one time until maybe ten years ago, I always thought of Lex Luthor as comic relief. I guess he was a little bit that in the original Superman, but I don't really care for that movie and I already don't remember the details from my last viewing.
But in Superman II, Luthor is more of a sniveling opportunist than a villain, doing his best to kiss the boots of the three humorless Kryptonians who can level whole cities if they wish. He's more to them what Ned Beatty's Otis was to him, before he abandoned Otis in their prison break at the start of the movie, carrying off in a hot air balloon with Miss Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine).
And so, whatever not insignificant amount of comedy there was in Superman II belonged to Luthor, and no one could have done it like Gene Hackman.
Hackman died in late February -- I'm not sure if they know the exact date yet -- at age 95, as a result of what might have been a murder-suicide with his much younger wife, carbon monoxide poisoning, or some third cause not yet determined. Their dog died, too, so that just complicates the possible explanations.
The circumstances of his death are not a concern of the current memorial piece, since at age 95, something was going to get Hackman within a year or two anyway, even if he had not died under these suspicious circumstances. No, today we are appreciating the career of a man who was one of the great cinematic icons of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Hackman was funny, as I've already indicated. You can excerpt any number of scenes from Superman II if you want to see that, including possibly my favorite, where he is strolling around the overthrown White House, starting to puff a cigar, and working his way up to telling the Kryptonians the price of his cooperation: "Australia!"
But the intensity of the man was what caused him to stick in our memories. There was the quiet intensity, which you saw in a movie like The Conversation. There was the not-so-quiet intensity, featured in Crimson Tide. And there was every kind of intensity in between. His performances were always alive with edge.
Hackman was so present in the formative years of my film fandom that I sometimes forget the films he was in -- I mean, that he was in them. My last viewing of Bonnie & Clyde, for example, elevated it into my top 100 movies on Flickchart, but I didn't remember until checking his IMDB just now that he played Buck Barrow alongside Clyde Darrow. (I don't think I remembered that those characters' names rhymed either.)
I was never a huge fan of The French Connection, but I'll get a chance to grapple with that again later this year -- and a chance to appreciate Hackman again -- as it's one of the films on the schedule for my Understanding Editing monthly series. In fact, there's still a lot of Hackman appreciation on the horizon for me, as there are a number of his prominent films that I haven't seen, including Reds, No Way Out, Postcards from the Edge and The Firm.
But why talk about the Hackman movies I haven't seen? There were plenty that I did, though they were not, in all cases, great movies. In all cases, though, Hackman was great in them.
If I'm thinking about another seminal role, I'd probably have to go with Unforgiven. His work as Little Bill Daggett showcased the menace of which he was capable, the psychopathy that was more frightening for being underplayed. The scene that leads up to him kicking the shit out of Richard Harris' self-important "The Duke" is the perfect example of this, as he utterly pierces the man's sense of his own legend through three simple words that preview where this little tete-a-tete is going to go. When The Duke tries to tell Bill that he has pronounced his name incorrectly, Hackman looks him down with a sort of half smile and doubles down: "Duck I says."
Hackman stopped acting long before he needed to. It may have been a surprise to everyone but Gene Hackman when the last movie he made was 2004's Welcome to Mooseport opposite Ray Romano. That was maybe not a fitting farewell for a man of his talents and his importance to Generation X and the Boomers before them, but Hackman always seemed like the kind of guy who would go out on his own terms. He was only 74 when that movie was released, and did not appear to be losing a step -- especially since he'd just made two films with signature roles, The Royal Tenenbaums and Heartbreakers, in the five-year period that preceded it. And if you don't think of Heartbreakers as a signature role, well ... maybe I just like Gene Hackman in comedic mode more than you do.
One of the defining traits of Lex Luthor, canonically, is that he's bald. But not my Lex Luthor. My Lex Luthor has a full head of hair and is trying to ingratiate himself to three superhumans capable of squashing him like a bug, like he's selling them a used car.
And I will miss him.
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