‘The Gambler’ (2014) With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan
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The Rewatchable is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find a lot of the videos that we've done of episodes on the Ringer Movies channel. Now we have a Ringer TV channel. We do. Ringer TV on YouTube. Are you cranking it on there? We sure are, man. There's some cranking? Yeah. You're cranking it on a YouTube channel? Yeah. He's cranking it. The watch is cranking away.

He did some three-person stuff. Yeah, me, Joe, and Rob did a little bit of a holiday recommendation kind of list for people, for people who are looking for stuff to watch over the holidays. Was one of them Carrie Ann on Netflix? The second we're done here, I'm going home to watch it. I watched the first 40 minutes. How was it?

Slow start. Oh, really? Really? Evil Bateman, though. I love Evil Bateman. Didn't know. He's not on the poster. Well, Ozark. I kind of buried him. He was pretty evil in Ozark. I guess he became evil. Well, I don't know how to describe the character in The Gambler. Is he evil? Is he a good guy? What the hell is he? What is this movie? He's a teacher. He's a teacher. We're going to talk about The Gambler on the Rewatchables. It's next. Where would a teacher like you get that kind of money?

He knew how to win the game. I've seen you be half a million dollars off. I've been up two and a half million dollars. But the rules... I don't like to lose. I will kill your entire bloodline. Just changed. What's going on? Time to get away from me. I've never done anything like this before. You've got to meet me. You understand the gravity of your situation? I'm a gambler. I came to play. Rated R.

All right, CR, this movie came out. We knew each other. Yeah. We were at Grantland. Yeah. And Wesley Morris skewered this movie and then you did a blog post and you really liked it. I loved it. You guys were like Jack and who's the other guy in Lost? Jack and Sawyer. Jack and Locke? Yeah, Jack and Sawyer. Jack and Locke, yeah.

And you've been nudging me on this movie for years. Yeah. And I'm like two-thirds of the way there for a while. And then I caught it last year and it finally fell into place. And then I watched it twice this week. And now I'm all in. It's about a bunch of stuff that we like. Yeah. Genius writing, gambling, and college hoops. So it's already got a bunch of stuff that we're interested in. But it's one of those weird...

you know, mid-2010s movies that we would call like five o'clockers that at like on a Friday at Grantland or whatever, we would kind of like cut out a little bit early and then go see something over at the movie theater right by LA Live.

And this was one that just kind of came and went. Like, even with Wahlberg, it didn't really, like, make much of an impact either commercially or critically. But it's kind of like, at least for me, lived on. And I go back to it really often just to see just how fucking weird it is at times. Yeah, I remember he passed through the whole Grandland universe because he really promoted this. And he did my podcast. I think he thought this was like an Oscar movie. Yeah. He lost all this weight for it. He, uh...

I remember being excited because he did the podcast and he'd never really talked about Boogie Nights that much. But during the podcast, I asked about Boogie Nights because we're doing oral history for it. We're able to grab what he said, put it in there. But he was really confident it was going to be a big movie and it just wasn't. But now it has this whole second life and it's been on cable a lot.

And I also think it's one of those movies you really do have to watch a few times. It feels like a cop-out, but I don't think it is because there's a lot of themes in this movie. It's mostly a movie about ideas. I know people might laugh at a Mark Wahlberg gambling movie being a movie of ideas, but this is based on a James Toback film from the 70s, but it's also based on a Dostoyevsky book.

And most of the scenes are not about like dramatic tension of what's going to happen. They're about two or three characters exchanging their points of view and their ideas about like how to live and

how to live honestly, what people need to do to live successfully. And I think that that winds up rewarding on multiple viewings. It's also strangely a movie that you kind of sometimes need to have subtitles on for. There's a lot of mumbling, but there's also a lot of really dense dialogue and dense speechifying. So it's just one of those things that if you have it on and on, you kind of get more out of it.

It also has a fundamental question, which we've been sitting with for 30 years now with Mark Wahlberg as an actor. Because you could make a case he's the perfect actor for this movie, and you could make a case that there's 20 actors you would rather have in this movie, and that his limitations as an actor, and for what he's willing to do and not do in a movie, hold this movie back, or it's perfect. And I don't really know where I've landed on that. This is kind of like...

This is the road not taken for Wahlberg. You know, like this is the Diggler. This is Departed. This is doing prestigious stuff, working with really good scripts. And he has since kind of almost at this moment gone in a completely different direction. Because it didn't work. Now it's like, all right, let's do some people. Yeah, I'll crank out like two family movies and an action movie every year.

And that's kind of like what he's sort of done with the rest of his professional career, along with obviously like fitness training, regimen stuff and supplements and exercise gear. So I feel like this was actually like his last stand of being taken seriously as an actor. Yeah, there's I'm in conflict in so many ways with this because this is an English major movie. As you know, I hate English majors. It's got a lot of big pretentious themes and it's trying to do a lot of stuff, which instantly I'm against. Yeah.

I really do like Mark Wahlberg. I also don't know if he's that interested in going to certain places and it's hard. And I've seen this movie now a bunch of times. It's hard not to imagine. I'll just step on a casting couch now.

This to me would have been the perfect Bernthal movie. Oh my God, dude. Like just perfect. This is everything I would have wanted from a Bernthal movie. The character would have made more sense to me. But I also think like to step on a casting what if later, Leo was initially attached and I'm like, I kind of like that direction too. But on the other hand, so the rewatchable side of me, the five o'clocker side of me, the unintentional comedy side of me, I kind of love Wahlberg in this because he's,

There's moments where I'm not with him, but that's what's fun about it. We're like, oh man, Mark Wahlberg just didn't have it here. But then other moments where he's really good. You can make the argument that, I mean, honestly, we could sit here for half an hour listing actors who probably would have nailed this. Oscar Isaac, Ethan Hawke, Mark Ruffalo, like so many different characters, actors who probably would have been really good, probably would have been able to bring a little bit more familiarity with the teaching segments specifically. Yeah.

But there's something so weird about Wahlberg talking about Shakespeare and whether or not Shakespeare actually authored his plays and Camus and The Stranger. And when he's doing that stuff, you're like, he's trying so hard to be believable. And he apparently spent all this time watching professors do lectures. Yeah.

That it gives it this like otherworldly quality. Do you know what I mean? Well, and he also has a very strange haircut. Everything about it is a very non-Walbert performance. The way he handles the gambling scenes is just stupid. Everything he's doing is some sort of weird Wahlberg choice that I kind of like. But I almost wonder, was this a better part for somebody else? Because the remake, the original movie, the James Caan movie,

It's just a classic James Caan swagger part. Just him being James Caan. It's part of a constellation of Caan parts, like the Thief movie. Godfather 1, Thief, Rollerball, all these movies where he's just like James Caan, swinging around. He might get the shit kicked out of him anytime. He might kick the shit out of somebody else. Don't leave your wife or your girlfriend with him. Just machismo all the time. And Wahlberg, it's probably closest to Dirk Diggler.

And it's funny because he lost all this weight for the movie. So he actually is the Dirk Digger face, but he's got this weird hairdo. And I feel like he wants to go to this crazy place here.

But yet, really, the only time he breaks down is the beginning of the movie when he's saying goodbye to his grandfather. There's that. There's the scene in Amy's apartment where he tells her what he wants when she jumps him. Yeah. But that's really it. Everything else, the whole point of this character, Jim Bennett, is that he just tells the truth. And it's actually a really incredible...

dramatic, not invention of the film, but like a thing to do is just, what if you had a character who was just always telling the truth more or less? He actually doesn't really even lie to the bookies. Like, yeah, that's a good point. I'm trying to think that he tried to fib out anybody. Never. No, I mean, you could say at the end with the Lamar stuff, he doesn't tell all the truth.

But he is telling the truth. I mean, he is being honest. When Lamar is like... When he goes to talk to Lamar, it's not like he's like... He's just like, you can do it for the money for you, but don't worry about me. Like, it's going to happen either way for me. All right. So let's get English major then. Okay. So is this a movie about...

somebody with a gambling problem? Is it somebody who's self-destructive? Is it a movie about genius? Is it a movie about all of these things? What is it? I think it's a movie about a guy who wants to obliterate himself to rebuild himself. And I think one of the coolest things about this movie is that there is no discernible trauma involved.

to this character that he is trying to recover from. Multiple characters confront him with that idea. Brie Larson's character is like, did you not have... You have no problems, so you had to invent them for yourself. John Goodman is like, you're suicidal. Michael K. Williams is always asking him what his problem is. Yeah, like you're a good-looking guy, normal family, you have money. I think he's a character who, by all accounts throughout the film, wants to live this ecstatic life

special life. And because he doesn't feel that way, he's just going to destroy the life he has. Like the idea of being like relatively happy. Honestly, the entire fuck you speech is,

I don't think he, that to him wouldn't be happiness. To have like a 30-year mortgage, a reliable car. Yeah. Money in the bank that's paying 3% to 5%. That's not what he wants. He wants to like feel things on a massive level. He wanted maybe to be a novelist, but knows he's not good enough. And so now he's like destroying the thing he is to feel anything at all. Yeah, like he would rather have Jameis Winston as his quarterback. Yeah.

That is honestly exactly right. He wants to see a guy throw for 150 yards to the other team than see Jalen Hurts. Would you rather have Joe Burr or Jameis? And he's like, I would love Jameis. I would love the rollercoaster ride he's on. Yeah, because, I mean, we'll dive into some of his blackjack stuff.

I feel like it's incidental to the movie. He's stacking. Yeah. So when you stack, you're on a death wish. Yeah. You're basically like, I'm trying to win everything I can or go broke. Yes. And that's it. So he loses all that money. And then it's, I guess my fundamental part, my problem with the film, which isn't really a problem, but he's just losing all this money. So he kind of seems like he wants to be murdered.

He wants to either be reborn or die. Yeah. But there's no path for him being reborn because he's just losing crazy amounts of money that he's not going to be able to pay back. Yeah. I mean... But then he meets Brie Larson.

And it feels like that's given him a shred of hope that he's like, maybe I should get out of this. Otherwise, he's on a suicide wish. I actually feel drawn to you. Like even in the conversation that they have in the classroom, he's basically like physiology is the only thing that I can't explain. He's obviously like getting closer and closer and closer to her. So he feels like obviously like this is the first thing that's come along in a while that makes me want to be anything else than what I am.

It's like how Doug Peterson just goes for it on every fourth and five. He's like, I can't feel anymore. I'm going to do this. Keep me rolled out with Trevor Lawrence. It's the only way I can feel anything anymore. Yeah, so this movie is...

The big themes are like to be or not to be. Yeah. All or nothing. Yes. What's the point of all of this? If you're not a genius. Don't try. Is it worth even just being an electrician at that point? It feels like everything they're trying to say in the movie is the first speech he gives to the class. Yes. Where he basically evicts her. It's the entire class. Then he points out to the Brie Larson character and she's like, this is the only one who has a chance. Yeah.

And he's like, if you were Shakespeare, because they're talking about whether or not the works of Shakespeare were actually authored by somebody else. And like the kid in the class is like, oh, do you think it's because, you know, the Earl of Oxford? And he was just like, if you wrote Hamlet,

Can you imagine not putting your name on Hamlet? Right? Yeah. And he's like, there's only like five of these people, 20 of these people, 100 of these people. Like everybody else is just is playing for scraps. Everybody else is kind of lying to themselves. And he's like, I won't lie to myself. I just kind of, it's just a very unique character for both him and for a 2014 movie to kind of present to us. This seems like the kind of movie if you could have said, what script are you jealous of?

This would have been a script for you. This is, this, Monaghan's kind of one of my guys. So Monaghan wrote Kingdom of Heaven, which is this Ridley Scott movie that's incredible if you see the Ridley Scott director's cut. He wrote The Departed. Yeah. And he did this. And then he's had some ups and downs since then with like movies that he's tried to direct and do work on.

But this is just a riff movie. You know, like every character in here is just like, hey, man, here's like three pages of stuff to just riff on. It doesn't really even like the first time he goes and sees Goodman, you're just like, I don't know. What was the point of that? You know what I mean? You didn't take his money that he offered you. But they're just like, they're just podcasting. They're just vibing with each other. Yeah, you have multiple characters who definitely wouldn't be this deep in real life.

And yet all of them are super deep. Yes. Even like the college basketball player, like really self-aware, just has some awesome thoughts. Then you go to John Goodman. He's definitely been moved by the stranger. Yeah. John Goodman, who's just a murderer. Yeah. He has these deep thoughts about the position of fuck you. And then the Michael K. Williams character, same thing. Like really interested in,

human connection and the reasons why people do shit. I'm not sure real life works that way, but that's what makes this movie so fun. It's this alternate universe of what the gambler would be. Right. And there's also like, I think for people, one of the reasons why it was disappointing is that exactly what you're saying about stacking is that there's actually not a lot of juice to the gambling scenes.

And that was my biggest disappointment the first time I saw it. Yeah. I didn't really under, I was so ready for gambling shit. And I also really liked the James Caan movie and it was so different than that from a sense of what he was trying to do. Sure. That I just had trouble with it. And then it would pop on and be like, oh, all right. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, I kind of like that. Oh, Brie Larson. Much bigger star now. The card playing is boring, but what he's saying during the card playing is kind of interesting. You must be new here. Yeah.

There is no limit. Also, he's delivering all his lines like Andy Samberg doing the impression of him. Say hi to your mother for me. He's got this weird edge to his everything. It's such a weird... This would be a really fun Oscar to hand out every year.

Like, just, this is a weird one for you. Yeah, this is a weird one. Yeah, here we go with the, it's a weird one for you category. Just people kind of going sideways of the movie. I also wonder whether part of the reason why you and I like this movie is that it is to...

if Den of Thieves is like the JV version of Heat, this is kind of the JV version of Thief and maybe like Collateral. Cool LA movie. Yeah. Guy with an open shirt collar. I would have thrown in Rounders too. Yeah, but I mean specifically like the Michael Mann. Like there's like they use like the deep synth kind of score here a bunch of times. And it kind of gives you a little bit of that feeling of driving around LA or running around LA in the end. Uh,

at having this kind of breakthrough moment in this weird city, but it's not quite as good as those films. Well, it has one other element that you and I both love is when movies create this little mini world inside a city we already think we know, and it's like you're going downstairs or you're parking your car and you're getting out. It seems like you're vowing for a party, but actually you're going into this whole crazy secret blackjack world or this whole secret card world.

And just this whole underbelly, kind of the high class underbelly, which I think John Wick really nailed in a great way. John Wick's like, we're taking the high class underbelly to a whole other level with Continental. There's, you know, obviously in Heat, there's BJ's on Alvarado, the nightclub that Al Pacino goes to. And I feel like Rupert Wyatt and William Monaghan, when they made this movie, were like, we have to double down on BJ's on Alvarado. So like when he goes to the Koreatown,

card playing casino at the end. He goes through an internet cafe, an opium den, a noodle bar, and then he gets to the casino. And that rounders place too, the place the Russian...

With the Chesterfield. Anytime a guy walks into a pretty nondescript place and then takes an elevator somewhere, Michael Clayton, rounders, like any... We go into a back room that then also has a back room, I'm in. And there's some sort of hot waitress or cash register person. Yeah.

Who has that look like, oh, he's back. And you just kind of know what you're in for. But she's also like a philosophy major. Yeah. And also totally ready to hook up with him again. It's such a strange Wahlberg movie. I was, it made me think like, what are my favorite Wahlberg movies? What's my relationship with Wahlberg in general? Cause he's, we've now had him for three decades and he's been in a lot of stuff. He's in one of my favorite movies ever, Boogie Nights, which I think is probably still my favorite Wahlberg, but he's also in a lot of other stuff. I like like the Italian job.

a super weird movie. The Fighter? 2010? Yeah, I mean, The Yards, I Heart Huckabees. Patriot's Day? He does a lot of, like, he, for the first 10 years, 15 years of his career, was still, like, searching around for that. The Departed? Yeah. I think he was, like, kind of not on Christian Bale's track, but

But was like, I want to do these kinds of roles, though. Yeah, he was in... It was somewhere like Damon and DiCaprio both turned this part down, and next stop was Mark Wahlberg. Yeah. A lot of times. Like, could he have done the Bourne identity? He probably could have. Now after this, pretty much after Gambler, he more or less does a couple of Pete Berg movies where he's kind of like doing, you know... Yeah, he's doing paycheck movies after this. But like Deepwater Horizon...

And then after that, it's like Transformers, Daddy's Home, Mile 22, Spencer Confidential. He makes two or three movies a year. There's one family one and one thriller or action movie. And he does Ted two years before this, which is a really funny movie that had some legs. Did you do a Ted Rewatchables? Not yet. Okay.

But that was a weird choice. So there's like a sense of humor with him, but I also am not positive he has a sense of humor. I think it's a very... Because I remember he was like really mad about the Sandberg thing and he had to come on the next week and he like made fun of Sandberg back because he was pissed. It seemed like he was going to like fight him. Say hi to your mother for me. He also, before he did this, he sought the blessing of James Caan. Do you think Jimmy Caan was like... Jimmy, Mark Wahlberg here. How are you?

There's a dead man on the other end of this phone. God's like, don't do it. Well, I'm going to do it anyway. They already paid me. Toback wasn't happy about this either. I don't think. I wasn't happy about it when I heard about it. Because, you know, anything mid-70s on, if it's still watchable, I'm always going to have my guard up. But they did really make it different than the original in a lot of ways. There's also just, I think for me...

You know, like Michael K. Williams is passed on, but this is like one of those movies where the star keeps walking into scenes where he's getting his doors blown off by the other guy in the scene. Even Brie Larson. Yeah. Like Brie Larson, Michael K. Williams, Goodman. Yeah.

Even Dom from Entourage, whatever that guy's name is. Mr. Lee's really good. Yeah, he's a good... Jessica Lange. Jessica Lange's good. You're right. He's always like... It feels like he's the second best actor in nine scenes. I think Emery Cohen cooks him a little bit, like in a good way. But like that character is really cool. Well, Goodman's incredible in this. And this is like... Goodman has put together so many just awesome, memorable, supporting parts. Yes.

That I almost feel like that's a bigger part of his legacy now for me than Roseanne. Oh, yeah. You know, Roseanne was one of the biggest shows of the 90s. One of the great character actors of all time. But nobody's talking about Roseanne in 2024. But I think some of these movies that he's in, that he just is able to just kind of fly into like a gust of wind. Yeah.

And he could just... What's he in? Three scenes in this movie? Literally. I mean, like three and a half. Because the one in the bathhouse, the one at the course track, and then one at the end when he shows up at the Koreatown place. I don't think he's ever been nominated for an Oscar. Has he not been? I don't think so. Probably won some...

won some comedy Emmys once upon a time, but it's a great movie for him. It's a great movie for Michael K. Williams, a.k.a. Omar, who really hit a nice stretch after The Wire when he would pop up with stuff and you would be delighted to see him. Did he win or no? He did not. You're right.

So, based on Dostoevsky's novel, originally, kind of, sort of. I researched this and it really doesn't seem like it's based on a lot. Did you, I mean, I think it also draws heavily from The Stranger and the idea of an existential sort of mindset. Yeah. What was the closest you came to him in this movie? You're just ready to throw it all away. Was there a New Bear Comics moment? I think when Ryan Howard tore his Achilles. Yeah.

I was like, fucking take it. So directed by Rupert Wyatt really well. This is, I think, a superbly made movie and turns out to be like one of the peaks of his career. And I think he was a promising director that seemed like it went sideways. Yeah, he did Planet of the Apes movie. He did this.

And then has kind of like done some sci-fi stuff, but has kind of fallen out of the rotation. Had some scandal stuff with Kristen Stewart? No, actually, that was Rupert Sanders. Oh, that was a different Rupert? Different Rupert. Damn, I got my Ruperts mixed up. That was my fault. I told you that, and I was like, oh wait, I gotta double check this. He also, this is shot by Greg Frazier, who's one of like the

the four or five best cinematographers. LA looks awesome. There's some great photography in this. Yeah, LA looks so awesome. I had trouble figuring out where we were in almost every scene. Yeah, I was trying to figure out where he lives, where Jim's place is. Topanga, maybe? Couldn't figure it out. He's got that little, like, on where he's running all the way through the end. I can only figure out... It kind of seems like he ended up at our office. Yeah, well, I think he's in... That would have been weird. He's supposed to be in Koreatown, but it seems like he's running through downtown Los Angeles to get back to, like,

a little bit north of McCarthy. I'll tell you this. That is a much more action-packed run than maybe they made it seem in the movie. $25 million budget made $33 million. Here's what Wesley Morris wrote for Grantland. Shout out to Wesley, who's been on this podcast many times.

Mark Wahlberg's grown so much in the last 15 years that you forget his limitations. He still can't show you what's happening inside a character. He needs dialogue. He needs somewhere to run. The gambler gives him both, but they're both terrible. The dialogue never leaves the surface and the running across LA happens in the last sequence. It's supposed to thrill you, but it's such a cliche.

that your embarrassment extends to the crew member has to follow with the camera as Wahlberg chugs along. Wasn't a fan. Wesley, tell him how you really feel. I wonder if like 10 years later was this like, no, I kind of like it now. Because he's done that with some other ones. Roger Ebert was sadly not alive. RogerEbert.com gave this two stars. Well, I had to do chat GBT, Robert Ebert. Roger Ebert, I know you hate this. Unethical.

Why is it unethical? It's a sin. He's dead. You can't just ask a robot to imitate him. Just wanted to find out. Don't do this to me. He said, chat GBT said probably two and a half to three stars. Ebert was known for his sharp eye with character driven dramas and his appreciation for films that explored moral complexity and self-destruction. Not wrong. Why are you so nervous? He was often skeptical of remakes and tended to hold them to a high standard. True. Yeah.

He may have praised Mark Wahlberg's committed performance, but questioned whether the character of Jim Bennett was as richly drawn or compelling as Axel Fried in the original. In summary, Ebert's review would have likely been a thoughtful balance of praise for its ideas and critique of its execution. That sounds about right. The robots are coming for us, Chris Ryan. He would have been a little annoyed about them remaking a 70s cult classic.

Yeah, during a time that 74 to 77 stretch when it feels like all of those movies just should not be touched. Yeah.

Are you a three days of a condor TV show? The TV show? Yeah. I watched a bit of it. Yeah, I thought it was cool, but it was just like, that's one of the great 70s movies. Yeah, I won't watch it. Okay. I'll watch Carry On, though, with evil Jason Bateman. Based on Alan Pakula's Carry On. Now it's time for the most rewatchable scene brought to you by Den of Thieves 2, Pantera. Yes. Ready for a new killer heist movie? Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson Jr. are back.

in the sequel to the original hit. But this time, the cop goes gangster. See Den of Thieves 2, Pantera only in theaters January 10th. We'll be seeing it before January 10th. Yeah, I hope so. Be calling in some favors for that one. Christmas night. Let's make that a big franchise. All right, most rewatchable scene.

This movie just kicks right in. Let's go gambling. Yeah. Yeah. No, no opener. No, like him at a Dodger game playing in the day. No coffee house scene. No him. He's just gambling right away. Tell me if I got this right. Walks in with 10 grand. Yep. Goes up 80. Blows it. Now owes 240. Well, I want to talk about the gambling. Okay. We just, of course we're going to have to. I love blackjack. Yeah. So he's stacking from 10. He wins on a 19 fair.

15 against a king hits, which I would hit too, gets a 621. So now he's up 10 and 20. So now he's up 40. 15 against a 13, he stays, which I think is the right move. And he throws a, he gets like a face card, right? Like he gets like a 10. Yeah. He stays, dealer gets the face card, bust. So now he's up 80.

At that point, you've won four in a row. You're going to be like, that was great. You're probably taking half the bets going back. He's like, fucking all in. 14 hits, busts. Starting over. Gets mad at the dealer. Double it. You must be new. Double it. Double it. Make it $80,000. I'm going to miss the league cover a lot more than that, buddy. You must be new. Double it.

Gets a nine against a five, gets an ace, stays on 20. And then anyone who loves blackjack knows what happened next. They were against the 15 and the six. Now all of a sudden he's down. What? 150. Yeah. He owes two 40 and then he borrows 50 grand from Neville, from Michael K. Williams at 20 points interest. Can we just call him Omar for the rest of the podcast or no? Michael K. I'll call him Michael K. He earned the Michael K.

Michael K. says, it's an unequal general situation. Does he say it's a losing proposition and he's like, so is life? Yeah, he says, this is what Wahlberg says, life's a losing proposition. You might as well get used to it. So when he says that, you're like, all right, this guy's fucking suicide packed with himself with gambling. So he gives Mr. Lee 40K and he keeps 10 to gamble. Leads me to...

To the next, it's a small rewatchable, but Mr. Lee says, your luck is no good tonight. You came in with $10,000 in cash. You didn't give it to me. And Wahlberg says, well, this is a gambling establishment. You owe me $240,000. I want it in seven days. And what happens? He takes the 10K. Gets 21 and 20. Gets a new dealer. New dealer. 21 and 20. Wins the first two. Gets a 12-sheet bust. So he's won the first three hands. He's back alive.

He's back kind of on the road again. Yeah, he also has one of my favorite lines in the movie where she goes, it's for your protection. And he goes, you don't come here for protection. You don't come here for protection from yourself. You come here for the fucking opposite. Yeah. So deal with the cards. Right. First he goes to the pit bot, don't look at him. There's no limit. Fuck my protection. Please deal with the cards.

I didn't know Jim Bennett was from fucking Southie. I'm giving him the Southie. I'm giving him the departed accent. Please deal the cards. Fucking Belichick. So Blackjack turns 80k into 200k.

And then decides to take it over the roulette wheel, which is yet another. So he's just clearly trying to go up. Yeah, he's up 160 or whatever. And he goes and bets on black and loses fucking masterpiece scene. I could watch that 10 minutes over and over and over again. He goes on black. Michael K goes, it's been coming up red all night. It's like, all right, fine. Black.

And that's it. Really enjoyable. It's like 20 minutes all the way through. We get to meet some characters. Great stuff. Mr. Lee's Casino seems to be on the PCH. Get the ocean view maybe a little bit in. Palisades? I don't know. Is there a lot of illegal gambling establishments? I was thinking a little like slightly seedy Venice. It's in the hills. Oh, it's in the hills? Oh, yeah, you're right. It goes up. Seems like Palisades. Yeah, Palisades has to be the answer then. Because we could see the ocean and he's going uphill.

Next one, Wahlberg's, uh, his big speech about how hard it is to be a novelist. Yeah. I mean, we accept genius in sports as something we cannot do, but it's no more likely that you could be a writer than you could be, what, an Olympic pole vaulter? Because what you have to be before you try to be a pole vaulter? Hello? It's a pole vaulter, no? Yeah. You are one.

A pole vaulter? A novelist. No, I am not. For me to be a novelist, I would have to make a deal with myself that it was okay being a mediocrity in a profession that died commercially in the last century. Alright, people do that. I am not one of them. If you take away nothing else from my class, from this experience, let it be this. If you're not a genius, don't bother. Alright? The world needs plenty of electricians and a lot of them are happy. I'll be fucked if I'll be a mid-list novelist getting good reviews from the people I give good reviews to.

Just some gems in here. What was your favorite part? I think him dunking on the nerdy kid who's trying to get into his good graces. And he was just like, absolutely not. But I think probably it's just all about the unequal distribution of talent. And I love when he somehow has...

A first-round draft pick NBA player coming up future at first-round draft pick and the number two tennis player in the country in his class and a genius writer. That's quite a class. I don't remember any of those classes at Emerson. My classes, I had like Jacko.

It's like I got Jabari Smith Jr. Worst case scenario, you're the third pick of the draft. I also love when he's talking to Emory Cohen about tennis and he's like, when you realized that you were the best, what did you start to think? And he's like, oh, I started to think about the game. And he goes, that's an IQ breakpoint, brother. What the fuck? I love it. I don't know what that means.

If you're not a genius, don't bother. The world needs plenty of electricians and a lot of them are happy. I'll be fucked if I'd be a mid-list novelist giving good reviews to the people I give good reviews to. Yeah, that is very funny. And then he points out Brie Larson. At a very early Brie Larson stage of the movie. Nothing has really happened for her yet.

In the movie or in her career? In her career. She's done Short Term 12, which is like this weird, awesome movie, but is also like her, Rami Malek, and Michael B. Jordan in the same movie right before they all get famous. Like she's two years away. Is it Trainwreck with Amy Schumer? 2016. Yeah. And then Room. Room's right after that. She's in a couple other ones. One of those ones you always liked her, but you never kind of totally know what was going to happen with her. And then all of a sudden she became Brie Larson. Yep.

She chooses to hide and blend in there with the rest of you. Why? But do you know who does write at the highest level? When most of us, and even I, even I, write barely adequately. Do you know who it is? In this room. Who is it? Don't give me that look. No, no, no, no, no, no. It isn't the one who talks the most. You're an NPR host, Hops. Okay? The literary person in here is Miss Phillips. She's the least of streperous in this room, the quietest, and the only one

who can have a real career at letters. Some of you can have one perceptually. Only she can have one in reality. She is better at writing than our U.S. Prisoner of the Year number two as a tennis. Yet she chooses to hide or just blend in with the rest of you. And she answers.

Being in the middle is the safest place to be, which I think is one of the themes of the movie. Yeah. And that's what he refuses to accept. He doesn't want to be in the middle. He'd rather just be killed in an alley because he lost $250,000. Because he kept stacking. No money, no advantages. Genius is magical, not material. I mean, basically he's your, that douchey guy in your hall in college.

who's just has these big crazy things that he's saying about how society works and everybody's like fucking tommy's going nuts over there yeah also like the english teacher who smells of cigarette smoke kind of has red eyes yeah you know likes the books that aren't on the syllabus definitely hooking up with one of the students you know has like a kind of tattered cormac mccarthy novel in his back pocket and you're you're completely enchanted by him you're just like oh my god this guy's spitting

Professor Smith is amazing. Next one, John Goodman's first scene. Shaving his head. He sees three problems.

With Jim. He wants to live like a monk. He wants to dance with the devil. And he wants to borrow money to pay off debts that he can't pay off. Associate professors, let's just say he teaches at USC because that has to be someplace that would be a program big enough for Lamar to get considered to go to the NBA, right? I had either UCLA or USC. I don't see if he's in LA. It has to be one of those two schools. I feel like it's USC because he's just in central Los Angeles a lot. Yeah.

Associate professor makes $150,000 at USC? I guess that's in the ballpark, right? Successful novelist. No, because he says he only made $17,000 off his novel. People knew the novel. There was a little cap for it. Michael K. Williams is like a reading your novel.

My favorite Frank line in this scene is when he's like, birth, education, intelligence, talent, looks, family money. Has all of this been some real comprehensive fucking burden to you? Right. I like that you went a little Logia. You crossed Logia and Goodman. I need this money because I'm a scumbag gambler. Say it. Say I am not a man. I need something from you. What? Collateral? No. No.

I need you to tell me, I need this money because I am a scumbag gambler. I am a scumbag gambler who is drowning in his own shit. That's the kind of man I am, Frank. And I want you to loan me a dying suicidal asshole a lot of money. That's too much to remember to repeat it. Well, I'll make it simpler for you. You want this money, you tell me I am not a man. Say it. Say, I am not a man.

And so he won't. Right. He won't do that. So this is like... He's a man of principle. And he... If you go by the adage that Jim is always honest in this movie, part of him must think... Because he keeps telling people, I am not actually a gambler. This is more of a means to an end to erase something about my ego. Next when he goes to see Lamar, and Lamar tells him he's got a knee. Jim Nance with a huge impact on this movie. This is right around when Jim Nance was...

Just skipping verbs, talking about body parts. But I really like that Lamar scene. I think it's good. The Lamar scene is really good. And his like, I'm not happy. You know why? Because I'm teaching the modern novel to a classroom full of students. They don't give a fuck. Right. Yeah. Casino blackjack with Brie. Goes to the casino with Brie, which I think is the Morongo, which I've been to.

And I have this written down as Jim's reverse 82 point game. It's how fast can I blow? Well, he starts off by doubling down on an 18 demanding a three and gets it. And you just know that night's not going to go well after that happens. That is not going to be the sign that, that you're going to have a four hour run. That's usually super lucky. Um,

I have a great shock order award for this. The fast forward is super cool. Oh, yeah. Really hard gimmick to pull off. It usually fails in movies. Limitless did it too. Yeah. Usually when people try it, it's not great. No, it also does a good job of like all the different emotions people are going through, but he's completely static. I have a nitpick that's too important to wait on. Okay. He just shows up and he's got a shitload of money.

and he's just dropping whatever, two pit bosses would be behind the dealer, like ASAP. Saying what, though? Just watching. Okay. You're just not doing that with some random dealer betting the cotton. They wouldn't be like, change to 50,000. Like, the whole casino would stop. Everybody would come over behind the table. I was going to ask you about, like, what is it?

How does it... Because I only play blackjack when I go for summer league or whatever. I don't gamble a lot, but... Because Sean's playing poker by himself and he needs somewhere to go. Sean gets his headphones on and turns into fucking Raymond Babbitt for nine hours.

You're actually right. I would love to gamble, but Sean won't do it with me. Sean's just listening to William Friedkin movies on audio and his headphones. He's listening to director's commentary and playing fucking hold'em against like an 80-year-old Navy veteran. He's listening to the sisters, Brian DeCaba, DeCaba director's commentary. Me and Zach lose $120 instantaneously and we just go drink for the rest of the night. But how does it get translated around the room?

oh, let's go watch this guy. He's on a heater or let's go watch this guy. If there's that kind of money from the table, you would get the crowd behind, but you would have way more people. There would be at least two, three people behind the dealer. Okay. Because normally you would bet that kind of money at the high stakes table. So if you're just sitting down with the common people betting that, there's people, they'd be watching. The fucking camera's going on. I was one of my disappointments with the movie that he never like,

Did the fuck you at the camera. Cause he was, he was such a fuck you kind of guy. I felt like turn that fucking thing off. Like he didn't do any of that. I want to just mention that one of the most captivating moments of my adult life was watching bill house and Chang, uh,

Podcast from Caesars. The day after we gambled all night. The morning after Chang and House had gone out for gumbo. Yeah. Like, I think, did Chang sleep that night? No. Right. So, gambled all night. Yeah. And just went straight out and had gumbo in some weird Joe House spot. Yeah. Off the strip. And then we potted. And then potted about, like, Chang winning a bone-colored chip that he had to, like, go fucking show Social Security number four. It was great.

Chang is kind of like the guy that... And that's also when I learned about people betting into people from like, you can just be like, I'm going to bet on this guy. Yeah. That's fucking crazy. Chang's a little bit like Jim in The Gambler. Like if he has a run, he's got to self-sabotage it somehow. Let's go to craps. I'm just going to start betting on random shit. Next one, Goodman's second scene. Oh my God. The fuck you speech. Open up two and a half million dollars. What do you got on you? Nothing. What'd you put away? Nothing.

You get up $2.5 million, any asshole in the world knows what to do. You get a house with a 25-year roof, an indestructible Jap economy shitbox. You put the rest into the system of 3% to 5% to pay your taxes, and that's your base, get me? That's your fortress of fucking solitude. That puts you for the rest of your life at a level of fuck you. Somebody wants you to do something, fuck you. Boss pisses you off, fuck you. Own your house, have a couple bucks in the bank, fuck you.

Don't drink. That's all I have to say to anybody at any social level. Did your grandfather take risks? Yes. I guarantee he did it from a position of fuck you. I think this is my favorite scene. This is the best. Okay. Everyone's been there once. If you're there twice, I can't help you. Some really good wisdom in this. Do you have the brains to walk when it's time to walk? But then the big speech. I guarantee he did it from a position of fuck you. A wise man's life is based around fuck you.

The United States of America is based on fuck you. You're a king. You have an army. Greatest navy in the history of the world. Fuck you. Blow me. We'll fuck it up ourselves.

He's amazing in this scene. And I actually really agree with him. I like the position of fuck you. This is why both of us would defend this movie to the death. This movie has great themes and thoughts in it. Yeah, and it's like every one of these guys is either trying to entice him into a life of servitude or...

get him to see like what he could be, you know? And they're, they're always like kind of, they're almost like these kinds of religious or spiritual tests more than they are like bookies. And I kind of love that, you know, it's a good movie trope of just random people who aren't good people, but for some reason care about this other person that in real life, they would just, I don't know why Frank cares that much. I guess the implication is that he knew Jim's dad or grandfather, the grandfather, um,

The Neville thing, the Michael K. Williams character, is basically like, I want to set up a gambling ring that goes on for years. Yeah. The basketball game. I wanted to ask you about this. I thought it was solid. I actually thought it was pretty realistic. Just too dark. Well, because I think they probably couldn't afford fans. Nowadays, they would just see Jad the fans, but we were still in that world of...

Like Rocky's the worst of this. Yeah, where it's like the lights are down so you can only see. They have to darken out the entire spectrum. So that was it. But I actually thought I kind of liked his game. Yeah. Who is he like, Lamar Allen? I think he's like a proto Jabari Smith Jr.,

Yeah, but he's a little shorter though. Rangey? No, he seems like he's 6'6". You think he's that tall? No, they listed him. He was 6'5". They showed it. Yeah, I thought he was a little more... Well, we're going to get into what this movie communicates properly and doesn't about NCAA sports. Okay.

I thought he was a little DeMar DeRozany, but almost like what Shabazz... Following in DeMar's footsteps at USC. What Shabazz Muhammad should have been, but wasn't. Like, theoretical Shabazz Muhammad. An hour and a half being like a little bit of a young Norman Powell. Because he was like a slasher. He had this inside-outside game, but he wasn't that big. I was fascinated by his passing. I know.

Just never worked out for him. Cle Anthony early, maybe, you know? Oh, Cle Anthony early. Then last one, the big bet. He bets black. Really good setup. Another great underbelly place we get to go into. And multiple people watching him. Bets black, gets 22. Do you think that this movie is actually saying that gambling is all chance and that there's no skill to it? No, I don't. Did you want like a great blackjack scene at the end of this movie? No.

I mean, that always is my preference. But I don't think the movie's interested in gambling as much as self-destruction. The gambling is just like a way for him to fuck up his life. I don't think it really cares about it. Which is probably... That's the thing, like...

I wanted, when I watched this the first couple times, I wanted the gambling to matter more in the movie because I love the gambling stuff. But if you view it more as like leaving Las Vegas or something, like he's, it's just self-destruction. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we have the same rewatchable scene? Yes. Far away from Frank. All right. That was the most rewatchable scene brought to you by Den of Thieves 2. Pantera. Get ready for all the action, drama, and chaos.

As Gerard Butler's character goes from cop to criminal in a brand new heist, see Den of Thieves 2 Pantera only in theaters January 10th. Gerard Butler. I really think outkicked his coverage for me with movies that he made. Like if you were going flight to Australia for the Australian Open and they were like, we have no other movies today except Gerard Butler. I'd be like, I'm fine. That's 20 hours. I'm in. For the Australian Open.

It's like we just have Gerard Butler. That's it. Let's take a break and we'll come back at the rest of the categories.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. There's nothing sweeter than bacon cookies during the holidays. With Prime, I get all my ingredients delivered right to my door, fast and free. No last minute store trips needed. And of course, I blast my favorite holiday playlist on Amazon Music. It's the ultimate soundtrack for creating unforgettable memories. From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to get more out of whatever you're into.

All right, what's the most 2014 thing about this movie? This is easy. Young Brie Larson. Oh, sure. Yeah. She seems like such a young pup in this. And now is Brie Larson. It's just, it was just notable to watch it. Yeah, there was also like, this was an era of crime adjacent movies. Yeah, like Focus. Where they would be like, hey, Richard Schiff. Hey, Michael K. Williams. Hey, John Goodman.

Yeah. We need you for like four days. Right. You know, can you come in and nail this scene? And like, you know, like, so that was like, I feel like triple nine. Like there was a bunch of movies right around here where it was like, man, this is just like kind of trashy, but really like way more. The acting is way better than it needs to be. You know, that's an interesting concept. And I wonder when that started. Cause yeah,

You think like when Jack Nicholson did the Joker and people were like, oh, this is cool. So you can have the biggest star of the movie. Malkovich and Conner. Yeah. And then that Jack Nicholson starts the villain era and then everybody wanted the villain part. I wonder when the, the Dion Waiters era started basically. Yeah. Like I can come in and just do. Cause Goodman does this in flight too. So that's 2012. Yeah. Departed. Yeah.

You have a lot of like really good, that's 2006? Yep. You have a lot of good actors in like small part, like Baldwin's in that movie. Not that much, but just killing every scene he's in. So it's somewhere like mid-2000s when actors realize like, this is a huge win for me if I crush these four scenes. Yes. I'll just do this like weird Casey Affleck cop movie where I come in and I'm like a heroin dealer. Yeah. You know? I mean, maybe it goes all the way back to like...

you know, Gary Oldman in a true romance. That's actually a good hopper walking. Maybe that's when it starts. Yeah. Yeah. What's aged the best? A hot girl making a wait, you're gambling again. Oh, no face. What does that not worked in a movie?

But the funny thing is that this relationship starts with him already in the tailspin. Yeah. So she's not going to be like, oh, I thought I was going to start dating Jonathan Franzen here. I have some more thoughts on that later. What's aged the best? I always like when in the credits when it says it was cast by Sheila Jaffe. Yeah. I always think she has good taste. Yeah. Sheila. Not quite rewatchables category status, but... Super job, Sheila. Best casting. Best caster. I see her. I always know the movie's in good hands.

How about King of Spades as an iPhone address entry? Oh, yeah. Do you do anything with your iPhone where you put, instead of the person's name, you put other stuff in there? Oh, like a funny, like, you know, Mr. Like something for fantasy where it's like Mr. Freakin'. No, I have some mean stuff in my phone. Okay. Yeah, there's a couple agents that I have. They come up as fuckface dot dot dot on my phone. And you know who you are.

Agents are the worst. Is that a shot at Bernie Lee? No, Bernie Lee is in my phone. It's Bernie Lee. I like Bernie Lee. What do you have for what's aged the best? Because I have a few more. Michael K. Williams. Yeah. Just awesome. I'd forgotten how big his part was in this movie, this most recent rewatch. And it's just so awesome watching him cook. What a good actor. He was taking promos, man. That sucks.

I love the connections between the scenes of where they have like these ideas that seem to be getting passed from scene to scene. So like talking about Frank talking about like suicidal gamblers almost goes immediately into the camo scene about Jim being like saving the sixth bullet.

is something no one ever noticed except for me. And that is why I am here. And that is actually a William Monaghan. Like he was like, I noticed that. And that kind of sent me down the road of writing about literature for a while. Well, you had Farrow Woodstage, the best of Moynihan dipping into old departed dialogue, right? What did he do? World needs plenty of electricians. Well,

The world needs plenty of pods. He's like, I'm just going to run that back. Also, just got to say, man, if you put a scene in Koreatown, your movie is a B, at least. I'm trying to think of any time Koreatown is in every... And the funny thing is when you go to Koreatown, which is one of my favorite places in LA and one of the best food places in the country. But if you're there at night, you feel like you're in a movie no matter where you are in Koreatown. If you're there during the day, you're like, Jesus Christ. Yeah, you're there during the day. It's like, what's going on here? Yeah.

I have the soundtrack is just funky and weird. Yeah. John Bryan and Theo James, I think, did it. Two M83 songs? Yeah. You a big M83 guy? Not really. Okay. But I like the way they use the music in this. You've got a BMW M1, how are you unhappy? I'm just blinded on any line like that in a movie. I know I'm in the right hands with the movie if somebody said that to somebody else. Did you write this because you believed in it or because you thought it was what people wanted?

She asked him at one point, just a good idea. And his answer was he probably wrote that book because he thought that's what people wanted as a book, but it didn't come from his heart, which I think is another big theme in this movie. The quick exchange that Neville and Jim have where he's like, there's only $10,000 against it at Warner Brothers, and Neville's like, it's an indie at best when they're talking about the adaptation of it. Yeah, it's good. Very good. I like Lamar's third-person routine.

And then when he talks about himself in third person. But my favorite is Michael Kay and his crew watching the point shaving game. And it becomes like the first alt gambling cast. This is the barstool. Yeah. The betting stream. This sets up.

This is on Turner. You can watch the NBA Cup quarterfinals or there's Jalen Rose and Kurt Goldsberry and Michael K. Williams. And it just keeps cutting to him. He's like, oh man, what the fuck is he doing? Do you think Big Cat saw this and was like, this is great? All right, next category, the Fortune 3 Clap Award for most gif-able moment. What did you have for this? Probably Goodman shaving his head. Did you have one? Didn't.

It's probably some sort of blackjack him losing something. But the thing is, he didn't. And I think he played it intentionally this way, but I just don't think Bernthal would have. You didn't feel the pain of any of the losses. And I think because he was trying not to have the pain. I think Bernthal would have been more interesting with it. Bernthal, I actually just as soon as you were saying that, it popped into my head is just after Presumed Innocent, Gyllenhaal. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Like watching him go, watching like it come up red on him and just be like, oh fuck. Yeah. Den of Thieves, Benihana Awards, scene stealing location. You could, you could go Koreatown.

You go to the casino in the beginning? You go to the casino in the end? Where do you want? I think I'm going to go the last casino in Koreatown as they go down all these different levels through the weird cabaret singer, the noodle bar, looks like an opium den, and then into an internet cafe, and then into the casino. By the way, if that place actually exists, I'm going there today. DM me. Yeah.

Would it be weird if I took out $100,000 in cash? Maybe that's where we should do our first gambling stream. Right. The Michael McDonald Sweet Freedom Award for best needle drop. Or the Kid Cudi. I got common people. Yeah? Yeah. What did you have? The choir singing Creep as he's kind of breaking up with Brie Larson. The only problem I had with that was Fincher used that in the trailer for Social Network. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I felt like it was stolen valor. It's like you guys are coming in after he's already made that iconic.

Closing credit song is solid too. Is that the one you're talking about? No, Common People is the one that Brie Larson's listening to when she's walking around campus. The Pulp song. Yeah, yeah. Big Kahuna Burger Award for best use of food or drink. Nobody like eats or really drinks in this movie. Constant cereal eating. I guess the cereal. When did you cut cereal out of your every day? You know, there was that first wave of how bad cereal was for you articles. And I still hold on for another seven to ten years.

I still had Cheerios in the house. My wife still gets it. Like, she'll do, like, some fiber stuff or some, like, healthier stuff. So, occasionally, I'll just kind of lose it. Like...

Almost like smoking Marlboro Reds again. I feel like if you're going to do it now, you might as well just go back to Honey Nut. You know what I mean? You might as well just have the 40 grams of sugar and say who gives a shit. I don't really want to eat a bunch of thumbtacks, but if somebody put Frosted Mini Wheats in front of me, I would probably go after it. What was your number one cereal? Just in general. I just eat Cheerios.

I really loved Rice Krispies. Yeah. I liked hearing them crackle. I really loved Frosted Mini Wheats for a long time. It was another favorite. I liked when they would get soggy in the bottom. I can't tell you what a giant cereal guy I was in the 90s. That's a huge cereal. I would just have it for dinner. I mean, Golden Grahams is one of the all-time greatest tastes of my life. I still eat cereal all the time. Big cereal guy. I love cereal. Do you eat healthy cereal or just regular cereal? I've pivoted to healthy cereal. Do you think it really matters?

I honestly just like having like any kind of cornflake in milk. Toss in a banana, it's good. Me too. So also, this is one thing that is really underrated is that cereal is the perfect, like, I have to go somewhere. Like, let's say you're going to a movie at seven. You're not going to get dinner. You get a quick bowl of cereal before you go. It's in between a snack and a meal. Yeah. It actually does tide you over. And also like, you know,

My sophomore year in college, I just basically ate cereal and then occasionally half-snack I would go out and eat. But I weighed 160 pounds at one point. In a good way or a bad way? I was playing basketball like five, six days a week and just eating cereal. And then occasionally half-snack, we'd go to like Papa Gino's and eat pizza. And my body was like, what's going on? What are you doing to me?

I love cereal though. I might make a cereal comeback over the break. I think we should do it. Maybe we should document it somehow. I will say one thing. I'm not a huge like getting douchey about almond milk, soy milk, oat milk, all that stuff. But I do think almond milk's pretty good with cornflakes. Yeah. It's about as tolerable as it gets with almond milk. You want to go slightly healthier. I think that if I was going to do it, I would go back full whole milk in a bowl. That's what I do, baby. Yeah. Full cow's milk. What's your favorite kind of cereal bowl?

Deep. Because I like the deep high ones. Yeah. I like to dig in. I like when the cereal gets kind of soggy in the bottom. In college, in Boston, I lived off Kraft Mac and Cheese and cereal. Pretty much. That was basically... Look where we are. Frosted Flakes was another one. Yeah. I would splurge every once in a while in Charlestown and go to the 99 because they have like the $9 chicken parmesan. Like, I'm going chicken parm tonight. This went longer than what's aged the best.

Cereal's great. Should we do a cereal podcast? Yeah, we could probably get a good video sponsorship. I bet that would do very well. It's like new podcast from The Ringer. The cereal podcast. I think what we would have to do is do like a Huberman pod where you and I go on a pure cereal diet and see how it affects us.

Here's the thing about cereal. It's the most involved in people's life, but the least discussed. Yeah. Everyone has like favorite, least favorite cereals. This is what- It's never talked about. Nobody would ever bring this up at dinner. Jon Hamm says this about crude oil and landmine. Yeah.

This is the one thing in the other thing with cereal is like people of all ages eat cereal Yeah, like that like your kids turn like I'll be completely honest This is like this is the one time where I've let the hive mind tell me what to do where I've let group think Everybody's just like this shit is so bad for you. I'm like, I guess it's bad for me I guess I mean, yeah, you can't eat a bowl of Captain Crunch anymore. You'll like I should be eating Cheerios. Oh

There's certain cereals that are bad though. Like Fruit Loops stuff with the dye in them. That's proven. And by the way, I fucking love Fruit Loops. Do you think Rupert Wyatt's listening to this and is just like, fuck, I can't believe my work is finally being recognized and then we go on a 10 minute fucking cereal challenge?

Did you like Fruity Pebbles? I was never a big Trix Fruity Pebbles guy. Were you a cereal mixer? Because that was another thing I used to do. I used to suicide it a little bit. Because if you get the little boxes and you go Lucky Charms and Apple Jacks and just like, who gives a shit? Oh, I loved Apple Jacks. Apple Jacks are still okay, right? No? No. They're really sugary, but they're great. They taste amazing. Cereal's so good. Jack, has your generation abandoned cereal?

Hell no. Honestly, people should just have it for dessert. Starting your day with it is the problem, but just have it as a dessert. That's what I've done a few times. I go on binges, and now, unfortunately, I'm going to go on another one with cereal. Anyway, that was the Big Kahuna Burger Award for Best Use of Food or Drink. The Butch's Girlfriend Award, weak link of the film. I like Jessica Lange before you say it. I think...

It is a choice what she's doing, but I think what she has to say in the film is quite effective. Oh, I really like her in this movie. Okay, good. Just making sure. I don't know why Brie Larson's character would like Jim. I think that that's a huge question. I just can't figure it out. First scene in the movie, she sees him fucking on the self-destructive bender. Yeah. He's a terrible professor. You're supposed to inspire students, and he's like, you guys all fucking suck. You have no chance. So in the script...

which I read, there is another character in the movie who was supposed to be played by Leland Orser and he's cut out. But he's like his adversary at school. And he's basically like, you're a fucking genius professor. Like, I hate you, but you are like the best of us. Oh, it's one of those. Yeah. You used to be the best. What happened? But I think maybe we're catching Jim at a little bit of a low point in his professorial career. Like, I think he's supposed to be like inspiring to these people.

Why is a 20-year-old bookworm at USC working at, like, an underground gambling ring as a waitress? Because I think they really— The tips must be incredible. But how did she even find that job? She's a book—like, I feel like she's not exploring the job space. Yeah, she sits in the middle of class, but she's also, like, this illegal blackjack cocktail waitress. And they never go back to it? She has no opinions on gambling? I actually have an answer. In the research—

In the research, they decided they just really liked the Brie Larson character and they were just looking for things to shoehorn her into. They beefed her up a little bit, yeah. I have no idea why she likes him. It makes no sense. And there's got to be two scenes of them

where they talk about cereal that's just got taken out of the final. Yeah, I just think that this is a two-week relationship. This goes hot and heavy. And then the second Wednesday that he's like still like moaning about how he's not Dostoevsky, she's like, I gotta try something else here.

Do you believe in the students getting involved with the professor as a Hollywood thing or a thing that happens in real life? I think that it did happen for a very long time. I mean, there are a lot of novels about a professor who gets really horny for his students.

That is like the bedrock of Philip Roth's career, right? We had one in college. A friend of mine got involved with a professor. When she told me, I was like... It was like you could have told me... A TA or like an actual graying professor? No, it was a professor. Was he an English teacher? Not going to give any more info than that. But I was so blown away. I was like...

And you're in his class? Like, I just, I couldn't believe it. I feel like it happens less now. Yeah. Well, I would hope so. Yeah. This is probably, I have this as what changed the worst, but like, this is like. Getting involved with your professor? It's kind of wild to watch this movie and be like, oh, wow, like Brie Larson's probably 21 in this movie and he's supposed to be 40?

He's a degenerate fucking maniac gambler, 40-year-old just getting involved with his TAs. Yeah, the movie ending with him running for nine miles to a 20-year-old's dorm. Yeah. A little weird. A little weird. Anyway, that was a weak link for me. What do you have, CR? Weak link, I thought...

Would just be the fact that there's just not very sophisticated gambling going on. So like, I think that when you, you don't get enough gambling movies that we can get a gambling movie where there's just no real skill or like strategy deployed that it's just like stacking and it's just destruction. That being said, it is, it is a very like entertaining thing to watch to see this guy do this.

Can I make a suggestion? You know how I always talk on the rewatchables and we've done almost 370 movies at this point about how I can't believe anyone making a sports movie wouldn't just call. Maybe do we have to start a sports movie consultancy, whatever. I have. I also think I should be gambling consultant for this because I would have told them scrap the blackjack.

Go right to craps. Much more fun for movies. In a Vegas scene, just craps. There's more going on. There's more people. There's dice. There's things thrown in the air. There's guys pulling in. You can bet on all these different things. I just think it works better. It's also like, Wahlberg lives in Nevada now. I assume he gambles, right? Right. Blackjack's just so generic. And they use these big square things. I don't know.

The Mallory Rubin Award for Did This Movie Need a Better Sex Scene. Probably not. Probably because it would have been weird. She's like 20. She jumps him. Yeah. But they don't show it. We'll never know Mallory's thoughts. I don't think Mal's seen this. What's H the worst other than stuff we've mentioned? I wrote down Wahlberg's hair looks like he's a 1974 right wing in the Flyers. He's like Rick Tockett. He's on Dave Schultz's line. What the hell is this haircut?

I assume this was like he had come off another movie or was going on to another. It just looks like he's got 18 wraparound hair strands. There's stuff in the back. It's just really strange. The guy who plays Dexter? Emery Cohen. I wrote down he's like David Arquette after a stroke. Do you know who he is? He was just in Rebel Ridge.

That's the same Emory Cup? Why did he play this part of Dexter like this? This is right after or right around Place Beyond the Pines, I think. And he was like a hot young actor. She's going for it? Yeah, he's awesome. I like it. You don't like it? I don't. He reminds me of Timothy Hutton's brother played by David Arquette in Beautiful Girls. He'd say, hey, you think you'd be here for a while? I'm gonna go take a shit. I have two big ones. He would definitely be the coolest...

weirdest number two player in the country of all in tennis history. Tennis players are super boring just in general. No, but no tennis player has even half as much weird personality. Speaking of tennis, what's aged the worst? Jessica Lange's tennis, just abysmal. I don't like her outfit. They have to do the quick, the close cuts of her because she's doing a serve. She's serving like this. Like there's just nothing going on there.

Would have gone golf maybe for that scene. Oh, but that would take out Dexter being her tennis instructor, which I thought was another sort of awkward thing. Maybe play doubles with him to try to hide the tennis more. Just wasn't good enough. Well, now she's playing pickleball, right? Yeah, or piddel. Yeah. Is that what it's called?

Paddle? What are you talking about? I don't even know. P-A-D-E-L? Do they try to make pickleball sound more interesting? Peter Schrager's always trying to get me to get excited about paddle. Is that a different game or is that pickleball? I thought it was pickleball. No, it's like the kind of more tolerable pickleball. Oh, is it like squash versus racquetball version? Yeah. What kind of ball do you use? It's more like, it's basically paddle tennis, but now it's got a rebrand. And paddle tennis is kind of fun. Yeah.

Pickleball should be shot into the sun and everybody who plays it should have to atone for their sins when they die. What's aged the worst? Broke college players. Pre-NIL. Now he's just... Now Lamar is just getting Chick-fil-A sponsorship. The collective has come through for Lamar. Yeah. Also, hard to imagine sports science being what it is that he can hide whatever's going on with his knee. Yeah, this is like a 1982 plot. Also, we'd just be like, just get surgery. You're a junior. Yeah.

I had that as well. I think if he was this good, he would have come out as a sophomore. I agree. Why is he in college for three years? Get the fuck out of there, Lamar. Go make some cash. Maybe he loved the works of Albert Camus. Maybe. And the teachings of Jim Bennett. Ruffalo Hanna, Rubinick Partridge, overacting word. They knew and they let it happen. Don't you call me lady. I come in here. I give these things to you. Give it all you got. Give it all you got.

I treated you like a son! You fucking stabbed me in the heart! Fuck you! Fuck you! Professor Wahlberg dialing it up. The Shakespeare speech. Awesome. Really trying hard. Although laying outside of the bank being like, do I embarrass you? Yeah, yeah. She's in there too. Was there a better title for this movie? No. The Can You Dig It Award for most memorable quote, A Wise Man's Life is based around fuck you. Yeah. Do you agree with this philosophy?

This, you get a house with a 25 year roof and an indestructible Japanese economy shit box. And you put the rest in the system at three to 5% to pay your taxes. And that's your base. That's what I've been telling you for six years. I just keep playing blackjack with it. That's why it's the work for you. I need the money. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. How does take a word? I got one. Yep.

Is this movie more interesting if the central relationship is just Jim and Lamar? We don't have Brie Larson at all. Take her out. She's gone. Do the new cut. If you take Brie Larson and just edit her out of the movie with all due respect. Why would we do that? I love Brie Larson. Because the Lamar relationship is almost more unique and interesting. So two more Lamar scenes. Yeah. And the ethics of whether or not he can ask Lamar to do this and why Lamar is doing it. What's Lamar's deal? What does Lamar think of Shakespeare?

It's an interesting idea. So Lamar is just basically blown up into a much bigger character. Yeah, you basically have like a lottery pick to be and a self-destructive professor is like the kind of central relationship. You kind of... Brie Larson's scenes are not integral to the story. And it becomes an Adam Sandler with the Safdie brothers and Lamar and then Lamar gets shot at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. My hottest take...

I don't know what Wahlberg's legacy is going to be as an actor, but he has worked with, I think the best collection of very attractive actresses at the perfect times of their career. I'm just going to go through a list.

And I'm not really counting Reese Witherspoon and fair. Cause that was a little early for her, but he did catch the Reese Witherspoon train pretty early. Heather Graham, boogie nights, Diane lane, perfect storm. Charlize, the Italian job, Elizabeth banks, invincible Kate Mara, Grantland hero and shooter. Yeah. Your girl, Amy Adams in the feet in the fighter, my girl, Mila Kunis and Ted and Brie Larson in the gambler. And that's all within 20 years. Craig, it's impressive.

Great work by him. Like really, really good taste. Ronda Rousey in Mile 22. I didn't have her in there. Who do you think he had the best chemistry with? Because I think it might be Brie, even though I've just made the case for cutting her out of the film. It's good in Brie, but I mean, Charlize in The Italian Job. Okay. I actually had to replace a plasma TV because she'd burn out the bulb. She was so crazy hot in that movie. Did we do Vincent Chase?

No, but we can. May I ask you something? Yeah. Would bookies be this permissive? No. It's a lot of money. It's like, there's a cap on this, right? Yeah. Like, these guys all know what he's doing. And it seems like, obviously for the story, it makes it really interesting to give him seven days. It's got, like, the countdown element to it. With juice. Yeah.

But like, why would you give this guy $240,000? Like, is it just because they think they can then go after his mother and take her house? Like, and liquidate his... Movie trope. Yeah. It's too much money. It, like, probably like 25K would be a lot. So, I'm with you. Okay. We'll take a break and then we're gonna do casting whinevs.

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Casting what ifs Paramount got the rights in 2011 And it was supposed to be Scorsese And Leo and Moynihan Or Moynihan As they call it the CR Dream Team The departed trio yeah And Scorsese dropped out Todd Phillips in there for a second Known to gamble from time to time In a pretty famous game in LA Oh And he dropped out And then Wahlberg and Wyatt came in Okay

Not a lot of casting stuff for this. No. Well, this is the problem is we haven't had enough time since the movie was made for the internet to make up stuff. It's like Ben Affleck was in there. This would be an interesting Affleck role. I'm sure he's a little older. No, he was at the right time of his... In 14, he was at the right age, right? That was his gone girl age. He's a couple years older than Wahlberg, right? They're around the same age, yeah.

Best that guy award. It's got to be Dom from Entourage. It is. I kind of think of him as Dominic Lombardozzi. So I was going to ask you, could we throw this to Marcus Johnson as the color guy during the basketball game? Oh, that's interesting. So you think he's Dominic Lombardozzi now? To me, he is. What do you think, Craig? None of these guys are ever Dominic Lombardozzi to me. Yeah, I don't think people... I think to us, he's that, but I think most people are like, hey, it's Dom from Entourage. Oh, the guy from The Wire. Yeah.

This guy is quite an IMDB, by the way. Lombardozzi? Yeah. Because you know what else he was in. You know. Miami Vice. Yeah. He's one of the cops, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he played that crazy Vince's cousin character or friend, whoever. What was he? Vince's friend? Or he was... On Entourage? He was his buddy. He had like a three episode arc on Entourage. Yeah, he's his buddy from back east, right? Yeah. He was Detective Stan Swiatek on Miami Vice. Yeah.

He was also in For Love of the Game as the tow truck driver. He's been in a lot of rewatchables, kind of secretly. Yeah. He was in... Maybe not that many. I like that guy. He was in The Irishman. Yeah. He was in Bridge of Spies, Gambler. Yeah. Public Enemies. He's worked with Mann a couple of times. He was in SWAT. Dion Waiters. John Goodman is the winner. Michael K. Williams is in it too much, I think.

Yeah, he's got like five, six scenes. Shout out to Omega Watch guy. The guy who was trying to buy his Omega Watch. Westway, yeah. Recasting couch director of City. I already had Bernthal as Wahlberg. This is the Bernthal part I've wanted for seven years. I think this is what American Gigolo was supposed to be for him. Yeah, never got that. Yeah. You have anything for this? For this, I think it would be cool if it had been like Oscar Isaac or Ethan Hawke. Like a kind of, like a little bit more of a bookish. You like Oscar Isaac more than me. I know.

You know why I don't like Oscar Isaac for this? Because it's not like an incredible movie. And I don't know if there's, he doesn't bring unintentional comedy for me. That's a good point. Do you think Ethan Hawke would? Gyllenhaal certainly would. Ethan Gyllenhaal, definitely. But now Gyllenhaal is almost shaded too far toward the, like, and I don't even know if he's being unintentionally funny. I think he might think that, like, if you were like, can you lose some weight for this part? He'd come back looking like the guy in Nightcrawler.

Right. And you'd be like, well, this isn't really effective. He's like, Wahlberg lost 50 pounds. I'm going to lose 80. Romo Collinsworth or someone else for the director's commentary. I see you, Mr. Allen. You're getting to your spots, making your shots and keeping the score strangely within the spread. You may have degenerative cartilage damage, but your mid-range game is strong. We salute you, sir. I should know that was coming.

Just because he took the North Carolina job this week, I'm going to go Bill Belichick because he's not doing media anymore. No, he is. You see he's going to do McAfee still? That won't last. Okay. I don't see that happen.

Yeah, Jim's got to do better with blackjack. You know, when you're stacking bets like that, you got to cash some of the chips and put them in your pocket because eventually the odds of winning eight straight bets, you're just not going to win eight straight bets. You're just not going to. Nobody's that good. But we're on to Morongo. Nobody's that good at all. Half-assed research. This was George Kennedy's last movie. Tough last movie for George. He just looks brutal. Here's one. Each day in the movie...

Jim's shirt color gets lighter. Starts all black and starts getting lighter and then by the end it's white. And when he's finally free. Yeah. See? A lot of deep shit going on in this movie. Craig, how many pounds do you think Mark Wahlberg lost in this movie? He's pretty thin in this movie. I bet you he lost... No, 40?

He lost 61 pounds. CR. He went from 198 pounds to 137 pounds. Liquid food, vegetables, a workout of strictly cardio. And he wanted to be 137 because the thinnest he'd ever been for a movie was Boogie Nights at 138. And he wanted to be one pound lighter. And he said he would never, ever do this again. He doesn't even look that bad when he's shirtless. He doesn't look like that. Yeah. Emaciated to me. It's like kind of heroin chic. Yeah. Basketball Diaries era.

Also, you mentioned this earlier, but he sat in on college courses around different colleges and analyzed professors and their mannerisms. Can you imagine, like, you're going to fucking the modern novel and Wahlberg's sitting there? He's like, don't mind me. You don't have to fucking look at me. Look at him. He's teaching. Say hi to your mother for me. Can you imagine, like, you're like a Loyola Marymount poli-sci professor? Yeah.

And like Wahlberg's coming to your class for a week and you're so excited for the gambler to see how Wahlberg. And that's how it's represented. It's like, oh my God, is that what he saw? And then he wins on 22 black at the end. So in the sting, Redford bets on the roulette wheel and it lands on 22 black. Oh, that's cool. I don't know if that was intentional. I'm sure it was. Monaghan, they pretty much shot Monaghan's script. There's scenes excised, but there's nothing really fundamentally changed about it.

Apex Mountain, Wahlberg, no. Lang, no. Brie Larson, no. Not Blackjack, right? On screen. No. What's the best Blackjack movie? Cereal? Well, that's an interesting point. They never really show us what the cereal is. It looks like he's eating Cracklin' O'Brien or something. Are we going back to cereal now? I had it written down in Apex Mountain. This is Apex Mountain for cereal conversations, I think, this podcast. Cereal, gambling, no. Michael K. Williams, no. Shaving points in a movie? No.

Blue Chips. Blue Chips. Omega watches? In film. Watching basketball indoors with sunglasses on? Definitely. Yeah. Definitely. We finally got one. You asked best blackjack scene. I really have to think about that and maybe come back. I don't know. I don't want to just give that answer just quickly. This might be actually Apex Mountain for cocktail waitresses in movies. Because between Brie Larson and the woman at the horse track when he's like,

She's like, this kid's like the grandson of the 16th richest man in California. And she's like, does he drink? So I'd be with you on that, but what about swingers? Oh, yeah. That's true. Dorothy. Yeah, that's true. Best blackjack scene in a movie. Well, there's Rain Man, right? It's probably Rain Man. Casino Royale, they're playing poker. Yeah.

I'd have to think. I'll have an answer in a later pod. I really want to research this because I don't want to leave anything out. Open guess the lines with your research. Rain Man is the best. Hangover? Do they actually play that? Hangover, they do it. But they're just making fun of Rain Man. Yeah. They play poker in California Split, right? All right, I just Googled this. 21 was a movie built around Blackjack? Oh, yeah, that's right. The Kevin Spacey movie. I didn't really like that movie that much, though. And then, man, really not a lot of great Blackjack. I'm sure there is. Maybe the listeners will have one.

Yeah, I think it's mostly poker because poker actually takes strategy and skill and the hands have arcs to them, whereas blackjack's just like, oh, fuck. Maybe somebody someday will make the movie about my blackjack career where eventually all my friends leave and it's three in the morning and they're vacuuming under my feet. And then Jacoby comes back. Yeah, Jacoby's like, how are you still awake? Yeah. Cruise or Hanks? This is easily cruise to me. Easily.

This is the easiest cruise in a while. And it made me think like this actually would have been an incredible, incredible cruise. What year though? What year of cruise? After like 90. 2002? Like the firm era. Oh, you'd go younger? Yeah. How old do you want him to be? Like 35. Is that too? So how old is he? So maybe right after Jerry Maguire? Yes. Vanilla Sky Cruise? Right around then. Yes. I think you're right.

decided Cruz needed it so he's now he's three back yep 19 to 16 has Cruz ever been a professor I would love to see Cruz molding young minds I mean he does that he teaches he teaches film to all of us he's been a student in cocktail yeah he's been a lawyer but he's never been a teacher right Cruz doing the the first professor teacher in Top Gun Maverick oh yeah he is he's an instructor yeah yeah yeah

Racehorse, rock band, wrestler, or fantasy team name. I'll give you Lamar's Point Shavers or King of Spades. I had Mr. Lee's. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Okay. Pickin' Nits. Got a few. I mean, Lamar needs his senior year to boost his draft stock. What is this, 1974? Right. What was the last year anyone said those words with college basketball? He's his second round pick. Again, the sports consultant's right here. Yeah. Come on. Wahlberg gets the shit beaten out of him.

I think three times more severely than his actual injuries. The Korean nail place where he gets fucking drop kicked. Multiple broken ribs. Yeah. Concussion. I think he has a broken orbital bone at one point. Definitely maybe a hairline fracture of the skull. Yeah. Concussion. He's fine. You're absolutely right. What else would you have? Well, crucial sports czar error is that...

Neville says Lamar's playing Michigan and then when they actually get to the game the team he's playing against is the Bulldogs which is not Michigan Wolverines and it's also in conference it's the conference semifinal oh I didn't even notice that and I'm like come on I mean now USC and Michigan are in the Big Ten together but in 2014 this wasn't happening great one um how does Jim know that

Amy is this genius. Like how many pieces has he read by her that he's like, she is the one person in this generation who's actually talented. I don't know. Cause it's a lit class. So how much like, is he just reading her like essays and stuff? And we need a scene where he's at his desk reading the paper. Uh, the only other thing is that Frank doesn't really live by his teachings because if you're in a position of fuck you, like, why are you also a loan shark? That seems like an unnecessary people who are going to pay you back. Yeah.

My two big ones. So they just give Lamar, they're going to fix the game. Hey, we put a big giant bag of cash in your locker. It's not suspicious at all. It's a giant big gym bag right in the locker. Since we're talking about the basketball game, can I do two of my unanswerable questions that are also nitpicks? What was Jim's bet?

Oh, I have all this later. Okay. Yeah. All right. I'll do it in unanswered brawl. All right. What's the other question? What would happen if Danny Hurley had been coaching that team? God damn it, Lamar! There's no way Lamar gets back in the game. Jesus fucking Christ! Sinking to his knees. He's fucking crying because Lamar missed a mid-range jumper. Didn't run horns properly.

The giant bag of cash in the locker is ludicrous. Should I bring, should I make Danny Hurley the new Wayne Jenkins? I'll throw him in there. You had to commit to it though and fall to the ground. End of LeBar's game. So they're up seven. It's like five, seven. Then they have the ball near the end. The other team's not fouling and they're also not dribbling out the clock. Yeah.

It's idiotic. Yeah, he's going early possession shoot shots when all you have to do is choke the game out. Also, sports consultant yet again. Can't believe I'm not hired for these. The move should have been they foul Lamar with three seconds left up seven, and he goes to the line, and you don't know whether he's going to make it or not. And he's shooting the free throw, and then it cuts to Michael K. Williams celebrating. Instead, it was like, oh, he's just going to shoot up seven with one second left? Like, what the fuck is this? It never happened.

Why is it that when Lamar's practicing on his own, he's like playing in the gym that Zoe used to play middle school basketball? It's supposed to be USC. It's supposed to be like a giant gym. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TVL, Blackcast, or Untouchable. There's a prestige TV case for this movie. Yeah, I mean, I would love a show about Los Angeles' underground gambling culture and bookies, but like a professor. It's awesome. Starring David Chang? Yeah.

Sounds unbelievable. When John Goodman shows up at Major Domo and he's like, I will fucking take this place over. I am not here for the BS fries.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Danny Hurley, Sid Goldberg, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, Nell, Byron Mayo, Carly Mays, Evil Laughing Ramon Raymond, Long Legs, or Philip Baker Hall? Should we get rid of a couple of these before the end of the year? Yeah, let's do a little bit of accounting here. Let's do an audit. Who has never won? The Sid Goldberg, maybe we had a nice run with Sid. We have never done Raymond Ramon. Yeah, all right, I'll get rid of him. It's fair.

I like it, but it's just like we've never done that. I think... JT Walsh, I guess we could get rid of. Sorry, JT. Sid Goldberg, we could probably get rid of. Okay. He's pretty obscure. Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sam Jackson, Mel, Byron Mayo, Harley Mays, Long Legs, or Philip Baker Hall. Or Danny Hurley. Or Danny Hurley. Danny Hurley. For any sports movement. Jesus fucking Christ, Jim! What the fuck are we doing? Are you hitting on 18?

That's a pretty obscure cut for people who don't follow UConn's Maui Invitational press conferences. We need somebody else at the ringer to hold you back from the microphone as you're screaming. I would say Sam Jackson in this movie wouldn't have been a bad thing. Sam Jackson as Neville and Sam Jackson and Goodman in the same movie would have been awesome. I'm trying to think what Sam Jackson, could he have been like, how do we work him in?

He could be... Andre Brouwer is in one scene in this movie as the Dean. Yeah, that was another one. Like, why do we have Andre Brouwer for one scene? I'm sure there's more Dean stuff in the script, I think. Yeah. Just one Oscar who gets it, Goodman. All right, I have some really good and answerable questions. So, Jim wrote a book called Uphill Both Ways that they show the cover of. What was this book about? Book of Fiction? No.

uphill both ways what does that even mean i wonder whether it's like tries it's like supposed to be like a demon copperhead like working class tale but it just didn't ring true because it wasn't really like what his experience was well you don't think it was like an adult catcher in the rye i mean that's what he is right yeah uh as long as i i wonder what do you would you read a book called uphill both ways i would never read any book like that ever no the answer is no

Is 2.5 million really fuck you money? Because... In 2014. Because John Goodman really felt committed to that specific figure. It wasn't two, it wasn't three. I was learning how he got to two and a half. I've been up two and a half million. So John Goodman just decides that's a great number. I'm good with that. Okay. How many miles does he jog at the end? Because it seems like he goes from Koreatown... I don't think it's that far. All the way to the arts district? No, I think she lives in...

It's the, what is it? Like the Los Altos apartments. I don't know if that's real. Yeah. That's what they're called. I think. But those actually exist. Los Altos apartments. It's on Wilshire. Oh, Wilshire and what? Um, it's on Wilshire and Bronson. Yeah. Like Wilshire and Wilton. So it's actually not that far of a run. That's like a fucking one mile run. What are they doing?

At one point, he's in downtown LA for some reason. Yeah, I know. I know. So did he run all the way down here and then run back? I think they say it's Koreatown and he actually starts down by like Grand Street or something. Or maybe he's in

But they say Koreatown though, right? Well, maybe he's so fucking hungry because he's just been eating cereal the entire time that he runs down into downtown by accident. Is it possible he's in Chinatown? No, they said it's Koreatown. They're like, come to the Koreatown spot. Koreatown to Los Altos. That's like a mile. Yeah. Like you said, a very exciting mile. Jesus. I feel completely disillusioned by this. All right. I figured out exactly how much money Jim owed. Thank you. You ready? Yeah. He had the Korean $200,000. Mm-hmm.

He owed Michael K. 60K. He got 260K from Frank with 10% juice, and he got 100K from the Korean with 10% juice, and he had to pay Lamar 150K before the game, which gave him 210K left. But he owed 310, 286, and 60. So he owed $656,000, and he had 210 left.

which you bet on the basketball game. He also gives Dexter 50 grand. I haven't gotten that yet. He wins on the basketball game, bets 210 to win 200 on the basketball game. So now he's got 410. So he pays the 60K to Michael Kay. He's got 350 left, but he owed 596 to the two bad guys. Offers 50K to Dexter, doesn't take it.

So he still has the 350. Also, Dexter being like, I'm going to go pro in tennis and I'm going to maybe make 50. Come on. Terrible character. Bet's 350 on black and wins. So now he has 700. Everyone gets paid and then some, which is why Goodman at the end says, I got an extra 100 for you.

Oh, right. It's the cream on top, right? So he actually won more money than he owed, which I think is very stealth in the movie, but it's what happened. He just wants to be free. He doesn't want to actually be up against. So he gives those guys the extra and then Goodman gets it. And that, I think, is how the money shook out. Okay. So what was that Michigan game, the Lamar game, paying out then? So he paid Lamar $150,000 and his cut was probably $150,000.

Which is, I would say they probably got 30 to 35% of the cut. Okay. So maybe those guys each won 500K, something like that. Because if you're getting paid out for- It's a big enough bet that Neville knows about it after the fact, where he's like, I heard somebody showed up in Vegas and smashed the money line or whatever it was. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Best double feature choice, two for the money or the original gambler? Original gambler. Yeah. Yeah. Which first or second?

No, I watched the Jimmy Conn movie. I know, but would you watch it first or second? I would watch this second as like a palate cleanser because the Jimmy Conn movie is very like, very, very serious. The Indian Red Zawantanay Award for what happened the next day. I just wrote down Jim get dumped. I had Jim gets canceled.

What's the fucking social media gets a hold of Jim? It's like, this guy slept with a student and fucking shaved college basketball, Pac-10 conference game. And then also, he gets driven insane when Amy writes a Sally Rooney novel and becomes hugely famous. I don't even think they make it that long. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? Can I offer you the sunglasses?

I could offer you the duffel bag that held the 50K. That's a nice bag. Jessica Lange's tennis racket.

Can I get Jim's Topanga Canyon house or Beachwood Canyon? It's a pretty nice house. It's a pretty cool house. I like that. Is it Laurel? Where is he living? It feels like a little Beachwood-ish. You don't want Uphill Both Ways? Oh, that's true. Signed. I want Uphill Both Ways. The actual book of Uphill Both Ways. Yeah, that's great. I love that it's being featured in the hallway of the English department. Coach Finstock will wear Best Life Less and always be in a fuck you position. Oh, I actually said you owe somebody money. Don't fuck around. Okay.

Who won the movie? I'm going to say Monaghan, the screenwriter, just because this is like unvarnished his thing. I think that a lot of like the characters are speaking from his POV. These are his like riffs on society and existence. And I think it's more or less a vehicle for like his kind of musing. So I'm going to go William Monaghan. I like that. You're going to go Goodman? Yeah, I think I am. Because it's... I love Goodman. If that Goodman part isn't that good, if it's like... Yeah, the movie falls apart. Yeah.

If it's like D'Onofrio. If that's somebody overacting. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody trying too hard. All right, Craig had never seen this movie. It did come out in the last 10 years, which is a bonus. Yeah. What were your thoughts? Yeah, I had never heard of it. I don't know if that, is that surprising to you that I've never heard of this? No, I mean, I think that there's a lot of probably mid-10s movie that fall into obscurity first.

before you start like watching stuff yeah as usual i like this movie more after hearing you guys talk about it for 90 minutes but it's it's more memorable it will be more memorable than it than it deserves to be i think for me uh it's kind of the jordan pool of movies but parentheses complimentary because like the movie puts up 34 but a very inefficient 34 12 for 28

34 points, but like a couple incredible threes. Gets punched once. Absolutely, like back-breaking turnovers. Yeah, right. But there are moments, like the highlights are great. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think that there are misses in this movie, but ultimately what I like is that there are five really good actors.

kind of just playing dress up and going for it. And ultimately I respect that. And I think I see less and less of that nowadays. I'm like watching Mark Wahlberg, Goodman, Michael Kay, Brie Larson, all these people being like, yeah, we're going to try to win an Oscar and we're going to really go for it and kind of an overwritten gambling movie. Yeah. It's just fun to see them all collectively agreeing to do it. There used to be like a Howard Hawks saying about like how many good scenes a movie needed for the movie to be good. Hmm.

This has enough to make me rewatch it. You know what I mean? I think that you need five. I also think five years from now, you're going to be like, I really like this movie. I think so too. I think the movie to me hinges... It became unintentionally funny when... His big speech as a professor in the classroom...

Like he wanted that to be like in his head. That's like the Lydia Tarr scene. Yeah. But it doesn't play. And I think after that, you're like, okay, this is now a different movie in my head. Yeah. Still very memorable. I think he obviously did a lot of research. I've made this joke before. We've been talking about this, but like, he's, he's almost like he's reading phonetically. Yes. Like, I don't know that he knows what he's saying in that scene as an actor. Right.

Whereas like Bernthal would have crushed it Yeah or Or Ruffalo would have been really good He's so slick with it I almost don't even know what he's saying Because he's running through it so fast Like he's memorizing it And he's trying to get through it Yeah like he's emphasizing weird parts of the speech Yeah It's like when we found out that The lady Colin Farrell hooks up with the Miami Vice Didn't speak English And memorized all the phonetic sounds of her dialogue And it was like oh okay Maybe that's what Mark Wahlberg did Possibly That's a good point

All right. That review didn't surprise me at all because I didn't really like this movie that much the first time I saw it, but it kept my interest and made me more mad than anything. And now 10 years later, I've arrived at a great place. This is just a really good Sunday afternoon. There's nothing to watch. The 4 o'clock NFL games suck. Just throw this on. You won't be sorry. I'll tell you another thing about this movie.

People are watching it. Are they? It's always on in the Showtime bundle if you're flicking the cable guy. Yeah, it's on Paramount+. You'll see the gambler. It's on Paramount. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's...

It's, I think it's, it's out there. It reminds me of what happened with focus, which was another movie that I don't think we did that on the watch list too, but that was another one that it was like, I think I like that, but it had some flaws that you and I are very easy dates if it's about sports or gambling. Yeah. Or the criminal underbelly or the criminal underbelly of either. Yeah. I think focus exploded on streaming in the last year. Cause it Margot Robbie. Yeah. Yeah. And Will Smith. Cause he punched Chris rock. Uh,

CR, a pleasure as always. Craig and Jack, thank you for producing. You can watch us on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. And we will see you. And subscribe to Ringer Serial if you haven't gotten a chance yet. Ringer Serial, Ringer TV, Ringer Movies. Yeah, 10 years ago, what really started podcasting was Serial, the podcast. And now it's a new one. Yeah. Just spelled a little differently. And we have an actual Christmas movie next week. That's right. Yeah. Very excited about that. See you then.