Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa

In light of the tragic death of Gene Hackman in the past few weeks, I thought that I would brush up on my Hackman viewing.  I was previously not a Gene Hackman fan.  I thought he was alright, and I didn’t really “get” him, while simultaneously coming up with my own conclusions about him – while knowing nothing.  Classic.

My first memory of Hackman was as Lex Luthor in Superman.  He was a jerk and that’s Lex Luthor, as far as I can tell.  So, he did his job well.

As a teenager, I started The French Connection because I heard it was a classic.  About the time Popeye Doyle was roughing up his CI, I changed the channel.  He was also a jerk in that, it seemed.  Hmm.

Next up:  No Way Out.  I ate that movie right on up (Well, hello there, Kevin Costner!).  But Hackman was a jerk again!  At this point, I was discovering a pattern.

Later, one of my favorite Westerns of all time, Unforgiven.  Hackman’s character, Little Bill Daggett, was a HUGE jerk and that was the setup of the movie.

Finally, I watched The Royal Tenenbaums, which I enjoyed, but his character, Royal, was also a jerk. 

Now, it turns out – now that I’m looking at IMDB, I have watched a lot of Gene Hackman movies, and he was rather strong and combative in the ones I saw. However, it turns out that there are a bunch of critical Hackman movies that I did not see. 

Over the years I’ve noticed a trend about how Hollywood treats their actors. If they play a character who is super popular or wins the actor an Oscar, the industry kind of presents that actor a lot of similar roles (see Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino).  This, I believe, happened to Gene Hackman.

For the podcast countdown a couple seasons ago, I watched The French Connection in its entirety.  I really enjoyed it.  Hackman was very effective, and while Popeye Doyle had jerk-ish characteristics, I started to see a glimmer in Gene Hackman that I hadn’t noticed before. I’ve read here and there about Hackman’s acting prowess, and I started to believe it a little bit after The French Connection.

The week of his death, the streaming channels started pushing his movies.  I decided to watch a couple, and I thought I’d tell you what I’ve been watching.  Stay tuned!