Piper Laurie

Her presence onscreen was beauty and magnetism, her experimental performances were mischief and insight. Piper Laurie died at the age of 91 on Saturday. I'd recently watched her in The Faculty, a 1998 Robert Rodriguez movie in which she plays a modest high school teacher who becomes a sinister, vivacious alien. She was brilliant as both.

In the role I know her best for, as Catherine Martell on my favourite TV show, Twin Peaks, she also had the opportunity to play two roles and it can be fairly said she disappeared into one of them.

I can't find any of her best, non-spoilery, scenes from Twin Peaks on YouTube. I'd upload one myself but, with my lousy internet, it would take all day and I wouldn't be able to do anything else online. I'm particularly fond of the bedroom scene between her and Richard Beymer in the second episode. But here she is with Jack Nance, playing her husband, Pete.

He's so weird and twitchy and she's always razor sharp. You get the impression of two kinds of intellect crashing against each other.

Laurie started her career as the beautiful alcoholic girl opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler (1961), a completely different performance. She certainly had range but she was consistently captivating.

Twitter Sonnet #1749

A simple gate can ferry dogs to Hell.
Confusing closets carry guns and hearts.
And something else that rings a silver bell.
The haunted crystals fill the shopping carts.
Of quiet names, the sparrow speaks to cool.
Resulting waves were tamped to placid glass.
For where the keel could cut's a standing pool.
In dreams, parades of pandas duly pass.
A touch of glacier tied the hill to land.
When stealing stones, observe the swaying grass.
As roots entwine the softest bed of sand.
A parcel waits to sate the anxious lass.
The sound of sawing wood's an eerie song.
Chameleon beauties stretch the hours long.

The Game's Break

"Hustlers of the world," William S. Burroughs once wrote, "there is one Mark you cannot beat; the Mark inside." I don't know if the makers of 1961's The Hustler had this quote in mind but it's certainly hard not to think of it when watching the film. Paul Newman and Piper Laurie star as two people on the brink of self-destruction in this surprisingly contemplative and sad film about a pool shark.

"Fast" Eddie (Newman) is a brilliant pool player and a small time hustler who wants to make it into the big time by beating a famous player called Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). He comes close but ultimately he's defeated not by lack of talent but for being a "born loser", at least according to an interested gangster named Bert (George C. Scott).

Now broke and depressed, Eddie stops for breakfast in a bus station where he meets Sarah Packard played by Piper Laurie. She has the air of doom about her, a perpetual grim smile, and a gaze that's steady not from confidence but from hopelessness. But it's kind of the shadow of confidence or pride. She pleads with Eddie not to beg for money in one crucial scene--in an earlier one, she's reluctant to take him in because, she says, he's "too hungry."

The two have an interesting relationship. You can see why she would be both initially repulsed by and ultimately enamoured with Eddie's personality. There's a scene between Eddie and Bert where Bert elaborates on his impression of Eddie's personality. Throughout the rest of the film, the viewer joins Eddie in wondering at its accuracy. Is Eddie playing against himself, are his losses due to something inside him that wants to lose, that sees loss as the only realistic outcome?

If he has a compulsion to lose, he has another compulsion to achieve the high of great play. He describes the feeling of playing to Sarah in one scene, the ecstasy of just somehow knowing how the balls on the table or going to move based on a visceral sense of the table surface, the balls, and the pool cue. You can see why her eyes shine in an unaccustomed way while she watches him talk.

It's a brilliantly shot film with terrific performances, particularly by Newman and Laurie.

The Hustler is available on The Criterion Channel.