lead doesn't totally understand it becomes stuck inside of and he's this guy who's like a flawed guy who's doing all these terrible things but he's got a there's an emotionality to his performance that is unusual in a movie like this you guys have this is green this is green i think so it's very important to us then it should be green this is i'm only here to help you okay i mean is that anything about it yeah i'm here to help you guys you guys have a show and this third chair i step on to help you out wow i'm here to help facilitate we'll get there later uh geronimo an american legend you know i haven't seen this in a long time i saw it recently for the duval draft okay tell us about it i mean i know what it is obviously walter hill film for a movie that makes a claim that now we're finally going to see things from the natives point of view you don't really see things right from the natives point of view another military man performance from hackman uh it's not great there are good things about it but certainly it's not going in the gene hackman hall of fame red okay 1994 wyatt erp he plays the father of the erp brothers this is lawrence kasdan's nine hour feature film yeah i'm still watching it i think yeah this is a long boring movie for the first time for the draft uh and it's really long and it's really inert it's really really very boring yes i don't know why it's not happening leaves early and then doesn't come back and i was surprised not to see him a small part for him in this movie certainly with the shootout we're anticipating that he's at "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," the movie, I think, we put it in the duval hall of fame open range yes the shootout at the end of that movie is hair racing one of the best ever spectacular absolutely well that movie is directed by costner this movie is directed by lawrence kasnan um wyatt erp is red is he a cowboy he's a cowboy he's a sheriff oh no no not happening yeah hackman's a cowboy yeah um or rancher or whatever uh 1995 the quick and the dead the cowboy cattle community is gonna have a lot to say to you well most of them are dead yeah so you know quick in the dead we were talking about style pieces yeah and here's a place right where hackman finds the style elevates the style fits into the sam raimi way of doing things yeah and he's good in this movie i i don't feel that this is a hall of fame film for him um he's not in it very much there's a nice little um piece of trivia about how because he worked so few days he's got to spend a lot of time practicing his quick draw and so he was the quickest draw on the set of this movie which is a film that's all about the quick draw um very fun movie fun sam raimi kind of revisionist slapstick western starring sharon stone and leonardo dicaprio um but i think not going in yeah it's a killer cast i had not seen it before actually it was a hole in my sam raimi filmography and i cool movie i didn't anticipate liking it i did act the first 15 minutes i was like uh this just seems like a movie about westerns uh but then i got into it and and uh such a good cast and uh and yeah he's terrific in the film isn't red yeah red that's my nod for me it's a huge stretch for me right here because i saw all three of these movies in movie theaters and i absolutely love all three of these movies now this there may be some divergence here with tracy letts so let's talk about i'm here to help you okay all right crimson tide you know okay yeah i mean he just once again you don't like to have fun i love having fun i enjoy having space or submarines go you mean would i rather be in space i say to you space or submarines and your answer is space i suppose i think me too but this is who the fuck wants to go on a submarine that's terrifying yeah i agree the scenes with uh gene hackman and denzel walsh and i don't like to have fun i don't like to have fun i don't like to have you have two guys at the top of their craft electrifying and they're really doing some good work some of the plotting of the movie with the multiple mutinies oh now it's our turn to mutiny now it's our turn to mutiny and i have to say the ending of the movie in which oh the we've destroyed a russian nuclear submarine we have barely averted nuclear holocaust and yet we're going to resolve this with jason robards and a three-person crew and we're going to resolve this with jason robards talking to gene hackman saying i've known you for 30 years i enjoyed that yeah well this isn't a problem that's how i think it works all right i think just for the commandeer the exo commandeering control of the sub scene alone this is some of the best some of the best shit you'll see in a movie in the 90s that's a great scene the movie was very famously sort of rewritten in real time tarantino was a part of rewriting this movie after tony scott made true romance and it's you know some stories there for sure you can feel the tarantino you have a lot of pop culture stuff the silver surfer stuff um but hackman and denzel are phenomenal together i think they're just great the the and the very end of the movie the coda uh you know i got a lot of people gave uh house of dynamite shit for its uh open ending with will there or won't there be a nuclear holocaust yeah they did wow they they did wow i give it a lot of shit and i want to say that part of the problem with with saying well this is what happens uh as a result of this will they or won't they nuclear holocaust well in the case of crimson tide oh there is no nuclear holocaust and hackman goes walking off with his fucking jack russell terrier and it's just a seeping wet fart of an ending to a movie it's just you the you just all the air goes out of the balloon america and this podcast disagrees with you this movie was a hit i'm here to help you yeah uh i think it's green do you think that we can do the firm and crimson tide i don't know we're gonna try okay i mean listen we're speaking to my childhood here but i do think that they're we have to keep moving now we have to keep moving we talked about cowboy movies for like three hours and now once it's the firm versus crimson tide this always happens go ahead by the way that's a conversation you guys are having we will have it when we get down to the end okay 1995 gets shorty if this were just the sean fantasy podcast this would be in my hall of fame as well because i think he is hysterical he's great harry's in this movie he's great he plays a lot of guys named harry he does play a lot of guys named harry you're right about that he is a in this movie a schlockmeister independent movie producer um and chili palmer the uh miami mafioso finds his way to hollywood and he loves movies and he stumbles into the life of this guy who knows a lot about low rent movies and this is like hackman hackman does this a lot more for the rest of his career much more broad comp gestural comedy which is something that he did not do a lot up until this point he's having so much fun in this movie i absolutely love him i understand that it is not an essential work in his career but as a as a movie loving 13 year old when i saw this movie we should yell yeah i love absolutely yellow okay 1986 is the birdcage another supporting performance but a very memorable thing of a big movie and he's really funny he really only figures prominently into the third act of the movie but but a very good movie and he's having a good time yeah obviously a remake of la caja yellow but i watched this movie for the first time last night in my hotel shocked to hear that it's true i just never seen it okay i had a good time i enjoyed it yeah it's a very fun watch it's a very fun it's not as um out of fashion as i might have expected like i didn't think it was like the hank's area at the time that was a little bit yeah but he's he's been accused of doing that in many different directions um but he you know what they sought him out for that kind of thing too so it's one of those things where it's who's really who's really to blame um robin robin williams fucking great incredible he's really good incredible and surprisingly restrained and specific yeah he's really really good i mean they're all good it's a really good cast and uh it's a fun movie baranski yeah it's a fun movie um you know i don't know that it earns the turn that the kids make at the end where they step forward to say uh actual you know here now we'll reveal it's like it was their idea from the beginning yeah i don't know that it earns their turn there's a minor point uh i i i well i like it thumbs up he plays a senator in this film yeah yet another politician elaine may some some laugh out loud moments one of the greatest uh 1996 this is his second film that year extreme measures a paranoid thriller doctor drama co-starring hugh grant produced by hugh grant and elizabeth hurley yeah well produced i want to say i have i noted it watching it it's like somebody producing this was paying attention it's not a good movie at all are you trying to get into elizabeth hurley's good graces right now not at all i'm just saying it's well produced uh i hate this movie's terrible it's not good it's not good okay that's right it's not going in 1996 is the chamber the second of three john grisham adaptations that gene hackman would participate in this is kind of an inversion of mississippi burning in which he plays a racist kkk member on death row his enterprising grandson played by chris o'donnell is attempting to get him off of death row and uh learns a lot about the history of the movie and he's like i don't know i don't know i don't know of his family in the american south yes movie stinks it's a hard no it stinks yeah the chamber's out 1997's absolute power gene hackman plays the president of the united states of america for the first time and he is a bad man and he does some bad things in this clint eastwood thriller there was a nice nice hit at the time i think it is not considered among the best of the eastwood directed pictures but i saw it in a movie theater and i had a grand old time when i did i don't think this in movie theaters i think this i think by late 90s is when i got off the train of the airport thriller to movie pipeline because it was first half of the 90s really treating us beautifully then you know diminishing returns well it gets worse yeah thoughts there's a great uh clint eastwood uh ed harris scene in this movie where they have a little cat and mouse uh detective suspect scene and the rest of it's pretty forgettable not going in red for absolute power 1998's twilight another movie i quite like uh this came up in the paul newman hall of fame conversation uh late period it's a robert benton movie yeah um about uh an aging detective an aging movie star and i think you know a kind of soft metaphor for hollywood of a certain generation nearing the end um hackman plays star surprisingly opposite newman who's not the movie star i think gives a good performance but the movie is really more newman's and susan sarandon's pretty muted is my recollection of it i haven't didn't revisit Not for Reese Witherspoon fans. I think I watched this for Newman Hall of Fame and kind of felt that, you know, Newman and Gene Hackman had very purposefully switched roles. And listen, sometimes you get it. Life is long. You want to try new things. But also, we'd mixed it up. Yeah, Newman's kind of playing Harry Mosby. Yeah. And Hackman is playing a beautiful but not beautiful movie star. I like this movie a lot. I recommend it to people sometimes, but I don't think it's going in the Hall of Fame for Hackman. 1998's Ants, yet another military man, one of the very few voice performances from Gene Hackman's career. You rewatched this film about six times to prep for this. What did you think? We haven't done Ants yet with the kids. Nor have we. Nor have we. Because I think the real ants that are in our home every time there's a heat wave have freaked the kids out. Well, this was the movie that was in the great race with the bugs life. The Pixar movie that came out, I think, in the same year. And there's some real advance in technology with Ants, too, wasn't there? Wasn't that the first of a certain kind of animation? It wasn't the first digitally animated, but I think it was a very sophisticated style of animation. And yeah, it's a Katzenberg movie. Woody Allen is the lead voice. I've not seen it, and I haven't shown it to the kids. Ants is red. 1998's Enemy of the State. Oh, I guess I have to add this to my Will Smith list as number four for me. I watched this in anticipation. Yes. And? I wish that Regina King had played the Will Smith part. I think it would have been a much better film. Oh, yeah. Interesting take. A reunion with Tony Scott after the success of Crimson Tide. This movie in which the name of Hackman's character is Edward Brill Lyle. Is that a front for Harry Call? Right. Or is it not? Is he playing? Right. Is this a sidequel, a legacyquel? Is this a sidequel to the conversation, or is it not? There's a photograph that is shown of Hackman in the movie in which he is very clearly in his Harry Call garb. Yeah. Way to besmirch your legacy. Was it marketed this way at the time? No, they talked to me. This was kind of before. Yeah, kind of. Yeah, but now it would be a whole Easter egg thing. That's right. And they would build a whole. And it wasn't in 1998. Yeah, it's Benedict Cumberbatch Con. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, that's exactly the reference I was thinking of. Yeah. You know, as a devotee of. Of Tony Scott, I enjoy this movie. I do as well. I think it's a lot of fun. It was a very early edition of the Rewatchables. You know, I like Will Smith. And I remember, I'm trying to think of who were. Is it Jack Black and Jason Lee? And there's a number of, like, rising actors who were all playing, like, quants and surveillance nerds in the movie that I found to be very entertaining at the time. I like it. I don't think it needs to go in. Yeah, it does not need to go in, but I also had a good time. See, when we get to. You're giving us space. The Firm and Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State, I just kind of turned to you guys and go, which one of these are you going to fight for? All right. So. What were you doing during the 90s that was not enjoying studios? Yeah, okay. There we go. I was on stage. All right, okay. Must be nice. When you're in a show, like, when you are on stage, when do you see movies? Do you watch a lot of movies? No, not a lot. Okay. Not a lot. It feels like it would interrupt the flow. Yeah. Okay. Sounds like that could be an issue for third chair status. Well, I don't know. It could be. 2000, Under Suspicion. I'd never seen this movie before. I had not seen it either. I watched it for this draft. This is the only film that Gene Hackman produced in his entire career, and it is a turkey. It is. It's about a wealthy tax attorney who is. It's meant to give a big speech, and before the speech is called into questioning by two police officers, played by Morgan Freeman and Thomas Jane. He's married to Monica Bellucci. Must be nice. And. John's too horny on this podcast. The twist of this movie is so stupid. I don't know. Why didn't Gene Hackman want to make this? No one saw it. It made like $85,000. I ran out of time. I think he. Look, I can picture a 1950s version of this movie, right? That you just. It's kind of a B-movie, you know? Sure. The limited sets and sort of the idea is that it's a bit of a boiler room atmosphere while this interrogation is taking place. He's reunited with Morgan Freeman from Unforgiven. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's just a, you know. And the problem with Suspicion movies. Like, Hitchcock's Suspicion is kind of the problem with a nuclear war movie. It's like, if they didn't do it, it's a bit of a, oh, all right, well, never mind. Never mind. It's all right. He's innocent. Well, Suspicion solves that problem by using ambiguity as a tool, as opposed to this movie, which does not. Under Suspicion is Red. 2000 is The Replacements. This is a sports comedy. His third and final coach, in which he portrays Jimmy McGinty, a retired professional football coach, or retired college football coach who's brought out of retirement to coach a collection of scabs during a professional football strike. Keanu Reeves plays the quarterback. He's the star of the film. Mm-hmm. This movie has a nice reputation amongst younger people. Again, not really ever one of my. I watched about 45 minutes of it this morning just to re-familiarize myself. It's a little breezy, and it's not inoffensive, but I didn't think it was great. I saw it, I guess, in high school and did not revisit it and don't. It didn't stay with me. They're scabs. Fuck them. Yeah, they are also scabs. Fuck them. They're fucking scabs. They're the fucking lowest form of. Fuck these people. The movie has, like, no relationship to the idea of. Actually, I would say it's very ungenerous towards the professional players who are on strike. It's a very weird idea for a movie. I hope they all get their legs broken. Fuck these people. Okay. Copy that. Okay. The replacements wasn't going in anyway. 2001's The Mexican. I watched that for this. Okay. Yeah, no. It doesn't work. Yeah. No, it's a dud. It did not go in the Julia Roberts Hall of Fame either. Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts play. My cousin, Julia Roberts. Oh, really? You know, I did that. You did the thing, and that was one of the. Oh, that's so exciting. the final reveals that Julia and I are cousins. Is that true? That's so nice. Are you guys in touch now? Was that before or after August Osage County? That was just last year I found that out. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, weird. Have you spoken about this? No. All right. Should we call her? It's not like a find-a-friend situation after on Finding Your Roots? I think we can get in touch. She's doing this podcast. Yeah. You know, next time I see her, I'm going to say, hey, cuz. Okay. We didn't put the Mexican in the Gene Hackman Hall of Fame. No, the Mexican. Even though it comes from my beloved Gore Verbinski, it's one of the most annoying movies of the 2000s. The register of performance that both of those actors are doing just feels way off to me. 2001's Heartbreakers? Now, this movie has Jennifer Love Hewitt. It does. But it's still not going in. It's not going in. Hackman's pretty broad here. Very broad. It's about as broad as you'll see him get. The Replacements, Heartbreakers, these are very broad performances that he's giving. 2001's Heist. A movie I love. Banger. I love. I ran out of time for this one, too. I know. I'm really sad. This was. Great. This is. I did this since. Great mammoth movie. I'm cut instead of this. Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pigeon. Absolute gem of a movie. Really good. He's really kicking ass with the mammoth speak. He's just nailing it. It's great. Yes. Your weight or your fate. I always remember that line. I think Delroy says that a couple of times. To me, it's more of a blue than a Hall of Fame thing. Agree. So maybe we'll just yellow it for our purposes here. 2001's Behind Enemy Lines. So strange that he made this movie because he made Bat-21. And this is just Bat-21 and he's moving into. I can't recall who plays the older general in Bat-21. Guitar player. Jerry. Burt Reynolds guy. Jerry. If only I had a computer in front of me. You find that. This movie was a modest hit. It spawned, I think, something like nine sequels that were direct-to-video movies. This was an Owen Wilson-led project. Did you see this movie at the time? I thought I did, but now I'm confusing it maybe with Enemy at the Gate. Which is also 2001. Yeah. Jerry Reid. I went on a. Enemy at the Gates, which is 2001, and then Enemy of the State, which was 1998. Right. Behind Enemy Lines certainly has its fans. Not a huge favorite of mine, and I don't think a particularly special movie. But it did pretty good business. Some of the early action stuff is well handled, is kind of visceral. Like, whoa, that's a. Is it Bosnia? Yeah. I believe it's set in Bosnia. Yeah. That's Red. He plays a military man again in that, Jack. He's an admiral now. An admiral. He's rising in the ranks. 2001, The Royal Tenenbaums. Now, there's a big. line of discussion here obviously this is an automatic green this is one of his very best performances he is hysterical in this movie i just rewatched i didn't rewatch the whole movie but i only rewatched my favorite scene in the movie which is when he takes the boys out for a wonderful afternoon set to the simon and garfunkel song and then chas drags him into the game room and he starts yelling at him and he says are you listening to me and he says yes i am and then you know he says he thinks his son is having a nervous breakdown and stiller leaves the game room very upset after turning the light off and hackman turns the light back on and he picks up the boar's head and he looks at the boar says he says there you are old friend just a quiet little weird moment in a very particular movie the line of discussion that is really interesting which tracy and i sort of started off mike yesterday is is this the thing that is missing from the contemporary wes anderson movies which is to say the actual friction between the style of acting and the style of performance and just general tone of gene hackman somebody who's an outsider to the west style versus everyone who is conscripted into the world now that makes it feel a little bit more enclosed so that there's no chaos or you know that that energy that is intent and bounce yeah i mean missing is one word for it it's not really connecting or the audience is not connecting in the same way which i guess you know is true in a box office sense that the the late period wes anderson feel more closed off and you just go like further further into westland and there is no hackman character kind of bringing you back to how other people speak um i i'm happy to go further and further into westland because we've grown up with him and also you know where else are you going to go i think you're going to if you have a hackman character and a hackman performance in every single wes anderson movie then it loses its luster the more that and there's something about the surprise and and the tension of this that's just you know a perfect storm but yeah it's it's the best it's one of the most important movies of of our lifetime to me anyway i love it it's my favorite west movie yes and mr fox and uh and uh hackman is a large reason why i adore hackman in this movie yeah and you know he's the title he's the it's the titular role yeah uh it's uh he's superb uh in the film and hilarious in the film and heartbreaking so good yeah he's really terrific and he hated making it hated making it didn't get west didn't like it didn't understand it didn't think it was going to be any good you know hackman famously didn't like to watch himself on screen he often was surprised to find that people liked certain movies of his that he had a bad time making i often wondered in all the time that we've been doing this show and all the time i've been a movie fan because he barely has been working since i've been an adult does he know that this movie means so much to multiple generations of people and i think we're now finally hitting the generation where they're like the royal tenenbaums is it that good which happens for every movie sure but for the last 25 years been a real generational above cult classic um and for some people it's the last great wes anderson movie there's a lot of people who think that something is kind of lost that's crazy after this stretch because he gets a little bit more diorama-esque in in life aquatic and then never really looks back from there but fantastic movie perfect movie green yeah green absolutely two more movies a must runaway jury his first ever his first ever collaboration with his old friend dustin hoffman his third and final john grisham adaptation he plays a jury rigging expert it's so dumb it's just a dumb idea yes uh didn't work he lamented on larry king that he didn't understand why this movie wasn't a success thought that was interesting and then 2004 the film that i guess encouraged him to leave the business welcome to moose port you know i it's a charming little comedy it's a he's good he's good in the movie did you watch this yes he's good the movie is not very good but he is playing a puffed up president who moves back to his hometown and it's conscripted into a mayoral race opposite more romano more tyranny and she's thrown at him like crazy the eyes yeah they have they have some chemistry uh i but i have a theory that it's not welcome to moose port i i my theory i mean friedkin said about him after he retired or friedkin said about him much later said he hated acting he always hated it he hated doing it he didn't want to be an actor he oh he said to billy i have a very bizarre relationship to this i don't know that i i don't know that this is what a grown man should be doing he always he always held it in some contempt which is one of the things perhaps that made him a you know a very compelling performer that and his life story have you seen the uh inside the actor's studio where he talks about his father leaving he he's taught he's telling the story about his dad leaving when he was 13 years old and his dad left and hackman was playing down the street and his dad left and he was playing down the street and his dad left and he was playing down the street drove down the street and waved goodbye to hackman that's and he when he's telling the story on inside the actor's studio he's uh he's doing he's so close to crying to sobbing and then he laughs and he says it was only 65 years ago you'd think i'd be over it by now and he even suggests maybe it's one of the things that makes me a good actor of course one of the things that does make you a good actor is life experience they don't all have to be horrible tragic moments like that but he's able to access something that is real pain he's able to access that pain that that hardship i think about it in terms of uh uh uh twice in a lifetime right probably one of the things that compelled him to do that movie was the idea of trying to get into his dad's headspace he could just accepting his dad's decision yeah for sure i i think there's definitely something to that um you know he he received the cecil b de mille award from the golden globes in 2003 and he makes one more movie after that i want i imagine mooseport is probably shooting after he receives that award and that speech is really interesting and he says a couple things that he had said throughout the entirety of his career and he talks about how he always wanted to be an actor and it's the only thing he thought he could do and if he wasn't going to do it he would have been like an insurance salesman or something like that but he puts himself as a kid going to see films with his mom and going to see errol flynn movies and going to see edward g robinson movies and then he says jimmy cagney james cagney that is my person that's the person who i saw on screen who alighted me to this entire world and i never really thought about him before as a model for what hackman did but there is something to it where cagney could play anti-heroes villains but he could also play like broad comic song and dance man and when you look at the whole shape yeah hackman did a lot he didn't his registers somewhat narrow in terms of what he wanted to do in his life but he was able to do what he wanted to do in his life and he did a lot of different kinds of movies despite having some of those limitations so i was really struck by those comments and it does feel like when he's giving that speech he's kind of like i'm done like you can almost feel him being now i'm finished now i'm going to santa fe yes which more power to you and he does and he disappears from hollywood for 20 years he writes some historical novels some some historical fiction rides his bike and lives his life and he's seen around town he shows up on a diners drive-ins and dives episode in santa fe and guy fieri diner in town and and that's pretty much it and we don't see him for 20 years continues to do those low lows voiceovers that's right right that's right he does a couple of documentaries as well about the military um and lends his voice to that but really from 20 2009 onward not a peep out of him um and it's a loss but at the same time i respect a person being like i'm good i did what there aren't a lot of comps i thinking back i thought spencer tracy maybe is also a cagney spencer tracy a guy who was always a little older than right than a traditional movie i think of him having like the moral character of the country on his mind though and hackman is kind of the opposite there's something a little dastardly well i even thought of uh bogart a little bit actually in that not a traditionally uh handsome hollywood star yeah yeah he was resistant to bogart in the interviews where he would people would compare him to bogart i think for that reason and he would always he used bogart as an example of a guy who he was unsure of how skilled an actor he was and how much he was using his natural personality to get a get across and make him interesting i always thought that was interesting it was almost like him being complimented and he was resisting to compliment what's the difference between gene hackman and george c scott why is gene hack why does gene hackman continue to be a movie star and george c scott doesn't because they occupy some of the same territory for a long time i think one is firing and the other is volcanic and there's something different and volcanic i think doesn't age as well the size of scott's performances yeah he kind of takes everything over whereas like in postcards from the edge or another woman like hackman can kind of just glide into a movie and it's it can be very elegant i don't know let's do the list really quick who's gene hackman right now not not a not an archetype we follow anymore we don't we don't let unclassically handsome people become male movie stars anymore yeah i mean i'm trying to think of i mean i love driver i've always loved driver And I think he is, well, he's very strapping and also a person who has served in the military and has some unusual instincts in terms of the variety of parts he wants to play. And, you know, has the heft as well as the actual size. But he's kind of exotic in a way that Hackman wasn't, right? Hackman was every day. Hackman was a guy standing next to you in the hardware store. That's very true. I mean, there's not, we don't have an actor like that. That's not what we're, and it's something that we love. And also certainly not one who's won multiple Oscars so early in the career and is so, like, embraced and celebrated. I mean, let's talk about the Hall really quick. So here are the greens we have right now. Okay. Bonnie and Clyde. The French Connection. Scarecrow. The Conversation. Night Moves. Superman. Unforgiven. The Firm. Crimson Tide. The Royal Tenenbaums. That's ten. Done. I feel like it's done. Am I crazy? No. I mean, I think that there's. We've not, we've not put in, here's some, here's some genuine contenders I think people will look at and say, why is that not in? Hoosiers. Mm-hmm. Mississippi Burning. Yeah. The Birdcage. Those are the three movies that I think for some people. I think we've explored it. Hoosiers is not our movie. That's okay. Just like The Nashville was not our movie. This is our list. Mississippi Burning. We have other films that he won Oscars for. So, and The Birdcage, we have. I think it's a late period comedy turn represented in a larger and more historical form. So, you know. What's your blue? I guess I'll do No Way Out just to spite Tracy. Love you. I'd love No Way Out. That's not spite. I don't consider that spiteful. What's your blue? What's your blue? Well, I asked you. I'm hosting this episode, goddammit. I'm only here to help. That's right. You've previously identified Prime Cut and Bite the Bullet as two possible blues for you? Yeah, I'm going to take Bite the Bullet. Okay. Good for you. Bite the Bullet. And I'll take. I'll take Get Shorty. Oh, that's nice. Okay. Movie I love. Performance I love. Good one. Movie I recommend to people. Okay. I mean, that was startlingly efficient. Two hours and. What's the job count at the end? Okay. We have. We have 11 military men, 10 cops, 8 government agents slash officials slash politicians, 5 dudes named Henry, 4 attorneys, 5 criminals, 3 supervillains, 3 cowboys, 3 doctors, 3 filmmakers slash movie stars, 3 coaches. Then you get into the twos. 2 cattle barons, 2 journalists, 2 surveillance experts. I don't think I would have expected military to outstrip cop or cattle baron. 11 military men and 10 cops? My goodness. Makes up nearly a third of his entire filmography. Wow. Okay. And yet he hated authority. The irony. And now we can watch things that don't have Gene Hackman in them. That's so true. We are free. We have one more Hall of Fame on the list for later this year. We do. We haven't discussed too much, but that I think we need to pursue. But we'll talk about that at a later date. In the meantime, hey, Tracy Letts, where can we find you? I don't care about any of that. But, you know, as I say, I'm just here to help you. As the third chair, I'm the Anita Baker of the Big Picture Podcast. What do you mean by that? Giving you the best that I got. All right. Anita Baker, one of my mom's faves. Who doesn't like Anita Baker? I agree with you. Thank you, Tracy Letts, for honestly a tremendous amount of work to be done for this. Yes, I know. What would we have done without you? Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support. I don't know when this is running. I don't know when this is running, specifically. I have some idea, but maybe I want to run it sooner. Because I just thought this was a nice conversation. Okay, that's exciting. So we'll see. So I don't know what's coming next. Maybe the next episode we do will be about. The Social Reckoning? Which Tracy's. Oh, that'll be so soon. I know. Are we sure? Have we heard anything about The Social Reckoning? No. Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day. You've heard things. I mean, we've heard things, but. And I won't be sharing them. We'll see you soon. We love you, Gene Hackman! We love you! We love you! We love you! We love you!