After decades in the spotlight, the actor swapped the scripts in the late 1990s for the white pages. In front of his writing, he will live in a modest and silent world that he would have liked to discover earlier.
Gene Hackman will have found in writing a form of absolute freedom. The American actor with prolific career, found dead with his wife and dog at his home on Wednesday, February 26, devoted the last years of his career to writing. Finding in literature, a way of giving life to characters that he has never been able to interpret in front of the camera.
In 2004, when he turned his back to Hollywood, Gene Hackman did not aspire to a peaceful retirement, however well deserved. Far from the spotlights and the tumult of the cinema industry, he swapped the scripts for the white pages. His first novel, Wake of the Perdido Starpublished in 1999, already announced this natural transition. In this novel co -written with the archaeologist of the seabed Daniel Lenihan, he tells the story of Jack O’Reilly, a 17 -year -old who, after having fled Cuba with his parents, embarks on board the Perdido Star, a ship en route for a new life. But the trip turns to the nightmare when the boat is attacked by pirates. Jack finds himself taken in a gear of violence, betrayal and survival on the high seas.
Wake of the Perdido Star is not marked by success but it symbolizes the beginning of a sincere friendship between its two authors. In 2004, they published their second novel, Justice for nonewhich narrates the story of a young farmer wrongly accused of murder in rural America in the early 1930s. The book is mainly used to give the opinions of the authors on a corrupt judicial system, class inequalities and the treatment of military veterans in America.
“I would only have liked to start earlier. »»
Gene Hackman about writing.
Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan share a real passion for the adventure accounts of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway. After shooting in more than 70 films, the actor would he have found more satisfaction in writing: “I only would have liked to start earlier”he declared to the magazine Indy Week In 2008. That same year, their third novel, Escape from Andersonville, Book the account of an army of the army of the Union who escapes from the hell of the civil war prison. One thing is a safe, its reception is much more discreet than its films. “I try not to read criticism”he said. “Hackman and Lenihan are not exactly prose stylists, but for the most part, their descriptions and their dialogues are lively, unpretentious and convincing”estimates him Chicago Tribune in an article published in July 2008.
At the age of 80, the famous tough man has nothing to prove and leaves behind the desire to please. In 2011, he published Payback at Morning Peak, His first solo novel with Western areas in New Mexico at the end of the 19th centurye century. His latest book Pursuiton a Missouri policewoman on a mission to resolve an unresolved serial killer case, concludes his literary career very soberly. One last page of the creative imagination of Gene Hackman. All of his work, on the other hand, has not finished telling his story in the 7the art.