"I don't need marked cards to beat you, pal."

New Year’s Eve here and raining and there’s about two hundred pounds of trash at the curb. My neighbor seems to be feuding with the garbage man these last three weeks. The garbage man is winning. I’m losing. My neighbor is from Tacoma so whattya expect? Got the DVD version of 1965’s Cincinnati Kid for Christmas and decided to watch it again tonight. Is it “The Greatest Poker Movie” as the label on the shrink wrap says or just merely a great movie and why would we care here on TheChipBoard?

Always liked Kid a lot and always seem to find more to like about it every time I see it. Never really saw it as a poker movie but as a film with poker in it. A couple of days ago I watched the DVD version of the movie with commentary by director Norman Jewison and this pretty much reinforced that notion. Jewison just has no basis from which to offer any insight to poker or gambling. Uh, he has shot craps and he has some buddies who play poker and he once hitchhiked as a young feller from his home in Canada to New Orleans (or was it New Jersey?). Jewison does, however, know how to make movies and he’s stood a lot closer to Ann-Margret than anyone here so let’s give the guy credit for that!

Jewison’s primary mission was to make a movie. You must realize, as Hollywood does, that there are only about 12 stories to be told in this world. Read your mythology and you’ll get the rundown straight from the ancients. Moviemakers shuffle the characters about, change settings, dress the sets, aim the cameras, fuss with colors and light, put some music to the thingie and a pretty bow on top and there it is, a movie! No poker bad beat stories from Mt. Olympus so we’ve got an ambition and revenge gig going in Kid. Actually, the movie almost backs into an important poker concept but I’ll talk about that later (groan). I got all this along the way to where I am now. I took a History of Western Lit course from a real pretty lady when I was attempting to maintain a student deferment in the late sixties. A while later I ended up as a touchstone to the straight world for a bunch of starving artists, providing reliable transportation and cashing the odd post dated check and such. Learned a lot of movie junk from them to add to the tale tellin' concepts I got from PSU so now I can recognize a lot of boring stuff about scene composition, “rule of thirds” and set design etc.

Something I wish Jewison had spent more time exponding on was actor wrangling. He tells us Peckinpah was the first director for the movie and he wanted to film the thing in B&W! Jeez Sam. Let’s see, all the hearts and diamonds would appear black and uh, well, all the clubs and spades are black. He does tell us that Tuesday Weld was intimidated to be picked for the movie considering she’d be onscreen with Ann-Margret and provides a lot of detail about various and sundry character players but he leaves out what went on with the biggies. Both ladies, Rip Torn, Malden, Edward G. and McQueen all give brilliant portrayals but it’s left dangling if Jewison actually directed these performances or if the actors pulled these feats out of their own makeup bags and such. Don’t buy this DVD for the director comments, he seems to have forgotten alot of what went on!

"How would you like to spend the rest of your life with the Shooter?"

Pried the cap off neighborhood pale ale (a perk of living in PDX) and fired up the letterbox version of this piece. So, is this a great “poker movie”? That’s been a subject for potshots but the more I learn about the game, the more I like the poker aspect of Cincinnati Kid. I have to admit that although I’ve got Jessup’s book sitting on the mantle with my framed Annie Duke autographed Bellagio Ace-of-Spades as a bookend, I’ve never read the story. Yet. Perhaps after I go through SuperSystem 2 and The Goldfield Hotel, Gem of the Desert I’ll get it read. The screen play was done by Ring Lardner Jr. and Terry Southern, neither of whom has been a subject of study for me either. Of course the biggest boner is not subtitling this film The String Bet Movie , a rules violation that occurs about twentytwelve times. There is plenty of subtle savvy poker action here and Jewison and company manage to portray quite a bit of good poker craft if only inadvertently. In the climax of the Big Game, I really liked the presentation of the hands. McQueen gets his last street and tidies up his cards by lining up his three tens with his new ace forming a straight line to the hole card and the full house he is representing. Lancey pulls his down card off to the side to show that this is the only card you could possibly expect him to have that will beat McQueen’s boat…but you must pay “the looking price”, right?

Interesting to me with this viewing is a deeply buried background theme I hadn’t noticed before. Stoner, McQueen’s character, appears to have recurring moral conflicts and dilemmas that go unresolved in the movie. The bathtub scene with Tuesday Weld serves up a question of where honor stands versus real-world results. The drama about help at the table from Shooter is pretty obvious. Consider also, the two players’ reaction when Pig (Jack Warden) is busted out of the game. The really important scene is when McQueen and Robinson share a break during the action and Lancey imparts advice about women. McQueen observes something very important about being “The Man” but the lesson at this point is clearly lost on him. Lesson lost in this movie for most part too. The ads portray Lancey Howard as “ruthless”. Wrong “R” word for a professional poker player. Try a different "R" word. Read Katie Lederer’s Poker Face for a perfect understanding of this trait that The Kid doesn’t possess at this stage in his career. It’ll be fun to see if this is part of the original Jessup story one of these days.

Last feature to mention of the DVD is specific scene commentary by Phil Gordon and Dave Foley, the guys that provide play-byplay for Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Dealie-Bobber, pretty entertaining and a peek into modern big time money poker.

Where’s the Cincinnati Kid payoff for us chip collecting gnomes? During the first part of movie it’s Edward G. vs. Rip Torn with real USPC Flying Comet chips. The blue ones are $1000 cheques in the game and there are green, yellow, tan ones. Red ones appear and disappear from the table during a continuity lapses. Truly though, the atmosphere in movie is what many of us are looking for when we hold and stare at our collecting treasures of choice and try to divine the stories contained in these bits of clay. Winning, losing and everything along the way.

I recollect a young man putting the same question to Eddie the Dude. 'Son,' Eddie told him..."