TCM tonight:
11:45 PM -- Cool Hand Luke (1967)
2h 9m | Drama | TV-14
A free-spirited convict refuses to conform to chain-gang life.
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Cast: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J. D. Cannon
Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- George Kennedy
Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Paul Newman, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson, and Best Music, Original Music Score -- Lalo Schifrin
The line "What we've got here is failure to communicate" was voted as the number eleven movie quote by the American Film Institute. When Frank Pierson wrote that dialogue to be delivered by an uneducated, redneck prison guard, he worried that people wouldn't find it authentic. So he wrote a biography of the guard, explaining that in order to advance to a higher grade in the system, he had been required to take criminology courses, thus exposing him to the kind of academic vocabulary that would justify him using the "communicate" phrase. But as it turned out, no one questioned the line, nor needed to read the fictional account.
