Last year I embarked upon what was intended to be a small video project that highlighted some of the films that Gene Hackman had starred in. This video ended up getting bigger and bigger, and I began to add things to it (the Trivia, for instance). Originally this was done using a slideshow template on Canva, with text (yes, text!) predominantly filling in the information about the films and Gene’s performance in them. But I was never satisfied with this. I mean, text on screen isn’t a good way (it’s no way!) to tell a story. So I bit the bullet and decided to use a voiceover – my own voiceover! I’m not an actor and not great at recitals or reading out loud. Ideally I would have gotten an actor to do it, but money was tight, and so I stuck with using my own voiceover. One thing I know for certain is that I’m defintely not getting work as a voice actor after this, that’s for sure!

My idea for doing this video comes off the back of people not knowing much about the greatness of Scarecrow and its existence, as well as my love for Hackman’s brillance as an actor (there was never a bad performance in any of his movies, even if some of the films he starred in weren’t critical or financial successes). It was also my intention to to do more videos like this – for Frame by Frame to be a series of videos on other actors. I’d like to do more, but I’ve got other projects to work on in the meantime. And the copyright issues (of the films I use) are problematic as well. I hope you enjoy this video anyway. I intend to upload a higher-quality (and less compressed version than the one below) to Vimeo at some point. Please leave me some comments on what you thought of it anyway!

Ever since seeing The French Connection and The Poseidon Adventure I fell in love with Gene’s acting style and presence on screen. About ten years ago I managed to watch Scarecrow (1971) for the first time. It’s now one of my favourite films of all time. It was one of those films that I had intended to see sooner (than later) after I had read Al Pacino’s biography, back in the 1990s. In the biography (A Life on the Wire, by Andrew Yule) it tells of how Al and Gene never really got on (off-screen), and that always intrigued me. Back then I was way more into the films of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro (and Jack Nicholson as well), so Gene was never really on my radar as an actor to study and watch, which is probably one of the reasons I left it so long to actually see Scarecrow. But in the last ten years I’ve come to appreciate Hackman’s performances a lot more. Partly because I never watched as many of his films as the latter actors I’ve just mentioned, so catching up with his work has been a treat in many ways.

This article was first published in January 2024.