Gene Hackman has died(nytimes.com) |
Gene Hackman has died(nytimes.com) |
https://www.theringer.com/2024/05/21/movies/greatest-movie-c...
from https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/entertainment/gene-hackman-rev...
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was actually a stress test that I took in New York,” Hackman told Empire in a 2009 interview.
“The doctor advised me that my heart wasn’t in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress,” he added.
He maintained his love for acting and missed it but the business had become too stressful for him.>He maintained his love for acting and missed it but the business had become too stressful for him.
Sounds like modern dev work.
Software development consistently ranks among the least stressful jobs you can get and it's really out of touch to compare this profession to genuinely stressful jobs.
Looking over surveys of most stressful jobs, it looks like the common theme are those that deal directly with people like customer service, sales, nursing/health care, or working in physically demanding environments like cook, construction, fire fighter.
Software development is an incredibly stress-free job in the overwhelming majority of circumstances.
Heres mine:
--= The Conversation (1979) =--
"Schizo surveillance guy gets a contract that starts to derail things" is the basic premise, but there is more going on - "it has layers".
Francis Ford Coppola filmed this in between Godfather I & II. I believe it is less famous only because the target audience is smaller, not due to its quality.
The editing is perfect, the pacing just right and the acting mostly top notch. Gene Hackman absolutely nails it.
I found the whole thing to be mesmerising and gripping until the very end. Underrated masterpiece.
May he rest in peace.
It was weird to see recent pictures of him. I guess our memory of a retired actor is often skewed since we constantly see them at a younger age in their movies, but rarely (or never) in a recent context. And considering his impact in cinema history, it didn't feel like he'd left the industry at all.
I hope he went away without pain. R.I.P.
I checked my phone out of curiosity, and Gene Hackman was at the top of Google News.
Carbon Monoxide, possibly?
Shame. I had no idea the guy was that old.
I even thought man he's really old now, but this seems to be a tragedy. What a shame.
Never realized until today, reading his bio that he is a former marine.
Semper Fi. Rest in peace Marine!
Kind of surprising. Might have to check that out.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/gene-hackman-wife-found...
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000432/
Related:
Gene Hackman has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43194778
Sheriff: Gene Hackman, wife found dead in Santa Fe home; no foul play suspected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43194324
Gene Hackman and his wife found dead at their home - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43192605
https://www.atptour.com/en/players/vitas-gerulaitis/g008/bio
https://www.hellomagazine.com/homes/816924/inside-gene-hackm...
Santa Fe weather seems to be daytime high around 10C, nighttime low around 0C, maybe a few degrees below 0C these days.
TFA states they lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Apologies for impolite formating.
https://www.target.com/p/first-alert-2pk-co400cn2-battery-po...
This is a 2 pack. There are better ones, too. If you don't have one already, don't wait another day. Hundreds of people die preventable deaths each year in the US because of this.
One of the few that can is Denzel, of course…
He was perfect as the sherif. One of those morally ambiguous characters, that you warm to but know is really a bad guy (much like the Clint Eastwood's lead character).
(...to be honest it's a tough call between Popeye Doyle or Royal Tenenbaum too).
Won't a favorite, but I recently watched Enemy of the State again, and was surprised by how much it held up over time, 27 or 28 years laster.
It's not very well known or particularly well reviewed. It just clicked with me, I've watched it probably a dozen times. It's about a jewel heist and the drama surrounding it
"Everybody needs money. That's why they call it MONEY!"
"Asshole dad reconciles with his estranged children."
Probably my favourite Wes Anderson film with an extremely talented cast. Gene Hackman does a great job of playing a well-meaning buy very flawed father figure.
I've heard he was just wretched to deal with on set and didn't really connect with the movie (at least at the time) — but wow what a performance regardless. That movie isn't what it is without him. You could say that for many of his films.
Didn't watch that one, seems interesting so I will check it out, thanks.
Enemy of the State is right up there too.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned "The Birdcage" yet. Fantastic ensemble cast, and Hackman plays his part to perfection.
"Heist" and "Royal Tenenbaums" would finish out my list.
Best read after seeing it: https://filmschoolrejects.com/night-moves-neo-noir/
But it's up against some great competition in this debate.
I don't know why but that makes me laugh every time. (And I agree w/ The Conversation being underrated)
The film’s only reason to exist is to put Hackman and Morgan Freeman in a room together sparring for 90 minutes. That’s more than good enough.
Enemy of the State
The Academy Award-winning actor was found on the floor in the mud room, according to the search warrant. It appeared he fell suddenly, and he and his wife "showed obvious signs of death," the document said.
Arakawa was found lying on her side on the floor in a bathroom, with a space heater near her body, according to the search warrant.
Her body showed signs of decomposition, the document said. There was mummification to her hands and feet, the document said.
A German shepherd was found dead about 10 to 15 feet from Arakawa, the document said.
But two other dogs were found alive. One healthy dog was near Arakawa and the other was located outside, according to the search warrant.
The Santa Fe City Fire Department found no signs of a possible carbon monoxide leak or poisoning, the document said. If there was carbon monoxide at the scene, it could have vented out of the home through the open front door before responders arrived.
New Mexico Gas Company also responded and "as of now, there are no signs or evidence indicating there were any problems associated to the pipes in and around the residence," the document said.The evidence doesn't show any foul play but the probabilities and unlikelihoods do.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/feb/27/gene-hackman-ca...
The nice part of having them hardwired is that the house is now like an office/other building: if one trips, they all trip, so the whole house is alerted. The newer ones have far fewer false alarms, too (pizza in the oven I am looking at you...).
Time to visit the hardware store
However I don't believe that one person being found dead near an open door is evidence of no gases. I would take it as the opposite. Something happens, one of them almost makes it out but either blacks out at the open door before getting fresh air or, like in the CO case, once exposed the damage is done.
That said, the bigger curiosity is one dead dog and two small, live ones. If you have people poisoned by food, and one animal with food anxiety, that's a recipe for one dead dog and multiple dead people and other household animals wondering what the hell just happened. If you have people and animals poisoned by a gas... Unless it was lighter than air it should have affected the small dogs as well, unless they were napping somewhere outside of the immediate danger.
(The GSD could also have died from eating the prescription pills on the ground and it's only a coincidental death rather than common cause)
Check on your parents' smoke and CO detectors next time you visit!
I'd be willing to bet the NEC says "must be able to perform without mains power" for any hard wired setup.
By all means put one in your house but I think it’s a racket to have all four detectors in your house also be carbon monoxide monitors when you can just put a battery unit at the far end of the house from the combined one.
Tragic situation all around, but I'm not ready to use a probability based argument to insist on foul play.
From https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/202...
Hackman and Arakawa were found in separate rooms. The actor was found in a mudroom near his cane, appearing to have fallen, while his wife was found in an open bathroom near a space heater, with an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on the nearby countertop, according to the warrant
But it’s unlikely for so many things to converge like this.
I've worked a number of different jobs. Software development isn't the most stressful job, but it can be very stressful.
I'm not bitter, you're bitter! :)
The difference between relatively difficult programming and a lot of jobs is that a lot of jobs have a pretty steady level of stress, whereas the programming stress level can vary incredibly.
Most professions have a much higher risk of physical violence, for instance.
You could offer me double my current tech job salary and I still don't think I'd go back to my old retail service job.
People were shitty when I did it 20 years ago, and they've only gotten shittier today.
I've done 48 hr on-call work days, and a decade back my average sleep hours were like 3 - 4 hrs/day. Needless to say, even the best case sleeping hours are/were 5-6 hrs even till date. Writing code gets as stressful, as it gets.
But I guess you are talking more on the lines of most other professions putting same effort but not getting paid anywhere near we do.
That's a different problem and has a lot more to do with overall life directions, where you started and where you are going than something to do specifically with Software development.
laughs from a bootstrapped startup
I was the second developer at a startup, got a nice bundle of stock options that kept me highly motivated for 12 years but were ultimately worthless when the company sold
I'd take earning a million dollars for 3 months of work and then taking the rest of the year off over what I have to put up with. Constant 24/7 unpaid support, having to work long hours because the company decided to do layoffs, having to work long hours because someone in sales promised the world for his commission that I don't see a dime of. Having to fix work of bad hires because said hire was related to the boss. Dealing with very strict government regulations that change every few years. Having to implement an absolutely horrible idea in a dead language because some boss had a bright idea. Dealing with hacker-kiddies constantly trying to compromise the system. Having to constantly learn the latest fad abstraction, on my own dime and time, that will only be relevant for a few years. Have to fix massive data issues because some executive decided to read the first chapter in a SQL book run a query in production? Having to deal with unrealistic deadlines and half ass specs. Having to deal with whatever scrum implementation some nitwit who took one online course came up with. Getting a couple weeks or three off every year, including sick days, and having to practically beg for it, and still getting calls anyway. Talk about being out of touch. What exactly do you think programmers do all day, write "Hello World," in every language ever invented?
Do you think Gene Hackman ever had to sit in a one-on-one meeting with is boss where the boss asked him to rank himself on various things, from 1-5? Getdafuqouttahere.
there are times it's great. there are times it's awful. and there are times i'm prepared to starve rather than continue working for ____
no one in my extended family went into this industry and none of them deals with the endless stress that i do
i envy those who can't relate
Most devs already came from enough privilege to afford never having to do truly painful jobs, so they are a pampered whiney bunch. At lunch today I sneakily surveyed 13 20-something devs (all white, all male). Every single one went to college and didn't need a part-time job to pay for it. I've been at this for 30 years, and sure that was a pretty biased sample: there are plenty of Indian, Thai, Chinese women devs that I've worked with, but most everyone from overseas is already of a higher-caste.
I'd love to see your typical dev do even mildly physical labor 40 hours a week for a little over minimum wage. Lol.
Here, there's plenty of possible explanations for why their deaths would be correlated. Especially the dog. If you lock a dog in a place for two weeks, it inevitable that it will be either dead or in serious medical distress when you come back. The one follows logically and tragically from the other. It doesn't change anything about the probability of the initiating event.
If somebody driving a car has a heart attack, and the car crashes into a tree also killing the passenger, you don't say: "what are the chances that Person A would have a heart attack at the exact same time that the Person B was in car accident? That's such an unlikely coincidence. There must be something else going on here."
Analyzing all events as statistically independent, even in situations where they clearly aren't is the opposite of "actuality knowing reality and knowing how reality works". On the contrary, it's one of the most common ways for a statistical analysis to go wrong.
The dog dying could be explained but from what I know dogs end up eating the owners.
Either way there isn’t any evidence for correlation only made up stories.