February 27, 2025 • 10 mins
Joe Neumaier joins Mendte in the Morning to talk about the death of Gene Hackman and his best roles throughout his career.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, if you haven't heard the news yet, and we've
been talking about it all morning, the legendary actor Gene
Hackman is dead at the age of ninety five. He
was found dead in his Santa Fe, New Mexico home.
He and his wife and their dog. We're all found dead.
Now police have ruled out foul play, but it has
(00:23):
everybody talking about the legendary actor, the great roles he's
been in, the great movies he's been in, and there
is nobody better than I can think of to talk
about that than Joe Neumayer, film journalist and host of
The Wor Movie Minute. Now, Joe's normally on Friday before
(00:43):
the box office, but we asked him to come on today.
He'll still be on tomorrow to talk about the weekend
movies and the Oscars, but today we're going to give
the time to Gene Hackman and his great career. So, Joe,
we've been going through some of the movies and every
time a movie comes up, I go, oh, he was
(01:03):
in that too. Oh my god, he was in that
movie too. It is amazing, amazing, the width and breadth
of work this man had.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Amazing stuff. Thirty five is so sad that he died
thirty five years but of amazing films that he left
us with. You know what you mentioned something, Larry, which
is true, which is that some coup of you go, oh, right,
he was great in that. I loved him in that.
And you know, there's so many great films that he did.
And I never I never interviewed him, sadly, but it
is a brief little anecdote. A couple of years ago,
(01:35):
I said to somebody, which is true, that Gene Hackman
always reminded me of my dad, my late dad. And
my friend said, oh, he always reminded my friend of
like his favorite uncle or like a great uncle that
he had. And that's sort of the thing, like everybody
sort of had this familiarity with Gene Hackman. He was
known as sort of like an everyman character actor, but
he really people could relate to him on that way.
(01:57):
You know, there's all those great actors from the early
in the sixties, but kind of really hit in the
early seventies, people like you know, obviously Gene Hackman, but
Dustin Hoffman, who was his one time roommate for a
while when they were young. Actress Robert Redford, Warren Batty
you know, Robert de Niro, al Pacino, they all came up,
but Halfman had something different. He wasn't good looking like
(02:18):
baby in Redford, and he wasn't sort of odd looking
or could disappear into a role like de Niro or Paccino.
He was like the guy who you were like, oh,
he was like my dad. He was like my uncle.
And that included things like even you know, the first
film that I saw him in when I was a
kid was The Poseidon Adventure, great film where he plays
the reverend who kind of you know, brings everybody to
to to rescue them and then sacrifices himself. Superman, which
(02:41):
I as a kid I loved. He was the great
Lexman store. But remember him in in Bonnie and Clyde,
he plays Warren Brady's brother. He plays Clyde's brother, Buck Barrow,
and he tells this great story, like little joke about
about a cow that that has been that he either
trying to give milk to a dying woman or and
he tells this joke and he tells it with like
(03:02):
this little twinkle in his eye. And that was Gene Hackman.
Both both in films that like required a little bit
of violence or a little bit of toughness. Even the
French Connection. He's funny in The French Connection, even though
he's intense and tough, but he's also he's also there's
moments in some of the most mellow films where you
feel like at any second he could sort of snap
and shout or something.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, amazing. His range was incredible. You think about Young Frankenstein,
you know he was you know, he was a riot
in Young Frankenstein. But you mentioned the French Connection, Mississippi Burning.
You know, he could play a very serious role. He
could play a leader like he was in Hoosier's The Wet.
The fact that he had such a range in his
(03:44):
acting is what made him indispensable and rememberable in these movies.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Absolutely agree, Hoosiers is one of those great movies. I
think people forget about it. I would recommend that to people
to seek out because it's really a wonderful film in
the eighties. And I would also say, you know, people
always talk about that great chase in The French Connection,
which he got him his first oscar. He was now
named about five times. He's one of the rare actors
who got Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. He got
Best Actor for French Connection, Supporting Actor for Unforgiven, which
(04:12):
he's also terrific in. But during that Grace car chase
in French Connection, he's doing something really difficult. He's doing
some great action, like silent action movie acting as he's
driving the car, as he's chasing the guy on the subway.
You know, the subway goes into Brooklyn and he's driving
the car under the under the elevated train. He's doing
(04:32):
some really great acting there. There's no dialogue, but he's
intense and he's angry and he's reacting and that's that's
very hard to do, and that's something that happened did
so well. You could like just see it in his
eyes or like the gesture. There's a moment in the firm,
you remember the firm he's going where he's talking to
Tom Cruise about something and they're walking through like a
hotel lobby or something, and he's just like paying attention
(04:55):
to little things. He's sort of moving things around on
a desk or or shifting things around. He was really
like an actor who kind of inhabited the entire frame,
everything in the frame. And then his eyes were so active.
He was just a delight. I loved him in The
Royal Tenenbaums, which is one of his last films from
two thousand and one. I loved him in there, and
(05:15):
it's just what a lot and Unforgiven though, I want
to really give a shout out to that film because
he got Best Supporting Actor for that. He was so shy,
by the way, when he got his oscars. If you
see clips of him getting the oscar for French protection,
kind of looks almost a little bit like he puts
his hand up. He's kind of like, kind of shy
on stage. He doesn't say much, but when he wins
for Unforgiven, he gives this a little laugh. Unforgiven is
(05:36):
a terrific film, of course anyway, but it really wouldn't
be what it would be without him because he's terrific
in there as the villain little Bill Dagan so good.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah, you know he's now. He never did all of
the things that make you a movie star. He was
never big on the talk show circuit. He wasn't out
promoting films like you're supposed to do. As a matter
of fact, he seems like he shied away from all that.
But most importantly Joe. It seems like that wasn't important
(06:04):
to him, No, And you.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Know, and I think that him stepping away from acting
in two thousand and three. His last film is this
little comedy with Ray Romano called Welcome to Movesport. He
was only about seventy three at the time and he
just sort of, I think the roles weren't coming to him,
and he just said, you know, he's just gonna ride
his bike and hang out in Santa Fe and enjoy life.
And I think that he just was, you know, he
was a realistic guy. I think in in his roles.
(06:28):
You see it in there, and I think he was
a realistic guy in real life. And if I could
recommend a few films of people that they haven't seen,
you know, we mentioned Hoosiers. By the way, Who's yours?
I think kind of gets forgotten a lot. But there's
another one called Uncommon Valor from nineteen eighty three where
he plays a lieutenant colonel who wants to go get
his son in Vietnam. He's great in there. And there's
(06:48):
a terrific film called Twice in a Lifetime that he
plays a guy who's kind of dealing with marriage crisis.
All of these things are so terrific. But anything he
does makes you smile and you just go like you
just so. I mean, but a French Connection, I mean
when he talked to the guy about do you pick
your toes and Peepsie, you pick your toes in Poughkeepsie,
that's like a character level to that, to that film
(07:09):
that you don't you don't expect, and he's just terrific.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Earlier, I said that the car chase scene in French
Connection was iconic and groundbreaking, and a listener called up
and corrected me and said, no, no, no, the first
big car chase was in Bullet That's one. Yeah, that
is true.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Ho, yeah, that is true. Yeah, Bullet is sixty eight
and French Connection seventy one. But I would say that
there's something about the way that that the French Connection
one is shot and using sort of and it's under
the cameras kind of sped up a little bit, even
though they were going very fast and with the going
underneath the elevated train in Brooklyn, there's something really special
about the French Connection on the Bullet one takes place
(07:50):
in San Francisco, but shout out to that listener for
knowing that that that bullet chase exists, because that's a
great one too.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
No, it was great. I'll put you on the spot here.
Give me the top five Gene Hackman films.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Top five King Hacknell obviously, as we're talking about Unforgiven
and French connection of the two, I'm gonna say Superman
because you know what he he that's my favorite superhero film.
He really makes that film in a lot of ways.
As I said that, Uncommon Valor is the other one
that I think is really underappreciated. And in Royal Tannon Bombs,
which is a comedy from Wes Anderson, Bence Skiller is
in it. And if you're like Gwyneth Paltrow, and he's
(08:23):
really fun in there. He's a rascal. He's like an
older rascal that kind of his face, kind of tries
to bring his family together. So those would be my five.
But boy, it's hard at the narrow down.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It is hard. And it's funny. You said you kept
talking about Who's Us as being an underrated and a
lot of people may not have seen it. That's one
of my favorite movies.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, one of my favorite.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Movies of all time. And I think he was amazing
in that.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, and you feel the character is supposed to have had,
you know, an alcoholic background, and he's coming back to
coach this Indiana teen in nineteen fifty one, and with
just very little. He doesn't act too much, doesn't push it.
You feel it in every scene and and you really
feel that the heart and the soul and that performance
thanks to Hackman.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, yeah, that's a great film. Every sports movie has
that moment, especially when somebody's playing the coach where they
have to talk to the team. And when he did
that when they were going to the championship, it is
still one of my favorite speeches. They play that sometimes
at basketball games at halftime. Still one of my favorite
speeches ever in a sports movie. You know what I'm
(09:24):
talking about?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I do? I do? Absolutely, yeah, no, And I think
that that also is one of those films. It's written
by the same guy who did Rudy by the way,
so it's got like scene that an actor would chew
into and kind of really kind of make it on.
So but the way Hackman plays it, he plays it
in sort of a quieter way. It makes sense. It's
a rural Indiana town in nineteen fifty one. He really
shits into it and it's such a great working film
(09:47):
in so many ways. It takes place in autumn, it's
really pretty, and he's just really he's the coach you
always wanted to have. Yeah, absolutely a basketball player, which
I was.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, I want to remind you so was I. I
want to be remind you that you're to be back
tomorrow and remind our listeners more than you. Uh, we'll
be back. He'll be back tomorrow to talk oscars. Look
forward to talking to you then. Thanks Joe Neumeyer, film journalist,
w o R Movie Minute host
Well, if you haven't heard the news yet, and we've
been talking about it all morning, the legendary actor Gene
Hackman is dead at the age of ninety five. He
was found dead in his Santa Fe, New Mexico home.
He and his wife and their dog. We're all found dead.
Now police have ruled out foul play, but it has
(00:23):
everybody talking about the legendary actor, the great roles he's
been in, the great movies he's been in, and there
is nobody better than I can think of to talk
about that than Joe Neumayer, film journalist and host of
The Wor Movie Minute. Now, Joe's normally on Friday before
(00:43):
the box office, but we asked him to come on today.
He'll still be on tomorrow to talk about the weekend
movies and the Oscars, but today we're going to give
the time to Gene Hackman and his great career. So, Joe,
we've been going through some of the movies and every
time a movie comes up, I go, oh, he was
(01:03):
in that too. Oh my god, he was in that
movie too. It is amazing, amazing, the width and breadth
of work this man had.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Amazing stuff. Thirty five is so sad that he died
thirty five years but of amazing films that he left
us with. You know what you mentioned something, Larry, which
is true, which is that some coup of you go, oh, right,
he was great in that. I loved him in that.
And you know, there's so many great films that he did.
And I never I never interviewed him, sadly, but it
is a brief little anecdote. A couple of years ago,
(01:35):
I said to somebody, which is true, that Gene Hackman
always reminded me of my dad, my late dad. And
my friend said, oh, he always reminded my friend of
like his favorite uncle or like a great uncle that
he had. And that's sort of the thing, like everybody
sort of had this familiarity with Gene Hackman. He was
known as sort of like an everyman character actor, but
he really people could relate to him on that way.
(01:57):
You know, there's all those great actors from the early
in the sixties, but kind of really hit in the
early seventies, people like you know, obviously Gene Hackman, but
Dustin Hoffman, who was his one time roommate for a
while when they were young. Actress Robert Redford, Warren Batty
you know, Robert de Niro, al Pacino, they all came up,
but Halfman had something different. He wasn't good looking like
(02:18):
baby in Redford, and he wasn't sort of odd looking
or could disappear into a role like de Niro or Paccino.
He was like the guy who you were like, oh,
he was like my dad. He was like my uncle.
And that included things like even you know, the first
film that I saw him in when I was a
kid was The Poseidon Adventure, great film where he plays
the reverend who kind of you know, brings everybody to
to to rescue them and then sacrifices himself. Superman, which
(02:41):
I as a kid I loved. He was the great
Lexman store. But remember him in in Bonnie and Clyde,
he plays Warren Brady's brother. He plays Clyde's brother, Buck Barrow,
and he tells this great story, like little joke about
about a cow that that has been that he either
trying to give milk to a dying woman or and
he tells this joke and he tells it with like
(03:02):
this little twinkle in his eye. And that was Gene Hackman.
Both both in films that like required a little bit
of violence or a little bit of toughness. Even the
French Connection. He's funny in The French Connection, even though
he's intense and tough, but he's also he's also there's
moments in some of the most mellow films where you
feel like at any second he could sort of snap
and shout or something.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, amazing. His range was incredible. You think about Young Frankenstein,
you know he was you know, he was a riot
in Young Frankenstein. But you mentioned the French Connection, Mississippi Burning.
You know, he could play a very serious role. He
could play a leader like he was in Hoosier's The Wet.
The fact that he had such a range in his
(03:44):
acting is what made him indispensable and rememberable in these movies.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Absolutely agree, Hoosiers is one of those great movies. I
think people forget about it. I would recommend that to people
to seek out because it's really a wonderful film in
the eighties. And I would also say, you know, people
always talk about that great chase in The French Connection,
which he got him his first oscar. He was now
named about five times. He's one of the rare actors
who got Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. He got
Best Actor for French Connection, Supporting Actor for Unforgiven, which
(04:12):
he's also terrific in. But during that Grace car chase
in French Connection, he's doing something really difficult. He's doing
some great action, like silent action movie acting as he's
driving the car, as he's chasing the guy on the subway.
You know, the subway goes into Brooklyn and he's driving
the car under the under the elevated train. He's doing
(04:32):
some really great acting there. There's no dialogue, but he's
intense and he's angry and he's reacting and that's that's
very hard to do, and that's something that happened did
so well. You could like just see it in his
eyes or like the gesture. There's a moment in the firm,
you remember the firm he's going where he's talking to
Tom Cruise about something and they're walking through like a
hotel lobby or something, and he's just like paying attention
(04:55):
to little things. He's sort of moving things around on
a desk or or shifting things around. He was really
like an actor who kind of inhabited the entire frame,
everything in the frame. And then his eyes were so active.
He was just a delight. I loved him in The
Royal Tenenbaums, which is one of his last films from
two thousand and one. I loved him in there, and
(05:15):
it's just what a lot and Unforgiven though, I want
to really give a shout out to that film because
he got Best Supporting Actor for that. He was so shy,
by the way, when he got his oscars. If you
see clips of him getting the oscar for French protection,
kind of looks almost a little bit like he puts
his hand up. He's kind of like, kind of shy
on stage. He doesn't say much, but when he wins
for Unforgiven, he gives this a little laugh. Unforgiven is
(05:36):
a terrific film, of course anyway, but it really wouldn't
be what it would be without him because he's terrific
in there as the villain little Bill Dagan so good.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah, you know he's now. He never did all of
the things that make you a movie star. He was
never big on the talk show circuit. He wasn't out
promoting films like you're supposed to do. As a matter
of fact, he seems like he shied away from all that.
But most importantly Joe. It seems like that wasn't important
(06:04):
to him, No, And you.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Know, and I think that him stepping away from acting
in two thousand and three. His last film is this
little comedy with Ray Romano called Welcome to Movesport. He
was only about seventy three at the time and he
just sort of, I think the roles weren't coming to him,
and he just said, you know, he's just gonna ride
his bike and hang out in Santa Fe and enjoy life.
And I think that he just was, you know, he
was a realistic guy. I think in in his roles.
(06:28):
You see it in there, and I think he was
a realistic guy in real life. And if I could
recommend a few films of people that they haven't seen,
you know, we mentioned Hoosiers. By the way, Who's yours?
I think kind of gets forgotten a lot. But there's
another one called Uncommon Valor from nineteen eighty three where
he plays a lieutenant colonel who wants to go get
his son in Vietnam. He's great in there. And there's
(06:48):
a terrific film called Twice in a Lifetime that he
plays a guy who's kind of dealing with marriage crisis.
All of these things are so terrific. But anything he
does makes you smile and you just go like you
just so. I mean, but a French Connection, I mean
when he talked to the guy about do you pick
your toes and Peepsie, you pick your toes in Poughkeepsie,
that's like a character level to that, to that film
(07:09):
that you don't you don't expect, and he's just terrific.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Earlier, I said that the car chase scene in French
Connection was iconic and groundbreaking, and a listener called up
and corrected me and said, no, no, no, the first
big car chase was in Bullet That's one. Yeah, that
is true.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Ho, yeah, that is true. Yeah, Bullet is sixty eight
and French Connection seventy one. But I would say that
there's something about the way that that the French Connection
one is shot and using sort of and it's under
the cameras kind of sped up a little bit, even
though they were going very fast and with the going
underneath the elevated train in Brooklyn, there's something really special
about the French Connection on the Bullet one takes place
(07:50):
in San Francisco, but shout out to that listener for
knowing that that that bullet chase exists, because that's a
great one too.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
No, it was great. I'll put you on the spot here.
Give me the top five Gene Hackman films.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Top five King Hacknell obviously, as we're talking about Unforgiven
and French connection of the two, I'm gonna say Superman
because you know what he he that's my favorite superhero film.
He really makes that film in a lot of ways.
As I said that, Uncommon Valor is the other one
that I think is really underappreciated. And in Royal Tannon Bombs,
which is a comedy from Wes Anderson, Bence Skiller is
in it. And if you're like Gwyneth Paltrow, and he's
(08:23):
really fun in there. He's a rascal. He's like an
older rascal that kind of his face, kind of tries
to bring his family together. So those would be my five.
But boy, it's hard at the narrow down.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It is hard. And it's funny. You said you kept
talking about Who's Us as being an underrated and a
lot of people may not have seen it. That's one
of my favorite movies.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, one of my favorite.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Movies of all time. And I think he was amazing
in that.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, and you feel the character is supposed to have had,
you know, an alcoholic background, and he's coming back to
coach this Indiana teen in nineteen fifty one, and with
just very little. He doesn't act too much, doesn't push it.
You feel it in every scene and and you really
feel that the heart and the soul and that performance
thanks to Hackman.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, yeah, that's a great film. Every sports movie has
that moment, especially when somebody's playing the coach where they
have to talk to the team. And when he did
that when they were going to the championship, it is
still one of my favorite speeches. They play that sometimes
at basketball games at halftime. Still one of my favorite
speeches ever in a sports movie. You know what I'm
(09:24):
talking about?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I do? I do? Absolutely, yeah, no, And I think
that that also is one of those films. It's written
by the same guy who did Rudy by the way,
so it's got like scene that an actor would chew
into and kind of really kind of make it on.
So but the way Hackman plays it, he plays it
in sort of a quieter way. It makes sense. It's
a rural Indiana town in nineteen fifty one. He really
shits into it and it's such a great working film
(09:47):
in so many ways. It takes place in autumn, it's
really pretty, and he's just really he's the coach you
always wanted to have. Yeah, absolutely a basketball player, which
I was.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, I want to remind you so was I. I
want to be remind you that you're to be back
tomorrow and remind our listeners more than you. Uh, we'll
be back. He'll be back tomorrow to talk oscars. Look
forward to talking to you then. Thanks Joe Neumeyer, film journalist,
w o R Movie Minute host
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com