Cool Hand Luke
Overview
Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg
Stuart Rosenberg
Stuart Rosenberg was an American film and television director whose notable works included the movies Cool Hand Luke , Voyage of the Damned , The Amityville Horror , and The Pope of Greenwich Village .-Early life and career:Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, Rosenberg studied Irish...

 and starring Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...

. The screenplay was adapted by Donn Pearce
Donn Pearce
Donn Pearce is an American author best known for the novel and screen play Cool Hand Luke.Born Donald Mills Pearce in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pearce left home at 15. He attempted to join the United States Merchant Marine at 16, but was turned away due to his age. He lied about his age,...

 and Frank Pierson from Pearce's 1965 novel of the same name
Cool Hand Luke (novel)
Cool Hand Luke is a novel by Donn Pearce published in 1965. It was adapted into a film of the same name. The story is told in first-person narrative and is unusual in that although there is dialogue, all words are indented paragraphs and are not encased in quotes as in normal English-language...

. The film features George Kennedy, Strother Martin
Strother Martin
Strother Martin was an American actor in numerous films and television programs. Martin is perhaps best known as the prison "captain" in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, where he uttered the line, "What we've got here is...failure to communicate."-Early life:Strother Martin Jr. was born in Kokomo,...

, J.D. Cannon and Morgan Woodward
Morgan Woodward
Morgan Woodward is an American actor.He is probably best known for his recurring role in Dallas as Marvin "Punk" Anderson...

.

Newman stars in the title role as Luke, a prisoner in a Florida prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

 camp who refuses to submit to the system. In 2005, the United States Library of Congress deemed Cool Hand Luke to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...

.
Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...

) is arrested for cutting the heads off a town's parking meter
Parking meter
A parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. Parking meters can be used by municipalities as a tool for enforcing their integrated on-street parking policy, usually related to their traffic and...

s one drunken night in the late 1940s.
Quotations

Oh come on. Stop beatin' it. Get out there yourself. Stop feedin' off me. Get out of here. I can't breathe. Give me some air.

When it comes to the law, nothin' is understood...I'm his official egg-peeler. That's the law!

You gonna fit in real good, of course, unless you get rabbit in your blood and you decide to take off for home. You give the bonus system time and a set of leg chains to keep you slowed down just a little bit, for your own good, you'll learn the rules. Now, it's all up to you. Now I can be a good guy, or I can be one real mean son-of-a-bitch. It's all up to you.

The man...and the motion picture that simply do not conform.

On The Chain-Gang They'd Seen Every Kind Of Man - But Luke Became A Legend

"What we've got here...is failure to communicate."

He was a cool customer. . .until the law made it hot for him!

 
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