Bulwark Takes - Rounders Bombed—Then Became a CLASSIC | Bulwark Movie Club

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Sarah, JVL and Sonny take on Rounders—the ’90s cult poker movie that turned Matt Damon, Ed Norton, and John Malkovich into gambling legends. They debate whether Teddy KGB is secretly the hero, confess real-life Vegas stories, and unpack how online betting is turning America into a nation of addicts. Get free shipping and 365 day returns with Quince at https://Quince.com/BULWARKTAKES. #sponsored 

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Welcome back to Bullwark Movie Club. I am really excited to be talking about movies with my good friends here, Sarah and JVL. And we are talking about one of our, one of my, I don't know about you guys, I won't speak for you. One of my favorite indie era, like the 90s Indies era movies, Rounders, which was not a huge hit, not a huge hit on initial release, got a lot of buzz and became really kind of a seminal movie as the online poker boom took up. off a few years later. Chris Moneymaker wins the World Series of poker. But Rounders itself is a is like a fascinating just movie qua movie because it stars Matt Damon right after he has won

the Oscar for Goodwill Hunting, right? He has won the screenplay Oscar with Ben Affleck. He stars in this movie with Ed Norton, who is himself a kind of up-and-coming star right before. He is in Fight Club with Brad Pitt. It's a, it's just this it's this kind of perfect storm of talent. And then Nobody went to go see it. Nobody went to see this movie. And then it catches a second life on cable, catches a second life on DVD. It becomes one of those basic cable classic dorm room DVD movies

that everybody watches and passes around. The basics here are pretty straightforward. Mike McDee, who is played by Matt Damon, is a poker player. He plays in the local games in New York City. He's putting himself through law school by winnings. He's grinding out 20, 30 grand a year, just taking down pots at these games,

and he is paying his way through school, and then he loses it all one night. Loses it all in Teddy KGB's joint. I think JBL is going to do a good Teddy KGB for us in a minute. Pay him. Pay that means his money. Throughout the show, he will be doing this. So just as a heads up,

that's what he sounds out. That's what John Malkovich sounds like as Teddy GGB. And loses all his money, and then in short order, loses his girlfriend, is about to fail out of school, and decides, I got to save my friend,

who is out of prison, played by, again, Ed Norton, by just being good at cards, just being very good at poker. And he does it. Good for it. It's a real feel-good story. Sarah, you are, I think you are more of a gambler than JVL. JBL, you're not a gambler, right? You don't.

No, I love gambling. I love watching gambling. I do not do very much of it myself. But I like to watch other people gamble. See, that you're the sort of. or a person who hovers at the blackjack table behind. Yeah. Sarah,

does that drive you insane? When somebody does that to you in a casino, does that drive you absolutely bonkers? No, it's okay with me if people want to watch. That's fine. The only problem I have is when the person hovering behind me is one of my friends and or siblings who is trying to tell me you must get up and leave.

Like, I've taken your debit card. I want you. It is four in the morning. When I left you at 11.30, you said you'd be right up and you're not. But I do love to gamble. When I left you at 1130, you had a full pack of cigarettes and a full stack of chips. And now you have neither.

And we've got to go. We got to get, we got to get. We got to be at the airport in 20 minutes. And look, I'm glad we're talking about this movie because it's a good opportunity for me to do a bit of a confessional about me. And it, because it's going to relate to how I take movies like this, which is I am a degenerate gambler. I love gambling, I love cards, and I do, then the reason this movie works for me when I know that as a quality question, I could, if I was really doing my, let's pick this apart, and we'll go through it, I have a lot of things I can point to where I'm like, all right, guys. And I'll just give you my top line, which is that the movie itself, I think does not assess. establish particularly high stakes for our character in terms of his goal. The stakes get high

because he gets himself in trouble. But like his, the reason he's doing everything is because this is a man with a dream. And the dream is to play in the world series of poker and to sit at the table with the greats. Okay, that's the stakes, is that he needs to do that. And you're sort of like, okay. Like, you've got a dream. I see. Sure. But the stakes. takes in the movie in terms of when he's sitting at the table. And I think if you are someone who gambles, this hits hard on this because the thing is when you're up, the feeling is tremendous. And when you're down, the feeling is the slough of despond.

Like, and those, as it carries you through those two things, and I just, I know this feeling. And like, it's actually, I know it, especially when I was young, right? and I was in my early 20s and I lived in Delaware and I was so bored and I would drive. How many times a month were you at AC

when you lived in Delaware? Real talk. I, especially by my third year when I just had a little bit of scratch, I was going a lot. And it was like a thing where I will... What was your preferred casino? Were you at the Taj?

Oh, that's a good question. I bet I was. I don't remember though because as I got older, I did much more Vegas gambling and once I didn't live in Delaware I didn't go to Atlantic City but I used to drive up there with my roommate

and I mean we would I would get home from work and we'd be sitting around like watching TV and she'd be like do you want to go? And I'd like yeah and like we'd go at like 9 p.m. Impulse trips to Atlantic

City baby. I swear to God there was a time where I had to do a radio interview about something policy and I did it from a parking garage at like 7th 30 in the morning after being awake all night. It's like, I obviously never did the underworld life of all of this, but the like being at a time when losing $200, like hurt.

And so the stakes, meaning if you made some money, it really mattered. If you lost some money, really mattered, I can just, I can feel it in my bones. I feel the adrenaline in my bones. It's not the thing I'm most proud of. It resonates with me, the idea that you should. should not do this as a grown adult with children because it gets people in a lot of trouble, but I love it. Sarah, do you know that Sunny has spent a little bit of time as a professional poker player

himself? Or a semi-amateur, an amateur, a talented amateur. No, no, no, no, no, no. First of all, first of all, I just want to say one thing that, what was that line, the slough, the slough of despair? Slough of despondent. That, that's a great, that is the perfect phrase for the, look on Mike McDee's face when he loses that big hand 10 minutes into the movie. Because we have all been there.

Everyone who has ever played cards in any real way or even like even just like casual casino way has has had the like dealer bust out a six card 21 on you when you're sitting there with your 20 just holding on trying to be like I need my I need to make rent this month. That would be great. That is that that look on his face. that look on his face as he watches his $30,000 disappear into Teddy KGB's pocket is one of the finest bits of acting.

I think in Matt Damon's very long and prosperous career. JBL describes me. I was not a professional or even semi-professional or even like serious amateur player, but I did play enough online poker in 2003, 2004, right before it got banned, right before, right in that nice, meaty spot. where lots of dumb people were playing poker for the first time. I made enough to pay for my flight and hotel in Las Vegas twice just on what. And that always made me very happy.

That was like just a little bit of just enough skill to get by. But I watched these games. I watched the games that Mike McDia is in. And I'm like, all of these people would destroy me. I would be the guy with the name tag sitting down at the Atlantic City casino getting taken in an hour. Like that's me. Yeah. And same. Like I'm not, you know, I just, I just love the idea of there's a card and it is face down. And when it goes face up, your fortunes change is just to me like the way that hits my body. And so I love a gambling movie. I watch all the gambling movies.

And I was surprised, actually, to see the on Rotten Tomatoes. Like, when I went to watch it, because I've watched this movie 20 times. And, but like, oh, like, I haven't watched it, although I rewatch it kind of a lot. But I maybe haven't seen it in some years, a few years. And I had never noticed that it gets a really low rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And I went and read some reviews from the time. And I was like, you know, I agree with all of this academically. but what you are all missing is just that this movie hits the gambling thrill.

Like it hits it and so you feel it. And so like it is a great watch and it does something that I think one, something in the reviews that I had not clocked was how much people say this is like Goodwell Hunting 2 because he is, he the Matt Damon character is a bit of a savant around cards, just the way the Will Hunting character is a savant. And also, he is somebody who is aspiring toward a life of the squares, right? He's in law school. He is trying to ride into a more respectable place. But of course, his friends are still of the underworld, of the gambling underworld, in the way that sort of the Ben Affleck, the working class, drunk drinking characters are. And so I hadn't quite

caught the parody or how the parallels of that which was fun to notice well but it's also it's also just it's also just one of these weird coincidences of of filmmaking right because he this movie was written years before goodwill hunting came out um the the guys who were the guys who wrote it uh brian coppelman and uh david david david levian uh i don't know how pronounce his name sorry um is uh they they they they said that one day harvey winstein who was the producer on this is Miramax movie. Just called them up and said, my guy Matt Damon's in your movie. They're like, okay, but fine. You know, it's a, it's a, it's just, it's an interesting coincidence more than anything else. But it is one of those great coincidences that, that I think hurt the movie

with critics. As you say, Sarah, it's, it's also, I think I believe this is entirely true. It is a movie that is hard to clock the first time you watch it, unless you were very steeped in poker language and nobody at this point, including myself, when I was, when I watched this movie for the first time, I had, I had, I had not read Doyle Brunson's books. I was not, uh, I was not reading Phil Helmuth. I was not watching. You did not know about Chris Jesus Ferguson. You didn't know who Chris Jesus Ferguson was. I didn't know who Daniel Negrano was. Johnny Chan. Johnny Chan, I might have actually because I probably had, you know, he was, he was big. He was a big name even then. But, like, I didn't know.

I didn't know. It wasn't my world. And I think a lot of people watching this movie for the first time, there's so much lingo. It is so dense and not, there is not a hand-holding explanation for everything that happens in the movie. There is a little bit up top and then, like, explaining the rules. But if you don't know what, like, Omaha High-Low is, there are scenes in this movie

that won't make any sense to you. Like, it just... Or even the basics of poker where, like, they're checking back and forth. It is very hard, I think, if you don't know it, to be like, why is this important? Like, you don't, if you know it, your adrenaline is going up as they do it because you see the chess playing back and forth of it. But if you don't know, you're just like, the movie kind of tells you, you get to see who wins, but you have no idea why that just happened. So this is one of the reasons the movie, I think, aged incredibly well. So I don't know if you guys know this, but the poker craze in America.

dates to 1996, I believe. And it comes from an article in Harper's. And it's called Betting Big at the World Series of Poker. And it is a piece in which a writer sets out to write a piece about the World Series of Poker. He is going to play in the World Series of Poker. And over the course of the piece, he makes it to the final table. And this thing becomes an absolute sensation. and the ripples from that go outward and create.

In the same way that Starbucks created coffee culture in America, this Harper's piece created the poker craze in America. And Rounders comes out, and we're still in very early poker years. But by now, poker is everywhere. Everybody knows what a river card is, right? Now, like, and so you can drop into this now, and the culture is soaked in poker and can immediately pick up on everything.

in ways which seemed incredibly technical and oblique upon release. And the film is, it's structured a little bit like a noir with the voiceover and the, you know, kind of the smoky streets of New York City. So there is, I think there is an intentional element of mystery to it, trying to keep this thing a little bit mysterious. They don't want to, they don't want to hold your hand too hard. But the McManus, I had forgotten that started as a Harper's just because I read the book. I positively fifth street his book which is like an expanded version of the same story and is really good if you have not read or listened to positively fifth

street you should it's it's fantastic um but it uh i had forgotten about that but i you know again it's it's one of these things where like the the culture the culture hits an inflection point based on that and also a technological change yes the online poker which allows the injection of people who were previously not card players. So you wind up with guys like Chris Moneymaker. And so Chris Moneymaker is the other apoccal event when the World Series of poker is won for the first time by a guy who comes from the world of computer poker. And has the unlikely

name of Moneymaker. Yeah, which is amazing. I mean, like it, you know, that is a, that is just a, that is a thing that you cannot buy. That is just a, it's a, it's a perfect. It's a perfect sort of thing. And so again, this is, this is, this movie comes out too early to hit that wave. People don't, people aren't familiar with it. And it kind of dies.

And then it goes on to this second life. And it helps that you have guys like Bill Simmons, like one of his, he was one of the big early boosters of, of rounders. And I remember there was an early awards column he did that was all quotes from rounders. And like,

I remember sending that to all my friends being like, this is amazing. This is, this is good writing is what this is. This is the best. So it was a, that was a lot of fun. Now, Sarah, you are not a poker player, right? You are.

So I play poker with my friends. I've got a poker table. But it's not what I go to Vegas to play because I feel. And it's funny because some of it's just what I like. Like I like Blackjack because, especially if you're going to sit in a casino, it's a community game, right? where you play against the dealer, whereas poker is adversarial with everybody at the table. And so, like, if I'm going to have fun, but there is a part of me every time I see this movie or others about poker where I think, I need to do this.

I need to get into this. You need to be in a skill game. Yeah, because I do, I like to play craps and I like to play, and I like to play Blackjack. Those are like the two games. And part of what I like about craps, it's like a physical thing is like instead of sitting, you stand. And, you know, and it is, there's a communal element, right? You're like rooting for the person with the dice and you, you know, you're watching. There's like a lot going on. Whereas poker is, and this movie makes this, is like a big sort of theme throughout the movies. You're

not playing the cards or playing the man, right? And so this is about people who sit and size people up. And it's a dominance game, which appeals to me, but means I have enough self-control to know like I don't get in the ring if I don't have the necessary skill level like because this is it is a skill game not a luck game and blackjack's kind of a skill game like you've got to know a certain number of things but like for me for example right I'm someone who hits on 16 that is that is me like I always hit on 16 this shocks me about you I never would have guessed cards unless I've seen unless I've seen unless I've seen too many face cards.

Even if you're showing a three. The dealer's showing a three, you're hitting on 16? No. No, no, no. Different thing. But like it like sort of things being equal. There's a type of player.

If the dealer has a face card showing. That you have 16. And I have 16. I'm going to hit whereas I think a lot of people don't hit. Um, and that's like a way I play. It's a rule. Um,

but like poker is a, uh, and it's actually interesting to me. I don't play online. I don't enjoy online stuff. And part of the reason is how do you play the person? If poker is so much about the people sitting around the table, who they are, sizing them up, understanding how they play, getting in their head, what is the value of the online poker? So I wrote about this a couple of years ago, and nobody should play online poker because online poker is now dominated by bots.

And the bots are calibrated to make sure that they let the huge. human fish win just enough to keep them from getting up from the table. So it is not an honest game. If you are playing online these days, it is you're, you are a sucker if you sit online. The only place you should sit is in, in person with people. But I don't know, Sunny, when you go to a physical casino in meat space and you sit, how can you be sure you're at a table in the right skill bracket? Is it just because of the buy-in? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's all about, it's, well, for me, anyway, it's about money level. Because when I go, when I, the last time I went to Vegas, I walked by the, I walked by the poker room and I just kept going.

I like, I couldn't even, I couldn't even bring myself to sit down because I'm so out of practice. I was like, I'm going to embarrass myself. This is, this is not going to be good for anybody. But when I go, I sit down at either a one, two, no limit game or a three six or a two four limit game. and like that that that is a low enough stakes that it attracts people who are about as good as I am usually frankly a little bit better at this point because I'm so out of practice but like and you can't lose that much money there is is the thing right you're if you go to a one two no limit game the buy-ins probably $300 like if I lose $300 that's not ideal but it's also not going to it's not going to break me if I sit down at like a if I sat down at like a I don't know five 10 game the The buy-in there is probably a thousand. So it's like- Yeah, I mean, $300 and for how long it would take you to lose it is probably about as long

as it would take to see a show. And you'd probably pay $300 for tickets to the show. So, like, in terms of dollars per minute of entertainment, that's, you know, this is so funny. This is what people do in Vegas while they're gambling is they do the mental math about what they're paying for the entertainment of sitting at the table playing versus what else they might otherwise do. Yeah.

Do you know that, do you guys know this? Sarah knows this. You may not, Sonny. We have a friend, friend of the bulwark, who has a World Series of Poker bracelet. Hey, Jeremy. You mention it. Love to you, big guy. Yeah.

Hey, JVL, here's something you might not know, which is that Sonny and I are going to Vegas together in just a few weeks. Yeah. Because we have Indy Fest, and it is in Vegas. It is our friend John, friend of the pot, also John Ralston, who runs the Nevada Independent, has his Indy Fest. Sonny and I are doing a panel. Will Summers is going to be there with us. And then we're going to hang out. You have to go sit at a table.

You have to go sit and play a little poker together. We can play blackjack or poker. Whatever Sarah wants to do, I'm down for. Bullwork takes is sponsored by Quince. As weather cools, I'm swapping in pieces that actually get the job done. We're talking warm, durable, and built last. And Quince delivers every time with wardrobe staples that will carry you through the season. Quince has the kind of staples that you want to actually wear on repeat. We're talking

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because I believe that Rounders is actually an allegory in a version of Dante's Inferno in that what is happening is that Matt Damon's character is being guided through the various circles

of hell by his guide Kinish taking place of Virgil and that Kinish is escorting him through and he meets a series of devils of increasing badness, right? Increasing levels of, of sinfulness. And they include KGB, but KGB, I think, is the most benign of them.

Petra, also quite benign. This is the Fomka Johnson. Fomka Jansen, who we can do a whole 20 minutes on her character, if you'd like. Then Gretchen Moll's character, his girlfriend, who is one of the real villains, and then finally, Worm, and then the worst person of the mall is Grandma. These are the true villains of it. And what has to happen is, in order for him to be reborn, Matt Damon's character has to make his way past each of these characters as he descends further and further through the depths of hell

before he can finally emerge out the other side on Easter Sunday morning, so to speak, reborn as a man with enough bankroll to go to Vegas. Have I convinced you? The Catholic reading of Rounders. No, it's interesting that you put this way, because Sarah, because something Sarah said earlier that the movie is, is the goal,

the stakes of the movie are, Matt Damon's character needs to get money so he can go to Vegas. And this is very low stakes, really. But that's not actually the stakes of the movie. The stakes of the movie are Mike D. Mike D needs to go straight. The real lesson of this movie is that Mike D needs to stop gambling and stop playing poker. And he needs to be a lawyer and be a productive member of society.

And he is turned from that path by everybody in his orbit. He is, and he goes to Sin City at the end. end of the film he is damned at the end of the movie is he or is it or is it no no he's i mean should he be straight well i don't here's here's a real question sarah should matt damon go straight what is the what by by the rules of the moon you look at this movie do you believe that the lesson is yes he should go straight he should be a square so before i answer that or do you think he's living the dream uh well actually okay i'll answer it in this way is that i'm glad he goes to Vegas, all right? He's a man following his dreams. I think people should follow their dreams.

Here's, though, one of the beats that I think is pretty silly in the movie that I had not thought about before is that they pump a lot of drama into the character of the judge, Martin Landau, who is the law, he is, he's like the, he's also his law school, though, professor in some way. And so they have this relationship. And there's a great scene where Matt Damon's character shows up to the judge's poker game and tells them all what cards they have by reading them all. And he's using it to get them to give him like a summer internship, clerkship, yeah, clerkship by demonstrating this. And they're all, these old men are very wowed by him. and the and so at some point damon and mathau have dinner or drinks and matthau tells him this story about how his parents wanted him to be a rabbi and instead he became a judge and so he deeply understands this notion of foregoing what somebody wants you to do to do this other thing and when matt damon gets himself in real financial trouble he goes to see this person

because no one will give him any money and he asks for he asks for 15 grand and the judge professor gives him 10 writes him a check on the spot and it is imbued with this sense of I see you son I see you striving to be that thing that you want to do and I have a debt to repay and I was a little bit like dude you went from being a rabbi to a judge he's going from being a lawyer to a poker player like I don't I sort of found that the beat of that a little silly because here's what I don't do. This is the one part I sort of can't get behind in the movie, which is that the real like denouement is that Matt Damon gets to go to play the World Series of Poker. And that's just,

that is about dream following. And okay, sure, fine. But like, where the stakes of the movie actually sit are when his buddy worm draws him back into the gambling life away from his girlfriend, another law student who, you know, he could go have a normal square life with. And his buddy worm pulls him back in. Worm is a degenerate cheater at cards. And so keeps- Importantly, a cheater. No, no, no.

He cheats a cheater in life. This whole thing is he is not a card player. He is a card sharp. Right. And so he gets Damon in trouble because it is in some ways a story of friendship, right? where Matt Damon is trying to like vouch for this guy. People will believe Matt Damon's character, but not worm. And so the, the, that where he gets in financial dire straits where people are going to come kill him or break his legs because of worms gambling debts.

Like those are the stakes of the movie. That's where the movie's interesting. The higher level stakes of can this guy, you know, leave the law profession and become a world series of poker player. I was like, I could take or leave that. Well, it is. So I kind of agree with this, except, except he, again, he should be going the other way. He should be going to loss. Corrupting him is the point of the movie.

Worm and everybody else in this movie corrupt him. And he and he leaves and he goes to do. But the, but I want to, I want to jump back to the question of Worm and KGB and Grandma for a second. Because JBL, you said something interesting that grandma is actually the big villain of the. Yeah, Grandma's the war. Worst character here because grandma is a pimp and a lone shark. And a traitor. He's a traitor.

I mean, this is the lowest circle. Literally the lowest circle of hell. In your metaphor, he is a betrayer that puts him in the lowest circle of hell. I will just say in the context of the film, not not the metaphor, in the context of the film, grandma is doing an interesting thing because he is the front man for Teddy KGB, right? He is, he is doing this on Teddy KGB's behalf. Teddy KGB wants Mike McDee to have no money because Teddy KGB wants to, oh, he says this, he says,

you are mine, you know, if you don't have the money. But then the question is, what does he actually want to do with Mike McD? Because he doesn't want to, there's no money in killing Mike McDee. There's no money in breaking his legs or breaking his thumbs. This is what grandma wants to do because grandma's a petty thug. He just wants revenge for the slights he has suffered. Teddy KGB is smart. he's a man with a code, he's smart, he knows what he's doing.

He wants Mike McDee for a different reason. And what I would propose to you, JVL, is that he wanted to own Mike McDee so he could siphon his winnings off of him. He basically wanted to turn Mike McDy out and make him, make him, put him on the streets and make him win him poker money. And that is, that's kind of interesting. It's not, they know, it's, it's very subtle. They don't really get into this, but that is kind of an interesting little element

an angle of all this, which, again, gets into the whole world just being kind of scummy and gross. Well, but there are honorable guys like Kinnish, who when, when Mikey McDee is down to the felt, Kinnish says, I'm happy to front you. I'll take 50% of your winnings. And

if you lose, it's on the house, right? I mean, there are honorable versions of this. But what Teddy is angling for is probably not honorable. But can I just say this is a weakness of the movie? Is that, Sunny, I I can see what you're saying, but you made that up. Like, that is nowhere in the actual movie.

Oh, I think it's there. Where? Well, he says, you'll be mine. I mean, when he does, when he says, you'll be mine, like, it's the only, it's the only reasonable interpretation. I don't know. That's what I've always thought it meant. Yeah. But maybe, maybe this was just me inventing head cannon.

I guess. I mean, I guess I don't need everything to be spelled out for a movie that, like, lives with this voiceover to get very explicit. about everything. That is wildly opaque for an interpretation. And, but I mean, I guess, sure, I mean, certainly that is where the stakes of the movie are is in that relationship. It's why they bookend it with the two games in terms of he loses all his money to him in the first pot. And that is what he's out. He's out after that. He's lost 30 grand, his law school tuition, you know, his girlfriend. He's made promises to his girlfriend that he is not going to keep gambling.

And then they get pulled back in. And the final game with Teddy KGB is a mixture of him wanting to win his money back, retribution for that loss, but also like the need to beat him, right? the need to not suffer the indignity of that loss again. You just know that he can win. Sticking it, didn't you? I have a question, some problematic questions, might as well do it.

Is Gretchen Moll, the girlfriend, one of the villains? Yes. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making it a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro?

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From tires are auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperts.com. I mean, just in terms of the film itself, she is just, she is not supportive. It's one of these very, there's a very classic, like, trope of mid-90s, early, it's like bad girlfriends and she is like a number one version of it it's it's she's just like okay that's sunny bunch saying that not me jviel i am i am waiting for sarah to hear her opinion

before i pronounce on this i know you think she's the villain uh i mean what it's like i i i've known you for years talking about everything of course you think she's the villain uh i think the villain And I think, yeah, but well, so. Mid-tier villain. I would, it depends on which way you come at this. So I will say, being in a relationship with someone, right, she doesn't see that he loves this, right? She is somebody who, and so to me, like, the villain is the person who wrote this character, because she is only there to give Matt Damon a reason.

for getting on the straight and arrow and kind of a, you know, ham-handedly, I think, constructed one. Like, it's just, like, clear. He gets the pretty girlfriend who also goes to law school and he becomes a lawyer. And this is the path of a normie square guy who he comes and he goes through this about how his childhood. He went to prep school, but only because his father was the janitor. And so he got tuition. And so this is his chance to, like, level up in life. But it's not really what he wants.

But it's not her fault. that he's told her, yes, I want this. Like, I messed up by losing my, my gambling away, my tuition. That's not the life I want. I want this different life. And so he's, when he goes through the movie saying, I made promises. That's true. He made promises to her.

And so she is with him because he said, I want this life. Okay. So he's made that choice. She didn't, like. See, that's what I was going to say. She didn't give, no, it wasn't. She didn't give him an ultimatum of, you know, before, or if she did, they don't tell us that.

But of course, for me, I do certainly, like, you do spend the whole movie being like, okay, then leave. Like, he clearly, this is who he is. And, like, this is what he's passionate about. And so, like, there's no part of me that thinks he should have stayed with her. But I also don't think she's a villain. She's not wrong for believing him that he wanted the life that she wanted. She's actually the hero of the movie

Because she's trying to keep him on the straight and narrow She is the one who's trying to save his soul She is the angel dangling redemption And he rejects her So that if you believe that the message of the movie Is that it's a tragedy Because Mike should not Be a professional gambler

He should be a lawyer Then she is the angel Right? She is his guardian angel Totally Right He rejects her Yeah Three times he rejects her.

How about Petra? Do we have thoughts about Petra? Wait, you didn't say what you thought about Gretchen Moll. You have to. What I think is that it depends entirely on whether or not you believe that Mike should be a gambler or a lawyer. Okay. Do you think he should be a gambler or a lawyer? I mean, for the purposes of this story, I think that he should absolutely be a gambler.

So do I. For the purposes of how I live my life, he should fucking go to law school. I am incredibly risk averse I you know so it's it's ever but I'm just trying to live with the rules of this movie and I think in the rules of this movie Mike is meant to play poker for a living Within the rules of this movie

she is absolutely like the villain of a villain of the movie not the villain. Worm is the villain the real villain of this movie is Worm who is a bad person throughout who corrupts Mike who pulls him back into this life who cheats who has no honor who has no code and this is why And this is why KGB is not a villain.

This is why, at the end of the movie, KGB, who has been treated as this dangerous, sketchy figure throughout the film, he's the one guy in the game you don't want to fuck with, as they say. Mike gives him, Mike razzes him. He takes all his money, and then he razzes him, and he says, I'll go busting you up all night. And his goons come towards him. His goons try to go after him. Yep.

KGB's like, no, no, he won, give him his money. I'm done playing. That's it. That's the, this is, this is how we live. KGB has a code. KGB has a code. KGB has a code. Characters with codes are good.

Which is why John Malkovich really does, even though I think that accent, if you were less, you have to be in it. You have to be in it for what John Malkovich is doing. I happen to be in for it. But if I took myself out of it for five seconds, I would be like, what is John Malkovich doing? What is this accent? What is this? It's slightly gay, gay Russian. Just like young man coming in for quickie.

I feel so unsatisfied. He's eaten his Oreos, his tell is listening to the cream inside. From last time I stick it in you. And then he does this after he says stick it in you and he starts gesticulating. He also does a thing with his eyes and his mouth, which I can't recreate. Yeah. And the movie only gives you. you like a quarter of a second of it but it's so good and everything like his

his body is like live in the way he splashes the pot with his hand oh yeah don't splash the pot i would splash the i can't do it i but he's amazing damon totally breaks by the way when he does the the hip thing he just he just like loses it for a second it's like okay that's i mean john malcovitch is so fun in this movie uh and and and so if you're if you're in it you just are like yes and he's one of those it's one of those movies where he's not in that many scenes but the ones he's in make the whole thing worth it the whole thing the movie does not work without his performance no it doesn't uh john to toro john he's so good in this movie yeah canish is so good so what i like about him is like so this guy's like a grunt play like

He plays for money because it's his job. This is living. And so he has child payments, whatever. So he is, he plays because he has to, and this is how he was his chosen profession. And he looks out for Matt Damon, especially by doing the thing. And this is why JVL, here's what, wow, the one thing I'll say about your problematic take is if you think that Gretchen Mall's character, the girlfriend, is a villain and Kanish is a hero. I call bullshit on that because they do the exact same thing. John Totoro cuts him off.

He knows he's in trouble. He knows his life is even at stake. And he says, no, I won't give you the money because it's just going to send you further down this path. And so Kanish and Gretchen Moll are in the same bucket of activity, the same view on how this should go. And I think it is interesting that she becomes a bad guy while Knessh becomes a good. guy. Only at the crisis point, right? That is a reversal for him. Her consistent view is that Mikey shouldn't be playing poker. John Totoro only cuts him off when he believes that Damon has hit bottom. And he's never pushing him, right? And this is the other thing. He's never

pushing Mikey in either direction. He offers to front him money to get back into the game if that's what he wants. But then when Mike says, hey, could I have that truck route? He's like, yeah, you can have my truck route. Like, he's not pushing one way or another on Mikey. He is a guide, not an instructor. I don't know about that. I mean, he helps him kind of like stay in if that's what he wants to do because he views it as a job. She's also saying, do this as a job. Like, be a lawyer, live this life. And Kanish is also advocating for a life of sort of sobriety in the, But it just, it just so happens that Kinnish is doing it in the context of poker. Yeah.

Fair. Fair. I love everything about Tertura's performance here, too. And when they, when, when, when, when Mikey is telling him about the time he sat with Johnny Chan in, in Atlantic City. And Kanish is just, like, his eyes start bugging out. And you could see he's right there where he's riveted with this story. And he just wants to, like, it's such a great piece.

Gosh, it's such a great. great piece. What did you make of Petra? I'm sorry. Just one more thing on John Chaturro. Chavill cannot wait to talk about Petra. John Terturo's 1998 included Rounders, of course, but also the Big Lobowski. And he got game. I, like, that is, that is a killer 1998. That is a, that is a very good year for any, any character actor. When did he do quiz show? That was a couple years before. That was like 94, I think. Yeah, 94 is Quisho.

Tuturo is one of these guys who I just, for no reason, I just imagine being an unbelievably good hang. He just makes every movie better. He's one of those actors that if he's in it, I'm probably going to watch the movie because I feel like his choices are good. Well, also, he's the best part of Transformers. Transformers is a terrible movie, and he's fantastic in it. Well, he works with great directors. He works with Spike Lee. He works with the Cohen brothers.

He works with Michael Bay. I mean, it's just the, the Troika. All right. You want to talk about Petra, JBL. I just wonder if you guys think that Petra is a villain or a, or what? You just think she's hot. I don't, did not say that. I did not say that.

Petra, is Petra a villain or? No, Petra is not a villain. She's just, she's more, she's more of a cog in the machine. She's not, she's not, she is, she's just working at the, the, the Chesterfield, right? She's just, she is, she is, following the code of their lifestyle, right? Which is that Mike McDee has come to the Chesterfield and he has vouched for Worm and said,

give Worm, put Worm on my tab. And Worm is the one who betrays that trust. She could have come a little bit earlier to him and said, hey, Worm has left your tab open. You owe us money starting, you know, today. She could have been a little bit better there. but she's just, she's just part of the, she's just part of the scenery, really. Everyone's got a pro.

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Get up to $100 on a prepaid visa card when you purchase a set of four eligible Toyota tires. Find a Toyota TreadExperts dealer near you at Treadexperts.ca slash locations. I do think she represents from, like, the girlfriend perspective, an alternative for him, which is he could, they clearly have had a relationship in the past. She's clearly spent the night at his apartment before. She offers to do it again. You want to talk about unrealistic moments? There's only one utterly implausible thing in this entire movie is when,

Fomka Jansen, breathily says to Matt Damon's character, I could stay. And he says, no, I'm sorry. That is utterly implausible. Sure. Well, he is just gotten out of a significant relationship. And also, she came there to take money from him because he owed it. And she says, thanks for making that easy for me. Because she's making the rounds to do pickup of the cash that people owe.

She's doing collections. But the least, the least believable strongman collection agent of all time. I also had the same, I also had the same thought. Like, this is who you send to go pick up the cash. On top. She's on a top. She was a bond villain. Sure.

But this is actually one of the things that makes Rounders really work. And it's one of the things that I think it makes Sopranos work or any show that or movie that is about kind of the underworld or the criminal world. Because for them to function, you have to believe that there are still rules, right? If it's all like, well, it's all scumbags who are going to knock off a poker game at any point, then no one would play, right? And so there is the extent to which the enforcement of the rules of this particular world work is something that draws you in and you can live there. And that's why what Teddy KGB does at the end is so important. important because this whole thing only works if there are rules. Sarah, this brings us to the current news where yesterday we got word of the gigantic gambling

ring that has been busted up, including a bunch of NBA players and coaches, Chauncey Billups, the most interesting aspect of which is that there's a whole bunch of mobbed up poker clubs where all of the games are crooked. And so in the real world of what allegedly the FBI just broke up yesterday, places like the Chesterfield and Teddy KGB's poker joint are all crooked. Yeah. And the mobsters running them do not operate by the code. They were using special glasses with marked cards and transmitters, which are letting them know what cards the other guys are holding and stuff. Have you read the details on this?

It's nuts. Cameras under the table. Absolutely nuts. I mentioned this in the Slack and Sam yelled at me because I clearly hadn't read the story that it was that it was about. But I, uh, but it like when I first saw the story, I assumed it was a sports gambling story. And there was a player who was like shaving points and like taking dives and getting, leaving games early in order to, uh, you know, help people win profits. But then there's the second poker, uh, avenue of it that I was deeply offended by. I was outraged by this Chauncey Billups running a scam poker game because I don't, look, in many ways I'm a naive child.

I go through life thinking that people want the best and are honorable and decent. And poker is one of those worlds where even when you see it on the Sopranos, it's, you know, they have the high stakes game with like David Lee Roth and Lawrence Taylor, right? like it's it's just a game where guys are getting together and they're playing cards or you uh or you have like rounders where you have teddy kgb who's mobed up with the russian mob but it's still a straight game and at the end of the game he doesn't mess up mike mcty right he's like you take his you pay that man his money you get him out of in the real world these are all scumbags who are just stealing money from people that's that's what it comes down to and i i found that so much more offensive than the sports gambling aspect of it for reasons I can't really articulate other than like but that's but poker

is a game of skill that's it that that was that like you take money you take money from sports gamblers I don't care because those guys are all degenerates anyway they're all just the I don't sports gambling I want to I want to ask I actually have a question for sarah about sports gambling and public opinion on it maybe we can get to in a second but the the the poker the live poker cheating I found deeply offensive in a way, in a way that's really surprised me. I was, I was, like, hurt by it. Does it surprise you, Sarah? Because I was shocked. I don't know why. Like, mafia people cheated cards, too. Like, like, in retrospect, like, oh, of course, I should have assumed this, but I didn't. I guess it surprises me in the, for the reason I just stated, which is the only way those things work.

It's got to be an honor among thieves type situation. Otherwise, I always think about this with every movie, whether in usual suspect, anything where they're getting together a crew to do a heist or to do a thing, right? Everybody's got to be on the level. They've got to believe that everyone's not going to turn around and shoot them or not give them their cut or whatever. And for all I know, because I don't actually experience these worlds unless it's through a movie, it makes total sense that a bunch of people who are involved in a bunch of scumbaggy things also turn out to be scumbags. That is like actually, that should probably just be axiomatic. but I think that I just sit there and I'm like, well, the only way that this actually works,

the only way you get people to put down a million dollars or play these big hands as if they believe at the end of it, everybody honors what happens. And that's happening in this movie. And if it's not happening in the real world, then I don't know what to tell you. What's the world coming to? I hate cheaters, though. The, like, at the game, like, if you cheat at cards, and this is why Worm is such a particularly repellent character because not only does he cheat, but he has been repeatedly told by the

Matt Damon character, I play straight up and worm like is dealing to him from under the deck gets caught by the police offices that they're playing with, which, I mean, just that guy is so stupid. And this is where some of it just does. If you look at it a little closely, you're like, is Matt Damon still friends with this guy? No. No, that actually, that totally tracks for me. That track, it tracks for me both that Worm is not able to control himself and also that Matt Damon would continue to be friends with him.

We've all got friends with that. Because Worm went to prison for him. Worm went to prison for him. That's true. They do give you that. Didn't rat. So I find Worm interesting because he's, he's introduced as like, this is just what Matt Damon might have looked like had he gone bad.

But that's not. actually what he is. Worm is a con man. And Matt Damon is a professional. And we know actually because we are told that when they first get together in school, they're setting up point shaving schemes. Like this is that worm starts. It's like, you know,

that we convinced guys on the high school sports team to take a dive for us so that we could, you know, win a bunch of money in bats. And Worm says, when Matt Damon pulls him out of a game to say, you got to say, I'm watching you cheat those guys. You got to stop. And Worm is like, I can't do that. I see a mark. I take him down. Like, it's, like, he has this it's a fake moral code because it's, he's inventing it to cover for his compulsion. But as if, like, you know, like, stupid people should not have their money. This is, you know, I got to do it. And that's, he's a very different figure, which is why he, he is in one circle of hell. And, and Mikey has

to make his way past him. Just one instant correction. Worm got kicked out of school for Matt Damon. He went to prison for credit card scams or something. Thank you. I have a question about online gambling. Sarah, does this ever come up with the focus group people?

Is gambling an issue that is starting to get so bad that people are like, why are we doing this? Yeah, so I'll tell you, this is like a business one. But we did, you know, sometimes people send us ads and they send us the products with the ads and like we decide if we like the products and we talk about them. Sometimes people just put stuff in front of us, right?

And we had one, we had a couple for draft kings. And man, did we hear about it from bulwark folks? And I, in my head, sort of I was like, well, this is like sports betting is a thing that like, I mean, it is on. I have belated, I started watching football.

I care about football now. And like, I know who's playing this weekend. I know who won last weekend and who lost. I know who's injured. Like, JVL, we haven't really talked about this, but I've been like really focused on getting into football. And I have been shot by the amount of gambling ads. They're everywhere.

And Draft Kings is like lots of the guys who, whether it's the barstool guys, whatever, their business model is entirely the sports betting. But one of the things that's becoming clear is that the sports betting is becoming a huge problem for young men in this country. Like it is just. It's predatory. So you guys.

would have to explain to me because I don't bet on I don't do that I don't sports bet in part because I don't know enough about it like I only do things and I don't know that I would get excited about doing that because I can't control it. I hate sports betting. I dislike it on a on a very visceral level which is in part of this just personal thing is I don't know enough about I don't know enough about the lines and I feel dumb playing I feel I feel I feel dumb betting on sports in a way that I don't betting on cards or dice or whatever. Like, I understand the basic rules of roulette. I don't play roulette, but I understand the rules of roulette.

If I put, uh, if I put five bucks down on and this, it'll pay off, you know, 40, but 40 to one, whatever. Like I, I, I at least, but with, with, there are so many variables in sports gambling that I just, I really hate it. Um, but I, like, my, my, my take on it has always been, I think, I used to be very, I used to be very libertarian on gambling. I used to think it should be mostly legal. Like, people are going to gamble anyway.

It's better that they do it through these apps or through local sports books than having to go to the mob and, you know, get their thumbs broken or whatever. And I have come around that, I've 180ed on that. I think you should have to risk your bodily, bodily injury to place bets on sports because otherwise it makes it too easy to tying people's bank accounts to endorphin delivery devices that are in their pocket all the time. is a terrible, terrible thing, and it is destroying banks. It's destroying families. It's putting people in debt. I think it's bad. I think it's all bad and should probably be banned. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making it a weird sound. I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at tread experts. From Toyos Observe Winterline to Celsius and open country, Toyo tires can handle it all. Get up to $100 on a prepaid visa card when you purchase a set of four eligible

Toyota Towers. Find a Toyota TreadExperts dealer near you at Treadexperts.cair slash locations. From tires are auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperst.C.A. It's just wealth transfer. So, I mean, so I've long been against gambling, like almost all forms of legalized gambling because they are almost inevitably regressive taxes on the poor. But at least with lotteries, their taxes, sports betting is wealth transfer. So, and it's wealth transfer in two directions. First of all, you have the people own the platforms who are taking cuts of everything. But then on the other side, when you go on and bet, the other side of that bet is not Bunny Sunch, some other guy in Houston, right? The other side of that bet are a bunch of

industrial grade data operations, which are data mining all this stuff and running line. You're betting against algorithms, and the people who run those algorithms are taking your money. But even that's not, the insidious part is the platform, because you are on sports betting platform, XYZ, they know everything about you. And so they are going to try to get you back if you try to walk away. And they can ping your device and say, hey, here's five free dollars. hey, we know you like to bet on the Cowboys. Here's a good Cowboys bet, right?

And they're leveraging all of this data in ways that are so insidiously tied to your person. You can't physically get away from it, right? Which is just a total category difference from I have to walk down to the bookmaker to place a bet. Like, if you want to have this stuff, I could, I'd say have a sports book. at a casino where people can go and play that, that's fine. But having this stuff on your phone is absolutely, there

is no public good served by this. And also, there's so much money in it now that I think it is impossible to get the toothpaste back in the tube. Yeah, just so one of the things, I've also always been pretty, just because I'm libertarianish on like grownups can make choices and

this is, you know, it's just is what it is. But it's somehow we went from, not being able to bet on anything to being able to bet on absolutely everything. And there was no middle ground. And like, so this is like a personal rule I made for myself. But when casino started popping up everywhere, like there's an MGM at the harbor that is quite close. I never. Like I will go to Vegas and not the MGM harbor for the weekend. Like if I, I'm not easier to get to Vegas than the harbor.

That's true. It's not that easy. But like it is, it is over. It's just across the bridge for me. And I, I, it's not that I've never gone.

I've gone. Thank you. I thought that I've never gone, but I mostly don't go because that's not good for me. And I like the idea that if you go to Vegas or even if you, JBL's right. Like if you, I think sports betting should be legal.

I feel about it the way I feel about speed cameras actually, uh, which is, look, if a police, compliments to catch me speeding, they should have to catch me speeding. But the idea that they can just set cameras up everywhere, it's like too easy to get me. Like there has to be some element of trying that does create some friction when something is a societal ill. It doesn't

mean, it's sort of like we've got, you know, I don't know, like having to go to a liquor store. Like just making it just a little inconvenient is a good thing. And I think the idea that now it is like basically hardwired into people's brains can't be good. Do you think there's a way to to unwind it? Like is it going to be like smoking where sure it's everywhere and it's like a 50 year fight, but eventually you can you can unleverage it because the harms become so or maybe people find ways to get to stop harming themselves. I don't know. But again, there's a ton of really good sociology done on this because different states legalize it at a different time.

And so there are essentially these giant longitudinal studies where you can follow outcomes of like, you know, state X legalizes it. Seven years later, state Y legalizes it. And you can track their progress. And this like provides really, really good control groups to isolate the impact of it. I will say my theory on this is no,

you probably can't put the toothpaste back in the bottle. But I do think there are tweaks that you can do at the legal level to make it more. more painful for these companies. Like, the way, the way some of the apps ban people who win too often, that should be illegal. You should not, you should not be able to, and I believe this on the casino level, too. Like, if you're able to count cards, you should be able to go there and win as much

money as you can. I, like, I am, I, if you're going to, if you're going to extract lots and lots of money from, like, regular idiot fish, then you're going to get, you should have to take, you should have to have a couple of bites taken out of you by sharks every once in a while. That's my, that's my basic theory. Hard to agree. Well, because counting cards, this idea that, like, that's just you improving your skill. That's just you knowing how to do something that makes you a higher level player.

I've never understood how card counting could, could morally be verboten by the casinos. It's not cheating. It just makes no sense. It's not cheating. It's because they, it's because they don't want to lose money and they have all, they've got everybody in their pockets you know it's whatever the thing that drives me craziest about legalized gambling sarah is one of your dreams in life to have a pit boss come over to you and say ma'am boy your action's too good for us here tonight we're very very sorry here are some

tickets to a show and please go have a steakhouse dinner on us do you live to hear somebody say your actions too good for us no no no not that but whenever somebody there they do do things to keep you there. So someone's like, you know, oh, you're driving home tonight? Oh, well, let me, let me ask the pit boss. We can probably get you a room.

And, you know, they get you the room so you stay there until 4 a.m. That would work on me every time. Yeah, it works on me too. I would never turn down that room. I know. Listen, everything in moderation.

Gambling is fine, but you don't, you can't and shouldn't do it all the time. Last question. J.B. Pritzker, $1.4 million in winnings. What is the way in which he could win that money that would make you like him the most? So what is your head canon story behind how he did that that makes you like him the most? Well, he was playing poker, right?

I don't think we know. Yeah, so was he playing blackjack? I'm pretty sure it was blackjack. I'm pretty sure it was blackjack. I'll offer that real quick. All right. Well, while you do that, I will tell you that in my mind, the thing is, thing that makes me like him the most is that he walks up to a roulette table, puts $50,000 down on a number, hits it and walks away, hits at 35 to 1 or 50 to 1 or whatever the individual

number payout is and just walks out with $1.4 million. That to me is like, oh, love it. Not to me, man. Go ahead. According to NBC News, he won $1.4 million in Vegas playing Blackjack. Yeah. So this is, so on Blackjack, the thing that would make me like him the most is not a one-hit wonder. You want him to have ground that out over the course of hours where he's up and down. He's up and down, but he gets on a run. He knows when the runs hot. He knows when the cards are going his way.

And because this is it, this is it, right? It's that you feel, and this is where it's not quite skill, but it's something adjacent. Intuition. Where you say, I'm catching cards right now. I push up. And because the way to lose it, Blackjack, is just to keep betting the same. thing the whole time. The way you win is to pick your moments. It's a little bit like poker. When you hit a hot streak, when the cards are, when the cards are in your favor, you just bet more

money. How much math did you take it, Kenyon? Zero is right. This is how it works. This is, in fact, 100% how it works. 50% of the time, it works every time. Exactly. Exactly. You don't know, do you know my, do you know what my favorite way to gamble is? You are out to Vegas. You're on East Coast time. So you wake up at three in the morning, three, four in the morning. I go get a Starbucks and a Bloody Mary and I play with the dealer.

And I catch the people who've been up all night drinking. The nice thing about that is that occasionally they will have like the $10 tables up at the nice casinos at that time of night because there's nobody there. They're just like, who wants to throw away some money?

They're vacuuming the carpet. And I'm like, I'm coming to get my day started. All right, Rounders. Good movie. Everybody loves Rounders. It's on Canopy, by the way. I didn't say this at the beginning. It's on Canopy.

If you have a library near you, you might have access to canopy. You can look it up. Or you can rent it for four bucks on Amazon, which is always, always an option. All right. Well, that was great. I just want to say, Sarah, I'm very excited to go to Las Vegas with you and sit down at a table. Because I don't think we have gambled together ever. I don't think so either

Not at a table game anyway Except with our futures on this endeavor called the bulwark but Payed off But no not at cards And we will be back maybe next week Maybe the week after I don't know We'll see how everybody's schedules look

With another episode of the Bullwork movie club Can't wait to see you guys at the theater Everyone's got a pro Need tires I've got a pro Car making it weird sound I've got a pro So who's that pro? The pros

at tread experts From Toyo's Observe Winterline to Celsius and open country, Toyo tires can handle it all. Get up to $100 on a prepaid visa card when you purchase a set of four eligible Toyota tires. Find a ToyoTredexperts dealer near you at treadexperts.cair slash locations. From tires are auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperts.com.