Gene Hackman Died Today…

Reacting to the death of my favourite movie star...

There was a sad irony in logging onto The Guardian this morning and seeing two headlines that profoundly moved me. The first was that Gene Hackman and his wife had been found dead in their New Mexico home. The other news was that Andrew Tate has been allowed to leave Romania for the US.

The theme of this piece will therefore be: “What does it mean to be a man?”

First – and briefly – Tate, who embodies the very worst of modern masculinity: vain and vulgar, misogynistic, and driven by a nauseating overpowered sense of self. His release is another victory for the Trump administration, another measure by which we should judge those loathsome celebrants of rape culture. He’s part of the sad story of what masculinity became when Hollywood and our broader culture turned its back on men like Gene Hackman.

I understand why it did that. Hackman was not, as they say, conventionally handsome. He had neither steroid-infused body nor scalp-reduction surgery. He didn’t even do the “shave your head so people don’t notice you’re bald” trick, except in ‘Superman’ which we won’t mention again (and even there it was a skullcap).

Hackman was the Everyman: he looked as good or bad as all of us. He also managed to convey our demons and devils, as well as our saints and angels. He played characters who were problematic, not always right, but, in the important ways, honest and earnest. Hackman did not belong in the culture that came after it, which emasculated the male figure, reducing our kind to squeaky voiced squeaky “clean” David Beckham clones with their hair gel, ubiquitous sleeve tats, and manbags. Lots of manbags. Yet Hackman also wouldn’t fit into the masculinity that followed after Beckham, where male culture responded to its emasculation by supercharging on testosterone, elevating men like Tate, Joe Rogen, and even Donald Trump.

‘Toxic masculinity’ is a problematic term because it too often includes all of masculinity. But if we can accept that some part of the male experience should be celebrated, then Hackman was a very good baseline for “male of the species” of the late twentieth century. He was also quite probably my favourite movie star.

I could have phrased that differently and said he was my favourite movie actor, but I think “star” is better. Stardom has nothing to do with acting ability. The others to challenge him in my affection would be the actors that most men my generation would have grown to love. Sean Connery outside his Bond role was up there, as was Clint Eastwood. Harrison Ford too, though probably not for the two roles that made him most famous. My favourite Ford movies are probably ‘Frantic’, which he made with Polanski, and ‘Blade Runner’ which he made with Ridley Scott. Both were attempts to break away from the kind of roles that made his name. In those two films, he came quite close to acting. But Ford never quite did.

The commonality between all those men is that none of them were overtly theatrical. They were always themselves, just in different clothes. There’s no inhabiting a role, disappearing behind prosthetics, or some obvious theatricality. Best Actor I’ve ever seen on screen? Probably John Hurt. He’s so good, Hollywood had to bastardise his genius and condemn him to “supporting actor” roles. But Hurt is not the actor I turn to when I want to feel comforted about being me.

Hackman was the opposite to Hurt. He was a hulking screen presence, untouched by obvious makeup. His hair was thinning even in his youth. He didn’t do a great deal to make you like him. All of which made it easy to like him. He was the friend you wanted fighting on your side. There was a paternal quality to him. He was my favourite movie uncle.

His obvious Great Movie is ‘The French Connection’, which he made with William Friedkin, but I also consider its sequel ‘The French Connection 2’ a Great Movie too. It’s directed by John Frankenheimer and… well… Yes, I know Friedkin made some of Hollywood’s best movies (well, just two, with ‘The French Connection’ and ‘The Exorcist’) but, truth be told, I think Frankenheimer was the greater director. He made more Great Movies over a longer time than Friedkin. His bad movies are better movies than Friedkin’s bad movies. And whenever I think of ‘The French Connection’, I also find myself remembering scenes from the second, which is grubbier and significantly darker.

Hackman’s Popeye Doyle was, of course, just Hackman under a porkpie hat. He was perfect for the role because Hackman could earn your trust immediately. You knew he wasn’t a bad cop. He was just a tough cop.

That’s not to say he couldn’t also play a decent bad guy, but his bad guys were usually motivated by something higher, such as duty, which they just got badly wrong. He played great authority figures who were lost in their own powers and responsibilities. ‘Crimson Tide’ is a must-watch to see Hackman get things badly wrong, even as he was trying to do the right thing. But his defining role was in ‘Unforgiven’, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Little Bill. Bill was a lawman whose determination to bring peace to his town was as confusing as it was brutal. His inability to get a roof on the house he was building became a metaphor for his rule as sheriff: the principal was a sound one but the execution was crappy. It made his role strangely double: a likeable guy but a terrible lawman; a sad man, a cruel human being. That was the film and role that perhaps best suited Hackman. It was a film filled with flawed humans. We all can be both Little Bill and William Munny (Clint Eastwood). Two men called Bill, on different sides of the law, but barely a cigarette paper’s worth of difference between them.

‘The French Connection’ and ‘Unforgiven’ account for Hackman’s two Oscars, though he was nominated another three times, but he made other movies that cemented him in my Number 1 spot. Too many to mention here but ‘Enemy of the State’ is worth mentioning in passing. In many ways, it’s the sequel to ‘The Conversation’, which might be Francis Ford Coppola’s best movie. Sure, ‘The Godfather’ was epic and the story dense and long but, for me, ‘The Conversation’ is that rare thing: a movie that perfectly encapsulated a time and place. If you want to understand Watergate America, ‘The Conversation’ should be on your list of films to see. As paranoid thrillers of the 1970s go (quite possibly my favourite genre of any movie), it’s perfect.

I would need to write another 1000 words for every one of the other movies that I’d recommend, so maybe it’s easier for me to admit where the Hackman magic didn’t quite work for me. They’re relatively few like ‘Cisco Pike’ where he’s more of a support role, playing a bad guy. His scenes are worth seeing. Just the rest of the movie is a laboured hippie piece, trying to ride the ‘Easy Rider’ chopper long after the hippies had left town. His career ended with the low point of ‘Welcome to Mooseport’ which was also the point where he realised he should quit before he ruined his reputation any further. It was a shame that he hadn’t quit a movie earlier, with ‘Runaway Jury’, which is decent, but last movies are rarely notable. He did the wise thing and disappeared from the public eye before his age became too obvious.

Quitting also saved him from becoming a regular in the Wes Anderson whimsical circus. No doubt he’d have been celebrated for embracing the indie scene, as he did with his starring role in ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, but I’m glad he didn’t. He deserved better and my love of Hackman would have forced me to watch more Wes Anderson who is scientifically proven to be 75% less funny than he thinks he is. I also wouldn’t have welcomed the way that Hackman would have been forced to change. Hackman represented something important in my life.

It goes back to that word “paternal”.

He was really of the generation of my father and uncles. Up on the big screen, he represented so many of their characteristics: commitment to family, friends, and country. They’re not always values I myself celebrate, though I respect them all. But life is confusing that way and Hackman helped me to understand that confusion. He played men who were virtuous but tough, kind but often deadly. He was rough and tough but his heart was in the right place. It’s easy these days to look back and be cynical of what masculinity meant back then. There was something naïve about that maleness but it was far more wholesome than today’s pseudo-masculinity.

Hackman’s death is hardly a surprise. In fact, I was talking about him just yesterday and holding him up as an example of a movie star who quit at exactly the right point. Yet I’m still saddened and a little shocked, especially given the unique nature of his death which, as of yet, has not been explained. Looking through his filmography, I’m also struck by how many of his films the iMDB rating system seems to get wrong. I need to rewatch them once I won’t feel too sad seeing Gene Hackman again, who, yes, I’m sure of it now…

He was my favourite movie star.