Eric Roberts had his moment in the sun as a serious and talented actor playing Paulie in the 1986 Oscar nominated film Pope of Greenwich Village. The Pope was a high watermark for the gritty, low-budget films about tough losers in New York first pioneered by Martin Scorsese's 1973s debut film Mean Streets. The style, persisted right through the 1990s in films like Laws of Gravity.   Eric Roberts's moving work in Pope reflected a period in American culture that was submersed in corruption, stagnation and self-defeating nihilism in the decades following Vietnam and the waning optimism of the Post-World-War period. Roberts role in Pope, conveyed a subtle interplay of self-pity and exaltation that characterized a bi-polar nation gestalt expressed adroitly in popular youth music genres that emerged during this period including punk rock, hip-hop and grunge.  Roberts, for his part, plays deftly and professionally the emotions of...oh screw it. Roll SHARKTOPUS!!!!