Probably Unanswerable Questions
Was Knish the smartest of them and the hero? Where does Johnny Chan's cameo rank among sports cameos? Is this the best gambling movie ever made? Does 'women are the rake' hold up? Where did Worm go after Binghamton? Did Joe give Petrovsky the 10 grand? What was the perfect release year? Could Damon and Norton have switched parts?
In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 01:12:21Read transcript
- Was Knish the smartest of all these people and the hero? He owned his own business, grinded out the rent money, was smart enough not to lend Mike McD 10 grand he would never see again, stayed away from Worm, and gives the Turkish bath speech that it is about making a living, not the World Series; he seems to live okay with his truck business despite alimony and child support.
- The ending at the World Series of Poker, which nobody watched then because you could not see the cards, became everyone's dream within five years; Positively Fifth Street by James McManus, about the World Series and Binion's, is recommended as one of the great crime and sports books, and Grantland tried to hire him.
- Where does Johnny Chan's cameo rank among sports-related cameos? The bar is Hulk Hogan in Rocky III; also Kareem in Airplane, Xavier McDaniel in Singles, Larry Bird in Blue Chips, though Koozie (as transcribed) with the left-handed free throws is the real Blue Chips flex and is acting rather than a cameo, and Bob Watson and Cesar Cedeno in the Bad News Bears sequel; Chan is up there even though he only mouths words.
- Is this the best gambling movie ever made? It is a host's favorite poker movie but not favorite gambling movie, which is Robert Altman's California Split with George Segal and Elliot Gould, about how befriending a gambler is bad for you; Koppelman and Levine are surely California Split guys, but as poker movies go Rounders is head and shoulders above everything.
- Where do we stand on 'in the poker game of life, women are the rake'? Iconic twenty years ago, it now reads as misogynist in the woke era, but the hosts still like it: it is Worm's line, this is a movie about card-playing, prison-dwelling dirtbags and that is how they talk, not a movie about the president or the Navy.
- Where did Worm go after Binghamton? In a 2013 Grantland mailbag Koppelman and Levine answered that he meant 'highway time' but needed road money, found a Bronx backroom game far from KGB's territory, and was chased across town by the man he had fleeced for cigarettes in the prison hearts game, a scene they shot, edited, screened and cut; they imagine he later scammed his way through the Moneymaker online boom, where Rounders 2 would pick up.
- Are we sure Joe gave Petrovsky the 10 grand? Why would she, and how would he know; and why did Petrovsky lend it in the first place to a bad student with a gambling problem, since nobody would give 10 grand to an untrusted, failing Ringer employee; Joe's look through the window pane suggests they will go another round, but nothing is certain.
- What year would have been perfect for release? It would have to be about two weeks before Moneymaker so the movie was still in theaters during the rush of interest, but Damon and Norton would be too old by then; a year later, after Fight Club and Ripley, is floated, yet both like how it played out and doubt a later release would have led to this podcast.
- An early question saved from this category: could Damon and Norton have switched parts? Norton 100 percent, since at the time he seemed the new Marlon Brando and the most important actor in a decade; Damon no, and Norton as the embodiment of filth and dishonesty is probably the more irreplaceable of the two.