I wrote it for an english class.. here goes.

Gian Densing
Danielle Fouquette
English 103
20 February 2007
Bringin’ Billiards Back
In the musical “The Music Man” they play a song called “Ya Got Trouble”. It is about pool. The song is about trying to get pool out of River City because it is a hoodlum’s game. The musical was written in 1957 and pool had a bad reputation. In 1959, Walter Tevis wrote a book called The Hustler, which was then made into a movie in 1961. The movie shows Fast Eddie’s struggle and the hard life of a pool player. The Hustler brought pool out of the gutter.
Pool got a bad reputation during the Great Depression. The Great Depression was caused by the New York Stock Market Crash in 1929 and lasted until 1939. During the Great Depression, people did whatever it took to make money. They sold produce in the street, worked in factories, or hustled for money. The definition of hustle in pool is to misrepresent one's ability in order to deceive someone, especially in gambling. However, in a financial sense it means to sell or get by questionable or aggressive means. Roadies, hustlers who travel from town to town, had to misrepresent their ability in order to get by, even though it was a questionable or aggressive mean. Hustlers were looked down upon because they were con men. Hustlers lied, cheat, and stole during the Great Depression; this caused pool to have a bad reputation. When people are uninformed about something, they tend to fear it. From what people knew about hustlers, they were just con men out to scam people. The movie resolved this problem by showing how hard Fast Eddie’s life was.
The Hustler humanized hustlers. Many people lost money to these hustlers. Their common marks were drunks in bars and pompous pool players. It is no wonder why so many people hated pool. People were being conned out of their money. The movie The Hustler shed some light on the hard life of a roadie. Fast Eddie was not some con man looking for a cheap thrill; he was a hard worker who did what he had to do to get by. When people saw this, they knew that Fast Eddie was just like any other man during the Great Depression. Having to drink all night to stay awake, having his thumbs broken for conning the wrong crowd, having his girlfriend kill herself is the life of a hustler, a real hustler. And people sympathized with his cause, thus earning back the respectability of pool.
The movie brought the respectability of pool back. Having the movie humanizing hustlers, the game was no longer reserved for hoodlums. It also made the drug world less ugly because it was more understood. Granted Fast Eddie did drink and do drugs, but only as performance enhancers. Back in the days of straight pool, a game where 150 or more balls must be pocketed, several games would be played. Because of this demanding sport, drugs and alcohol came into the mix. This is no different from a professional athlete using steroids. Steroids are not legal drugs; for example, fighters such as Nate Quarry, Vitor Belfort, and Josh Barnett of the Ultimate and Pride Fighting Championships have used steroids resulting in suspension from their organizations. When the standard of performance is so high, athletes need any advantage they can get. The fighter that is marginally better in one aspect of the game usually comes out victorious. The same concept can be applied in pool. Once the image of the dirty hustler conning people for his next drug fix was shattered, pool was on its way back to respectability.
Since The Hustler saved pool’s reputation, it made the game mainstream. Pool was no longer a hustler’s game anyone can play. Dean, owner of Scratch a pool hall in La Mirada, said that, “The movie opened up people’s eyes to pool. It made people want to play more pool.” Dean has seen The Hustler and has seen these things firsthand. Scratch is very busy on the weekends. Sometimes I get kicked out because people are waiting in line to play. Since the coverage pool got in the movie, people realized that it was a very fun game. Recreational players even started playing for money. “No bar, no pinball machines, no bowling alleys, just pool… nothing else. This is Ames, mister.” There are even cafes, arcades, even clubs with pool tables. Nowadays pool is on television, on the corner pool hall, as well as in bars. The game of pool has seen its ups and downs. As Fast Eddie said, “Just had to show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it's great, when it's really great. You know, like anything can be great, anything can be great. I don't care; bricklaying can be great, if a guy knows, if he knows what he's doing and why, and if he can make it come off.”











Marrapese, Nancy L. "Pool Rooms No Longer a Haven for Hustlers." The Boston
Globe 9 Nov. 1987, Third ed. 15 Feb. 2007
.

It is excellent, I grade it with an E.

It is historically correct as well. Do put it up on the main page please as not every one ventures back here much.

The problem was the majority of people who watched the Hustler and sadly the color of money saw fast eddy as cool and a hero. They missed the point he was a POS scum bum on the con. He hustled, used, abused and dumped every one who tried to help him, charlies burns, piper laurie, burt, vincent, the works.

You see the same thing in the Saprono's and in gangster movies. They are not heros, they are killers and low life criminals.

Depending on what kind of class you are submitting this to, you may have a great deal of work to do. This makes for a nice rough draft, but the majority of the work is in the reviewing stages; not the initial writing.

I do not mean to be harsh, but I have only read a little past the first paragraph. It doesn't flow. The sentences need to link to each other with the words that you choose, and the topic needs to be moving in one clear direction.

Here is an example:

In the musical “The Music Man” they play a song called “Ya Got Trouble”. The song is about trying to get pool out of River City because it has a bad reputation. A musical was written about this so-called "hoodlum’s game" in 1957. In 1959, etc....

What you want to look for are the words that link the sentences together. The end of the first sentence mentions a song, and the second sentence starts out with "The song", to tie SONG to SONG. The second sentence is then linked to the third a little differently, etc.. This creates a nice flow for the reader, and lets the direction of your writing stand out. The reader can then see the big picture.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

Any help one puts up with the proper attitude should be accepted and studied, even if some parts brush you wrong. This is how we learn, from constructive criticism.