Jack McCain (Pierluigi Apra): Something wrong?
Hank McCain (Cassavetes): Who are those two slobs out there?
Jack McCain: Cuda and Barclay.
Hank McCain (raises eyebrows): Cuda and Barcley.
Jack McCain (defensively): They’re good!
Hank McCain: They’re bums. They’re punks. They’re fags. They’re fringe nothings. Now whose idea was this?
Jack McCain: It was mine.
Hank McCain: It’s good.
Jack McCain:Thank you.
Hank McCain (suddenly agitated): Whaddya do? Sell women? Sell marijuana? Whaddya do? Where’d you get the $25,000? (pause) I wouldn’t give you 25 cents! Whaddya do, you go out and you hustle yourself all over the street? Small time. No DIGNITY! (pause) You don’t beg!
Jack McCain: That’s why Hank. I need this chance. I got tired of being small change.
Hank McCain (leaning over, patting Jack on the chest): You’re gonna be small change all your life.
—Machine Gun McCain (Gli intoccabili), 1969, directed by Giuliano Montaldo. Now a fabulous Blu-ray disc from Blue Underground. Most of the career advice I give to younger film critics—those I deign to talk to, that is—sounds rather like this, FYI.
No man ever was or ever will be like the man called Hank McCain.
(sorry, couldn’t help it)
Hopefully the recipients of your advice take it more to heart than hapless Jack.
Saw this a few weeks ago and quite enjoyed it. Eklund is, against stiff competition, the most disquietingly submissive girlfriend in Italian gangster movies. But I chalk it up as a sign of the times, pat myself on the back for the little nagging voice of outrage (and for not letting it interfere with my enjoyment), then get knocked off my pegs by Rowlands’s third-act arrival, and her effortless distillation of my concerns in a sardonic glance and a weary smile at her former love. Nice to be reminded (seriously) how many movies, from all levels of respectability, outsmart me.
I’ve always taken Irish Soul Brother Number One Glenn Kenny’s advice to heart.
With this and Johnny Staccato recently released, can we continue this John Cassavetes trend and finally make Love Streams available?