The Color of Money

The sequel started with Paul Newman, who telephoned Martin Scorsese in September 1984 to ask whether he would follow up The Hustler. Scorsese finished in 49 days and came in 1.5 million dollars under budget. He worked in and around Chicago in working pool rooms, FitzGerald’s Nightclub among them, rather than built sets; Touchstone took the picture after 20th Century Fox and Columbia passed. Scorsese considered black and white, and says the extreme closeups of Tom Cruise at the table came from the nuns in Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus. Cruise played most of his own shots; the jump over two balls went to the professional Mike Sigel. Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats is absent. Gleason was sent a draft with the character written back in and declined; Fats read to him as an afterthought. At the 59th Academy Awards Newman won on his seventh nomination, for a character he had first played 25 years earlier. The other three nominations, supporting actress, screenplay based on material from another medium and art direction, went nowhere. One of Cruise’s lines travelled further and named the 1993 game Doom. A good fit if you want the table shot in working halls instead of a set. Not for anyone waiting for Minnesota Fats to walk back in; that door was shut on purpose.