And then suddenly things changed. I wasn’t expecting them to. Truthfully, it seemed like the moment had passed. Everything isn’t perfect, I’m not saying that, but something did happen. And, maybe appropriately, it happened on the way to the movies. In front of the Chinese Theater back during the 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival when I had just seen THE WILD BUNCH in 70mm up the street sitting next to HEATHERS screenwriter Daniel Waters, if I can briefly name drop, and had some time to kill before COOL HAND LUKE at the Chinese. That’s when, thanks to my friend Jeff, I met her. A brief meeting for starters, yes, but there would be another soon enough and then things proceeded from there. At the time, I had no idea what had just happened. I was just going to see COOL HAND LUKE, after all. But that was the very moment things changed. There’s no point in talking about it all too much but this is a piece about the film I saw at the point when nothing was ever going to be the same again. I just didn’t know it yet.
Oddly enough, for a film that has unexpectedly played a surprising role in things, COOL HAND LUKE isn’t even one I’ve seen all that much. Long ago a DVD I rented didn’t work and then for reasons that make no sense I never actually got around to trying it again until years later so the TCM screening was only my second time. This background matters to no one but me but it does matter and even though COOL HAND LUKE is, admittedly, a minor player in the greater narrative of all this it’s still worth pointing out. As for the film itself, released in the fall of 1967, it truly stands out as one of those they simply don’t make anymore. Just looking at the opening credits reveals a jaw-dropping array of names both in front of and behind the camera that leap out in terms of how much of a sense of pure craft is felt in every single scene. Maybe nobody makes movies like this anymore because there’s no one around to do it. For years I mainly associated this film with the line in the CHEERS pilot arguing it’s “the sweatiest movie ever made” but more than that it’s about a personality that won’t quit, no matter how much the clamp of authority tries to hammer down on him and how that standoff affects everyone watching all this play out. It’s a movie that’s better than you think it is, even if you already love it, and I wish I’d seen it earlier. Just like I wish I’d met her earlier. But there’s nothing to do about any of this. Which is maybe one way all these things connect with each other.
Caught late one night while drunkenly cutting the heads off parking meters in his small town, Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman) is sentenced to two years in a prison chain gang farm. The place is run by the Captain (Strother Martin) along with strict guards that include the silent and very imposing Walking Boss who they call the Man with No Eyes (Morgan Woodward) due to his mirrored sunglasses. Luke is a decorated veteran but even he doesn’t seem too impressed by this. As he settles in with the fellow prisoners he doesn’t seem intimidated by anything at all so and at first does what he is told each day so eventually his cool, seemingly uncaring attitude wins over his fellow prisoners including group leader Dragline (George Kennedy). But soon after a visit from his sick mother Arletta (Jo Van Fleet), word comes of her passing so the Captain and the guards act fast to make sure Luke won’t try to escape leading to a rebellion that he doesn’t intend on stopping.
The parking meter tag reading “VIOLATION” clicks up in the very first shot of the film, as if telling Luke exactly what he is. Maybe it’s telling us what we are too. Luke is certainly some sort of violation to the normal order of things and maybe him just existing is the greatest violation of all. But signs are everywhere in COOL HAND LUKE, telling us, telling him, what he’s supposed to do and he sees no reason to keep following those orders. COOL HAND LUKE is about the signs that are always around telling us what we’re supposed to be doing, telling us what we are, but more than that it’s about the smile on Paul Newman’s face, the smile Luke is always willing to give someone so they can’t see through him. It’s a smile that doesn’t care what’s about to happen since he hasn’t thought much about it anyway, he just doesn’t want to let them get him down. Paul Newman is what COOL HAND LUKE is, but COOL HAND LUKE is also everything around him. It’s a film that lives and breathes as it moves effortlessly from scene to scene, capturing just the right sense of defiance in those moments that come from Luke but also in the faces around him observing all this. It builds to a point where the end result seems inevitable since a man like Luke can’t react to what they do to him any other way, done with a beautifully unrushed nature that helps you live in this film as you absorb it all. As Ed Lauter’s police captain in TRUE ROMANCE might have said, it’s a good fucking movie.
Of course, Paul Newman isn’t in every shot in the film but if Luke is in the shot Luke is what matters. COOL HAND LUKE is uniquely a great character study almost because of, or maybe in spite of, what we don’t actually learn about him. “Nothing can be a real cool hand,” he says about the card game bluff that leads to his nickname, just as they all get nicknames in this place which helps keep them separate from the outside world, his own nickname one that comes from nothing just as he only shows everyone around him nothing. And in that blank slate which refuses to quit is something the other guys can admire, can aspire to, getting Dragline’s respect and then everyone else around them. It almost certainly never occurs to Luke how far all this is going to go. “Just passing time,” he says when confronted with details of his war service that ended with some commendations but not much else at all, busted down from sergeant back to Buck Private where he started. For a while he knows enough to keep his head down and stay quiet, unlike fellow prisoner Ralph Waite who is in no way prepared for what this place is, where they has to ask the bosses permission to do any single thing while clearing brush or whatever it is they’re doing along the road. Once Luke figures out the rules and how things work from day to day, he can do the same thing here only it’s going to wind up with even less. He gets them to pave that road faster than anyone thought because why the hell not, what else is there to do after all. Even better, they’ll get to confuse the guards while getting the job done. Even after the triumphant moment of realizing the job is done it’s a familiar sign reading STOP that the camera zooms in on as if telling him he may as well stop, all this hard work will get him on their bad side no matter what so there’s really no point. After all, sometimes you smile at the wrong people and the very idea of following the rules simply for your own pleasure in this place gets you nowhere. Luke just doesn’t care. What Luke is, who he is proving it in his famous pledge to eat fifty eggs in an hour and he really does it before sprawling out in that famous Christ pose, showing them the impossible for no reason at all. “No one can eat fifty eggs” someone says right after he did it. That’s what you say when a myth is right in front of you.
Luke barely seems to acknowledge or even look at his fellow inmates and he certainly never helps them with their own problems, let alone try to be any sort of leader. It’s not about them. It’s about him and it’s about how they react to him or, at times, don’t at all, standing by silently as they watch him, unable to do anything else. Whether he’s their Christ or not, whether they’re all his disciples, the imagery is sometimes obvious although I’m the wrong guy to speculate much on this aspect but it’s how they react to him. He creates the myth of himself through all the defiance he displays, not even afraid of a rattlesnake and reaching up to the sky during a rainstorm Shawshank-style as if baiting the lord that he can do anything to Luke that he wants but there’s no redemption to be found here, not one that anyone will offer, no amount of spirituals sung by Harry Dean Stanton to help him and no magical place to tunnel out to. As for the guards, meanwhile, all they need to do is sit there and watch him, silent. They don’t have to do anything but wait.
Luke’s mother also has no help to offer him when she visits, only coming to say goodbye when she clearly knows the end is near, looking at him with love, knowing there’s nothing she can do, nothing she could ever do. Maybe she knew the violation he was going to be. It’s one of the quietest moments of the film as well as one of the most crucial turning points, answering so much about who he is while still not revealing very much at all. His mother loves him while knowing he’s a screwup and when she’s finally gone, he’s alone. Even Hud had a family that wanted to care about him, at least up to a point. Luke is simply let go, free and clear, nothing left but his banjo as if finally receiving assurance from the lord after screaming up to the sky at him that he really will always be alone. And when she dies there’s nothing to keep him anywhere. When those things happen it all changes. Things seem different. Things look different. And you can’t stay where you were. What happens leads to Luke’s escape attempts which all seem to be on impulse because why not and it seems like he wants to fuck with the guards as much as he wants to escape anyway, it all comes from the feeling of when Luke by himself finally plays that banjo as he searches for answers that he’ll never get and maybe never really want.
They used to make movies like this, they really did, whoever ‘they’ are, and it’s hard not to think about what these movies used to be. At the time this was normal, expected, just something new opening in theaters starring Paul Newman. Stuart Rosenberg directed a few films before this as well as some television and his most notable credits that come after all feel random so in the end he’s remembered now primarily as the director of COOL HAND LUKE and, well, other things. THE APRIL FOOLS, a Jack Lemmon-Catherine Deneuve romantic comedy which followed, seems genetically designed for me so I wish I liked it better. There’s the Elliott Gould social satire MOVE which is difficult to find now, the not-bad Walter Matthau cop thriller THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN along with several other Paul Newman vehicles that don’t have anywhere near this kind of pop culture footprint. There’s also the smash THE AMITYVILLE HORROR plus his other prison drama BRUBAKER which, in fairness, I still haven’t seen, along with THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE which on a prestige level might be the only one with a reputation that comes close to LUKE. But never mind all that. Maybe he never made a better film than COOL HAND LUKE, possibly due to working with the right star and material, possibly due to all the right people around him to help make this happen.
Maybe the best way to put it is that it feels like Stuart Rosenberg is in the zone here in the directing the film, correctly finding what each scene needs to be about while keeping just the right balance among everything around him, the feel of the prison farm, the glare of the sun in the early morning, the silent gazes of the other prisoners when they know they have to be quiet. The film has breathing room, Rosenberg’s direction here always captures the essence of what each scene is meant to be, soaking in the hot Florida environment while balancing between keeping the star of the film front and center with all these other guys in the frame around him. Even if it’s a Paul Newman movie, which it definitely is, what they’re doing always seems to matter.
As much as all this is true, it still feels like a film made by the great cinematographer Conrad Hall just as much as by its director, each of those shots managing to be stunning while still moving the story forward at the same time in showing how Luke fits in with this crew. On an elemental level, there isn’t a single uninteresting shot in the entire running time and something like the little camera move that occurs when Luke does those pull-ups during the egg eating contest, the moment has such a playful nature it feels like the camera is directly attached to Luke himself. Even those interstitial-type shots of the chain gang working add so much mood and texture to help this sense of imagery stick in the mind after, all of it implying a certain sense of freedom as much as it can never be found. The editing by Sam O’Steen always breaks down sequences into shots and moments that go together seamlessly with the whole thing whether the guys all leering at Joy Harmon washing her car or the clock ticking as Luke eats all those eggs along with those interstitial montages of the days and nights going on and on, always keeping the structure of different events moving forward. The more I watch it, the more I soak into the rhythms provided by every single moment which makes me think it might low key be one of the most well edited films ever.
Neither Hall nor O’Steen were Oscar nominated for their work here but the phenomenal screenplay by Donn Pearce and Frank R. Pierson based on Pearce’s novel was and it’s almost deceptively episodic in the way it gradually unfurls the pieces of the story at first along with a spotlight on all that dialogue which incisively cuts right to the point. The conflict is laid out beautifully in those moments and it makes things like the silent reactions Luke gives to all those rules and stamping down by the guards more powerful. It relishes the language of what he fights against, maybe most enjoyably in something like the introductory speech given by the great Clifton James as the floor walker continually punctuating how any rule breaker will “spend the night in the box” which clearly plays like what a similar speech years later in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY (needless to say, also starring Paul Newman) where Tim Robbins is repeatedly told in his mailroom orientation how if he makes any mistake “they dock ya!” was riffing on, clearly portraying the giant Hudsucker corporation as its own sort of prison with its own rules, just set in a world where Luke wasn’t the one who had to worry about them anymore.
Composer Lalo Schifrin’s score also received an Oscar nomination and his gentle main theme hangs in the air throughout, along with the recurring reminders that lead to the way it pounds in day after day on the road, all these elements making up the texture of the film, a story about a guy who doesn’t want to do what people want him to do. Those moments keep the film building up to the clash we know is coming and the way those moments pay off when they finally come, especially the way Strother Martin collects himself and makes his ‘failure to communicate’ pronouncement to all the inmates, using the formality of the phrase to assert his power over them. The power of the moment lays out exactly what the film is saying and Strother Martin makes it his own immortality right there, about those people on their own side who insist on communicating with you their way, how Luke needs to learn the rules for his own good as the Captain would say, always insisting the sadism they believe in is right and they won’t rest until you say the same.
This may or may not resemble an actual Florida prison camp of the period when it’s set, presumably at some point in the ‘50s, but none of this really matters since the metaphor is clear, the very idea of captivity is what Luke is fighting against just as much as he fights against everything he encounters. The very concept of a prison film is unavoidably metaphoric anyway, the one place he’s forced to be and is always going to have to break out of since Luke is a guy who can’t stay down, won’t stay down even through all the mental torture and flat out sadism they use on him to make his mind right, as they put it, and do only what they ever say. Realism isn’t the strictest concern here and, wisely, the film simply jumps over a few captures after Luke escapes, speaking to their inevitability. What matters is what happens when they catch him again and try to break him, the one thing they intend to do and the one thing they know how to do. “Stop feeding off me!” he shouts at all the other prisoners who want to, need to, look up to him, when brought back to the camp. But no matter what, he can’t stop. Even after they break him. He has no choice and final escape is really all he has left, no answers to get when he reaches the church to ask his final questions, needing to know if there’s any possible way he can win. Those questions we ask at certain times, not knowing if we’ll ever get an answer and not sure if we even want one.
In some ways we don’t know any more about Luke at the end of the film than we do at the beginning. At the beginning we’re asking who this guy is and maybe that’s what we’re doing at the end. The answer is simple since he’s Paul Newman and everything that represents. But he’s also us. After all, sometimes the answers are simpler than we realize. We don’t know what we should do. There are no answers. When you’re a hard case, you have to find your own way when the worst has already happened. Even if all you get out of it is a pair of broken sunglasses meant to shield a pair of eyes you can never see, well, that’s something. It allows for the uplift of the final moments, with an editorially created ending anticipating ANNIE HALL years before that film allowing us to look back on all the good times and get one more look at all those shots of Luke’s smile to help us remember. That’s what the very last shot says, revealing a certain photo that has been taped back up. It was all a show, but it was also real. It had to be real. And if it wasn’t real, then we’ll never fully understand what it was. That’s what I’m still asking about some of what’s happened in my own life, even now that it’s all been forever changed.
What Paul Newman does here is a rarity, a great performance in addition to being a great movie star performance and it seems worth pointing out that they might not be the same things. It’s very much designed to be a movie star role and Luke is meant to be a star to everyone else in the prison camp so it makes perfect sense. The way he takes over the screen with every ounce of his confidence is unforgettable, taking that cockiness of Luke and his ultimate unreadability to a place that it feels like no other actor could have reached. The truly great roles/performances by the actor speak to the power that comes the moment he steps onscreen whether THE HUSTLER, HUD, SLAP SHOT, THE VERDICT or THE COLOR OF MONEY. But what this one has is the hidden sense of futility which comes along with that power, seeming to know that none of what he has will do him any good in the end. It’s his film and was likely always meant to be. But there is still George Kennedy who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar (Newman, for the record, was nominated but lost Best Actor to Rod Steiger for IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) along with Strother Martin who also deserved to be nominated for it, showing how laid back and untroubled his true evil is until he can’t hold it back anymore. In her one scene, Jo Van Fleet makes every single line enigmatic while also displaying the love for her son that she knew would never be quite right. And all those character actors. The completely silent Morgan Woodward and his mirrored sunglasses is intimidatingly unforgettable and it’s like late ‘60s Character Actor Central here with the likes of Lou Antonio, Ralph Waite, Luke Askew, Wayne Rogers, Anthony Zerbe, Harry Dean Stanton, Joe Don Baker, plus Dennis Hopper who doesn’t really have any dialogue at all but our eyes get drawn to him each time he’s in a shot, partly because he’s Dennis Hopper but also because he’s doing something interesting every single time he’s onscreen.
But much of it comes down to the things that are remembered by us, whether from films or our own lives. COOL HAND LUKE is likely thought of now as one of the strongest Paul Newman films as well as an exemplary example of a studio film at the start of the New Hollywood with scenes like the fifty eggs plus Strother Martin’s legendary ‘failure to communicate’ utterance. It’s also likely that the film’s greatest legacy in pop culture might be how it later utilized the “Tar Sequence” track from Lalo Schifrin’s phenomenal score and turned it into the instantly recognizable Eyewitness News theme that played during local newscasts for decades after. The film’s legacy in my own life now is a little different, even if it’s just as unexpected. But you never know what’s going to happen no matter how insistent you are. How everything changed one day when I was at the Chinese Theater, a place which no matter how much it’s changed what with renovations and IMAX and all that has always meant a lot to me. It’s where I saw PULP FICTION on opening night, after all. Now it means so much more. Nobody can eat fifty eggs, just like nobody is going to meet the love of their life in front of the Chinese Theater, but it did happen. And several months later we went back there and saw STOP MAKING SENSE, our first movie together at that theater. It was a good choice. We also saw plenty at the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival the following year, but that’s a story for another time. What’s important for now is that she gave me my smile. Just as Luke still has his smile at the end of the film. That’s the one thing they couldn’t take from him and makes me wish mine could turn up even more than it does now, but we’ll wait and see about that. COOL HAND LUKE is a great film about never losing it and how we can get to that place if we don’t let the world take it away but it’s even better than that. And who really knows what to ever say about the things that happen as we find our own way, hopefully with the people who mean more to us than we ever thought possible.
