If you were really, really paying attention in my last post, you might have noticed that I used a choice quote from A Few Good Men. It’s not that important of a line within the film but it is one of those phrases that once it gets stuck in my head, it is stuck. I stuck it in there more for me than for any greater purpose in talking about a board game.
What it got me doing, though, is looking at what YouTube has in terms of short clips from that film. I also read a bit of movie background information. Of course I watched the “you can’t handle the truth” scene. I also watched the scene with the “strenuously object” argument. A scene, by the way, that features Christopher Guest (who took Spinal Tap to eleven) as the (possibly) corrupt physician Commander Stone. In my reading I also learned that before A Few Good Men was a film, it was a play on Broadway. It was writer Aaron Sorkin’s third play but, once adapted, turned into his first foray into Hollywoodland.
Having just read all this, imagine my surprise when I got to the final credits of a movie and saw Aaron Sorkin’s name, both for screenplay and director. It made me wonder if maybe I hadn’t got some wires crossed.
You see, Sorkin’s directorial debut is the film Molly’s Game, which will be removed from Netflix streaming at the end of March. Molly’s Game is adapted, by Sorkin, from the book of the same name by the titular Molly Bloom. She made something of a tabloid splash in 2013 and 2014. Bloom was arrested and charged in a $100 million dollar money-laundering racketeering case in New York City. In the gossip columns she was billed as “the Poker Princess.” She turned heads as a young and attractive woman who made a small fortune running poker games for the rich and famous.
The film takes a few liberties with respect to the book, a version that itself may or may not be totally on the level. For starters, the film shows Bloom with her published book in hand only days after her April 16th, 2013 arrest. Molly’s Game, the book, wasn’t published until June 24th 2014, months after her sentence was handed down. The film also makes a big deal about how the book doesn’t name any names, with the exception of those previously made public in a 2011 prosecution. Yet in a July 2014 excerpt, published by Vanity Fair, “Player X” is clearly named as “Tobey,” along with other* famous names. If that weren’t enough of a giveaway, the VF illustration of the article clearly depicts Tobey McGuire, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Ben Affleck (among others) at her table.
Not that I will blame Sorkin for sexing up a story. That is his job, more or less.
I could go on, but that would require me to delve far too into the celebrity gossip “news” from a prior decade. Suffice to say that the film treatment was enjoyable enough but I don’t need more.
Netflix pushed Molly’s Game at me from the moment it was available. I guess I figured from the start that it looked good but I also recollect that something in the marketing seemed a little off. I couldn’t possibly remember what that was now. Suffice to say, it sat in my queue unwatched until, as happens so often, the threat of removal motivated me to watch it.
As I say, it was worth it. Sorkin excels at the dramatization of recent headlines. Molly’s Game isn’t quite at the level of Moneyball or The Social Network, and it’s not going to have the cultural staying power of A Few Good Men, but it is on par with the bulk of Sorkin’s work. Its fault, perhaps, is that the story is a little smaller than the film. Molly Bloom didn’t change the way baseball is played, nor create one of the most influential pieces of software of our times. She didn’t invent the Apple Computer nor defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. She skied pretty well, it seems, and ran a decent poker game. She also got screwed over by the government, which makes her story compelling but also puts her in a pretty good sized club.
The film makes mention of the fact that she wrote a book confessing** to federal crimes while she was under indictment for such. As discussed, though, the book didn’t come out until after she’d plead guilty to lesser charges (she was sentenced to 200 hours of community service plus fines). Thus the puzzle of the film (why would she confess?) is solved by the fact she’s simply restating what she already plead guilty to. The larger why, why write a book, makes more sense in that context too. A newly minted felon, she needed a quick and legal way to start paying down her debts.
Maybe I should drop his next two films (The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Being the Ricardos) into my queue now, although Netflix doesn’t think I would go for the second.
*At any given time, truth mixes with thinly-veiled fiction. In the film (coming three years after the book, mind you), Molly gets her poker start working for the owner of the “Cobra Lounge.” In that 2014 article, she specifically says it’s The Viper Room, the famous Hollywood nightclub only known to me as a result of River Phoenix’s drug overdose. She says her boss, from the Viper Room, is Reardon, whom it is now recognized is club co-owner Darin Feinstein. I’m sure it’s not worth it to try to keep it all straight, unless you are really into celebrity gossip.
**Possibly as a nod to those already in the know, Bloom’s character makes a passing mention of the fact that she’d been charged with operating a “game of chance” whereas poker is a game of skill. One might well question whether playing poker is “gambling.”