Most Rewatchable Scene
Vegas blackjack sequence
In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:52Read transcript
- The will reading, where Charlie learns he got the rose bushes and a used car while the beneficiary got $3 million, ending with "If there is a hell, sir, my father's in it" and laughing his ass off.
- A combined pick: Charlie meeting Raymond at the car, then Charlie touching Raymond's things in his room ("definitely not a weekend visit, Vern"), including the uncut sheet; called a really well-written scene.
- The breakfast toothpick scene: Raymond counts 246 with four left in the box.
- The doctor's explanatory scene is very 80s and they would never do it that way now, but it still earns sentiment; it leads into the phone-booth fart scene.
- The bathtub scene is a little forced but really well acted; in the Premiere piece Hoffman is quoted saying the key scene where Tom finds out he is the Rain Man was the first take, which Levinson kept.
- Reading the Tootsie material shows Hoffman was a big rehearsal guy, while Levinson worked on an if-we-got-it-we-got-it basis, and they somehow navigated that.
- The breakfast where the card-counting scheme is hatched begins the last 45 minutes, called a favorite part of the movie, running through the Vegas blackjack section.
- It is asked whether Vegas was the number one reason to do this movie; wanting to finally talk about Hoffman is given as a reason too.
- Charlie letting Ray go back to Wallbrook, with the head touching and Barry Levinson being weirdly good, and the Amtrak ending with "one for bad, two for good" are also nominated.
- The pick is Vegas: the seven minutes of blackjack are called unassailable, and it is affirmed as definitely Vegas.
- The Vegas sequence is instantly iconic and may have sent more teens and twentysomethings to Vegas than any movie stretch; Swingers references it. It is Hollywood Vegas rather than the real chain-smoking grind.