Rewatchables Reference

• The opening scene – Mike McDermott loses his shirt to Teddy KGB. The face Damon makes is one of the best acting moments of his career.
• 'Let's play some fucking cards' – Gretchen Mol moves out, Norton does the 'women are the fucking rake' speech, and then the music kicks in as Mike decides to go back to poker.
• The Johnny Chan scene – everything about it is awesome, including the Russian lady who has intimate familiarity with the hand.
• The judges' game – Mike putting every player on their hand in 14 seconds.
• The final scene – Mike vs. Teddy KGB, the rematch.
• Mike and Worm winning everything back on their run through the underground games.
• The trip to Binghamton – the scariest scene in the movie, when the municipal workers catch Worm cheating and beat the shit out of them.

• The opening line: 'Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.' One of the most memorable opening lines in movie history.
• All the poker lingo – the flop, the nuts, all that shit. It's aged beautifully and made people actually understand poker.
• Billions DNA – you watch 'Rounders' and can see the origins of Koppelman and Levien's Billions.
• Damon and Norton at really fun times of their careers – Damon after 'Good Will Hunting', Norton in his 'Primal Fear'/American History X/'Fight Club' run.
• Russians as villains – much more believable and relevant in 2018 than in 1998.
• The movie looks surprisingly cool and not dated for 1998. It's also a pretty good New York movie.

• Gretchen Mol as the stereotypical wet-blanket girlfriend – a staple of '80s and '90s sports movies. She's flat-out bad in the movie.
• Mike not hooking up with Famke Janssen – inexplicable and indefensible. His girlfriend moves out, he's got nothing going on, Famke makes a hard pass, and he says no.
• The judges' game card read – 14 seconds to read everyone's hands is hard to buy, even though Koppelman and Levien claim they've seen it happen.
• Martin Landau's character – a cross between a law professor, Confucius, the Fairy Godmother, and Red Auerbach. Not great, but essential to the movie.

• Neve Campbell turned down the role of Jo – would have been better. She was inherently sympathetic, which is what the character needed.
• Could Damon and Norton have switched parts? Norton is probably more irreplaceable as Worm than Damon is as Mike.

John Malkovich as Teddy KGB. He's in three scenes, maybe 12 minutes total, and scores 35 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 blocked shots. His accent was ridiculous in 1998 but kind of lovable in 2018.

• Michael Rispoli as Grama – the guy who lost the bake-off to Gandolfini for The Sopranos.
• Lenny Clarke in one of the poker scenes – you only knew him if you lived in Boston.

• Malkovich as Teddy KGB – 'In my club, I will splash the pot whenever the fuck I please.' Captivating but also over-the-top. His accent is super weird and exaggerated.
• Grama's scenes are a little rough – the dog abuse as a shortcut to make us not like him.

• In the original draft, Jo was only in three scenes. The studio made them expand the role by combining her with another character.
• Malkovich learned his accent from a Russian woman reading his lines.
• The original script had Phil Hellmuth instead of Johnny Chan.
• Matt Damon had pocket kings and got knocked out by Doyle Brunson at the real 1998 WSOP.

• Johnny Chan – 100%. Won the WSOP twice and then gets immortalized forever in this movie. 'Look at the patience. Look at him wade out his chi.'
• Matt Damon – no, the movie wasn't a hit. His Apex Mountain is probably the first Bourne movie.
• Ed Norton – no, 'Fight Club' was his Apex Mountain.
• John Malkovich – it's Being John Malkovich. Having an entire movie named after you trumps everything.
• John Turturro – the 'Rounders'/Big Lebowski combo in the same year is pretty incredible. But Barton Fink is probably his Apex Mountain.
• Koppelman and Levien – Billions is probably their Apex Mountain now.

• Could Damon and Norton have switched parts?
• What is Grama's actual arrangement with Teddy KGB? How does the money stuff work at the end?
• Why doesn't Mike hook up with Famke Janssen?
• How did KGB know his boat was better than Mike's in the opening scene? Mike could have had pocket nines for four of a kind.

• Johnny Chan – the Muhammad Ali of poker. Won the WSOP twice, nobody cared, then this movie made him immortal.
• Strong cases for Koppelman and Levien (led to Billions), Malkovich (iconic performance in 12 minutes), and the poker industry (this movie plus the hole-card camera plus Chris Moneymaker created the poker boom).