Movie Lessons

By Kevin Sweeney

I now think Jack Nicholson telling Tom Cruise
he couldn’t handle the truth in A Few Good Men
was similar to George C. Scott telling Paul Newman
he didn’t lose to Jackie Gleason in The Hustler
because he drank too much during long hours of
straight pool but that he didn’t know how to win.

I wonder if Tom Cruise, maybe a method actor,
pretended Jack’s accusatory comment referred to
Ellen Hurley from Glen Ridge NJ who turned down
Tom’s request to go to the prom before he was a
scientologist. Had Paul Newman’s Fast Eddie Felson
been a scientologist he wouldn’t have gone to this
one pool room where he got badly injured. Maybe if

he’d hung out at Chiefs Pool Room in the Monongahela
Valley where young guys would pay Johnny Onions to
pick up 6–packs at Sepesy’s. Johnny would require
a dime for the game of 8 ball he’d just won, a fee for
this illegal favor, then perhaps exit the back door of
Sepesy’s and keep the money. Certainly a truth

not easy to handle but a practical lesson for under–age
drinkers who’d one day see Jack Nicholson on TV,
courtside at Lakers games, flaunting more wealth than
the pittance they’d given Johnny Onions. It was time
to not be a loser but be Paul Newman as Fast Eddie
playing Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats a second time

and WINNING. Soon Paul would be the world’s most
handsome man then create pizzas and morning tea to
support social justice. I probably won’t ever watch
The Hustler again as I hated the sound of Paul screaming
when bad guys from Lawless America broke his thumbs.

Although Paul was about to die when he and Robert Redford
charged the Bolivian army as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, they were both still–life alive when that movie ended.
Only we, the audience, would have to handle the truth
and try whenever possible not to lose.