Spike Lee won: the film made his career, is one of the greatest movies the country has produced, and inspired generations to make movies. — Wesley Morris
Clockers is a second-favorite Lee film with his greatest ending, solving Richard Price script problems with moral clarity, as in his Katrina documentary and 4 Little Girls. — Wesley Morris
This is the film Lee should be proudest of: a perfect movie about an imperfect problem America will not solve, which people will still watch in 100 years. — Wesley Morris
Mimi Leder and Janusz Kamiński were attached before Crowe’s interest brought Mann to the project; Spike Lee, Scorsese, and Spielberg were also approached. — Bill Simmons
Crowe would make a different but exciting Vincent, while Sandler would make the movie funnier but might prevent viewers from accepting Max. — Bill Simmons
The first pick is Malkovich, to the other's surprise: his character is the most memorable and most quoted, still the phrasing used at tables today; this is not Damon's or Norton's biggest movie, not what John Dahl is best remembered for, Famke Jansen (as transcribed) was about to be in a superhero franchise and Turturro has bigger films, but for men of a couple of generations this is where Malkovich went for it.
The counter-pick is Damon: an old-school Tom Cruise role that just needs a star, since Mike McD is a mediocre law student with the wrong friend who likes poker and yet makes you care; Affleck, Leo, Brad Pitt and Clooney would not pull it off, with Norton ironically the only other choice.
The reply is that Damon was going to be fine regardless and a movie-star part is inherently blank, never too far or too good; another candidate is Koppelman and Levine, since few TV or movie writers are known to normal people, Steve Zalian (as transcribed) aside, and even Succession's Jesse Armstrong or Veep's David Mandel lack public profile.
Koppelman and Levine positioned themselves well in the guys' pop culture world of the late nineties and probably won, since they have thriving careers and made something people love; Damon loses initially but retroactively the Good Will Hunting, Ripley, Rounders run is an all-timer, and the best rewatchables are movies where the major players are in their sweet spot, as Damon and Norton were.
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?
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.
Mike McD taunting Teddy KGB after taking his money; the Oreo tell going unnoticed for 20 hours; Teddy's tell being so basic; Mike telling Teddy he knows the tell and showing his laid-down hand; Worm not smoking; Petrovsky's 10 grand loan; how 10 grand becomes 60; KGB's fold in the opening hand; Grandma's (as transcribed) arrangement with Teddy; Worm not playing
'You feeling satisfied now, Teddy, because I can go on busting you up all night' is said after taking 60K off a man who may head the Russian mafia; Mike McD would be killed immediately and never leave the Chesterfield for taunting the warlord whose hand he just stole; a heat check in itself.
Two questions about the Oreo tell, a controversial moment: Mike McD reads every judge's hand in 14 seconds yet plays Teddy for 20 hours without the tell clicking, which has no defense and is the biggest flaw; and Teddy, cleaning out basements for years, has the most basic tell imaginable, eating the cookie only when he likes his hand.
In a less sophisticated poker movie, like Casino Royale where everyone has five kings, the tell would not stand out, but this film is so nuanced about table tics at the Taj that one glaring tell in the villain nags; still, it was made for audiences who do not know poker, and one host did not notice it until his fourth viewing while the other caught it at once.
Why does Mike tell Teddy he knows the tell? One host long considered it a problem, since with the tell he could take the money in ten hands, like Belichick telling the other coach what he has figured out; the counter, credited as what the writers intended, is that it is a mind game that rattles KGB so his aggressive game falls apart.
Showing a hand when laying it down is a real strategic question; whenever someone does that at a Vegas table the host thinks he is an idiot without security in his game, unless it is after ten hours to prove he actually laid one down; the 'laying this down, Teddy, top two pair' line is great.
How is Worm not a smoker, the most likely smoker of any movie character? Research saved for here: Ed Norton is anti-smoking and did not want Worm to smoke; it also fits the plot that he plays for cigarettes in prison without smoking himself; still called the biggest reach in the movie.
Mike McD's law professor lending him 10 grand to set up the finale, at the cost of another yeshiva story, draws a joke that the host would rather rob a liquor store than sit through it; the defense is an admittedly bullshitty theory of an underdog bond between Irish and Jewish people, with Italians thrown in, which makes the Petrovsky storyline make sense.
Both like the old guy Petrovsky; Martin Landau's return as Bob Evans on a creatively dormant Entourage had a splash of Petrovsky in it, and Crimes and Misdemeanors, a favorite of both, is called incredible though unlikely to get an episode before season 19.
How does Mike McD go from 10 grand to 60 against Teddy rather than 40? Koppelman and Levine told one host that Teddy reloads, visible in the chip changes, and that they fought for reload scenes but could only go so far into poker minutiae before it got boring; it is still weird that Teddy rebuys into his own game instead of calling it a day at 40K.
Raised early and told it belongs in picking nits: KGB folding and walking away in the opening hand without seeing whether Mike McD had four nines; the reply is that he read Mike's face.
Grandma (as transcribed) is a weird character whose arrangement with Teddy KGB is unclear; how the money works at the end is confusing, since Grandma got paid yet is upset, and the juice on Worm's debt, suddenly 15K, seems arbitrary with the numbers shifting; parked for nitpicks.
Forgotten in nitpicking: why Worm, clearly good at poker, does not play with Mike to double their chances; the answer is that Mike does not trust him, and his instincts prove right when Worm sits down at the cop game and cheats.
Matt Damon is a no because the movie was not a hit; his real apex is probably the first movie of his franchise that made a shitload of money (the transcript has 'that first born movie'), unless it was covered in the Good Will Hunting episode; Ed Norton is a no, with Fight Club his apex given his body of work, though he was on his way up; Gretchen Maul (as transcribed) is definitely a no, with The Notorious Betty Page (as transcribed) her comeback.
Johnny Chan is put forward as a 100 percent yes; the other reacts 'No way!' and the proposer repeats 100 percent yes, since Chan won two World Series of Poker in a row, this was effectively his third title, and he is immortalized pulling the greatest poker move, waiting out his man; the hosts wonder whether it is the same wheel hand Mike uses to beat Teddy KGB.
John Turturro is a no: this and Jesus in The Big Lebowski the same year are a great one-two, but Barton Fink is probably his apex, even though one host is not a Coen Brothers guy.
For Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons is argued as his apex, coming off Killing Fields, with an underrated over-the-top performance opposite Glenn Close; then the other realizes it must be Being John Malkovich, since they named a movie after him, which is conceded as the cherry on the sundae.
For Koppelman and Levine, Billions is their apex mountain right now; their dream is Kevin Durant telling them at a party that he loves their show.
Joe was in only three scenes in the original draft; the law school scenes were shot at Rutgers; Malkovich built his accent from a Russian woman reading his lines; the original script had Mike move on Phil Hellmuth, not Johnny Chan; the closing Counting Crows song is on no album; Damon and Norton played the 1998 World Series of Poker main event, where Doyle Brunson's aces knocked out Damon's kings; the book in the opening is Brunson's Super System
Joe was in only three scenes in the original draft; all law school scenes were filmed at Rutgers, though one host assumed John Jay, as the film calls it something like City Law School; Malkovich got his accent by having a Russian woman read his lines and mimicking her, which prompts the question of whether it is convincing.
In the original script Mike McDermott was to make his move on Phil Hellmuth in the Atlantic City big-money game rather than Johnny Chan; relief is voiced that it was changed; Hellmuth is discussed as polarizing, Skip Bayless crossed with poker, one of the great figures in sports history whose existence makes the game more interesting, still stirring drama at this year's World Series, and also as annoying.
Johnny Chan is one of the biggest winners of the movie, top four for Who Won the Movie: he won the World Series of Poker twice when nobody cared, has the perfect poker name, and stands alone like the Muhammad Ali of boxing because of this film; made ten years later the spot goes to Phil Ivey.
Eric Seidel, who loses the famous hand to Chan, is one of the greatest players ever and still makes a fortune in cash games, but looks like a yokel in the movie and must hate it.
The Counting Crows song at the end, 'Baby, I'm a Big Star Now', is on no album and hard to find, though one host locates it on Spotify under Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings; it is called one of their best twenty songs, with a double meaning, and a host wants Adam Duritz on his podcast as the band nears 25 years.
Matt Damon and Edward Norton played the $10,000 Texas Hold'em championship at the 1998 World Series of Poker in Vegas, where Damon's pocket kings were knocked out by Doyle Brunson's pocket aces; Brunson is the Bill Russell of poker and has the 10-2 hand named after him.
In the opening shots Mike McD pulls money out of a copy of Doyle Brunson's Super System, a book one host devoured at 18, dated as strategy but a cool way in; having something named after you means you did something well, and Brunson won the World Series with 10-2, not a favorite hand.
The only item: Neve Campbell turned down Joe; the film seems to have been locked in on Damon and Norton throughout, with little almost-happened history.
Both hosts think the movie would have worked better with Neve Campbell: a better actress at a nice point in her career, Party Five (as transcribed) still running and post-Scream, inherently sympathetic, which Joe needs so you believe she is trying to get Mike McD to go straight.
The 'spot the sucker' opening line; the Billions DNA; the Mike McD face; the throwaway poker lingo; Damon and Norton at fun points of their careers; the look and the New York setting; Russians as villains; Teddy KGB's accent; the World Series of Poker ending
The first line, 'if you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table then you are the sucker', may not be the greatest opening line in movie history but is one of the most memorable; the hosts want to see that list, which must exist on the internet, and float it as a vacation column.
There is Billions DNA in the film: watching Rounders is like watching Tracy McGrady on the Raptors, and the pop culture throwaways such as Buckner going into Shea became signatures of Billions, which also brought in Malkovich in season three.
The face Mike McD makes after losing the 30K is one of the best acting moments of Damon's career: the face everyone makes when destroyed in poker or blackjack, the life sinking out of your body; the sports-fan equivalent is the Marco Bellinelli corner three or the Case Keenum pass.
Having a big hand cracked while deluded with euphoria is called the most crushing unimportant thing that can happen in life; all the throwaway poker lines have aged beautifully and one host understands the lingo partly because of this movie.
Damon and Norton at fun points in their careers: Norton arrives with Primal Fiction (as transcribed), American History X, one of the most interesting performances of the last 25 years, then Rounders and Fight Club; 25th Hour mixes that guy with Worm; also Everyone Says I Love You, a terrible Woody Allen musical, and The People vs. Larry Flint, which has not aged well.
The Larry Flint writers, Larry Krasuski and Scott Alexander (as transcribed), also wrote the OJ Ryan Murphy show and Ed Wood and set the template for the clever, controversial biopic, like Man in the Moon, a style that now lives on TV in 13-episode runs.
The late-nineties talent cluster: in a fantasy draft Leo, Damon and Norton are the top three or in the top five, with Brad Pitt, Affleck gravitating to popcorn movies, feeder films like School Ties and Dazed and Confused, and Vince Vaughn; weirdly no black actors went to the stratosphere, Halle Berry aside.
Clooney, Matthew Perry twenty years ago, Wahlberg after Boogie Nights, Will Smith and Jim Carrey round out one of the best clusters, all 35 and under, compared with the Godfather generation around Brando; these people get credit as movie stars rather than actors, in the era when the Entertainment Weekly cover mattered and Carrey got $20 million a movie.
Norton took a left turn after the mid-nineties string: directing Keeping the Faith, which Juliette Littman likes, The Score with De Niro, Death to Smoochie, then 25th Hour, probably his best of the 2000s, and The Illusionist; he never had the Pacino or Gene Hackman career one host wanted, though he may still.
Worm is a character unique to Norton, out of the John Cazale 1970s: the lovable scumbag you root for without knowing why, with a little Fredo in him.
The movie looks surprisingly cool and undated for 1998 and is a good New York movie that still looks like the New York the hosts remember; the Chesterfield is based on a club called the Mayfair, and one host once played in a private room like it, the film's room being a slightly nicer red leather version of his, with that seedy but exciting feeling.
Russians as villains has aged the best: in 1998 the Cold War had ended eight years earlier and Russia was in free fall, but twenty years on Roman, Maurice, Teddy KGB and the underground network are far more believable villains.
Forgotten from aged best: Teddy KGB's accent, ridiculous in 1998 and loved in 2018 largely from familiarity; in the theater it was the movie's biggest flaw, a completely unnatural choice in a natural film, but twenty years later it works, is distinct, fun to imitate and almost a parody of bad Russian accents.
The ending of Mike McD heading to Vegas and the World Series of Poker makes far more sense now, since within five years that became the dream of basically everyone who played; it could have been aged best too.
The opening scene, Mike McD losing his 30 grand to Teddy KGB; Mike McD and Worm arriving at the emptied apartment and leaving to 'play some fucking cards'
Five nominees are read: the opening scene where Mike McD loses his shirt ('I don't think you have the spades'), and Mike McD's poker comeback, whose clip is played; 'let's play some fucking cards' plus the guitar riff gets a host fired up to gamble, like the Vegas moment in Swingers.
An aside: the comeback is a bit of a cheat, because the two hosts played cards on the same night earlier this summer and real poker is slow and awful, everyone is Joey Knish and no one is Mike McD, whereas the movie makes it feel like a jet engine down the tarmac; one host's favorite thing in life is driving to Vegas and sitting silently at a poker table for eight hours.
The remaining nominees: the Johnny Chan scene, Chan being one of the movie's big winners, with the Russian lady's intimate familiarity with World Series of Poker hands and the Chan versus Seidel 'look at the patience' hand; Mike and Worm trying to win everything back ('I've gone on runs like this before'); and the final Mike McD versus Teddy KGB showdown.
Runner-up nomination: the judges' game, Mike McD putting every judge in the room on a hand so that Judge Marinacci offers a clerkship on the strength of one read; every movie like this needs a moment showing how smart the lead is. — Sean Fennessey
The other runner-up is the trip to Binghamton and the card game with the police officers, corrected to municipal workers: the scariest scene but one of the best made, the shot of Mike and Worm getting beaten after Norton's mechanic work is caught, real tension in a movie where the stakes are otherwise hard to gauge.
The opening scene is picked as the most rewatchable: a testament to how the film draws you in, the soundtrack, Mike McD rolling in with 30 grand, taking three stacks of high society and explaining the game's nuances; voiceover is a no-no that the host hates, but here it works for the first ten minutes.
A quibble about the opening hand: Mike McD holds ace-nine, KGB holds aces, the board runs ace nine eight, then another nine gives both a full house, and a rag comes on the river; KGB is so sure he has won that he shows his aces, drops them and walks away, yet Mike could have held pocket nines for four of a kind, something the host has never heard anyone discuss.
The quibble is told to save it for picking nits; the counter is that KGB read Mike's devastated face and needed to see nothing else, which the questioner half accepts while still wanting to see the cards.
The other favorite is when Gretchen Mull (as transcribed) moves out: not the moving but Mike McD and Worm arriving at the emptied apartment, Ed Norton's 'women are the rake' speech, Mike's wheels turning to 'fuck it, let's go, let's play some fucking cards', and the music, almost a sports-movie scene.
Is this Apex Mountain for Tony Gilroy: the only other contenders are the Bourne films; one participant is a fan only of the first Bourne, another a big fan of The Bourne Legacy, which Gilroy directed, with its homoeroticism between Jeremy Renner and Oscar Isaac (less explicit than Skyfall, though they spend a night in a cabin) and an unsung Edward Norton performance, 55 to 60 minutes of a perfect movie before an exhausting hour-long car chase through Manila; the conclusion is that this is easily Gilroy's Apex Mountain.
Asked whether this is Apex Mountain for George Clooney, the answer is 'I do': there are not a ton of Clooney performances the speaker loves, said through clenched teeth, but there is a precision here, the razzle dazzle without overdoing anything, neither leaning on a hero trope nor playing a dirtbag, riding a line that should make the role ambivalent, and he nails it.
This is peak phase-two Clooney and a favorite performance of the second half of his career, with Out of Sight as phase one; it kicks off his sad-sack period, playing a man no woman in the film is attracted to, which may not be realistic. — Lindsay Zoladz
Tilda Swinton is placed at the beginning of her American peak rather than at a summit; her Oscar speech for the film, recommended for rewatching, teased Clooney for wearing his Batman costume with the nipples under his Michael Clayton suit while he laughed in the front row, and the 2007 and 2008 Oscars are remembered as a good era with a great crop of films.
