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 One day, I found myself downing a pint or two with the esteemed Mr braingunk himself, when we started talking about who was a proper “man’s man” and why.
Now, I suspect that because we’re both ‘of a certain age’ our idea of what that constitutes compared to other people’s idea might be on slightly different buses. But our criteria were as follows:
- He has charisma overload
- You wouldn’t want to fight him
- He's not a twat
- He is über cool
Thus we have a very limited subset of the human race. As an example, Vinnie Jones is dead hard. I wouldn’t want to annoy him. He is also pretty charismatic onscreen. He’s probably cool if you like football. But he can be a bit of a twat. Another example is Ferris Bueller, I mean Matthew Broderick. He’s ultra cool, he’s completely excellent (he’s Ferris FFS) but really, in a fight? He’s not a man’s man. Ooh no.
We both agreed who the number one Man's Man's Man is (and there could be no other) but we’ll keep him for another day. We both threw many different names into the pot but each one was usually countered by ‘twat’ or ‘crap in a fight’ or ‘totally not cool’. Yup, we were doing some pretty deep scientific analysis here.
What about the inaugural Man's Man's Man, Harvey Keitel… Let’s go through the requirements then.
1. Has Charisma Overload? Oh yes. The dead giveaway here is that you can’t just say ‘Harvey Keitel’ when you’re talking about him. It’s obligatory that someone adds ‘Fuck yeah!’.
2. Would not want to fight him? Considering he’s just 5’ 7.5” (that’s 1.72 meters for those youngsters or French out there) AND 70 years old, he’s still hard as nails. I wouldn’t want to even remotely annoy him. If he doesn’t just deck you with one swift punch, he’d probably grind your face into the remains of the broken bottle he just hit you with, then light a cigarette off your still twitching corpse, grunt then get back to his meal.
3. He is not a twat? He never, ever does anything that makes you think ‘what a twat’. He doesn’t have to try to keep up an image or to fake being cool. He just is. He’s never even had a patch in his life where he veered towards being a bit of a twonk. Nope. Never.
4. He is über cool? Totally. He even has a sense of humour (Many skits on Saturday Night Live) , but you’d not really want to point that out to him (see point 2). Yes, he usually plays super tough guys but he only dishes out the ultra violence when it’s deserved. Usually.
So, Harvey (I would never call him Harv, he deserves the name in full, every time) ticks all the boxes. He is a proper man’s man. That’s in the 1970’s definition, I don’t mean he bats for the other team. Heck, Harvey probably never beds less than 3 women at a time.
You’d think such a Hollywood Legend might not have time for the little people but again, Harvey is the man. Witness the story on IMDB from someone who caught him wandering outside at the Bad Lieutenant premier. He had a nice chat with him and at the end told Harvey he had no ticket but would love to see the film. What does Harvey do? Takes him right on into the theatre with him to see it. Can you imagine how cool that would be? ‘Yeah, I’m with Harvey, OK?’
What I can’t comment on is how the ladies see him, but from the braingunk point of view, he’s the kind of guy we look up to (well, down slightly if we’re being literal). He has heart, he gets the job done, he has time for people, he’s handy in a fight and despite being 70, he still looks and acts as cool as a glacier.
Ladies and Gentlemen, braingunk's first Man's Man's Man :
Mr Harvey Keitel.
Notable Performances:
More Info:
IMDB Profile
Wikipedia Page
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