HARDCASES

My pops loved tough guys: Muni, Bogart, Mitchum, Bronson, Caan, Eastwood, McQueen, and Connery, just to name a few. Men whose faces were history maps of hard living and hard lovin'. Stoic men who could say it all with a searing glare and a smooth swagger. Actors you believed kicked ass on screen, and off (many did) as well. Hard cases who could pimp slap a thug and say, "You're gonna take it and your gonna like it." Stars who appeared as comfortable brandishing a gun as bedding a broad. They were larger than life. Just like the characters they played. McQueen did his own dangerous stunts. Mitchum was known for plenty of public brawls after becoming a movie star. Caan counted among his friends many a made guy.

I was raised on these iconic movie tough guys, and easily understood why Pop found them to be kindred spirits. If you saw Francisco "Paco" Rodriguez, you'd think so what? He's a short guy with a pot belly. But he was as tough as the hardboiled heroes he so admired. He feared nothing. When a thug waved a loaded gun in my father's face, he didn't even flinch when he snatched it away from him. I heard my grandpa was no joke either. A bit of a gangster and a ruthless disciplinarian. My uncle carried a gun. My skinny brother Gil was so tough, he'd be playing stickball in the street, get hit by a car, dust himself off and get back to the game. So I understood what tough guys were all about. In the movies and real life. Didn't matter if they were short or tall, slim or fat: it was about presence. Confidence. Fearlessness. They commanded respect. Had lived, fought and loved, and regretted nothing. Said what was on their mind and didn't take shit from nobody. Minds as quick as their fists. These actor's my father loved embodied the hard cases they portrayed on screen.

Let's see...Now...It's '06...And we have Tom Cruise! Matt Damon! Ben Aflleck! Orlando Bloom! Dudes, who if you put them in a dress, could easily pass for a chick and wouldn't need any make- up. I believed Matt Damon as the world's deadliest secret agent, as much as I believe President Bush actually reads intelligence reports and understands them. The toughest thing Tom Cruise ever did was berate Brooke Shields and scowl at Matt Laurer.

Too much androgeny goin' in Hollywood. Actresses and actors are virtually physically interchangeable. In the movies, like the rest of America, bland is the word. Wallmart rules. Times Square is a shopping mall. Hollywood stars are as exotic as a vanilla milkshake. I have nightmares that Ben Affleck will soon star in the remake of The Big Sleep. I hope that this trend will change one day. That filmmakers and casting directors and studios will stop passing off marshmallow soft pretty boys as hard cases. In the meantime, I'll fire up the DVD player and lose myself in movies like Thief, in which James Caan, says, "I am the last guy in the world you wanna fuck with."

And when Jimmy says a line like that, you believe it.