The Hustler
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Contents |
The Novel
The Hustler was a 1959 novel by American writer Walter Tevis, which tells the story of a young pool player ("Fast" Eddie Felson) who challenges the legendary Minnesota Fats but loses.
Eddie could spiral down to the scrapheap, but he meets Bert. Bert teaches him about winning, or more particularly about losing. Tautly written, it is a masterful treatise on how someone, with all of the skills, can lose if he "wants" to lose. How a loser is beaten by himself, not by his opponent. And how he can learn to win, if he can look deeply enough into himself.
The book is a slender volume, but perhaps it should be required reading for anyone wanting to cross that immense divide between the very good, and the champion.
The book was followed by the sequel The Color of Money.
The Film
The Hustler was later made into a 1961 film starring Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson, Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats, Piper Laurie and George C. Scott.
The movie was adapted by Sidney Carroll and Robert Rossen from the novel by Walter Tevis. It was directed by Rossen and was his second sports movie after Body and Soul (1947). Like Body and Soul it can be seen as an attack on the soul-destroying power of greed.
At another level, it is about winning or losing, or what makes a winner and what makes a loser. In his first match with Minnesota Fats, Fast Eddie Felson is convinced he is the better player and that he will win. Bert (played by George C Scott) in perhaps one of his finest roles, however, spots the personality flaw and quietly tells Fats that Felson is "a loser". Bert proves to be a master coach of character, and subsequently moulds Felson into a winner, even if not into a better person. It is a brilliant dramatisation of high level sports psychology, and is one of those rare films that manages to deliver the essence of a very good book.
The novel The Color of Money was also adapted into a film.
Awards
It won Academy Awards for Best Art Directions-Set Decoration, Black-and-White and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Paul Newman), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (George C. Scott, who refused the nomination), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jackie Gleason), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Piper Laurie), Best Director (Robert Rossen), Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.
Newman played the same role of "Fast" Eddie Felson as an older and wiser man in the 1986 film The Color of Money (also adapted from a Tevis novel), directed by Martin Scorsese.
The original film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
In 2006, the screenplay by Sidney Carroll and Robert Rossen was selected by the Writers Guild of America as the 96th best motion picture screenplay of all-time.