Wicked Problems at the Movies: “The Hustler”

April 29, 2018

“I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

 The Hustler 

“You know, I gotta hunch, Fat Man,” says “Fast” Eddie Felson to Minnesota Fats, “I’ve gotta  hunch it’s me from here on in…I mean, did that ever happen to you?  When all of a sudden, you feel like you can’t miss? ‘Cause I dreamed about this game, Fat Man.  And I dreamed about this game every night on the road…You know, this is my table, man, I own it….”

 Fast Eddie Felson, the small-time pool shark in The Hustler (1961), speaks these words to Minnesota Fats, the reigning pool champion and widely acknowledged as the best in the country. They are at the Ames Pool Hall in New York City, and after six hours  of shooting pool they are about even in money won. Fast Eddie is driven by his single overwhelming desire to beat Minnesota Fats and become “the best in the country,” and is determined to let nothing and no one stand in his way.

The Hustler is a story about the transformation of a self-centered, manipulative, arrogant hustler who is constantly ready to take advantage of others, into a decent and caring human being. Director and writer Robert Rossen says, “My protagonist, Fast Eddie, wants to become a great pool player, but the film is really about the obstacles he encounters in attempting to fulfill himself as a human being. He attains self-awareness only after a terrible personal tragedy which he has caused – and then he wins his pool game.”  The critic Roger Ebert describes The Hustler as “one of the movies in which the hero wins by surrendering, by accepting reality instead of his dreams…” It is “one of those films where scenes have such psychic weight that they grow in our memories.”

 Characters 

The main characters in The Hustler are Fast Eddie Felson, played by Paul Newman; Sarah Parker, played by Piper Laurie; Minnesota Fats, played against type by the comedian Jackie Gleason, and Bert Gordon, a role taken by George C. Scott.  All four actors were nominated for Academy Awards in 1961.

Fast Eddie Felson, Newman’s first starring role is a hustler, doing and saying whatever he has to do or say to get what he wants. Fast Eddie is an ambitious, shallow, self-destructive, arrogant pool shark with an overwhelming desire to beat Minnesota Fats. When they finally arrive at the Ames Pool Hall in New York, Fast Eddie wonders aloud to his buddy  Charlie, “How much am I going to win tonight? Ten grand. I’m gonna win ten grand in one night. Well, who’s going to beat me?”

Charlie Burns, Fast Eddie’s traveling companion and manager, doesn’t share Eddie’s overwhelming compulsion. He would rather stay on the road and hustling in pool halls. He sees himself as a surrogate father and is destroyed when Eddie betrays him.

Sarah Parker, is a woman somewhere in her late 30’s or early 40’s who has lost all purpose and direction in her life. She is a world-weary, insecure alcoholic who, when life becomes complicated and unbearable, escapes into an alcoholic haze. “On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to college,” she tells Eddie.  “The rest of the time I drink.” Stricken with polio as a child – when she stumbles she tells Eddie that she is “not drunk but lame” – she has been abandoned and rejected by her father who, as a way of assuaging his guilt, sends her money each month.

Minnesota Fats. Dapper and rotund, Fats is the reigning pool champion who makes an appearance each night at the Ames Pool Hall at exactly 8:00 to see if he has any challengers. Impeccably dressed in a suit, vest, and tie and with a carnation in his lapel, Minnesota Fat’s appearance sets him apart from everyone else in the pool hall. Although his nickname “Fats” is appropriately descriptive, his performance belies his girth. “He is great,” says Eddie admiringly during their first match. “Geez, that old fat man.  Look at the way he moves, like a dancer…And those fingers, them chubby fingers. And that stroke.  It’s like he’s playing a violin or something.”

Bert Gordon is a shrewd, amoral, big-time gambler and a fixture in the pool hall, constantly on the lookout for talented players to back. He acts as Fats’ manager, arranging for matches and managing the money. His overriding  interest is making as much money as possible and he is ready to destroy anyone who stands in his way.

The Story

At the beginning of the film, Fast Eddie and Charlie Burns are making their way from Oakland, California to New York City, where Fast Eddie is determined to challenge Minnesota Fats, beat him, and claim the title of “Best Pool Player in the Country.” They are financing their trip by hustling pool players in small towns across the country.  Shortly after their arrival in New York, Fast Eddie finds himself in the Ames Pool Hall challenging Minnesota Fats. By 1:30 am, though they are about even in money won, Charlie wants Eddie to quit. “He’s too good,” he says.  Fast Eddie refuses:  “Charlie, I’m going to take him.”

And Eddie does “take him,” at least for a while. By morning,  he has won $18,000.  Bert Gordon, Fat’s manager, slips into the pool hall to watch. Sizing up situation quickly, Gordon says to Fats, “Stay with this kid.  He’s a loser.” And Gordon is right. Eventually, the tide turns the other way, and Eddie, unable to cope with the pressure, begins to drink heavily and ends up losing all the money he won during the night.

Eddie awakens the next morning with only one goal: to raise enough money to challenge Minnesota Fats again. Charlie is against it, however, so Eddie, true to his nature,  runs out on him. While storing all of his belongings in a locker at the bus station, he meets Sarah Parker and begins a relationship which leads to him moving in with her. It goes badly for them both, however, especially when Charlie shows up and confronts Eddie for running out on him. After a few days Sarah and Eddie fight and Sarah tells him to move out.

Eddie turns again to what he knows and what he excels at: hustling for money in local pool halls. He runs into a set-up arranged by Bert Gordon and is exposed as a hustler. Four thugs drag him into a back room and break his thumbs.

Holding his broken thumbs, Eddie returns to Sarah who takes him in and nurses him back to health. While Eddie heals during the next few weeks, Sarah discovers that she is falling in love with him, but Eddie can neither deal with nor reciprocate her feelings.

Once his thumbs have healed, Eddie returns to his obsessive desire to beat Minnesota Fats. He seeks out Bert Gordon and agrees to go with him to the Kentucky Derby in Louisville where Gordon is confident that there is big money to be had. On learning that Eddie is planning to return to hustling, Sarah is devastated, feeling once more that she will be abandoned. Against Bert’s wishes, Eddie decides to take Sarah with him.

The game that Bert has arranged between Eddie and James Findley, a “very rich man..who gets his kicks playing hustlers” is not pool at all, but billiards.  When Bert learns that Eddie has never played billiards, Bert wants out, but Eddie insists that he wants to play – and ends up losing most of the money  Bert brought with him. Enraged when Bert refuses to put up any more, Eddie goes upstairs where Sarah is asleep and takes $500 from her purse he had given her for safe-keeping. After he loses this as well, Eddie begs Bert not to give up on him. Sarah comes down the stairs, interrupting them and implores Eddie to stop. Enraged by her intrusion, he explodes, telling her to “get off my back,” and ordering her back to the hotel. “Would you get off my back, Sarah, once and for all, would you get out?”  Gordon, pleased to see that Eddie is getting rid of Sarah, and believing he is now ready for Findley, says “Go ahead and play him Eddie.  Play him for a thousand dollars a game.”

Sarah leaves and Eddie soundly beats Findley, winning $12,000 and keeping as his share, the $3000 he needs to play Minnesota Fats again. Rather than feeling exultant, however, Eddie seems distant, uninvolved and depressed. Refusing Bert’s offer of a ride back to the hotel, he chooses to walk. When Bert arrives at the hotel, he gives Sarah money, telling her it is from Eddie who doesn’t want to see her again. Believing she has been abandoned by Eddie, she is devastated. Bert grabs Sarah and tries to kiss her, but Sarah is unresponsive.  Hopeless now, she submits to his sexual efforts, then goes into the bathroom, writes “PERVERTED,” TWISTED,” “CRIPPLED,” on the mirror,  then kills herself. Later, Eddie arrives back at the hotel and learning that Sarah is dead, attacks Bert and has to be restrained by the police.

In the film’s final scene, Eddie arrives at the Ames Pool Hall to play   Minnesota Fats and finds that Bert is waiting for him. Eddie tells Minnesota Fats that he has $3000 for a pool game.  “That’s my bankroll, my life’s savings. Whatsa matter Fats?  All you gotta do is beat me the first game and I’m on my way to Oakland.” Fats agrees, and as the game is being set up, Eddie turns to Bert and speaks to him for the first time:  “Get on me Bert.  I can’t lose!”

And he doesn’t. Over a long night, Eddie wins game after game, and finally Fats says, “I quit Eddie.  I can’t beat you.” As Eddie prepares to leave, Bert shouts “You owe me money.” When Eddie asks what will happen if he doesn’t pay, Bert threatens him: “You’re going to get your thumbs broken again. And your fingers. And if I want them to, they’re going to break your right arm in three or four places.” Still Eddie refuses to pay, telling Bert that if he did it would be like Sarah “never lived…never died. And we both know that’s not true.  She lived. She died.”  And then he tells Bert that his boys had better kill instead of just maiming him because “if they just bust me up, I’ll put those pieces together again and…so help me God, Bert, I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna kill you.” At this, Bert waves his thugs away: “All right, All right.  Only don’t ever walk into a big-time pool hall again.”

The Themes

Ambition:

Eddie is obsessed by his ambition to be recognized as the world’s best pool player. He is sure that he is the best, but in order to be recognized he must beat Minnesota Fats. But unable to withstand the pressure, Eddie begins to drink and eventually, exhausted, drunk, and incoherent, loses it all. What he has not lost, however, is his obsessive desire to return and challenge Minnesota Fats once again.

Bert Gordon is also ambitious, but what he wants is both simpler and more complex than Eddie: He wants money and control to run the show.  “I’m already rich,” he tells Eddie. “I like the action.  That’s one thing I think you’re good for – action.”

Until Sarah falls in love with Eddie, she has no ambition other than a bottle to help her make it through the day. Then, brought back to life by the prospect of loving and being loved, she wants to see Eddie free himself from Bert’s influence and control.

Betrayal, Rejection, Desertion

Driven by his obsession, Eddie is willing to betray anyone and everyone. He is the quintessential hustler.  He betrays and abandons the two people who care for him the most, Charlie and Sarah.

After leaving Charlie asleep in the the run-down hotel, Eddie meets Sarah in a local bus station.  Thinking she is a prostitute, he suggests that they get a bottle and go to her place.  Later, Eddie wants to move in with her but  Sarah is leery, saying, “Look, “I’ve got troubles and I think you’ve got troubles.  Maybe it’d be better if we just leave each other alone.” Later Eddie moves in with Sarah and she dares to hope that she may finally find some happiness with Eddie. But Eddie, unable to love her back, and obsessed with beating Fats, cannot respond. They fight. Eddie is abusive, and Sarah tells him to leave.

Sarah’s deepest fear is to be rejected and abandoned by Eddie as she was by her father.  When they are in Louisville, playing billiards, the game that Burt has arranged with the local gentry, Sarah tries to tell Eddie that he is being used. Enraged that Sarah has interfered with the pool game – and daring to come between him and his ambition – Eddie shouts at her to return to the hotel: “Would you get off my back, Sarah once and for all, will you get out? Would you get off my back?”  Sarah returns to the hotel and, convinced by Bert that Eddie wants nothing more to do with her, begins a final and irrevocable betrayal of Eddie and of herself as well.  She gets drunk, allows Bert to make love to her, then kills herself.

Loser/Winner

After his devastating loss to Minnesota Fats, a suspicion that he could be a loser begins to haunt Eddie. For him, being a loser means losing at the pool table and he had just suffered two devastating losses there, one at the hands of Minnesota Fats, and the other when the local thugs beat him up and broke his thumbs. Was it possible that Bert Gordon was right, that he was a loser? While on a picnic during the relatively happy months that Sarah is nursing him back to health, he asks, “Sarah, do you think I’m a loser? ”  When she is puzzled, Eddie tells her that a guy named Bert Gordon told him he was a loser. “Is he a winner?” she asks. “He owns things,” Eddie responds. “Is that what makes a winner?” asks Sarah  “What else does?” answers Eddie.  He then tells her what it is like when he is playing and everything is flowing:”When I’m goin’, when I’m really goin’…it’s a great feeling, boy, it’s a real great feeling – when you’re right and you know you’re right,”  Sarah responds to Eddie: “You’re not a loser, Eddie.  You’re a winner. Some men never get to feel that way about anything.” By the end of the movie, as Eddie struggles to come to terms with the devastating loss of Sarah, he begins to understand that there is much more to losing than losing a pool game, and there is much more to winning than winning one. In the final showdown, Eddie says to Bert, “Just win. Win! you said.  That’s the important thing.  You don’t know what winning is, Bert.  You’re a loser. ‘Cause you’re dead inside and ya can’t live unless you make everything dead around you.”

Love/Commitment

When Sarah tells Eddie that he isn’t a loser, that he is a winner, she also tells him that she loves him. “You’re not a loser, Eddie, you’re a winner. I love you.” Eddie, self-absorbed, and emotionally crippled, deflects her expression of emotion. “You know, someday Sarah, you’re going to settle down.  You’ll marry a college professor.  You’re going to write a great book – maybe about me, huh?  Fast Eddie Felson, Hustler. ” Sarah simply repeats again, “I love you.”

After a pause, Eddie responds: “Do you need the words?”  “Yes,” says Sarah, “I need them very much.  If you say them, I’ll never let you take them back.”  Face-to-face with Sarah, Eddie cannot bring himself to say them.

When Eddie  agrees to go with Bert to Louisville to look for a big payday, he is uneasy about telling Sarah. He buys her a new dress and takes her out to dinner before breaking the news.  When Sarah hears that he is leaving, it feels like the same abandonment she experienced from the other men in her life, including her father.  When Eddie tries to reassure her that he will be back, she says, “If you were going to come back, you wouldn’t have taken me out tonight, you wouldn’t have bought this dress.  You’re hustling me, Eddie.  You’ve never stopped hustling me.”

Eddie’s answer contains his first glimmer of insight:  “No, I never hustled you, even when I thought I was, and you know it.”

Sarah, upset now, says to him, “What do you want me to do, just sit here and wait, your faithful-looking Sarah?…Is that your idea of love?”

“I got no idea of love.  Neither of us would know it if we saw it comin’ down the street,” Eddie says to her.

“I’d know it, Eddie” says Sarah. “I’d know it.  For God’s sakes, what are you trying to do to me. I love you.”

“Well,” says Eddie, “what’s your idea of love, chains?”

“I made you up, didn’t I Eddie?” says Sarah. “You weren’t real. I made you up, like everything else…The men I’ve known – after they left I’d say they weren’t real. I made them up. But you Eddie, I wanted you to be real. I’m so scared.  I’m scared.”

Eddie is not able to understand Sarah’s love, let alone return it. But her death changes everything. For the first time in his life, he understands what love is – and that he loved Sarah – only after he lost it. After Louiville, in his final confrontation with Bert in the Ames Pool Hall, he says, “We really stuck the knife in her, didn’t we Bert…Then we twisted it…Of course, maybe that doesn’t stick in your throat, ’cause you’d spit it out just the way you spit out out everything else.  But it sticks in mine.  I loved her, Bert. I traded her in on a pool game.”

Character 

After his defeat by Minnesota Fats. Eddie runs into Bert in a poker game who says “I don’t think there’s a pool player who shoots better pool than I saw you shoot the other night at Ames.  You got talent… [but] you’re a born loser.” “So I got talent,” responds Eddie, “So what beat me.” “Character,” answers Bert. “…Everybody’s got talent.  I got talent. You think you can play big-money straight pool…for forty straight hours on nothing but talent?  You think they call Minnesota Fats the best because he’s got talent?  Nah!  Minnesota Fats got more character in one finger than you got in your whole skinny body.”  What Bert seems to mean by “character” is mental toughness, discipline, dealing with what is actually happening instead of living in a fantasy world, a willingness to pay any price, and to win at any cost.

Among the painful lessons that Eddie learns from Sarah’s death is what character really means. “… you were right,” he says to Bert.  “It’s not enough that you just have talent.  You gotta have character too…I sure got character now.  I picked it up in a hotel room in Louisville.”

Transformation 

I would’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity,
but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of
complexity.
                                      Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We  spend the early years of our lives in the “simplicity on this side of complexity.” We live in a self-centered, limited and distorted universe where our wants, needs, demands, and desires make up what we believe to be reality. And this presents us with a conundrum: In order to live full and abundant lives – paraphrasing Freud, to work, love and play – we cannot stay there. Unless we find ways to move through the complexities and complications that are inevitably part of life itself and discover the simplicities on the other side, no one will hire us, no one will love us, and, if we insist on playing by our rules and for our benefit, no one will play with us.  Aniela Jaffe, a Swiss psychoanalyst, once told of a woman who, while she was in treatment, dreamed that she was commanded to descend into “A pit filled with hot stuff and immerse herself in it. This she did until only one shoulder was sticking out of the pit.  Then Jung came along, pushed her down into the hot stuff, exclaiming ‘Not out but through.'”

While most of us make our way through the difficulties and challenges of growing up with some degree of success, not everyone is able to do so. Had Eddie beaten Minnesota Fats on his first try and become the “best pool player in America,” then allied himself with Bert’s program at the Ames Pool Hall he may have remained on “this side of complexity.” But when Sarah killed herself, and he realized that he loved her, he began the difficult, painful transition out of the simplicity that was not worth a “fig” to the simplicity that was worth giving your life for. Rejecting Bert’s offer to be partners –  “Boy, we’re gonna make a lot of money together from now on” – Eddie said “I loved her, Bert, [and] traded her in on a pool game…[So] the price is too high. If I take it she never lived.  She never died. And we both know that’s not true, Bert, don’t we? She lived. She died.” And what Eddie didn’t say, though he was becoming aware of it, was that the old Eddie had also died in Louiville with Sarah, and was being transformed into a different person.

Wicked Problems in The Hustler

Wicked problems are usually seen to be problems of societies, nations and the world: terrorism, child abuse, sex trafficking, extreme poverty, unclean water, inadequate health care, poor education, global warming, and on and on.

But wicked problems occur elsewhere as well:  In organizations, in teams, in communities, in families, and especially in relationships. They are also intrapersonal, and involve individuals struggling to overcome their personal flaws and weaknesses.

In The Hustler the social problems that are present in all societies –  crime, poverty, violence, alcoholism, gambling or loneliness – exist primarily as the context for the events in the story rather than the focus of it.  The wicked problems that are at the center of this movie – and in all novels, movies and plays – are intrapersonal and interpersonal: the struggles of individuals to manage their inner fears, concerns, flaws, and weaknesses, and the dilemmas of two people, or  small groups- such as  family or members of a  team – to create relationships that enable them to live and work together with reasonable levels of cooperation, collaboration and satisfaction.  The central wicked problem at the center of The Hustler is a combination of Eddie’s struggle with himself and the struggles to create relationships between Eddie and Charlie, Eddie and Sarah, and Eddie and Bert, struggles that are intensified with Sarah’s death, and lead to the transition from a self-centered egoist and narcissist to a human being who learns in the end what it means to love another person.

“Problems Universal and Eternal” 

“To find beauty in the sad, hope in the midst of loss, and dignity in failure is great poetic art,” wrote playwright David Mamet in his 2005 tribute at the death of Arthur Miller.   In addition to honoring Miller – unarguably among the greatest of American playwrights – Mamet clarified the differences between “good”and “bad” drama. “Bad drama reinforces our prejudices,” he wrote. “It informs us of what we knew when we came into the theatre…” And “Good” drama? Referring to Miller’s masterpieces, Death of a Salesman (“The great American Domestic Tragedy”) and The Crucible (“..the [great] American Political Tragedy”) Mamet offers his answer. “We are freed, at the end of these two dramas, not because the playwright has arrived at a solution, but because he has reconciled us to the notion that there is no solution – that it is the human lot to try and fail, and no one is immune from self-deception…The good drama survives because it appeals not to the fashion of the moment, but to the problems both universal and eternal.”

Spend two hours watching The Hustler and you begin to grasp more fully what Mamet makes clear: the problems of Eddie, Sarah, Charlie, and Bert are not unlike our own. While their problems may initially seem foreign and strange, embedded as they are in hustling, gambling, drinking, betrayal and loss, they are, in a larger sense, like our own, “both universal and eternal, as they are insoluble.”

The Hustler reminds us that the central themes of the movie – love,  ambition, betrayal, abandonment, rejection, commitment, character, change and transformation – are also the themes of our own wicked problems. And by reflecting on how these characters grappled with these themes, we gain a deeper understanding of our own struggles. “We have,” writes Mamet, “through following the course of the drama, laid aside for two hours, the delusion that we are powerful and wise, and we leave the theatre better for it…”

When it comes to the messy problems in our lives – the ones that seem to bar our way from easy passage toward the ideal lives that we imagine and hope for – it is important to be aware that what there is to be learned from movies like The Hustler can help us understand the simplicity on the “other side of complexity:”  It is delusional to think that we are “powerful and wise” enough to find solutions for insoluble problems. Rather, what is required is the constant struggle with our wicked problems, which are inevitably “both universal and eternal.”