"Blonde" (spoilers), Lotusland, The Hustler

“It soon became clear that Marilyn was no pushover,” Anthony Summers wrote. “She worked the Hollywood system to her advantage.” And yet, in an interview with Summers, director John Huston describes what he saw in Marilyn Monroe: “Something so vulnerable, something you felt could be destroyed.” In interviews with over 700 people, Anthony Summers, author of Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe (2017) encountered nothing to suggest that Daryl Zanuck or another Hollywood producer assaulted Marilyn Monroe. Summers is suspicious about Andrew Dominik's film Blonde: "When Oates’ novel Blonde came out, her defence was that, in a work of fiction, she ‘had no particular obligation’ to the facts. In my view, that is not so. The people she named in her novel were real people with real reputations – and historical legacies – and such fictional fabrication is unjustifiably cruel. The fact that the individuals concerned are dead is no defence." Joyce Carol Oates's only defence was her warning: What follows is fiction. Biographical facts should be sought elsewhere. 

In Blonde, Cass Chaplin and Eddy G.— played, respectively, by Xavier Samuel and Evan Williams, and who in Oates’ book are as victimised by the Hollywood system as Monroe is—are conniving rotters in the film, with uncomfortable echoes of homophobic films of the 1950s. Blonde also contains moments of erotic surrealism, including a threesome filmed as an elegantly distorted kneading of flesh into strange new configurations, like a sexy version of the climax of Brian Yuzna's Society. Spoilers: The star’s death is reframed to directly implicate these former lovers rather than the Kennedys. The dialogue is cringey, the direction is misguided, and again, there is far too much skin shown. Blonde isn’t subtle, that’s for sure. Sometimes pushing the envelope helps a movie excel, but in this case it doesn’t work out. In fact, it drastically takes away from what this could have been. Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is exploitative. For most of the film the despair is palpable; the dramatic purpose is not. Blonde frames Monroe, stylishly and icily, as a hysterical woman. She deserves better. Source: empireonline.com

A femme fatale, at least in her own mind, Anais Nin was a woman of mystery and passion, known for extravagant sexual exploits which included a torrid affair with Henry Miller and his wife June. She was not known at the time for her bicoastal life where she had a husband stashed in New York and a younger husband in Los Angeles. "She was liberated decades before female liberation," said the chauvinist author Norman Mailer. "I never let her seduce me that day she came on to me at a party in Greenwich Village. She got Jack Kerouac instead." Anais told novelist James Leo Herlihy she was intrigued by Paul Newman, while Herlihy was lobbying to get Newman to star as Willart in John Frankenheimer's All Fall Down (1962), a role with similarities to Newman's Hud, that ended up on Warren Beatty's hands. Anais told Herlihy. "I suspect Newman will go far in an industry that is all about illusion. There is a self-awareness in this handsome young man. In spite of the hot sun, he already knows that California is a cold, harsh land. He does not want it to hurt him. So what must he do? 

I predict he'll have a miserable life in Hollywood. Beneath all of his swagger, I suspect there is a sensitive man lurking somewhere there. I feel sorry for Newman because if he wants to be a movie star, then he has to be as artificial as Marilyn Monroe. He has to become a sort of dream figure for the women of America. And American women are shallow. They always make gods and goddesses out of cardboard figures. I predict Newman will turn into a cardboard figure. There will be no reality to him. He can't be real. We'll never know who Paul Newman is, because he doesn't know himself. Perhaps one harsh, brutal morning, when that world tumbles in around him, he'll look into the mirror and see himself for the first time. But it will frighten him. A tragedy, really. But, this is, after all, Lotusland." Later, Herlihy confided: "I don't know if I learned anything about Paul Newman from listening to her. But Anais was not clever enough to conceal her own deceit. She was actually attracted to Newman, but could not admit that to herself. From the way she talked about him, I felt she wanted to add him to her stable of lovers. But knowing how hopeless that was, she chose to trash him instead, the way she did with Gore Vidal in her diary." –Anais Nin: The Last Days (2013) by Barbara Kraft

The Hustler's (1961) - Journey of Ambition and Redemption: One of Paul Newman’s most iconic films, it remains a frighteningly nuanced psychological study and societal portrait. The film delights in illuminating the dark “shadows” of our times: ruthless ambition, pangs of personal growth, capitalist dreams, and the pursuit of alcohol to provide a fleeting smile in times of sorrow. These themes are often silently stalking us, hiding around unforeseen corners, as we do not generally bring them up in polite discourse. As Fast Eddie Felson approaches his peak, the need for mastery looms. The drive for mere pleasure falters when confronted by the will for being recognized and having lasting power. And to Eddie, power is achieved by beating the greatest pool player in the country, Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). 

Eddie finds refuge in the form of the eternal feminine. His love interest, Sarah Packard, is attracted to the charming masculinity of Newman's character, yet she's painfully aware of his immaturity. Her instinct to introspection is actually frightening to him. Eddie secretly knows he must accept the instinct of Sarah to improve himself before he can embark on a disciplined and mature approach to life. However, success in his life will entail a confrontation with the Mephistophelian “devil” straight from the tragedy of Goethe’s Faust. This force is personified by Bert Gordon, a rich speculator, gambler and owner of men’s souls. Eddie’s “excuses” for losing do not gain any sympathy from such a Machiavellian character. In a deep conversation with Sarah, Eddie finds the source of his passion, likening it to a jockey having developed such precise control of the powerful stallion (his inner nature), that propels him towards an undeniable victory. Sarah calls Eddie a winner.

The Hustler culminates with an emotionally wrenching and tragic climax. Fast Eddie enters the Ames Pool Hall, the billiard coliseum, with his final $3000 dollars. Harnessing his remnant passion for the game and for life that he realized through Sarah, he now drags his damaged pride during his last pool match. Sarah’s insight helped Eddie find out the truth about his moral weakness. Rossen shows the pool game as a graveyard collection of dispassionate symbols. Fats is a champion, but his love for the game has been reduced to a “high percentage” ritual. Eddie won’t lose because he has someone who inspires him to fight for. Eddie says defiantly to Bert, “You don't know what winning is. You're a loser, Bert. 'Cause you're dead inside. You can't live unless you make everything else dead around you!”

Despite its reputation as a truly bleak film, it's somehow a story of moral triumph. A determined hustler can beat the system, no matter how far he has fallen. When Eddie invests all he’s got (his life savings), no mere percentage player can match his fervent determination. And yet it also warns us against chasing false symbols of success that prevent a deeper emotional connection. All the glitz and glam of a Las Vegas evening cannot fill that unquenchable human void that inspires the greatest of feats. “I think Robert Rossen had actually signed somebody else,” Newman remembered, “and then he found out I was available and called me and said, ‘Can I send you a script?’ I read half of it and called my New York agent at six o’clock in the morning and said, ‘Get me this film.’ And he did.” Rossen, whose major Hollywood career had been interrupted by encounters with the House Un-American Activities Committee, was now hobbled by a combination of diabetes and alcoholism, but he was determined to make a film about a world that he knew well, the demimonde of smoky billiard halls and itinerant pool sharks. It was a bravura bit of pulp, tightly atmospheric, filled with pinpoint detail and spare, snappy dialogue. 

Newman respected Rossen’s knowledge of the subject matter and his commitment to the job. “He just pulled himself together to do the film,” Newman remembered, “and he was incredible.” Too, Newman loved the material and knew it was the best thing he’d ever had in his career. In his view, Eddie Felson was a guy trying to find himself, to express himself and his talents in an unorthodox way, to burst into the world and be a somebody instead of a nobody, and mostly, to realize his true self. Newman told an interviewer, “I spent the first thirty years of my life looking for a way to explode. For me, apparently, acting is that way.” Newman always recalled The Hustler fondly, as one of his best roles. “It was one of those movies when you woke every day and could hardly wait to get to work,” Newman said, “because you knew it was so good that nobody was going to be able to louse it up.” Rossen was free to operate on the cheap and get an authentic feel; the picture was shot in mid-town Manhattan during the spring of 1961. Rossen used the Greyhound Bus Terminal, some dive bars on Eighth Avenue, and, especially, the Ames Billiard Academy on West Forty-fourth Street.

Piper Laurie, a promising young actress with a résumé rather like Joanne Woodward’s of a couple years before, would play brilliantly her bittersweet role as Eddie's love interest. Sarah is an alcoholic writer with a shady past, and she's partly lame. Laurie's chemistry with Newman is so powerful and disturbing that evokes the best noir dramas. To prepare for the film, Newman took lessons from the famed billiard champion Willie Mosconi; he moved a billiard table into his Upper East Side apartment where he lived with Joanne, getting good enough to play most of his pool shots in the film. The Hustler was in contention for an impressive nine Oscar awards: best picture, actor, actress, director, screenplay, cinematography, art direction, and two for best supporting actor. All these nominations were worthy, but Paul Newman’s was especially well deserved. He was the center of the film and carried it all—the naïvete, the swagger, the nervous tension, the sexual confidence, the crushing humiliation, the not-quite-focused calculation, the hard-earned redemption—with disarming certainty. 

—Paul Newman: A Life (2009) by Shawn Levy