Did you know that this was written by the same guy who wrote not just The Man Who Fell to Earth but also The Queen's Gambit? Talk about range! Although, having said that, according to Wikipedia, his son said that he (Walter Tevis) was the anti-hero of all of his works. The Man Who Fell to Earth is supposed to reflect how he felt when he moved as a boy from cosmopolitan San Francisco to Kentucky. And the main character of The Hustler, Fast Eddie Felsen (Paul Newman) comes from Oakland, and a pivotal event happens in Louisville. Add to that that Tevis was at the University of Iowa for a while and Felsen has the two showdowns with Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats in a pool hall in Ames, and you get the impression he took "write what you know" seriously. Tevis was late following his family to Kentucky because he was in hospital with heart problems from which he never really recovered, and for which he was given phenobarbitol (like the main character in The Queen's Gambit) which he blamed for his later alcoholism, like Piper Laurie's Sarah in this film (whose scarring childhood affliction was polio). Also, Tevis himself hustled pool as a young man, so...
The film opens with Fast Eddie and his partner/manager Charlie on the road, claiming to be businessmen. We watch Charlie "beat" Eddie at pool as Eddie appears to get drunker and drunker. Finally Eddie insists that Charlie bet him money that he can make a trick shot again that Charlie claims he made by luck before, and Charlie refusing because Eddie was drunk. Of course, gullible rubes in the bar step in and we see how a pool hustler makes his money. In fact, Eddie and Charlie are not on the way to a convention, but to the Ames pool hall in search of Minnesota Fats. They arrive before him and Eddie looks around and boasts that he will make $10K before the night is out. Well, after initially being told that Fats hasn't lost in ten years, and being soundly beaten for the first few games, Eddie turns it around and after a marathon 25 hour drinking and pool-playing session, is up $18K.
Charlie wants to leave, but Eddie knows the code of the pool players, according to which the game is only over when Fats says it is (because it's his home turf, apparently), and while Eddie is exhausted, Fats splashes water on his face and is fresh as a daisy. After FORTY STRAIGHT HOURS, Eddie is out of cash and just slumps on the floor.
Yet, he wakes up before Charlie the next day and sneaks out, intending to take the bus out of town. But he is distracted when he sees Piper Laurie sitting in the bus station cafe. She claims to be waiting for her bus, but later walks out (having paid for his coffee) after he dozes off. But then he meets her at a bar later, and while she resists his charms at first, he is soon living with her. She claims to be taking classes at the university two days a week, and is a bit of a lush, although that's not why she limps. (At first she says that's because she was in a car wreck.) They are fairly happy, though, when Charlie shows up. Charlie wants Eddie to go back on the road with him and it emerges that he has some thousands set aside, which he says he'll give Eddie if they get the team back together. Eddie is enraged, though, because he thinks he could have got back into it with Minnesota Fats if Charlie had let him bet that money, and he cuts ties with Charlie.
At this point, he crosses paths again with George C. Scott's Bert Gordon, who was Fats's money man, and who, it emerges, is basically the local gang boss. He offers to be Eddie's new manager, but insists on such an exorbitant cut that Eddie refuses. Bert cautions Eddie that one day he'll walk into the wrong pool hall, and whaddaya know, very soon Eddie gets exposed as a pool shark and a gang break his thumbs. He goes crawling back to Sarah and again, their life is good.
She loves nursing him and stays off the booze and is able to write again. (Another reference to Tevis's actual life - when he had money he drank, and when he drank, he didn't write. There are long dry patches after both Hustler and MWFtE, and he only became prolific when he quit drinking in the 80's.) But eventually, the thumbs heal and Eddie feels he has to make some money, and he goes back to Bert, and the seeds of doom are planted. He plots a match between Eddie an eccentric Kentucky millionaire with his own table in his mansion (based on a friend of Tevis's who taught him pool) and off they go, only Sarah insists on coming too, because she doesn't think Eddie will return otherwise.
Well, the Kentucky Millionaire is a tricky customer: he's actually a billiards expert and insists Eddie play that, which he never has before. It takes some heavy losses before he gets in the groove, but you know he comes out on top. But he decides to walk back to the hotel, where Sarah has been taken after making a scene of herself at the mansion party, and Bert gets there first and gives Sarah some money to go home, claiming it's from Eddie. We don't know whether or not she believes him but we see her argue with him then go to his room and... let's just say something happens that was a long time coming, and that drives an irreparable wedge between Eddie and Bert.
Then, some time later, Bert is back in the Ames pool hall with Fats and Eddie walks in.
And we get the showdown. Which is satisfying. Now, there's a message in this film, but it's not too heavy handed. I'm assuming the film was pretty shocking for its time: Sarah is blunt about her sexual history and about hers and Eddie's sex life.
And it definitely does not feel like a product of the 50's, although there is a cool jazzy score. And Newman starts out a bit over the top for my tastes, but as the film goes on he becomes more taciturn and lets his eyes do a lot more of the acting, and he won me over. Basically, this film is too cool for school - very existential. Apparently Jackie Gleason really could play pool at a pro level, so Newman practiced for months to be able to look as good as he does. But the pool is beside the point: it's about making a living from your art without letting the money consume you, and doing it on your terms, however that might bite you in the ass. Gleason is great but is not the bad guy. That's Scott, and he's great too, of course.
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