“Racked up”

FADE IN: INTERIOR OF A NAMELESS POOL HALL
It’s the middle of the work day. From table to table, low-lifes and hopeful sharks and hustlers sniff around for a whiff of fresh blood. It’s a slow hunt. The harsh white tones of an old fluorescent light twitch across the faded green of a pool table, while an unidentified woman in the unfocused foreground collects the balls into a triangle rack, quickly and deliberately. The cigarette smoke is so thick it makes everything seem almost black and white. The figure, chalking up her cue, comes into sudden focus as the camera jumps to a close-up of her face. She looks to be in her early-to-mid 40s and a bit like an actress whose name the world has forgotten. She looks slight, maybe 90 pounds, but she walks around like someone with a lot of weight on her shoulders. The movie The Hustler plays on television above the bar.

NARRATOR (OFF SCREEN)
Pool is a game of quiet, intense focus. A noble science. A force acting on a ball … simple Newtonian physics. The game is practically a love letter to geometry. Chalk up the cue, take a shot and listen to the clatter of balls as they break and drop into the pockets, rolling down the gutters. It’s a game of control.

ROSE
Smiles with neutrality, if anything with half-pain. She is Bonny Sue Rose, a 20-year resident of Reno and a southpaw shooter whose life has revolved around the game. Pool is a game of definitude and certainty. Her life has lacked much of either.

We can all miss. No matter how perfectly a shot is lined up. No matter how textbook the technique. We can all miss, and the strangest part, is that sometimes we do.

NARRATOR (OFF SCREEN)
Unlike its bastard cousin, poker, pool has yet to rise from the smoky, badly lit backrooms and clean off its seedy reputation. Time was when TV writers needed to instantly establish a character’s blue-collar credibility or couldn’t think of any other way to get such a diverse assemblage of dirtbags in one room, they would just call it a poker night. But now, poker has become sexy. It’s been sanitized by ESPN’s World Series of Poker and Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Showdown. And chastened, by of all places, young Hollywood … “Matthew Perry holds middle pair and awaits the river.”

CUT TO: THE FACES IN THE POOL HALL
Each pool player’s face registers a different degree of uncertainty. Their smiles and intentions are locked-down, hidden behind their pool cues.

NARRATOR (OFF SCREEN)
Perhaps the most famous movie about pool is 1961’s The Hustler, with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. Newman plays “Fast Eddie,” a small-time hustler who ends up challenging the legendary Minnesota Fats (Gleason) to a game of heavyweight pool that would forever shape the course of his life.

ROSE
There was a time when hustling was the only real way to make any money playing pool. Back in the days when there were no tournaments to win and little more than trophies given to the winners. Sharks turned to hustling to make their rent. If you’re a good pool player, you don’t have to hustle. That’s the simple truth. I’ve never hustled. I would never throw a game.

She breaks the rack with a hard cue shot. The balls scatter with a clink like the sound of heavy marbles. She pockets the dark blue two ball in the corner and begins to sight-up her next shot.

Nice tables, good cue sticks and good lighting. That’s what you look for in a place. You can usually tell immediately how good a place will be by how many barflies are in there. Most places might have good sticks or good lighting but rarely good everything.

She looks around, eyeing the door as though somebody she doesn’t want to see might come inside the joint. Her eyes find a flashy kid with a lot of chains around his neck. He’s wearing sunglasses on the bill of his ball cap.

ROSE
The guy who looks like the best player in a pool hall … he almost never is.

CUT TO: THE HUSTLER
Eddie’s love interest SARAH is trying to talk some sense into him.

SARAH
Doesn’t all of this come through to you, Eddie? Doesn’t any of this mean anything to you? That man, this place, the people. They wear masks, Eddie, and underneath the masks, they’re perverted, twisted, crippled.

DISSOLVE

NARRATOR (OFF SCREEN)
Pool is a game of skill played on slates covered with green baize or, on professional tables, 100 percent worsted wool. The length of tables can vary from seven to 10 feet. In a game of eight ball, the variables are pretty well-defined: 15 numbered balls and one white cue ball, six pockets and a rubberized rail. How a player addresses the cue ball is far more important than the power that’s put into a shot. Good pool is all about working the percentages. It’s a dirty math that’s reputation lies somewhere above three-card monte and below church bingo. On par with bikini bull-riding, maybe. Classic pool-hall lore has stories of billiard prodigies, too short to see over the table, standing on apple crates to connect their shots.

At a far table, a kid makes an obvious fuck-up and sends the ball flying off the table toward Rose. He’s dogging it and trying to get somebody’s attention.

ROSE
When I was young, I remember seeing a sign promising that anyone could make $20,000 if they could run seven complete racks in a row. I took it as a challenge. I wanted to win it so bad. I wanted to pay off my mom’s house for her. So I practiced three to four hours a day. But it’s expensive. For a while, I was spending $350 a month to practice. When I didn’t have any more money, I’d find a pizza parlor with a table. With one quarter I could play for hours, beating challengers and controlling the table. Sometimes we played in pubs. But I wasn’t 21-years-old yet, so I carried my older sister’s ID with me just in case. If anyone asked, my name was “Patty.”

ROSE chalks up her cue and eagerly banks the yellow nine ball off the far corner and sends it in.

I got involved with a league and joined a team of women. They were a bunch of lesbians, actually. I’ve got nothing against lesbians if that’s the way you want to go. I don’t judge people. I told the lesbians my name was Patty, to match my ID. They made me team captain. We did good, but all of my trophies came back with the name Patty.

NARRATOR (OFF SCREEN)
There’s some argument about the origins of pool. Some say it began in the middle ages as an outdoor game played with rocks and stones. The stones were knocked around with a wooden club, more like modern croquet than what we think of as the modern game of pool. The green baize covering the table is supposed to represent the grass on which the game was originally played. The game eventually evolved to have holes in the sides and rubber bumpers to keep the balls on the table.

ROSE
Starts to shoot then pulls up. Something is bothering her. Distracting her game.

It started when I was really little. These memory gaps. I can’t fill them in. Shit has always happened way too fast. My mom was a drinker. Vodka was her drink. She was always half on the couch, half off. I don’t know who my father is. I don’t even know who my real family is, besides my older sister. She knows, but she won’t tell me. Maybe it’s got something to do with money. I don’t know. My other sister was killed by a drunk driver in 1979. Her daughter, Michelle, was killed with her. It’s always something. I’ve got a half-sister up in Oregon. She’s obese and religious.

Rose chuckles and then goes silent as though to check if anybody else is listening to her talk. It’s quiet with the occasional smack of pool balls. She lines up and slams the blue 10 into the red 11 on the rail. They form a train and both roll in. The cue ball rolls out like a jet fighter pulling up after an attack.

Sometimes I think I want to write a book about my life just so I can maybe understand it. What does all of this mean? I was just a little girl. Something was going on. I wasn’t fucking normal. Wasn’t somebody noticing? I’m only telling some of the story here.

CUT TO: THE HUSTLER

FAST EDDIE
It’s not enough that ya just have talent. You gotta have character, too. Four ball. Yeah, I sure got character now. I picked it up in a hotel room in Louisville.

FATS
(Impatiently) Shoot pool, Fast Eddie.

DISSOLVE

NARRATOR (OFF SCREEN)
Pool balls used to be made of ivory, until dealing in the substance became illegal. Now, balls are made of a synthetic ivory-like substance. For a while, celluloid was tried, but the balls tended to explode.

ROSE quickly deposits a green and a red ball in one shot. Then she nudges in a maroon seven ball. She’s impatient. She wants to play better, but something is blocking her game.

CUT TO: THE HUSTLER