RIP Gene Hackman

 

If you want to make it in Hollywood, but you're not the most attractive guy in the room, then you'd better be good at what you do - not just good, but the best - that was Gene Hackman. 🥲

Interestingly, he also didn't hit it big until he was 40 years old - and then he was everywhere!

Though most often he played villains later in his career, he also could play it tender, which people often forget due to his later films.

In fact, his death just reminded me of a conversation I had with my estranged older sister in the 90s, when she pronounced Gene Hackman as "evil" 😂

 

I even remember where we had this conversation, for some reason - it was at a Buona Beef restaurant in Chicago.

So I laughed and said "Hahaha, WHAT?  How do YOU know Gene Hackman is evil, do you know him personally? I think you're confusing some of the roles he plays with the man?"

She said "He looks like Dad and he always plays evil characters."

???

I was like "Yeah, um ... that's acting?  That's why he's won two Academy Awards.  They typically don't give those out for just playing yourself on screen, Jack Nicholson perhaps being the only exception."

Okay, it's true that as my dad aged, he did look a bit like Gene Hackman, but the poor man can't help he looked like my Dad!?! 😂

And just because he looks like him doesn't mean he behaves like him?

And Gene does have an intensity in certain roles much like that of Adam Driver, but again, that's good acting?

But I guess she hadn't seen him in The Poseidon Adventure, where he played a Reverend who led everybody out to safety and sacrificed himself for their survival.

Or even Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge,  starring Meryl Streep (an underrated film, IMO), where he played the fatherly director, who has to fire her for inability to perform due to cocaine abuse and then rehires her after rehab to do the looping because he still believes in her.

She apologizes to him profusely for "ruining his film" and he says "Don't be sorry, just fix it," then wraps his arms around her and says "Look at that screen. Look at what you can do and you were barely conscious. Imagine what you can do sober" - and the movie ends with him directing her in a new film.

But then that's my older sister, snap-judging people based on how things hit her emotionally, with flawed logic, pronouncing everyone else "evil" so she can feel morally superior, a list which includes even babies and toddlers (she has no children); in fact, this is one of many reasons why we're estranged, but that's another story. 😂

But we continued the discussion about villains actually being more fun to play, which she didn't get at all. 

I said

"Because it's a challenge, especially if you're actually a good person." 

"Because that's what acting actually is, playing somebody completely different from who you really are. Otherwise, you're just playing another version of yourself, which isn't acting at all."

"And let's be honest, if you had the choice between  playing Snow White or the Wicked Witch, which is more fun to play?"

"It doesn't mean you ARE a witch in real life, or even that you admire or want to BE one, it's just a more challenging, interesting role to play."

"And if you're really good at it, people who confuse fantasy and reality -  or their own skewed perception of the world versus objective reality -  will believe you really ARE a Wicked Witch!" 

"That's Gene Hackman. In fact, he'd probably take it as a huge compliment that you really believe he's evil 😂"

"And some people who always played white-hatted good cowboys were actually real-life a-holes, like John Wayne" 

My sister said "John Wayne was an a-hole?"

*Sigh*

Oh, girl ... snap out of it.

But my brother-in-law totally got that and said "I get it. For men, it'd be like if you had the choice between playing Bob the Knight or the  tyrant King?" 😂

My sister shot him daggers for a look and he stop talking, of course, and ended up agreeing with her. 😏

And I'm sure she twisted that convo later and used it as some kind of warped, effed up that evidence I belonged on her evil list, too - which again, also included even babies and toddlers - but most people that live in actual reality know what I meant, especially people in the field or artistic, creative people.

Regardless, we don't know Gene Hackman personally and he was famously private and protective, especially with his kids. We also know that he retired from Hollywood in 2004 and left all of that life behind. We've also never heard any behind-the-scenes horror stories, but who knows?  

Maybe we'll find out more now that he's gone . Maybe he was a jerk. Maybe he was good man. Maybe he was somewhere in between like most people. 

The truth is, we really don't know who Gene Hackman was at all- we only know that he was one hell of an actor and made us believe he was who he was playing!

My favorite film of his was The French Connection, actually, in which he plays a cop trying to track down a wealthy French heroin dealer, for which he won his first Oscar.  I haven't seen it in years, but I'll watch it again this weekend in his honor. 

Or Mississippi Burning, where he played an FBI agent devoted to getting to the bottom of 3 missing civil rights workers, where he displayed both toughness and tenderness?

I also absolutely loved him in The Birdcage, where he played a Republican Senator from Ohio, whose daughter was marrying the son of two gay men from Miami, which was at first hidden from him, and then he had to escape the press by dressing in drag when he left!

And in The Unforgiven, though he played an overly letter-of-the-law sheriff, Little Bill, he was also kind of hilarious, exposing the truth to the biographer of a British "outlaw," who had coined himself "The Duke of Death" that though the British outlaw was present, he was actually coward who never shot anybody, and thus, Little Bill calls him instead the "Duck of Death."  😂

As for his death, along with his wife and dog, the only situations I can think of where that could happen and not be foul play is either suicide pact or carbon monoxide poisoning?

I'm gonna go with the latter because who would include their dog in the former?

Either way, super sad - RIP Gene Hackman

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PS 

Okay, so I had assumed carbon-monoxide poisoning, but this story is getting weirder.

Not like foul-play weird, still likely accidental weird - but WTH?

So it's being reported that cops said carbon-monoxide levels were not high and that there were no gas leaks.

They also reported that it looked like they fell while standing up - as if they literally "dropped dead" in separate rooms?

Also, the one dog died just a few feet from her, but the other two were alive?

There were apparently scattered pills in the bathroom where she was found, and though they didn't say what the pills were, but it appeared  like she dropped them when she fell? 

So ... dropping dead while standing up isn't really typical or consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning?

I mean, of course, I don't know for sure, but typically, people who have carbon-monoxide poisoning get super sleepy and then lie down, and when they go to sleep, that's it. 

(Not always, I'm sure, but people who have survived it have said this.)

So unless the report of no gas leaks and low carbon-monoxide levels  is false or was performed improperly, my next guess would be accidental overdose of something - but the argument against that is the dog's death, especially one dog out of the three?

So then my last guess would be they accidentally ingested something poisonous - perhaps even unknowingly fed it as a treat to the one dog versus the others - accidental poisoning?

The latter would explain why she was in the bathroom trying to self-medicate her symptoms, right?

Beyond that, I have no clue.

I'm not saying this is foul play, in fact, I don't think so - it really sounds accidental - but I guess ya never know. 

Super weird, we shall see.