The time the sequel to the Hustler was about Pac-man

Martin Scorsese was wired. It was 4am but there was no way he was going to sleep.

“It was one of the most profound moments of my life,” he said in a 1990 Wogan interview.

“I’d been to a party at Shirley MacLaine’s house. It had been a great night but I needed to leave at 11pm, I was making Raging Bull at the time and had to get up early to film Bobby DeNiro being really angry.”

However, as he was leaving, he caught sight of a bright screen in another room.

“I asked Shirley what it was and she just smiled and said I was going to love it.”

It was a Pac-man arcade game, and for the next five hours Martin Scorsese was entranced.

“I’d never seen anything like it. This guy. This yellow guy. He’s eating the fruit. The ghosts want to stop him eating the fruit. It had everything – drama, tragedy, conflict, fruit.”

He knew immediately how he could include it in his next intensely cinematic yet true-to-life picture.

“Paul Newman and I had been kicking around a sequel to The Hustler, but we could never agree how to bring Fast Eddie back.

“I thought he should be a hot air balloonist who tries to hustle other hot air balloonists, whereas Paul thought he should be a hustler in the glamorous world of show-jumping.

“This settled it. Fast Eddie would return as a pro Pac-man player”

With Paul Newman on board and enthusiastic, a story was developed – Fast Eddie, seeing the popularity of Pac-man, decides to become really good at Pac-man and win money by betting on how good he is. Also a woman commits suicide.

“It was a simple story, but that’s all we needed.”

The film, now with the official title Pac-Hustler, was slated to follow Scorsese’s classic King Of Comedy.

However, it wasn’t to be.

“We came close, we really did. We had a set built of an old divey bar with a Pac-man machine in it. Paul did some training and was a great Pac-man player. I mean, great. One of the best.”

Pac-Hustler was abandoned on the first day if shooting.

“Paul just walked onto set and said ‘Marty,’ we were close. ‘Marty,’ he said, ‘why not make the sequel about pool.’ Well, it seemed obvious now he’d said it. Pool was a perfect fit for the sequel to a film about pool in which the lead character was a pool player.”

The divey bar set was retained with the Pac-man machine swapped out for a pool table and filming on The Color of Money began.

Despite that film’s success though, there are many fans who believe that Martin Scorsese has got a great Pac-man film in him and perhaps one day, Pac-Hustler could see the light of day.