Gene Hackman

[Mr+Ripley]

  Sad to hear the news of the passing of Gene Hackman. He was one of those actors who was always very good, no matter which role he played or what the film was. You would be hard-pressed to find a duff role on his CV, I certainly can't think of any. If the film was so-so, he could elevate it and make it good. If the film was good, he could make it great. And if the film was already great, then it was a pleasure to watch his performance. 

  Far too many of his films to list here, but one of my favourites has always been The Poseidon Adventure. To this day it still stands up as a cracking disaster movie, probably the best in that genre. A mention needs to be made for The French Connection films as well.

  Little known fact. In the early 1960's, before any of them were real actors, let alone famous, Gene, Dustin Hoffman & Robert Duvall used to share a tiny apartment in New York. In their acting classes, they were all voted by their classmates as " least likely to succeed ".

  RIP Gene Hackman. 

  " Why were you picking your feet in Poughkeepsie ? "

[Mr+Ripley]

  There's a tribute in the form of two Gene Hackman films on BBC Two next Sunday night. It starts with The French Connection at 10 pm, immediately followed by The Conversation at 11.40 pm.

[daveNOS]

@Mr+Ripley I wonder if Sky could look at renaming one of the Cinema channels and show some of his movies, they surely must hold or can get the rights to enough to pay tribute to a true Hollywood legend.

[Doc5907]

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@daveNOS wrote:

@Mr+Ripley I wonder if Sky could look at renaming one of the Cinema channels and show some of his movies, they surely must hold or can get the rights to enough to pay tribute to a true Hollywood legend.

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I watched Mississippi Burning last night. Fantastic performance by Gene and William Defoe!

[Mr+Ripley]

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@Doc5907 wrote:

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@daveNOS wrote:

@Mr+Ripley I wonder if Sky could look at renaming one of the Cinema channels and show some of his movies, they surely must hold or can get the rights to enough to pay tribute to a true Hollywood legend.

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I watched Mississippi Burning last night. Fantastic performance by Gene and William Defoe!

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  I think I saw that was available on APV whilst I was searching his films, been a long time since I've seen it, so may watch it again. I also noticed Hoosiers is available, which I've never seen, probably because it's about basketball, but I understand Gene gives a knockout performance, so that's another one to add to the Wishlist.

  I did watch The Poseidon Adventure at the weekend, & then found a bunch of YouTube videos about the making of it & behind the scenes.

[Mr+Ripley]

  I pulled up a list on Google of all his films, & between 1961 and 2004, when he retired from acting, he made 81 films. That's very impressive. It's quite an eclectic list too. The genres include drama, action, disaster, superhero, western, animation, thriller & comedy - remember his brilliant cameo in Young Frankenstein? Definitely a body of work to be proud of.

[Mr+Ripley]

BBC Four are showing an episode of Wogan where Gene Hackman is one of his guests. It is on next Saturday at 10.50 pm.