Walter turns up in Brandon’s bedroom and wakes him up. ‘Don’t get excited, all is forgiven,’ he informs his drowsy protégé. Brandon wants to know the time. It’s six in the morning. ‘I gotta fly to Vegas,’ says Walter. ‘Meet with some clients, hand-holding thing. Have to just keep them aboard for the last game, because you can do this thing. End of the season is a perfect place to turn the streak around.’ Walter’s faith in Brandon’s powers simply refuses to wane. He says they’ll go out for a ‘good meal’ when he gets back in the evening, although he doesn’t specify whether he’ll once again part with thousands of pounds so that Brandon can have sex with one of their fellow diners. ‘9.30, Nobu,’ he stipulates. Isn’t that the planet Luke Skywalker’s mum comes from in Star Wars? It certainly doesn’t sound much like a restaurant. ‘We’re turning it around, I’ll see you tonight,’ Walter whispers, homo-erotically.
Nobu. Brandon sits alone until Toni appears, looking stunning. ‘Walter was delayed, he’ll be back in the morning,’ she explains. ‘Asked if I’d fill in.’ ‘You know, it’s funny,’ Brandon muses. ‘He didn’t call me.’ Forget the mother of your daughter Walter, you have to clear things with Brandon first. Toni smiles weakly. He asks if she’s okay, she confirms that she is. She starts to fill Brandon in on Julia’s doings but then breaks down instead. ‘He’s gambling,’ she tells a strangely impassive Brandon. ‘Yep,’ he confirms, nodding his head. He’s just the man you need in a crisis. ‘I just can’t believe I’m here again,’ says Toni, who is apparently a bit of a face at Nobu. ‘I saw it coming, I just couldn’t stop it,’ she adds. ‘I gotta win one more game,’ says Brandon, narcissistically. Talk about making it all about yourself. And, Brandon, one MORE game? When did you last win ANY games? ‘You can’t fix this, Brandon,’ says Toni.
They arrive back at Toni’s and Brandon walks her to the door. ‘Come here for a second,’ he says, and gently whispers, ‘I’m gonna kiss you right now, okay? Trust me on this.’ Not a bad line that, especially by the B-man’s usual standards. They kiss, and head inside. Walter looks on from somewhere, cigarette in hand. That’s a stroke of bad luck.
We watch some of the next scene from Julia’s point of view, as she tapes the action with a camcorder. She urges Walter to open his present. He jokily grabs some foil wrapping paper and feigns delight but Julia corrects his mistake. The real gift is a framed photo (‘Oh man, beautiful,’ says Walt.) of Toni and Julia. Toni is present and correct, and wishes her hubby a ‘happy anniversary’. A knock sounds at the door, I wonder whose presence could add further intrigue to the scene? No, it’s not the hooker Toni found Walter giving money to a while ago, it’s just boring old Brandon. ‘You’re back from Vegas?’ he asks Walter, who invites him to ‘join the celebration’. Brandon wonders what’s happening. ‘Well, Toni and I were married 12 years ago today,’ says Walt. Brandon congratulates them, Walter tells Julia to ‘give mummy her gift’. While she opens it he ‘sings’ what the subtitles inform me is ‘Funeral March’ by Chopin. Characteristically, he then bursts out laughing while the rest of the gathering ignore him. Walter is now in charge of the video camera. Catching Toni’s worried look when she sees her gift, he assures her, ‘It’s okay, baby. I saved for it.’ He’s brought her some ear rings, which he urges her to put on. ‘I got beautiful taste, don’t I?’ Brandon and Toni look a bit awkward. Walter’s got Brandon a present as well. ‘It’s sort of our anniversary anyway, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘They’re made for car racing. The guy who wore this won six straight times at Le Mans. (It’s a smart watch.) Put it on, maybe you’ll start winning again.’ Very bizarre - has the prolific Le Mans winner sold Walter his watch, or does Walt simply mean that he wore that kind of watch, but not literally that exact one? It’s certainly something to ponder. Brandon is reluctant to accept the gift. ‘Why not?’ says Walter, still filming this strained tableau. ‘We all love each other here, right? You’re family. I’m like your father, you’re like my son (he kisses Brandon on the forehead). That would make you his mother, wouldn’t it, Toni?’ Toni looks very pissed off at the Oedipal drama Walter is deliberately concocting. ‘Oh, I said something wrong, didn’t I?’ he says. Toni starts to remove the ear rings but Walter protests. ‘They’re for evening, Walter,’ she explains. ‘So what? Wear them to bed,’ he insists. He then turns to Brandon and asks who he likes ‘in the big game’. Brandon wants Walter to turn off the camera. Walter decides that, like everyone else in the English speaking world, he can wait for the pick. ‘We’ll break it when we do the live TV show’. Is it possible to ‘break’ something which nobody cares about whatsoever?
Brandon stares moddily into the river, then it’s time for ‘The Sports Advisers - LIVE Super Forty Special’ in which ‘John Anthony has his Super Forty selections’. Unfortunately, John Anthony is currently in the bathroom, sweating heavily, as he goes over stat-filled bits of paper in a desperate attempt to finalise his selections. A voice outside informs him that he has two minutes left. Brandon starts throwing up in the toilet, while Walter and Chuck wait patiently on the set. ‘What the hell is he doing?’ asks an exasperated Walter. Brandon is now slumped on the bathroom floor, in a manner eerily reminiscent of my good self after a few too many double whiskies. He ferrets around in his pocket and produces a coin. ‘Heads, New York. Tails, Kansas City,’ he mutters. He tosses the coin. ‘Heads over, tails under,’ he says. He tosses the coin again.
Brandon finally deigns to show up and gives Walter the piece of paper on which he’s scrawled his carefully calculated picks. Walter reads them into his phone. ‘New York, minus one and a half, and the over, 36.’ ‘You wanna know about those picks?’ Brandon says, enigmatically. Walter tells whoever he’s speaking with to wait. ‘What should I know about them?’ ‘I flipped a coin to decide.’ For some reason, Brandon looks quite pleased with himself. You can’t beat a cowardly abdication of personal responsibility. ‘Push it all the way, Southie,’ Walter instructs his phone. Brandon looks surprised, Walter smiles at him. The programme starts and Walter greets ‘everybody’. The good news is that viewing figures have gone up massively of late, the bad news is that’s only because the show has been switched to the comedy channel. ‘Never before, in the history of this industry, has an offer been made like the one I’m about to present to you now,’ says Walter. ‘I am so confident of John Anthony’s picks for this Sunday, I’m so sure of the skills he’s brought to bear, and so anxious for you to get on the phone and dial the toll-free number on your screen, that for the first time in sport service history, I am going to guarantee our picks for this weekend.’ ‘What does that mean?’ asks Brandon. Er, B-man, this is live TV. Save your dumb questions for after the show. ‘What does that mean?’ Walter echoes. ‘It means this. You tell us how much you’re betting with your bookie. You lose, we cover. (Chuck breaks his pencil in disbelief.) You heard me right. That’s risk-free. Now, let’s got to the oracle, God’s gift, John Anthony.’ ‘Wow, that’s all I can say,’ says the oracle. ‘The phones are gonna be flooded Walter, and they should be.’ That’s great John, but I suspect Walt might have wanted a little more, if only to fill the allotted air-time. ‘Hey John,’ says Walter, chattily. ‘Why don’t you run down the pitfalls facing the average bettor? I mean, when you think about it, a game this huge, (with) all the added dynamics, I mean, without your expertise, I guess the average bettor might as well just, what? Flip a coin?’ I accept that this crazy guarantee has enlivened proceedings a shade but the spiel at the top of the show promised ‘John Anthony’s Super Forty selections’, when it seems they are actually only available when you phone the ‘toll-free number’. I maintain that this is the worst programme in the history of television. As for the guarantee itself, it’s patently absurd. The emboldened gamblers will bet millions, which, if the tips prove incorrect, Walter’s company won’t be able to cover, so most of the punters will end up having to fund their own losses anyway.
Outside, Brandon catches up with Walter and tries to dissuade him from this suicidal course of action. ‘If you can flip a coin to make a pick, I can guarantee the game,’ says Walter. This may seem like a non sequitur, but what’s he really saying is: ‘If you can be so irresponsible as to leave a vital decision up to the toss of a coin, I am therefore allowed to be even more irresponsible and risk financial ruin for myself and my loved ones’. Which is stupid, but makes sense. ‘What if we lose?’ Brandon asks. ‘F*** it, I’m ruined anyway,’ says Walter. That’s actually true, so it’s really a bit of a no-loser for Walter. He either goes bankrupt, which is going to happen anyway, or he makes a fortune from winning commissions and saves his business. The only problem is that this course of action, as I mentioned above, could lead to punters losing money when the bankrupt company is unable to refund their stakes as promised. Screw ’em, betting’s a mug’s game! God knows what happens if one of the tips comes in but the other loses. Everyone’s all square? ‘Cover your ass, all right,’ Brandon urges. ‘At least cap the thing out.’ Walter gets out a cigarette. ‘Brandon, can’t you feel it?’ Brandon doesn’t know what he is on about. ‘I think you do,’ says Walter. ‘The best part of the best drug in the world ain’t the high. It’s the moment just before you take it. The dice are dancing on the table. Between now and the time they stop, that’s the greatest high in the world.’ Sounds intoxicating but I’m not sure anti-gambling agencies would look kindly on such talk.
There’s a great hubbub at the office as punters call up, keen not to look an apparent gift horse in the mouth. Various punters are told it’s New York and the over, and that it’s guaranteed. ‘Our reputation is the guarantee,’ Reggie tells a caller who has presumably expressed some of the concerns I’ve been voicing. ‘Twenty-eight years in the business, we’re not going anywhere.’ Brandon looks on nervously from his office. Walt marches down the aisle, currently omnipresent ciggy hanging out of his mouth. He tells his possibly soon-to-be-unemployed minions to ‘kill the phones’. They begin to gather round a TV, as the game is just about to start. Brandon shuts the blinds in his office.
‘Jackson’ gathers in the opening kick-off. As he returns it, Walter moves around as if their movements are synchronised. It’s the first play you buffoon! Last season the Bears ran the opening kick-off back for a touchdown and still got well beaten, so he shouldn’t worry yet, although, in fairness, if your future is literally hanging on the result, then I suppose you’re bound to get pretty wrapped up in it. In any case, the return man is from Kansas, so why Walter is jiggling around as if hoping for a big return is anyone’s guess. Jackson fumbles but Kansas recover, to the disappointment of the viewers. ‘Harris’ then scores a touchdown for Kansas, and again Walter jigs about as if he’s running with him. He should be yelling ‘tackle him’ or some such. Everyone groans with disappointment. Next, Simpson, who is having a superlative post-season, makes a big catch for New York. However, the quarterback follows that by lobbing an interception to ‘Dawkins’. Dawkins runs it all the way back for a touchdown and the outlook is bleak. Kansas City leads 14-0.
Brandon emerges to watch with the group. He puts his hand on Walter’s shoulder. ‘You better hold on to that coin you flipped,’ says Walter. ‘Because, this game keeps up like this, I’m gonna have to borrow it.’ ‘It’s not over yet,’ Brandon points out. ‘I wouldn’t change my bet.’ He heads down to his flat and starts packing his stuff. Finished, he heads out, leaving an letter on the mantelpiece. He hails down a cab as Toni watches him leave, and then puts her head to the wall in a relieved fashion. Why would she just be standing by the window like that? Quite voyeuristic, the Abrams clan.
‘Jones’ runs in a touchdown for New York, and it’s 14-7 as Walter and company exchange high fives. But, as Brandon’s cab pulls up at the airport, ‘Rogers’ scores on a 32-yard run for Kansas. Aren’t these Super Forty players generically named? What happened to Chong, from earlier? It’s 21-10 to Kansas at the end of the third quarter.
More excitement in the office as New York score again to make it 21-17. I don’t catch the name of the scorer but ‘Smith’ or ‘Johnson’ is probably a safe bet. Walter finally notices that Brandon isn’t there, even though he sodded off back when it was 14-0 and there are now only four minutes left.
Walter arrives back at his house and yells, ‘We’re back in it, babe. New York touchdown and we win both bets.’ We hear the commentator in the background, talking about how there are only 58 seconds left. Walt has watched the entire game in his office with the others, but now, with the game reaching a thrilling climax, he heads home to hunt for his wife? He shouts for Brandon too but no one is responding. He finds Brandon’s note, propped up on the box the Le Mans winner’s watch came in. I thought Brandon was living beneath the office, next door to Walter and Toni’s, but, a minute or two ago, it looked like he just walked out of his bedroom and then put his letter on the mantelpiece in the adjacent room. The geography here doesn’t really make sense but I suspect you could care more.
Toni comes wandering in. ‘He left,’ says Walter. She knows. ‘You didn’t tell me?’ he asks. The poor old chap looks genuinely heartbroken. ‘How about that,’ he adds. ‘No goodbye. No nothing.’ Well, nothing except the note Walter is holding in his hand at this very moment, which presumably contains some sort of goodbye-type sentiment. ‘I’m sure it’s all there in the letter,’ says Toni. ‘I’m sure it is,’ agrees Walter, ‘I wonder what’s not in here.’ For her part, Toni wonders what he’s on about. ‘What do you mean, what do I mean?’ says Walter, preparing to work himself into a frenzy of rage, instead of watching the last few seconds of the vitally important football game he’s devoted the last three hours or so to. ‘He had enough, Walter,’ says Toni. ‘He wanted his life back.’ Walter wants to know if Brandon ‘said that to you’. ‘Well, loud and clear, by leaving.’ Walter thinks ‘something else’ was behind Brandon’s abrupt departure. Toni seeks further details but Walter plays coy. ‘You have no idea?’ The pair exchange meaningful looks. ‘You’re missing the game, Walter,’ Toni points out. ‘Oh, no. This is the game,’ he retorts.
Brandon walks through the airport, the viewers in the office get excited as Jones secures a first down for New York, but Walter remains too busy rambling on about Brandon to pay much heed to the game which will make or break his company. ‘I guess Brandon was homesick,’ he ruminates. ‘I don’t know. Or maybe he had such deep feelings for me that he couldn’t face saying goodbye.’ Walter, Brandon lives in Las Vegas. This is not the end of ‘Casablanca’, if you want to see him some time in the upcoming week it won’t be a problem. Toni looks horrified for some reason. ‘Wait a minute,’ Walt adds. Something’s just occurred to him. ‘Brandon didn’t tell me he was gonna leave because you let him f*** you.’
In the game, ‘Edwards’ takes it down to the Kansas 44. In the melodramatic soap opera, Toni says ‘Oh God’ and Walter asks if she denies his claim. ‘Do I have to, Walter?’ she wonders. ‘You know you did,’ he says in a hugely annoying tone. ‘Another lock of the year,’ says Toni. ‘I saw you, Toni,’ Walter reports. ‘I saw you and him that night. I never went to Vegas.’ ‘You mean you lied to me about the trip?’ says Toni. ‘Don’t talk to me about lying,’ says Walt, who raises a fair point. ‘I guess you had the whole thing set up,’ Toni counters, still trying to shift the blame. ‘Don’t make this about me,’ he protests, again, pretty fairly. But Toni refuses to relent. ‘(You) just put me out there on a tray?’ ‘I put a tray out there,’ bellows a furious Walter. ‘You didn’t have to shove a f*****g apple in your mouth and sit on it!’ What an appalling metaphor. Edwards catches it and goes down to the Kansas City 23. ‘Admit it!’ Walter barks, petulantly. ‘You played me, Walter,’ Toni whinges. ‘You’re f*****g-A I did,’ he agrees. ‘It worked. Didn’t it?’
The commentator informs us that New York is spending their final time-out, with just eight seconds left. ‘Brandon was right,’ says Toni. ‘But you don’t deny it?’ says stuck-record Walt. ‘It’s the best pick he ever made,’ says Toni, being unnecessarily cryptic to delay unveiling the upcoming, ludicrous, plot twist. Walter doesn’t understand. The New York quarterback has a pass ‘batted down at the line of scrimmage’. Brandon has conveniently arrived at an airport bar just in time to watch the denouement. ‘So, after everything, it all comes down to one final play,’ says the man on the mike. ‘You were gambling with me that night Walter,’ says Toni. Get on with it woman! ‘With me!’ She pats her chest for extra emphasis. ‘Brandon knew it, because he knew you. He told me he was just sure you were watching somehow. So he asked me in to spend the night and put on a little show for you, Walter.’ Well, the mystery of where Brandon’s actually been living deepens. I’m sure they were outside Toni’s door when they kissed. ‘But I didn’t believe him, Walter,’ Toni continues, interminably. ‘Oh God, I didn’t believe him. I mean, after all we’ve been through. So I figure, you know, ‘what the hell?’. He slipped out the back, no big deal. He never even stayed here.’ So, they’re definitely not in the same building. Toni’s ‘he asked me in to spend the night’ was, let’s face it, pretty misleading, unless Brandon invited her to spend the night at her own house. ‘And you,’ Toni adds. ‘You were in such a good mood the next day. I figured, well, ‘Thank God, you know, because he must have been wrong. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he confront us, confront me?’ Oh, Walter.’ You could write about ten pages about how stupid this all is but I’ll try and be brief. Basically, the only reason any of these three idiots would behave as they have done would be in order to set up a dramatic ending to a film. Why did Brandon decide to ‘put on a little show’ for Walter? What point was he trying to make? If he wanted to bring matters to a head regarding Walter’s jealousy, why not just confront him about it? And also, though I’m sure this isn’t the case, Brandon and Toni have created the perfect alibi for themselves. ‘Let’s go in and have sex, and, if Walter has seen us somehow, we’ll just tell him we knew he was watching and we were putting on a show for him.’ Remember that little tactic, adulterers of the world, especially if your partner is pretty credulous.
New York needs a touchdown on the final snap to win (the commentator talks about how players dream of this moment, so we all notice the similarities between this play and the one that Brandon got injured on way back when) and we see Brandon and the office looking on nervously. Sadly, Toni and Walter’s enthralling confrontation is raging on. ‘You wanted to lose!’ she yells at him. ‘Like I was something you could just toss on a table. Only we booked your bet, Walter. Brandon and me, who evidently love you more than you love yourself.’ Walter is speechless for once.
It’s the final play! The quarterback drops back, then takes off running, just like Brandon did. Still, Toni won’t zip it. ‘Your fantasy is to end up alone, with nothing,’ she snarls. ‘I won’t let that happen, Walter, do you understand me?’ Walter must be wondering just how terribly he has to behave to get rid of this broad. The quarterback continues his circuitous, and surprisingly time-consuming progress to the end zone, while Toni smacks Walter and informs him ‘this is real’. ‘You and me and Julia, we’re all that’s real.’ Walter looks contemplative. ‘This is it Walter,’ says Toni and the quarterback, ‘goes airborne from the five. Does he get in?’ What do you reckon?
The office goes wild as the touchdown is confirmed, while, at the airport, Brandon smiles slightly at the crazy vagaries of the sports-tipping world and raises his right arm. More scenes of pandemonium in the office, involving the likes of Chuck and Tammy. Toni mouths ‘Walter’ but we can’t hear it above the epic sweep of the soundtrack. Walter gives in and kneels down on the floor next to Toni. They hug each other, all issues happily resolved. Walter murmurs into Toni’s ear and, yes, a manly tear rolls down his cheek. There wouldn’t have been any issues if they hadn’t acted like such a pair of clowns in the first place but what sort of a film would that have made?
Brandon walks away from the bar, grinning delightedly to himself. It’s all worked out pretty well for everybody except maybe Jerry, who, in essence, lost to his job to someone who then quit himself mere days later, and except maybe the likes of Amir, who lost everything they own on Brandon’s earlier tips, and would have been unable to raise more than a brass farthing to invest on New York in ‘Super Forty’.
Some kids are playing American football while cheerleaders chant in the background. Brandon appears, ball under his arm, whistle round his neck. ‘Giants, with me!’ he shouts. ‘Over here with me.’ He’s a football coach. The youngsters gather round for a pep talk. ‘We got a tough team we’re playing today,’ says Brandon. ‘You all know that. Toughest on our schedule. Now, most important thing we’re gonna do today is have some fun.’ Somehow I wasn’t expecting Brandon to be a foaming-at-the-mouth win-at-all-costs merchant. He waffles on in this ‘have some fun’ vein, then indulges in some back and forth with his charges. They then storm off in rowdy fashion while he grins indulgently. However, one of the ankle-biters has stayed by Brandon’s side. ‘Coach, do you really thing we can win today?’ he enquires. ‘Oh,’ exclaims the B-dog. ‘I’d bet on it.’ In that case, the poor little mites have got absolutely no chance.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Two For The Money (part three)
As Brandon is putting his clubs in the trunk, Toni comes out of her house and hails him. He wants to know where she’s going, she tells him she’s off to work. He takes her by the hand, compliments her on her appearance and marches her towards his car. ‘Nice ride,’ Toni remarks. I can’t believe she hasn’t seen his car before, considering her and Walter seem to be Brandon’s only friends. He brags about the personalised number plates (‘900 K-I-N-G,’ if you’re a latecomer) as if they’re something to be proud of, rather than the stupidest thing anyone has ever had emblazoned on their vehicle. She gets in, Walter looks on jealously from the office window. No one likes a long commute so you have to admire the way Walter has set up his business in the building right next door to his residence.
Brandon drives Toni to work like a maniac. He’s still pissed off that Walter a) told him to get knotted when he asked for a raise and/or b) paid for a pretty girl to sleep with him without telling Brandon, who thought he had charmed her into the sack until she disabused him of that overly optimistic notion. Or perhaps Brandon couldn’t care less about such matters and is simply trying to impress Toni. ‘You feel that?’ he asks three times, in a steadily rising pitch. Toni wants him to slow down but he refuses to comply: ‘This car was made to go fast.’ He gets a cigar out, tells her to ‘loosen up’ and asks: ‘When you’re not at the salon or running Julia to play dates or keeping Walter in line, which I know is a full-time job, what do you do for you?’ She goes speeding manically around the streets of New York with one of her husband’s idiot employees by the looks of things. ‘I stay busy,’ she responds and tells him he’s got a turn coming up. Why is he driving her to work anyway? She must have her own car, what with Walter’s wedge and all the ‘running Julia to play dates’ to be done, and, unless Brandon is planning on coming back to pick her up again later on, she’s going to end up marooned at work with no easy way to get home. Just thought it was worth mentioning. ‘That’s not what I asked,’ Brandon shouts annoyingly, taking the corner like a ‘Wacky Races’ competitor. ‘What do you do for you, for Toni?’ ‘I was a junkie, Brandon, okay?’ she says. I don’t think he wanted to know that either but we have quickly learned that Walter and Toni love to share. ‘So every day I get up and I gotta wonder ‘Is this the day? Is this it? Is this the day I slip? End up back on the street?’ Just keeping it all on track. That’s what I do for me.’ Brandon’s cigar doesn’t appear to be lit but he keeps putting it to his mouth anyway. In the space of half a day he’s metamorphosed into a complete twit. Rather than praise Toni for the way she’s turned her life around, he remarks: ‘Well that’s not living, Toni. That is not living. That is maintaining. That’s cashing in. That is not living.’ A sweet, happy daughter, a marriage and a successful business seemingly aren’t enough for this chump. What the hell does that mean?’ says Toni, then asks if we’re ‘talking perfection here’. Brandon says no and sagely pronounces that ‘nobody’s perfect’. How would you follow up that comment, if you were trying to be the biggest dickhead possible. You could mull it over for hours and I still doubt you could top this beauty: ‘Oh, except for me. Last weekend going 14 and 0, huh?’ Toni, used to dealing with preening alpha males, laughs indulgently, and thanks ‘John’ for the ride as they pull up by the salon.
Walter’s office, a few days later. Walter and Brandon listen to the results coming in. Brandon gets up, ‘I’m gonna go work out.’ ‘No, you’re not,’ says Walter. ‘There’s half a dozen games left. I want you to watch every second of every minute of every one of them. All right, so sit down.’
It’s later on now but our pair of punting prima donnas are still watching American football together. The commentator says something derogatory about Oakland and Walter says ‘Bye-bye’ and switches off the TV. ‘You know how you go three and eleven don’t you?’ Walter asks Brandon, who has dit6ched his cigar and does not look too happy. Clearly, he knows how to go three and eleven, having presumably just done exactly that, but I think Walter’s going to tell him anyway. ‘You go three and eleven when you make Sunday’s picks on Tuesday. ’Cause it rained in Cincinnati on Saturday, (and) two starting quarterbacks never got to play. That’s how you go three and eleven.’ Well, you’re the boss Walter, why didn’t you either ‘put the tips on ice’ as you said you would earlier and force Brandon to revise them later on, or just change some of the more outlandish ones yourself? To only pick three winners out of 14 in a sport where the possibility of a draw is not really in play is, to be honest, unrealistically bad. There must have been some obvious clangers in there. Brandon indulges in a quick spot of straw-clutching: ‘We still got Monday night and the parlay.’ ‘F*** Monday night and f*** the parlay. This isn’t about that. This is about me, isn’t it? It’s about the commission thing.’ Brandon looks very awkward and says he doesn’t know. Savvy businessman Walter decides he should reward Brandon for a feat of tipping which a two-year-old could have bettered. ‘Listen, I’m gonna bump you. Ten percent. Okay? You earned it.’ Brandon is rocking back and forward in his chair nervously, and Walter doesn’t really relax him by adding: ‘This is dangerous territory we’re getting into.’ However, he’s going to give him the rise anyway and wants to know about Monday night. Having lost a fortune following Brandon’s terrible Sunday picks, everybody is apparently going to ‘double down’ on whatever he pulls out of his ass for Monday night. ‘Monday night’s fine,’ says Brandon. ‘You bet your mother’s house on it?’ ‘I don’t bet, Walter.’ However, Brandon assures Walter he is happy with his selection. Walt wants more: ‘On your mother’s house or not?’ ‘With my mother in it.’
Brandon watches the Monday night game in a bar. ‘Another Monday night thriller comes down to the final seconds,’ says the commentator. Brandon looks on as the Carolina return man fumbles a punt and Cleveland recover the ball. Judging by the way a half-smoked stoogie falls out of his mouth, the pained cry of ‘f***’ he emits and the anguished look on his face, that’s not good news for Brandon and his followers. His mobile rings, it’s Walter. Very dramatic, but what has to be said right away about this disastrous turn of events that can’t wait for the morning? Maybe Walter wants to get an early jump on Brandon’s picks for next week?
This reversal of fortune has convinced Brandon to become the hardest worker bee in the hive. We see him buying a stack of sports newspapers and having phone conversations about esoteric American footballing matters. For some unfathomable reason it seems he is now being chauffeured around, and we see a minion hold the back door of the car open for him.
In his office, Brandon pesters a contact (‘Larry’) for information about whether an injury victim will be playing at the weekend. ‘It’s raining, it’s snowing. Can his knee hold up in that?’ Larry reports that ‘the doctor cleared him’. ‘Will the doc let him play?’ barks Brandon. Presumably he will, what else does ‘clearing him’ mean? Perhaps he’s only cleared him to hand out the sports drinks at half-time. ‘Yes, he is a gamer, thank you,’ says Brandon. ‘I can read between the lines, you got it.’ I can’t read between the lines. F*** knows if this character’s going to play or not.
We are treated to a bit of American football action and then arrive at a golf driving range at night time, where Brandon is hitting some balls. ‘Hell of a swing,’ says a just-arriving Walter. ‘Southie told me where I could find you.’ Brandon wanted to ‘clear (his) head’. He asks how they got on. Walter confirms that Brandon hasn’t already seen the results. Walt’s general demeanour suggests that Brandon did not make a spectacular return to form. ‘Highest sales volume ever,’ says Walter. Of course! After some hopeless tipster costs you a packet, the first thing you do is call back in search of a few more tasty nuggets. ‘I think we kicked ass,’ says a confident Brandon, clearly not an expert in body language. He’s pounding golf balls at a very fast pace while this chat goes on. ‘It was amazing,’ says Walter, as if he is agreeing. A grinning Brandon tells him ‘last week was nothing’. ‘You’re right,’ says Walt. ‘It was nothing compared to what we lost today.’ Finally, he has Brandon’s full attention. B wants to know exactly how he did but Walter decides to paint him a little picture of office life beforehand: ‘Grown men crying on the phone, their wives screaming in the background. Three salespeople quit. Couldn’t take the pressure.’ Brandon is bent over, aghast at his monumental incompetence. ‘F***,’ he says, but simply swearing is no longer enough to earn Walter’s amity. ‘You lose ten out of twelve, ‘f***’ doesn’t quite cover it,’ he points out. Again, I think that set of results is terrible almost to the point of impossibility, especially after last week, but I suppose it’s forgivable, in the name of adding a bit of dramatic heft. Walter thinks ‘holy f*****g s***’ or ‘Jesus f****** Christ’ would sum up their situation more adroitly. Brandon puts his golf club away and intimates he’s heard enough. Walter agrees. ‘What’s left to say, except maybe, we keep the phone number, only we switch it over to a f*****g suicide hotline.’ Brandon walks off and Walter shouts, ‘Tomorrow morning, Brandon (we don’t hear much about that John Anthony character these days, do we?). Bright and early, we start all over again.’ Walter refuses to lose faith in his tipping find but if I were him I’d be round Jerry’s at this very moment, with a pre-paid Alexandria in tow.
Brandon cycles around a park. A thug appears from nowhere and barges him off his bike. It’s Benny, Mr Novian’s personal thug. ‘Mr Novian wants to see you,’ he explains, dragging Brandon off. ‘Tell him to call me,’ Brandon wheezes, as the thug manhandles him. No need though, Novian himself hoves into view. ‘I didn’t recognise you without the suit John,’ he remarks. Good job Benny has a better memory for faces or the two of them could have been hanging around all day. ‘This is my time off,’ splutters Brandon, strangely taking the remark at face value instead of as the pointless prelude to a tirade of abuse that it so obviously was. ‘If you wanna talk, make an appointment,’ he adds, though with Benny’s arm around his throat, he is not really negotiating from a position of strength. ‘Or shall I call you Brandon?’ Novian wanders. Not having expected a response to his weak opening line, he ploughs on with his prepared speech. ‘Someone costs you thirty million, you do research, right?’ Brandon now looks terrified as Novian boasts about how he knows all about him, ‘where you live, where you’re from, where your family lives. Hey, your mother, there’s a sweet lady, man. I just come from Vegas. Dealt me three blackjacks in a row, she’s a good woman.’ Brandon tries to attack Novian but Benny restrains him. Novian continues to ponder some of life’s eternal verities: ‘Where’s the cocky motherf***** who came to my house?’ To be fair, it’s easier to be a cocky motherf***** when you’re not lying in mud with Benny’s arm around your throat. ‘Where’s John? What happened to John?’ Brandon suggests Novian should ‘use somebody else’ if he’s not happy with the picks. Benny lifts Brandon to his feet and Novian marches over. ‘I (have) just come for an apology. That’s it. Just look me in the eye and say you’re sorry.’ Brandon does so, but Novian isn’t satisfied. Brandon tries again but an angry Novian tells him he’s ‘not even close’. Benny hauls Brandon down to the ground again. ‘I’m gonna get my satisfaction, God damn it,’ says Novian, not as willing to admit defeat as the Rolling Stones. He gets out a gun and points it at Brandon’s head. Brandon apologises repeatedly. ‘It was a bad f****** weekend man.’ ‘Well, let’s make it a fun day,’ says Novian, proceeding to put his gun away, before urinating all over Brandon. It’s fair to say life in New York’s been something of a roller-coaster ride for the B-man.
We’re on the set of ‘Sports Advisers’ (‘Some businesses piss all over their competitors, but our clients piss on us!’). Jerry wants a word with Walter. ‘I think that I should lead off tonight,’ he says. ‘I got some really strong stuff, man.’ The show’s obviously fairly close to kicking off, but, seeing as the only people who could possibly be watching are extreme sado-masochists, I won’t complain about the way these idiots try to change the running order on the fly when they could have sorted this out hours ago. ‘Jerry, you got a good hole,’ Walter points out. ‘Stay in it.’ Jerry points out that he went ‘eight for twelve last week’. ‘I’m hot, I’m feeling it.’ Walter is unimpressed. ‘You had one good weekend, don’t get pushy.’ Jel objects to being written off as a one-hit wonder. ‘Sykes System revolutionised this industry, man.’ He shows Walter an advert featuring John Anthony. ‘Am I wood (?). Where’s my f*****g ad?’ We all know that Walter doesn’t have the longest fuse and he duly rips the advert from Jerry’s hands and tells him to ‘take a hike’. Jerry is baffled. ‘You’re fired, you’re gone,’ Walter explains. ‘I’m not fired,’ says a laughing Jerry. ‘You need me more than ever.’ Walter gently intimates that he’s not entirely convinced that that is, in fact, the case: ‘Get out of here, you cut-rate parasite.’ I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Walter’s treatment of Jerry is unrealistically appalling. If Walter thinks John Anthony is his top man then more power to his elbow, but he’s gone out of his way to rub Jerry’s nose in it, and resorts to cheap insults when Jerry bridles, or attempts to have a reasoned debate. Jerry tries again, ‘In six years, my worst weekend was never as bad as any of this guy’s last three weeks (we see Brandon looking on from the camera area).’ Walter again tells Jerry he’s out, Jerry wants to know what Walter is doing. I’ve vaguely tried to give Walter the benefit of the doubt before but he loses me for good now by making pained noises and shouting, so everyone within earshot can hear: ‘Am I doing something wrong here? Am I not communicating, is that it?’ He wanders out towards the cameras, where technical types and other hangers-on lurk. ‘You all know what I just did. (To Jerry) I fired you!’ Take careful note of this, all you bosses around the world. If you are ever in the unfortunate position of having to let someone go, and they express disbelief and try to get you to change your mind, don’t even think about offering them any sympathy. Instead, simply hurl abuse at them in front of the rest of the workforce. Yes, we can all agree that Jerry was being a bit juvenile about John Anthony’s preferential treatment but, let’s face it, all the evidence suggests that he’s a solid pro, whereas JA’s a no-hoper who fluked a few good weeks. Wouldn’t you be hacked off? Jerry, stupidly, keeps trying to reason with this buffoon. ‘Come on, this is me, all right? I’ve been here for you. I’m consistent and you know it. The other guys, f*** ’em. They come, they go. I’m the guy.’ ‘No, they don’t. Not him,’ says Walter, pointing at our hero. ‘That’s true talent. Get it? You can’t see it, I can’t explain it to you, that’s why you’re fired.’ I can’t be bothered to rip all that nonsense to shreds. Jerry implores Walt to ‘think about what (he’s) doing’ but Walt’s on a roll. ‘You couldn’t pick your nose without a f*****g computer,’ he says. That’s pretty specious, Walter. Given the chance to talk to someone rational, Jerry would no doubt point out that, over the years, his computer program has been a more accurate forecaster of sports results than human intuition, hence his reliance on it for his selections, with it’s nose-picking qualities simply an added bonus. Walter doesn’t give him time for a rebuttal though, adding: ‘You’re small Jerry. You belong in a can.’ ‘You’ve lost it,’ Jerry observes. Walt again points to John ‘Two winners out of twelve’ Anthony. ‘You don’t touch him. Now why don’t you have some self-respect and leave?’ Jerry is lost for words but eventually storms off, telling Walter he’s ‘out of (his) f*****g mind’. ‘Maybe I am,’ Walter concurs.
Brandon strolls over to Walter. ‘Asshole,’ says Walter, referring, naturally, to Jerry. ‘He doesn’t realise I’m trying to build an empire around you.’ I think he did realise that Walt, hence his displeasure. ‘I hope you do,’ he adds. Poor old Walter, he doesn’t realise that the man he’s anointed as head of his new empire was last spotted being urinated on in the park. Brandon doesn’t have much to say for himself but ambles towards his seat while Walter tells everyone to get back to work. And … we cut away before we get the chance to see how on earth Walt and the wallies explain away last weekend’s fiasco to their single-digit audience.
Brandon is in bed. His phone rings but he ignores it, without even seeing who it is. It’s Alexandria! No, sadly, it’s Walter. Someone knocks on his door and he peers through the peephole. ‘Hey, Toni, this is not a good time.’ She says she is cognisant of that but needs to speak to him about something ‘important’. ‘Not right now,’ he says. ‘Brandon, you have to … You have to go,’ says Toni. Brandon, who seems to be ailing, murmurs, ‘No, I gotta get back on track.’ ‘That won’t matter,’ says Toni. ‘You could win a hundred games in a row and it won’t be enough.’ Toni is clearly dealing in hypotheticals here, the B-man is lucky if he wins one in a row. ‘He will ride you into the ground,’ she adds. She’s trying to protect Brandon from Walter? I can see where she’s coming from but I thought she would be telling him to get lost before his ineptitude costs her husband his business.
Brandon sits in his office in a suit. The phone rings, he answers it. ‘I’m wiped out John,’ says a distressed voice. It’s Amir, he’s calling from a pay-phone. ‘My business, my house, my credit, everything,’ he adds. Brandon assures him it’s all going to be swell. ‘We’re gonna get back on track this weekend.’ ‘Still you talk like this,’ says Amir in accusatory fashion. ‘Who the f*** are you? Like this is some kind of game. You ruined me! I was betting a few thousand a Sunday when I called you but you pushed me, every call, all the time, with your talk. I lost three hundred and eighty thousand this weekend. I was going to get married. I had a life!’ Amir starts crying. You’ve got to sympathise with the old boy but last time we saw him he was living large. I know it’s so very easy to say but why didn’t he scale back a bit when he got well in front? And also, just because some smug tipster tells you to up your stakes to dangerous levels, that doesn’t mean you actually have to. Tell him to get stuffed and bet with money you can afford to lose. Okay, kids! Brandon doesn’t have much to say for himself, which Amir notices too. ‘No more money to squeeze so you shut up,’ he says. It would be funny (and not a little ironic) if his money ran out halfway through his rant at Brandon but this is a serious scene so we can’t have any of that nonsense. ‘How do you f****** live with yourself?’ Amir enquires. He hangs up, Brandon looks pensive.
Brandon works out. I think he’s lifting weights in his suit! He has a Eureka moment and dashes towards Walter’s office, yelling excitedly. ‘I know what the problem is,’ he tells Walter, as he bursts in. The boss is with two men and a load of money. Brandon says he’ll come back but Walter says he’s fine to stay. ‘These guys are finished.’ They leave and Brandon wants to know who they were but Walter is more concerned about his inability to make contact with Brandon and proposes ‘a Bat light or something’ so Brandon knows when his ‘services’ are required. Brandon again asks who the two strangers were. ‘The Salvation Army,’ Walter replies. ‘How does someone go one for eight?’ Sounds like you-know-who is in typical mid-season form. Again, one for eight is beyond ludicrous. It’s the playoffs now, apparently, which are seeded, so if you simply pick the home team, you’re liable to get more picks right than not. ‘A f*****g monkey tossing darts could do better than that,’ says Walter. Brandon wants to know why Walter has so much money lying around but Walt will not be deterred from denigrating his latest calamitous tipping performance. ‘I got a plan,’ he says. ‘We take all your picks, we reverse everything. Like one of them ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes, where everything is opposite. You say black, we say white (we get it Walter).’ ‘How much is that?’ Brandon asks, referring to the dosh. ‘Peanuts,’ says Walter. ‘Two hundred and seventy-five thousand. That’s how desperate I am.’ Brandon wants to know what happened to the ‘two mill’ they won weeks ago. ‘Man, I was carrying twice that in red ink before you even showed up,’ says Walter. ‘Everything you see is smoke and mirrors. I got three mortgages on this house. What do you want to know? I’m gambling again!’ Brandon stares at him moodily. ‘Cover my losses, I just got a loan from a guy who works out of a bar on 106th and Broadway. Trouble with me is, I start betting you heavy after you went a hundred per cent and I rode you right into the f*****g toilet.’ The trouble with this development is that, the week after nailing every result, Brandon arrogantly worked out his tips in about two minutes, and Walter, correctly, criticised him for it. Now we’re supposed to believe that, after watching, and passing comment on, this massive display of hubris, he then ahead and lumped large on the tips anyway? Brandon has an evangelical look in his eye. ‘I’m gonna take care of all this s***,’ he promises. ‘I’m Brandon Lang, all right?’ He burbles on about why changing back to his old identity is the way forward: ‘I’m the kid you called in Las Vegas…I lost something in here…I gotta go back to being me…If I go back to being Brandon …’ ‘You can pick again,’ Walter finishes. He’s on board with the scheme and takes the blame himself, ‘My fault. I f****d with you. Only two games, two winners, two over-unders.’ I think he’s talking about the coming weekend. An insufferable pedant would wonder how eight games (16 teams) reduced the field to a pair of games (four teams) in a week but that’s not how I roll. Walter piles on a bit of pressure about how vital the weekend is, then suggests they get some food but Brandon wants to ‘do some homework’. They hug, they’re both optimistic about the coming weekend.
In his office, Brandon struggles to come up with his picks for the games while the salesmen twiddle their thumbs. Our man lifts weights, shouts things at himself and puts a football to his head. Walter and his team wait patiently in the outer office. For some inexplicable reason, the phone lines aren’t exactly burning up with punters desperate to know what John Anthony’s got for them, although maybe some people have done what Walt said and reversed the picks. They’ll have made a fortune and will be desperate for more. Brandon comes out of the office and gives Walter a piece of paper. ‘Brandon made these picks?’ Walter asks. ‘You’re looking at him,’ is the response. ‘New York and the under, Tennessee and the over,’ Walter announces. ‘Sell ’em hard.’ They’re professional sales people, how does he think they’re going to sell them?
It’s time for the big games and even Julia wants to watch. Walter, Brandon and company are watching the game on a bank of four TV screens, each showing the same pictures. If you want to watch different games, then four screens are obviously great but if only one game is one, wouldn’t you just have one TV on? What do I know, I yearn for the day when I have a bank of four TV screens. Walter tells Julia who to ‘root’ for. ‘We don’t want them, that’s Atlanta.’ Very implausible, this film. Atlanta a game away from the Super Bowl? Not likely. Last I heard their star quarterback was possibly on his way to the slammer. Walter wants New York to win ‘and New York has gotta win by more than five points. Only you gotta root for a low score, okay? Because both teams together have to make less than 42 points, total.’ I’m sure I’ve seen the logistics of a plot point explained to the audience in a more maladroit fashion than a father blatantly stating them to his daughter, who could hardly care less and is likely to skitter off in a few minutes anyway, but I can’t remember when. Still not sure we, I mean, er, Julia, knows what’s what, the writer, I mean, er Walter, says, ‘So it’s New York in under 42 points.’ Julia nods agreeably. Brandon is looking tense.
New York scores a touchdown to ‘take the early lead’, prompting screams of delight from the beer-swilling gathering at Sports Advisers HQ. Chuck is there by the way. I think this film would have been better with more Chuck, and Julia, and Jerry. And less of Brandon, Walter and Toni.
Second quarter, it’s 10-0 New York, but Atlanta scores to make it 10-7. Julia shakes her head in disbelief. I was totally wrong, she’s clearly a huge American football fan. ‘Cong’ (?) throws a touchdown to ‘Simpson’ and New York go 17-7 up.
We skip forward again. Commentator: ‘New York just seconds away for maybe their third trip to the big game.’ The dangerous Simpson catches yet another touchdown for New York. ‘Hello, Super Forty!’ the commentator exults, trying to get round the fact that use of the phrase Super Bowl has obviously been prohibited. That makes it 24-14 and New York have got it in the bag, prompting happy scenes. ‘The boy is back, first of two, baby,’ Reggie says to a still-nervous looking Brandon. But wait, Atlanta are throwing a long bomb on the final play for the hell of it, and a touchdown would get them within five points and take the total over 42, wrecking both Brandon’s tips without altering the result. ‘Knock it down, knock it down,’ says Chuck, so happy to get an audible line he decides to repeat it. Commentator: ‘A wall of blue shirts up there around Jesse Sanchez. It is tipped in the air, it’s still loose, it is bouncing all around. And Peterson comes down with it. He’s at the 20, across the ten. Mackey dives at his ankles to keep him out of the end zone. Well, we end on a meaningless touchdown. Of course, I guess, unless you live in Las Vegas.’ This all plays out to a background of frenzied yelling from Walter’s gang but it’s no good, a freak play has wrecked the party atmosphere. Walter and Brandon look appropriately horrified.
Another commentator informs us that Kansas City caned Tennessee 33-13 in the other match, so Brandon’s definitely got the result wrong, although if the line was 45 or under he’s at least not gone zero for four. Only Walter and Brandon are left in the office. ‘I’m finished Walter,’ says Brandon. ‘Oh that’s great to hear,’ says Walter. ‘Thank God I haven’t alienated my other reliable tipster. Oh s***, wait a minute.’ He doesn’t really say that. ‘I don’t eat, I’m not sleeping,’ Brandon moans. ‘You got a little insomnia, a little indigestion, you’re gonna quit?’ says Walter. That, plus the fact he couldn’t tip the winner of a walkover. ‘What use is John Anthony gonna be to you now anyway?’ Brandon perceptively asks though, as I may have mentioned a few million times, perfect weekend or not, I think most punters would have deserted John Anthony by now anyway, or been forced to by the bankruptcy courts. Walter won’t ‘listen to this defeatist b******t’. ‘They know you went 80 per cent for half a season,’ he points out. ‘They know, and they’re gonna remember as soon as you win a game.’ He’s right. Brandon does at least have the law of averages on his side for ‘Super Forty’. ‘Then we go into March Madness, baseball,’ Walter adds. ‘Next year this time, this won’t even be a memory.’ Brandon wants to know ‘who said anything about next year, Walter?’ ‘You made a career choice buddy, and I bankrolled it,’ says Walt, lighting up a cigarette.
Toni arrives, indicates her displeasure at his smoking, and he tosses it away. ‘Let him go,’ she advises. ‘Of course you stick up for him,’ says Walter. If he seriously thinks his wife wants to get it on with Brandon, then why has he been mentoring the lad? ‘Meaning what?’ asks Toni in resigned fashion. ‘Meaning whose side are you on?’ ‘I didn’t realise I had to choose, Walter.’ Walter turns to Brandon. ‘You’re a champion,’ he informs him, cheerfully flying in the face of public opinion. ‘Champion goes down 86 times, he’s up on the 87th. I’m not gonna let you stay down, no way. Because this is not about you, or you (Toni). Or me. It’s about your gift. Your gift transcends all this s**t. Your gift is cosmic. It’s metaphysic. It’s eternal. It is God! Besides, we have a contract.’ ‘B******t,’ is Brandon’s response. ‘Walter, you can’t own someone,’ Toni points out. ‘Who owns him? I created the greatest sports tout this country’s ever seen. I hooked him up with every major client. I built a f*****g television show around him. I took out full-page ads. I introduced him to the major clients of the world (you’ve said that one Walt, and, considering that they ended up peeing on him, Brandon may not view it as a massive favour). I did that. I hooked you up with everybody. You think you’re gonna walk out that door, take that with you, leave me here holding the f*****g sack? B******t! (To Toni) I don’t even know why I’m talking to you about this s***. What the hell has this got to do with you? You know this is between me and him. What are you doing up in this office? What are you doing here? Get out of here!’ He really is a pleasant fellow. ‘Don’t talk to her like that Walter,’ says Brandon. ‘It’s between me and you.’ ‘Are you telling me how to talk to my wife?’ Walter wonders. ‘You shut your f*****g toilet when I’m talking to her.’ Walter has turned this into a very ugly scene. Toni begs Brandon to leave. He makes to do so but ends up hanging around by the door while Toni gives Walter hell. ‘Listen to me you son of a b****. Don’t you ever talk to me like that, ever.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ says Walter, calming down a shade. Brandon takes his leave.
Brandon drives Toni to work like a maniac. He’s still pissed off that Walter a) told him to get knotted when he asked for a raise and/or b) paid for a pretty girl to sleep with him without telling Brandon, who thought he had charmed her into the sack until she disabused him of that overly optimistic notion. Or perhaps Brandon couldn’t care less about such matters and is simply trying to impress Toni. ‘You feel that?’ he asks three times, in a steadily rising pitch. Toni wants him to slow down but he refuses to comply: ‘This car was made to go fast.’ He gets a cigar out, tells her to ‘loosen up’ and asks: ‘When you’re not at the salon or running Julia to play dates or keeping Walter in line, which I know is a full-time job, what do you do for you?’ She goes speeding manically around the streets of New York with one of her husband’s idiot employees by the looks of things. ‘I stay busy,’ she responds and tells him he’s got a turn coming up. Why is he driving her to work anyway? She must have her own car, what with Walter’s wedge and all the ‘running Julia to play dates’ to be done, and, unless Brandon is planning on coming back to pick her up again later on, she’s going to end up marooned at work with no easy way to get home. Just thought it was worth mentioning. ‘That’s not what I asked,’ Brandon shouts annoyingly, taking the corner like a ‘Wacky Races’ competitor. ‘What do you do for you, for Toni?’ ‘I was a junkie, Brandon, okay?’ she says. I don’t think he wanted to know that either but we have quickly learned that Walter and Toni love to share. ‘So every day I get up and I gotta wonder ‘Is this the day? Is this it? Is this the day I slip? End up back on the street?’ Just keeping it all on track. That’s what I do for me.’ Brandon’s cigar doesn’t appear to be lit but he keeps putting it to his mouth anyway. In the space of half a day he’s metamorphosed into a complete twit. Rather than praise Toni for the way she’s turned her life around, he remarks: ‘Well that’s not living, Toni. That is not living. That is maintaining. That’s cashing in. That is not living.’ A sweet, happy daughter, a marriage and a successful business seemingly aren’t enough for this chump. What the hell does that mean?’ says Toni, then asks if we’re ‘talking perfection here’. Brandon says no and sagely pronounces that ‘nobody’s perfect’. How would you follow up that comment, if you were trying to be the biggest dickhead possible. You could mull it over for hours and I still doubt you could top this beauty: ‘Oh, except for me. Last weekend going 14 and 0, huh?’ Toni, used to dealing with preening alpha males, laughs indulgently, and thanks ‘John’ for the ride as they pull up by the salon.
Walter’s office, a few days later. Walter and Brandon listen to the results coming in. Brandon gets up, ‘I’m gonna go work out.’ ‘No, you’re not,’ says Walter. ‘There’s half a dozen games left. I want you to watch every second of every minute of every one of them. All right, so sit down.’
It’s later on now but our pair of punting prima donnas are still watching American football together. The commentator says something derogatory about Oakland and Walter says ‘Bye-bye’ and switches off the TV. ‘You know how you go three and eleven don’t you?’ Walter asks Brandon, who has dit6ched his cigar and does not look too happy. Clearly, he knows how to go three and eleven, having presumably just done exactly that, but I think Walter’s going to tell him anyway. ‘You go three and eleven when you make Sunday’s picks on Tuesday. ’Cause it rained in Cincinnati on Saturday, (and) two starting quarterbacks never got to play. That’s how you go three and eleven.’ Well, you’re the boss Walter, why didn’t you either ‘put the tips on ice’ as you said you would earlier and force Brandon to revise them later on, or just change some of the more outlandish ones yourself? To only pick three winners out of 14 in a sport where the possibility of a draw is not really in play is, to be honest, unrealistically bad. There must have been some obvious clangers in there. Brandon indulges in a quick spot of straw-clutching: ‘We still got Monday night and the parlay.’ ‘F*** Monday night and f*** the parlay. This isn’t about that. This is about me, isn’t it? It’s about the commission thing.’ Brandon looks very awkward and says he doesn’t know. Savvy businessman Walter decides he should reward Brandon for a feat of tipping which a two-year-old could have bettered. ‘Listen, I’m gonna bump you. Ten percent. Okay? You earned it.’ Brandon is rocking back and forward in his chair nervously, and Walter doesn’t really relax him by adding: ‘This is dangerous territory we’re getting into.’ However, he’s going to give him the rise anyway and wants to know about Monday night. Having lost a fortune following Brandon’s terrible Sunday picks, everybody is apparently going to ‘double down’ on whatever he pulls out of his ass for Monday night. ‘Monday night’s fine,’ says Brandon. ‘You bet your mother’s house on it?’ ‘I don’t bet, Walter.’ However, Brandon assures Walter he is happy with his selection. Walt wants more: ‘On your mother’s house or not?’ ‘With my mother in it.’
Brandon watches the Monday night game in a bar. ‘Another Monday night thriller comes down to the final seconds,’ says the commentator. Brandon looks on as the Carolina return man fumbles a punt and Cleveland recover the ball. Judging by the way a half-smoked stoogie falls out of his mouth, the pained cry of ‘f***’ he emits and the anguished look on his face, that’s not good news for Brandon and his followers. His mobile rings, it’s Walter. Very dramatic, but what has to be said right away about this disastrous turn of events that can’t wait for the morning? Maybe Walter wants to get an early jump on Brandon’s picks for next week?
This reversal of fortune has convinced Brandon to become the hardest worker bee in the hive. We see him buying a stack of sports newspapers and having phone conversations about esoteric American footballing matters. For some unfathomable reason it seems he is now being chauffeured around, and we see a minion hold the back door of the car open for him.
In his office, Brandon pesters a contact (‘Larry’) for information about whether an injury victim will be playing at the weekend. ‘It’s raining, it’s snowing. Can his knee hold up in that?’ Larry reports that ‘the doctor cleared him’. ‘Will the doc let him play?’ barks Brandon. Presumably he will, what else does ‘clearing him’ mean? Perhaps he’s only cleared him to hand out the sports drinks at half-time. ‘Yes, he is a gamer, thank you,’ says Brandon. ‘I can read between the lines, you got it.’ I can’t read between the lines. F*** knows if this character’s going to play or not.
We are treated to a bit of American football action and then arrive at a golf driving range at night time, where Brandon is hitting some balls. ‘Hell of a swing,’ says a just-arriving Walter. ‘Southie told me where I could find you.’ Brandon wanted to ‘clear (his) head’. He asks how they got on. Walter confirms that Brandon hasn’t already seen the results. Walt’s general demeanour suggests that Brandon did not make a spectacular return to form. ‘Highest sales volume ever,’ says Walter. Of course! After some hopeless tipster costs you a packet, the first thing you do is call back in search of a few more tasty nuggets. ‘I think we kicked ass,’ says a confident Brandon, clearly not an expert in body language. He’s pounding golf balls at a very fast pace while this chat goes on. ‘It was amazing,’ says Walter, as if he is agreeing. A grinning Brandon tells him ‘last week was nothing’. ‘You’re right,’ says Walt. ‘It was nothing compared to what we lost today.’ Finally, he has Brandon’s full attention. B wants to know exactly how he did but Walter decides to paint him a little picture of office life beforehand: ‘Grown men crying on the phone, their wives screaming in the background. Three salespeople quit. Couldn’t take the pressure.’ Brandon is bent over, aghast at his monumental incompetence. ‘F***,’ he says, but simply swearing is no longer enough to earn Walter’s amity. ‘You lose ten out of twelve, ‘f***’ doesn’t quite cover it,’ he points out. Again, I think that set of results is terrible almost to the point of impossibility, especially after last week, but I suppose it’s forgivable, in the name of adding a bit of dramatic heft. Walter thinks ‘holy f*****g s***’ or ‘Jesus f****** Christ’ would sum up their situation more adroitly. Brandon puts his golf club away and intimates he’s heard enough. Walter agrees. ‘What’s left to say, except maybe, we keep the phone number, only we switch it over to a f*****g suicide hotline.’ Brandon walks off and Walter shouts, ‘Tomorrow morning, Brandon (we don’t hear much about that John Anthony character these days, do we?). Bright and early, we start all over again.’ Walter refuses to lose faith in his tipping find but if I were him I’d be round Jerry’s at this very moment, with a pre-paid Alexandria in tow.
Brandon cycles around a park. A thug appears from nowhere and barges him off his bike. It’s Benny, Mr Novian’s personal thug. ‘Mr Novian wants to see you,’ he explains, dragging Brandon off. ‘Tell him to call me,’ Brandon wheezes, as the thug manhandles him. No need though, Novian himself hoves into view. ‘I didn’t recognise you without the suit John,’ he remarks. Good job Benny has a better memory for faces or the two of them could have been hanging around all day. ‘This is my time off,’ splutters Brandon, strangely taking the remark at face value instead of as the pointless prelude to a tirade of abuse that it so obviously was. ‘If you wanna talk, make an appointment,’ he adds, though with Benny’s arm around his throat, he is not really negotiating from a position of strength. ‘Or shall I call you Brandon?’ Novian wanders. Not having expected a response to his weak opening line, he ploughs on with his prepared speech. ‘Someone costs you thirty million, you do research, right?’ Brandon now looks terrified as Novian boasts about how he knows all about him, ‘where you live, where you’re from, where your family lives. Hey, your mother, there’s a sweet lady, man. I just come from Vegas. Dealt me three blackjacks in a row, she’s a good woman.’ Brandon tries to attack Novian but Benny restrains him. Novian continues to ponder some of life’s eternal verities: ‘Where’s the cocky motherf***** who came to my house?’ To be fair, it’s easier to be a cocky motherf***** when you’re not lying in mud with Benny’s arm around your throat. ‘Where’s John? What happened to John?’ Brandon suggests Novian should ‘use somebody else’ if he’s not happy with the picks. Benny lifts Brandon to his feet and Novian marches over. ‘I (have) just come for an apology. That’s it. Just look me in the eye and say you’re sorry.’ Brandon does so, but Novian isn’t satisfied. Brandon tries again but an angry Novian tells him he’s ‘not even close’. Benny hauls Brandon down to the ground again. ‘I’m gonna get my satisfaction, God damn it,’ says Novian, not as willing to admit defeat as the Rolling Stones. He gets out a gun and points it at Brandon’s head. Brandon apologises repeatedly. ‘It was a bad f****** weekend man.’ ‘Well, let’s make it a fun day,’ says Novian, proceeding to put his gun away, before urinating all over Brandon. It’s fair to say life in New York’s been something of a roller-coaster ride for the B-man.
We’re on the set of ‘Sports Advisers’ (‘Some businesses piss all over their competitors, but our clients piss on us!’). Jerry wants a word with Walter. ‘I think that I should lead off tonight,’ he says. ‘I got some really strong stuff, man.’ The show’s obviously fairly close to kicking off, but, seeing as the only people who could possibly be watching are extreme sado-masochists, I won’t complain about the way these idiots try to change the running order on the fly when they could have sorted this out hours ago. ‘Jerry, you got a good hole,’ Walter points out. ‘Stay in it.’ Jerry points out that he went ‘eight for twelve last week’. ‘I’m hot, I’m feeling it.’ Walter is unimpressed. ‘You had one good weekend, don’t get pushy.’ Jel objects to being written off as a one-hit wonder. ‘Sykes System revolutionised this industry, man.’ He shows Walter an advert featuring John Anthony. ‘Am I wood (?). Where’s my f*****g ad?’ We all know that Walter doesn’t have the longest fuse and he duly rips the advert from Jerry’s hands and tells him to ‘take a hike’. Jerry is baffled. ‘You’re fired, you’re gone,’ Walter explains. ‘I’m not fired,’ says a laughing Jerry. ‘You need me more than ever.’ Walter gently intimates that he’s not entirely convinced that that is, in fact, the case: ‘Get out of here, you cut-rate parasite.’ I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Walter’s treatment of Jerry is unrealistically appalling. If Walter thinks John Anthony is his top man then more power to his elbow, but he’s gone out of his way to rub Jerry’s nose in it, and resorts to cheap insults when Jerry bridles, or attempts to have a reasoned debate. Jerry tries again, ‘In six years, my worst weekend was never as bad as any of this guy’s last three weeks (we see Brandon looking on from the camera area).’ Walter again tells Jerry he’s out, Jerry wants to know what Walter is doing. I’ve vaguely tried to give Walter the benefit of the doubt before but he loses me for good now by making pained noises and shouting, so everyone within earshot can hear: ‘Am I doing something wrong here? Am I not communicating, is that it?’ He wanders out towards the cameras, where technical types and other hangers-on lurk. ‘You all know what I just did. (To Jerry) I fired you!’ Take careful note of this, all you bosses around the world. If you are ever in the unfortunate position of having to let someone go, and they express disbelief and try to get you to change your mind, don’t even think about offering them any sympathy. Instead, simply hurl abuse at them in front of the rest of the workforce. Yes, we can all agree that Jerry was being a bit juvenile about John Anthony’s preferential treatment but, let’s face it, all the evidence suggests that he’s a solid pro, whereas JA’s a no-hoper who fluked a few good weeks. Wouldn’t you be hacked off? Jerry, stupidly, keeps trying to reason with this buffoon. ‘Come on, this is me, all right? I’ve been here for you. I’m consistent and you know it. The other guys, f*** ’em. They come, they go. I’m the guy.’ ‘No, they don’t. Not him,’ says Walter, pointing at our hero. ‘That’s true talent. Get it? You can’t see it, I can’t explain it to you, that’s why you’re fired.’ I can’t be bothered to rip all that nonsense to shreds. Jerry implores Walt to ‘think about what (he’s) doing’ but Walt’s on a roll. ‘You couldn’t pick your nose without a f*****g computer,’ he says. That’s pretty specious, Walter. Given the chance to talk to someone rational, Jerry would no doubt point out that, over the years, his computer program has been a more accurate forecaster of sports results than human intuition, hence his reliance on it for his selections, with it’s nose-picking qualities simply an added bonus. Walter doesn’t give him time for a rebuttal though, adding: ‘You’re small Jerry. You belong in a can.’ ‘You’ve lost it,’ Jerry observes. Walt again points to John ‘Two winners out of twelve’ Anthony. ‘You don’t touch him. Now why don’t you have some self-respect and leave?’ Jerry is lost for words but eventually storms off, telling Walter he’s ‘out of (his) f*****g mind’. ‘Maybe I am,’ Walter concurs.
Brandon strolls over to Walter. ‘Asshole,’ says Walter, referring, naturally, to Jerry. ‘He doesn’t realise I’m trying to build an empire around you.’ I think he did realise that Walt, hence his displeasure. ‘I hope you do,’ he adds. Poor old Walter, he doesn’t realise that the man he’s anointed as head of his new empire was last spotted being urinated on in the park. Brandon doesn’t have much to say for himself but ambles towards his seat while Walter tells everyone to get back to work. And … we cut away before we get the chance to see how on earth Walt and the wallies explain away last weekend’s fiasco to their single-digit audience.
Brandon is in bed. His phone rings but he ignores it, without even seeing who it is. It’s Alexandria! No, sadly, it’s Walter. Someone knocks on his door and he peers through the peephole. ‘Hey, Toni, this is not a good time.’ She says she is cognisant of that but needs to speak to him about something ‘important’. ‘Not right now,’ he says. ‘Brandon, you have to … You have to go,’ says Toni. Brandon, who seems to be ailing, murmurs, ‘No, I gotta get back on track.’ ‘That won’t matter,’ says Toni. ‘You could win a hundred games in a row and it won’t be enough.’ Toni is clearly dealing in hypotheticals here, the B-man is lucky if he wins one in a row. ‘He will ride you into the ground,’ she adds. She’s trying to protect Brandon from Walter? I can see where she’s coming from but I thought she would be telling him to get lost before his ineptitude costs her husband his business.
Brandon sits in his office in a suit. The phone rings, he answers it. ‘I’m wiped out John,’ says a distressed voice. It’s Amir, he’s calling from a pay-phone. ‘My business, my house, my credit, everything,’ he adds. Brandon assures him it’s all going to be swell. ‘We’re gonna get back on track this weekend.’ ‘Still you talk like this,’ says Amir in accusatory fashion. ‘Who the f*** are you? Like this is some kind of game. You ruined me! I was betting a few thousand a Sunday when I called you but you pushed me, every call, all the time, with your talk. I lost three hundred and eighty thousand this weekend. I was going to get married. I had a life!’ Amir starts crying. You’ve got to sympathise with the old boy but last time we saw him he was living large. I know it’s so very easy to say but why didn’t he scale back a bit when he got well in front? And also, just because some smug tipster tells you to up your stakes to dangerous levels, that doesn’t mean you actually have to. Tell him to get stuffed and bet with money you can afford to lose. Okay, kids! Brandon doesn’t have much to say for himself, which Amir notices too. ‘No more money to squeeze so you shut up,’ he says. It would be funny (and not a little ironic) if his money ran out halfway through his rant at Brandon but this is a serious scene so we can’t have any of that nonsense. ‘How do you f****** live with yourself?’ Amir enquires. He hangs up, Brandon looks pensive.
Brandon works out. I think he’s lifting weights in his suit! He has a Eureka moment and dashes towards Walter’s office, yelling excitedly. ‘I know what the problem is,’ he tells Walter, as he bursts in. The boss is with two men and a load of money. Brandon says he’ll come back but Walter says he’s fine to stay. ‘These guys are finished.’ They leave and Brandon wants to know who they were but Walter is more concerned about his inability to make contact with Brandon and proposes ‘a Bat light or something’ so Brandon knows when his ‘services’ are required. Brandon again asks who the two strangers were. ‘The Salvation Army,’ Walter replies. ‘How does someone go one for eight?’ Sounds like you-know-who is in typical mid-season form. Again, one for eight is beyond ludicrous. It’s the playoffs now, apparently, which are seeded, so if you simply pick the home team, you’re liable to get more picks right than not. ‘A f*****g monkey tossing darts could do better than that,’ says Walter. Brandon wants to know why Walter has so much money lying around but Walt will not be deterred from denigrating his latest calamitous tipping performance. ‘I got a plan,’ he says. ‘We take all your picks, we reverse everything. Like one of them ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes, where everything is opposite. You say black, we say white (we get it Walter).’ ‘How much is that?’ Brandon asks, referring to the dosh. ‘Peanuts,’ says Walter. ‘Two hundred and seventy-five thousand. That’s how desperate I am.’ Brandon wants to know what happened to the ‘two mill’ they won weeks ago. ‘Man, I was carrying twice that in red ink before you even showed up,’ says Walter. ‘Everything you see is smoke and mirrors. I got three mortgages on this house. What do you want to know? I’m gambling again!’ Brandon stares at him moodily. ‘Cover my losses, I just got a loan from a guy who works out of a bar on 106th and Broadway. Trouble with me is, I start betting you heavy after you went a hundred per cent and I rode you right into the f*****g toilet.’ The trouble with this development is that, the week after nailing every result, Brandon arrogantly worked out his tips in about two minutes, and Walter, correctly, criticised him for it. Now we’re supposed to believe that, after watching, and passing comment on, this massive display of hubris, he then ahead and lumped large on the tips anyway? Brandon has an evangelical look in his eye. ‘I’m gonna take care of all this s***,’ he promises. ‘I’m Brandon Lang, all right?’ He burbles on about why changing back to his old identity is the way forward: ‘I’m the kid you called in Las Vegas…I lost something in here…I gotta go back to being me…If I go back to being Brandon …’ ‘You can pick again,’ Walter finishes. He’s on board with the scheme and takes the blame himself, ‘My fault. I f****d with you. Only two games, two winners, two over-unders.’ I think he’s talking about the coming weekend. An insufferable pedant would wonder how eight games (16 teams) reduced the field to a pair of games (four teams) in a week but that’s not how I roll. Walter piles on a bit of pressure about how vital the weekend is, then suggests they get some food but Brandon wants to ‘do some homework’. They hug, they’re both optimistic about the coming weekend.
In his office, Brandon struggles to come up with his picks for the games while the salesmen twiddle their thumbs. Our man lifts weights, shouts things at himself and puts a football to his head. Walter and his team wait patiently in the outer office. For some inexplicable reason, the phone lines aren’t exactly burning up with punters desperate to know what John Anthony’s got for them, although maybe some people have done what Walt said and reversed the picks. They’ll have made a fortune and will be desperate for more. Brandon comes out of the office and gives Walter a piece of paper. ‘Brandon made these picks?’ Walter asks. ‘You’re looking at him,’ is the response. ‘New York and the under, Tennessee and the over,’ Walter announces. ‘Sell ’em hard.’ They’re professional sales people, how does he think they’re going to sell them?
It’s time for the big games and even Julia wants to watch. Walter, Brandon and company are watching the game on a bank of four TV screens, each showing the same pictures. If you want to watch different games, then four screens are obviously great but if only one game is one, wouldn’t you just have one TV on? What do I know, I yearn for the day when I have a bank of four TV screens. Walter tells Julia who to ‘root’ for. ‘We don’t want them, that’s Atlanta.’ Very implausible, this film. Atlanta a game away from the Super Bowl? Not likely. Last I heard their star quarterback was possibly on his way to the slammer. Walter wants New York to win ‘and New York has gotta win by more than five points. Only you gotta root for a low score, okay? Because both teams together have to make less than 42 points, total.’ I’m sure I’ve seen the logistics of a plot point explained to the audience in a more maladroit fashion than a father blatantly stating them to his daughter, who could hardly care less and is likely to skitter off in a few minutes anyway, but I can’t remember when. Still not sure we, I mean, er, Julia, knows what’s what, the writer, I mean, er Walter, says, ‘So it’s New York in under 42 points.’ Julia nods agreeably. Brandon is looking tense.
New York scores a touchdown to ‘take the early lead’, prompting screams of delight from the beer-swilling gathering at Sports Advisers HQ. Chuck is there by the way. I think this film would have been better with more Chuck, and Julia, and Jerry. And less of Brandon, Walter and Toni.
Second quarter, it’s 10-0 New York, but Atlanta scores to make it 10-7. Julia shakes her head in disbelief. I was totally wrong, she’s clearly a huge American football fan. ‘Cong’ (?) throws a touchdown to ‘Simpson’ and New York go 17-7 up.
We skip forward again. Commentator: ‘New York just seconds away for maybe their third trip to the big game.’ The dangerous Simpson catches yet another touchdown for New York. ‘Hello, Super Forty!’ the commentator exults, trying to get round the fact that use of the phrase Super Bowl has obviously been prohibited. That makes it 24-14 and New York have got it in the bag, prompting happy scenes. ‘The boy is back, first of two, baby,’ Reggie says to a still-nervous looking Brandon. But wait, Atlanta are throwing a long bomb on the final play for the hell of it, and a touchdown would get them within five points and take the total over 42, wrecking both Brandon’s tips without altering the result. ‘Knock it down, knock it down,’ says Chuck, so happy to get an audible line he decides to repeat it. Commentator: ‘A wall of blue shirts up there around Jesse Sanchez. It is tipped in the air, it’s still loose, it is bouncing all around. And Peterson comes down with it. He’s at the 20, across the ten. Mackey dives at his ankles to keep him out of the end zone. Well, we end on a meaningless touchdown. Of course, I guess, unless you live in Las Vegas.’ This all plays out to a background of frenzied yelling from Walter’s gang but it’s no good, a freak play has wrecked the party atmosphere. Walter and Brandon look appropriately horrified.
Another commentator informs us that Kansas City caned Tennessee 33-13 in the other match, so Brandon’s definitely got the result wrong, although if the line was 45 or under he’s at least not gone zero for four. Only Walter and Brandon are left in the office. ‘I’m finished Walter,’ says Brandon. ‘Oh that’s great to hear,’ says Walter. ‘Thank God I haven’t alienated my other reliable tipster. Oh s***, wait a minute.’ He doesn’t really say that. ‘I don’t eat, I’m not sleeping,’ Brandon moans. ‘You got a little insomnia, a little indigestion, you’re gonna quit?’ says Walter. That, plus the fact he couldn’t tip the winner of a walkover. ‘What use is John Anthony gonna be to you now anyway?’ Brandon perceptively asks though, as I may have mentioned a few million times, perfect weekend or not, I think most punters would have deserted John Anthony by now anyway, or been forced to by the bankruptcy courts. Walter won’t ‘listen to this defeatist b******t’. ‘They know you went 80 per cent for half a season,’ he points out. ‘They know, and they’re gonna remember as soon as you win a game.’ He’s right. Brandon does at least have the law of averages on his side for ‘Super Forty’. ‘Then we go into March Madness, baseball,’ Walter adds. ‘Next year this time, this won’t even be a memory.’ Brandon wants to know ‘who said anything about next year, Walter?’ ‘You made a career choice buddy, and I bankrolled it,’ says Walt, lighting up a cigarette.
Toni arrives, indicates her displeasure at his smoking, and he tosses it away. ‘Let him go,’ she advises. ‘Of course you stick up for him,’ says Walter. If he seriously thinks his wife wants to get it on with Brandon, then why has he been mentoring the lad? ‘Meaning what?’ asks Toni in resigned fashion. ‘Meaning whose side are you on?’ ‘I didn’t realise I had to choose, Walter.’ Walter turns to Brandon. ‘You’re a champion,’ he informs him, cheerfully flying in the face of public opinion. ‘Champion goes down 86 times, he’s up on the 87th. I’m not gonna let you stay down, no way. Because this is not about you, or you (Toni). Or me. It’s about your gift. Your gift transcends all this s**t. Your gift is cosmic. It’s metaphysic. It’s eternal. It is God! Besides, we have a contract.’ ‘B******t,’ is Brandon’s response. ‘Walter, you can’t own someone,’ Toni points out. ‘Who owns him? I created the greatest sports tout this country’s ever seen. I hooked him up with every major client. I built a f*****g television show around him. I took out full-page ads. I introduced him to the major clients of the world (you’ve said that one Walt, and, considering that they ended up peeing on him, Brandon may not view it as a massive favour). I did that. I hooked you up with everybody. You think you’re gonna walk out that door, take that with you, leave me here holding the f*****g sack? B******t! (To Toni) I don’t even know why I’m talking to you about this s***. What the hell has this got to do with you? You know this is between me and him. What are you doing up in this office? What are you doing here? Get out of here!’ He really is a pleasant fellow. ‘Don’t talk to her like that Walter,’ says Brandon. ‘It’s between me and you.’ ‘Are you telling me how to talk to my wife?’ Walter wonders. ‘You shut your f*****g toilet when I’m talking to her.’ Walter has turned this into a very ugly scene. Toni begs Brandon to leave. He makes to do so but ends up hanging around by the door while Toni gives Walter hell. ‘Listen to me you son of a b****. Don’t you ever talk to me like that, ever.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ says Walter, calming down a shade. Brandon takes his leave.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Two For The Money (part two)
Back in his office, Brandon studies the newspaper. Tammy marches in, looking very hot. ‘His name is Amir,’ she announces, hopping onto Brandon’s desk. ‘He’s a dime bettor. Owns a dry cleaner’s. We got him for the subscription.’ She hands Brandon the details and he murmurs, ‘Amir, single, 102 Fifth Street’. Amir is waiting on line one, according to Tammy, who hops onto Brandon’s lap and plants a lingering smacker on his chops. Yes, we all love Brandon, but he’s such a lucky f****r that I have to admit I’m quite looking forward to his inevitable downfall. ‘Good morning,’ says Brandon when the kissing finally finishes. See what I mean? The man’s banter is truly pathetic. ‘Walter wanted your first call to be special,’ Tammy coos. ‘Go get ’em tiger.’ ‘You got it,’ replies the king of the epigram, before resorting to making bizarre schoolyard noises as he reaches for the phone, while Tammy saunters off.
‘Amir, my man, John Anthony here!’ Amir (Craig Veroni) is in his dry cleaner’s shop, as evidenced by the fact we see him with phone in one hand, freshly-cleaned garment in the other. Brandon launches a charm offensive: ‘Yes, hello to you, sir. How’s your morning going? Mine started off pretty outstanding. But not as outstanding as I plan on my weekend being.’ Outstanding on its own basically means well above the norm, so I can’t see the B-meister’s efforts to introduce gradations of the word catching on.
For some reason, we then cut to the outer office, where there’s a general hubbub as fools are parted with their cash. Back to Brandon, who is trying to persuade Amir to bet big. ‘How much can you lay with your bookie? Twenty grand?’ How much cash does Brandon think the dry-cleaning racket brings in? Amir agrees with me and asks ‘John’ if he’s crazy. ‘Listen, I was betting a thousand a game.’ Brandon couldn’t give a monkey’s. ‘I’ve got a game that I’m calling my lock of the decade. Okay? (Walter comes into the office.) Texas versus O.U.’ JA thinks Texas are going to win the game easily, even though they’re the underdogs. ‘I like Oklahoma in that game,’ Amir protests, although if his own opinions were worth sixpence, I doubt he’d have to phone these self-styled experts to put him straight. Amir tries to wrap up the call but Brandon butts in, ‘Hold that thought, I’ve got Vegas on the line’.
Cut to Reggie barking at some punter. Cut back to Walter leaning over Brandon, fresh back from Mount Sinai with another tablet of sports betting wisdom. ‘The only thing you got to know about any of our clients is that they’re all in the hole. The second they pick up the phone, wham, you got them…Get to the point. You’re above them. Let ’em know it. Let ’em feel it. More John Anthony.’ Brandon gets back to Amir and asks what his favourite drink is. It’s a pina colada. Come on Amir, you’re better than that. Brandon is equally bemused. ‘Tomorrow, we gotta get you a new drink. But today, here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna go down to your bookie and lay twenty large on Texas. Then you’re gonna go home, put on your favourite Hawaiian shirt (Walter mouths something and leaves. I’m pretty sure it was ‘I love you’.), and you’re gonna sit back, twirl your little blue umbrella, after you’ve made that little rum concoction that you love so much with the orange slice and the cherry, and you’re gonna watch Texas rip those Oakies a new asshole. And after you win the twenty grand, you’re gonna call me back and you’re gonna tell me ‘Thank you sir. May I have another?’’ If I had thousands of pounds riding on some college football game, I doubt I’d be sitting around drinking pina coladas (afterwards maybe) but Amir seems impressed by Brandon’s braggadocio.
Night seems to have fallen but Brandon is still in his office, marching around with a ball in his hand and telling his customers what’s what on a hands-free gizmo. ‘McNeil’ has apparently lost his dog in a hunting accident so his team should be heavily-backed. ‘You don’t mess with a man who just lost his dog!’ What about the 50-odd players on the other team? Haven’t any of them got any extra motivation? Clearly not, as Brandon tells his mark to ‘Western Union me ten thou by tonight. Let’s ride this wave into Sunday,’ as if he was asking him (or her) to pick up a pint of milk. ‘Denny Boy!’ is next on the line. Remember Brandon’s brother from earlier? He’s told to lump ‘five hundred dollars on the Cheeseheads (Green Bay Packers). Let Stu in on that too and take care of Mama. Talk to you later.’ There’s not much time for small talk in this game! ‘Tammy, who’s on line four?’ Brandon enquires. Ha! I bet (geddit?) she wouldn’t have been so quick to straddle him earlier if she’d known she’d be answering the phone until all hours. Moving on, Bran’s got a real troublemaker here. ‘Forget the other four games you wanted to bet,’ he says in exasperation. ‘Let’s throw that four thousand on this one thousand and make it five, take it money line and turn it into twelve thousand.’ It all seems so simple!
Walter is in his office, football games are on his TV screens. He’s got eight screens, not four, as I wrongly claimed last time. We take a look at an Internet page. It’s ‘The Sports Advisers Exclusive Web Picks’. Brandon’s smiling visage is in the top right-hand corner, while the text on the page informs us: ‘John Anthony. I hit my $50,000. Texas 42 Oklahoma 7.’ That’s a pretty good tip, Amir should be okay for pina coladas for the foreseeable future. ‘Yes!’ says Walter as another game finishes. ‘Good ball game,’ the commentator enthuses. ‘10-7, Oakland upsets New York.’ Brandon no doubt predicted the result, winning margin, first touchdown scorer and the number of times a controversial call went to instant replay. Walter turns off the last TV, a good night’s work completed, but then starts coughing. He’s in a bad way.
At Walter and Toni’s, the lady of the house is on the phone, Brandon is mooching around and Walter is crawling around the house while one of his kids rides on his back, imploring him to speed it up a notch. Walter sees Brandon and addresses him as though he didn’t even know he was there, ‘Hey, ten and two, pro football?’ John Anthony can obviously pop round whenever the hell he likes. ‘85 per cent weekend, you’re a mutant!’ Walter adds. (‘Coming soon: X-Men IIII. The latest strain of good mutants use their uncanny ability to predict the results of trivial sporting events to defeat Magneto once and for all!’) It transpires that Brandon has brought some food round, as a favour to Toni . She gets off the phone and thanks him for saving her life, in the figurative sense. He wants to know what she was yapping about on the phone. Try minding you own business, pal! ‘Walter’s doctor, this is good news, finally put him on an exercise programme,’ she reports. ‘I want to be there the first time he goes to make sure the trainer understands his aversion to consistency.’ Walter’s ‘always been that way’ she adds. Walter, sitting on the floor in an other room, looks on somewhat jealously as Toni and the B-man talk at the kitchen table. I don’t think he can hear that they’re actually discussing him and his highly irritating ways. ‘Well that’s consistent,’ ‘jokes’ Brandon, causing Toni to crack up. ‘You are cute,’ she says, and feeds him something. Walter is horrified.
The Bizarre Love Triangle are now sitting at the table. ‘Life is f*****g good,’ Walter remarks. ‘So, let’s talk about making it better.’ ‘Duck Brandon, here it comes,’ says Toni. ‘I’m thinking of putting John Anthony on TV this week,’ Walter portentously announces, as if putting some clever-dick on a crappy cable TV show will cause a stir akin to Jackie Robinson’s Major League debut. ‘If you do this, from here on out, you’re gonna have to eat, sleep, drink, breathe, talk, walk, and fart John Anthony.’ Toni and Brandon laugh. ‘Just think it over,’ Toni tells Brandon. ‘Don’t decide now.’ F*** me, they’re not asking him to donate a kidney. And, incidentally, as Walter’s employee, if Walt wants him on his show, then he’d better, quite literally, get with the programme. I think the issue they’re trying to stress is that Brandon might find it hard to be ‘John Anthony’ on a more permanent basis but it’s a non-issue as far as I can see and the man himself thinks likewise. ‘Look, it’s the only move,’ he says. ‘It means I got to do a little acting, I’m cool with that.’ Walt won’t have it though. ‘No, no acting. This is living.’ Why, exactly? I’m sure a lot of real-life tipsters have monikers, but that doesn’t mean when they go out for a meal with friends they have to reserve the table under the name Winston Wins-a-lot. Walt won’t do the decent thing and shut it though. ‘From here on out, Brandon Lang and his fettuccini knee and his self-f*****g-pity is as flat dead as Donald Trump’s hair.’ Walt certainly knows how to sell something with sweet talk and I’ve seen no evidence in this film whatsoever of Brandon being at all self-pitying. Yeah , he wanted to get back into football, but he wasn’t moping around, quite the opposite. Walt continues, ‘And John I-can-walk-on-f*****g-water Anthony has taken his place’. That’s pretty funny, but we’re straight back to farce mode as Toni pleads, ‘Listen to what he’s asking you Brandon’. ‘I’m gonna build an empire around you,’ Walter promises. ‘It’s gonna cost me. You understand what I’m saying?’ I don’t, unless he means Jerry and the other tipsters will be pissed off, which they wouldn’t be if he handled the situation with any tact whatsoever. Brandon grins from ear-to-ear. ‘Hell, yeah, I understand. I’m John f*****g Anthony. I’ve got a crystal ball.’
Even though Brandon already looks, somewhat unsurprisingly, like a hugely attractive film star, it’s time for him to be beautified, ready for the limelight. Toni cuts his hair, they have crap banter, Walter buys him a sharp suit, they have crap banter, Brandon buys … a top-of-the-range car! I was going to take the piss out of this but I suppose the brilliant John Anthony can’t be seen driving around town in some old banger. The car salesman asks if Brandon has any credit. Upon being answered in the negative, he speaks sotto voce to Walter. ‘I don’t know, Wally. Can you trust him?’ ‘With my wife, naked,’ replies the ever-confident Wally. ‘The floor is yours,’ the salesman tells Brandon, who points at a tasty silver model.
Brandon pulls up somewhere in his new motor, which has the personalised number plate ‘900 KING’. You don’t have to wait long for your licence plates when you’re the top betting guru in town. The parking valet wants to know what the plate means. ‘That’s me, John Anthony,’ says Brandon, handing him his card and a tip. ‘I don’t lose.’ He is greeted by Walter, who is in typically buoyant mood. ‘I want you to meet Mr Miracle, John Anthony.’ Brandon shakes hands with some big-shots.
Walt’s now in make-up, prior to taping his show. ‘It’s never, ever gonna go down,’ he complains, I think referring to his hair, rather than the fact he went a little overboard on the old Viagra earlier on. The beautician sprays him liberally with aftershave, although I’m not sure the show ‘Mad Walt and his zany soothsayers’ will be airing in smell-o-vision. It transpires that Brandon was sitting in the next chair. He’s looking intensely into a mirror. ‘A star is born today,’ says Walter encouragingly. Bran’s got the sweats on. He’s ‘scared s******s’. ‘You just read off the teleprompter,’ Walter explains. ‘You’ve been here before, kid. Remember football?’ Hey, John Anthony didn’t play any football, that was Mr self-pity Brandon Lang, remember? It’s bizarre how they’re making such a big deal about this TV show. No one watches rubbish like this and, if they do, they’re unlikely to make too much of a fuss about the appearance and delivery style of the assorted presenters. Brandon thinks this is different from football. Too right. In football the quarterback has to play at least reasonably, or there’s a good chance his team will lose, so at least something is at stake, whereas he could go on to this show and do a lame, long-winded Jack Nicholson impersonation and I doubt anyone would give a fig. They’d probably view it as an upgrade when compared with Walter’s monologues. But no, the B-dog is worried because there’s ‘no opponent’. ‘Well then, you’re a lock to win,’ Walter points out. It’s time to get going. ‘Remember, stay with the script,’ is Walter’s parting shot.
The tipping experts sit around, ready for the show, while TV technical types shout things out. ‘John Anthony, huh?’ asks Jerry. Is he coming on to Brandon? (If you haven’t read part one of this marathon, you won’t get that joke.) ‘Yep,’ says Brandon. ‘Alls I see is another wannabe in a thousand dollar suit,’ Jerry remarks. ‘Word to the wise, keep the suit you came in with. All right, Jethro?’ ‘Jethro?’ How many pseudonyms has Brandon got? He smirks smugly and says he’ll do that, while we hear a woman say ‘good luck to you’. I think it’s someone (Toni? Tammy?) speaking into Brandon’s earpiece.
The show starts. ‘Welcome to this week’s edition of ‘Sports Advisers’,’ says Walter. He introduces himself, ‘Jerry Sykes, Chuck Adler (Charles Carroll) and a truly gifted newcomer to the Sports Advisers panel. I want you to meet him, a substantial find, and his name is Brandon Lang … I mean, er, John Anthony.’ Okay, okay, he doesn’t really mess it up like that. Brandon nods arrogantly into the camera. Walter engages full-on twitter mode. It’s week six in professional football and thinks are getting really ‘hot’. ‘This is oven mitt time, am I right?’ Well, we’d better hear from the ‘Wizard of Odds, Jerry ‘The Source’ Sykes,’ in that case. Jerry launches into his spiel. While each of the panel speak, by the way, TV viewers see the number they can call ‘1-800-BET-ON-IT’ beneath them, plus some encouraging blurb on the crawl: ‘Call now for your free picks etc’. Jerry’s evidently got some computer programme with which he makes his predictions. ‘The Sykes System uses 42 proven indexes to eliminate the guesswork in sports wagering.’ This is all news to us, of course, but regular viewers, if that’s not an oxymoron, must have to listen to the same old bull every week. Without Jerry’s ‘computer-based picks, you gotta a better shot of having God show up at you door with nine strippers, a bag of pure Bolivian cocaine (we see Walter laugh indulgently, though I can’t believe the FCC welcome this sort of material), enough Viagra to make Chuck’s head blow up, than picking these things on your own. You call me, absolutely free, I got five picks this weekend that are incredible.’ Speaking of Chuck, it’s time to hear his sales pitch. ‘How many gamblers did I bail out last weekend with my game of the year?’ He recounts how some of his clients struck it rich, his face turning an alarming shade of red as he does so. He’s got six games this weekend, he’s releasing them free, blah blah blah. I can see how people like Amir might give John Anthony kick-backs to keep the tips coming but what’s with all this giving some of the tips away for free? Can’t people just keep calling back with a different name or maybe this is just a one-week thing? I’m probably over-thinking it.
Chuck exudes confidence about his selections. ‘These games are a burial, a blow-out, a human lock! You can bet your children’s unborn children’s children on these six games absolutely free!’ Chuck is yelling incoherently by the end of this rant, and the final two words would be unintelligible without subtitles. He has turned purple, but at least it’s a bit of entertainment for the viewers. ‘I believe, I believe,’ says Walter. ‘I believe you’re trying to make me deaf.’ Brandon laughs, Chuck cackles strangely and Jerry points out the unusual colour he’s gone. ‘Is that, would you say, that’s kind of a chartreuse?’ Not really, you prat. Chartreuse is yellowish-green, old Chuck’s now more of a maroon hue. Back to Walt, who helpfully reminds viewers that ‘Saturday comes before Sunday,’ which means college football, which means it’s Brandon’s chance to shine. ‘Thank you, Walter,’ he says. ‘This is John Anthony here.’ He spouts some drivel. ‘From Wall Street to Tokyo to Hollywood, all your big money is gonna stay and play with me That’s right, that’s why they call me the Million Dollar Man.’ Yep, I expect the guys were sitting around the office one day, and Walter said ‘What about this John Anthony character?’ and Jerry replied ‘Well, from Wall Street to Tokyo to Hollywod, all the big money stays and plays with him,’ to which Chuck exclaims, ‘That’s right! We should call him the Million Dollar Man from now on!’ Walter must have written this script, it’s beyond dire. Brandon realises this too and his voice trails off. Oh no, his TV debut is going to end in ignominy! ‘I can’t say that, man,’ he remarks. Jerry looks pleased and Walter is about to tell the techies to cut but Brandon recovers. ‘Somebody wrote some very clever stuff for me here like the ‘Million Dollar Man’.’ I think he’s taking tongue-in-cheek. ‘So let’s just call me John.’ Walter tells the cameras to start rolling again, if they ever stopped. Brandon continues: ‘I played quarterback, Division One. And every QB knows that the secret, the key, to victory, is anticipation. The ability to see the future and react to it. Now, that is what I do. And that is the truth. So I’m not gonna sell you today, all right? I’m just gonna tell you the facts. For over one year, I have been picking 80 per cent winners (way to not sell them Bran!). Unbelievable? Used to be. I know the leagues. I know the teams. I know these players. I know this wonderful game called football. Call the number on the bottom of your screen and ask for John. Let’s make some money.’ He grins ingratiatingly into the camera.
Walter gets home, looks in on his daughter (Julia - Chrislyn Austin) and then starts wheezing unhealthily. Toni wakes up and informs him that it’s 4am but Walter’s on a high after the show. ‘Man, you should have seen him.’ Walt, we all enjoyed Chuck practically self-combusting but I’m not sure it was worthy of a 4am bender, unless … you’re not talking about someone else are you? ‘I just sat there and watched him roll. I swear, he made me want to pick up a phone and call. (He laughs.) I took all the sales boys down to Smith and Wo’s, you know, get them primed for the weekend.’ That doesn’t sound like an optimal management strategy to me as the staff will be nursing hangovers and doing sweet FA all day tomorrow but Walt knows best. Anyway, ‘Chuck got so drunk he took a swing at one of the deer heads on the wall’. Now that’s a good scene, why can’t we view it for ourselves, instead of having it relayed to us by some drunkard? Walt cackles with glee, Toni smiles indulgently. ‘I’m gonna hire more guys on Monday,’ Walter adds. ‘I got to. I gotta get more phones.’ Unbelievably, with his gorgeous wife beckoning him to bed, Walt will not shut up about Brandon. ‘I’m going to do this whole dot-com thing around him, you know?’ But we’ve already seen a web page with Brandon’s grinning mug on it. Maybe Walt’s going to expand that side of his operation? He burbles on about how Brandon is his ‘protégé’. ‘If anything happens to me, he steps in.’ He gestures to his heart, to indicate the fact that his scenario is sadly not very far-fetched. ‘It’s like having a son.’ Toni again tries to entice him into bed but Walter is in that sozzled state where the most asinine ideas seem perfectly reasonable, and announces that he’s ‘gonna go for a run’. Walter changes into his gear while eulogising about his work-out but Toni cunningly gets him to lie down ‘for one minute’ and he gradually passes out while she whisper soothingly to him. Fair play to Toni, I can’t see many women showing such forbearance when their hubby wakes them up at four in the morning spewing nonsense.
Brandon’s office, Jerry bursts in. ‘You know anything about Stokey being out this weekend against New York?’ Brandon’s reading the paper in relaxed fashion and is more concerned about Jezzer’s office etiquette. ‘A knock would be nice, Jerry.’ The J-man points out that he’s ‘kind of underwater here, man’. Brandon doesn’t know anything about the Stokey situation. Jerry says that if he does hear anything, then he’s got to spill the beans to Jerry. ‘’Cause that’s the way we work.’ ‘I’ll rush right over,’ Brandon deadpans. ‘Stat.’ It transpires that Jerry’s concerns about Stokey are the tip of a mightily pissed-off iceberg. ‘I been working here for six years, you been doing it for one,’ he snarls, pointing aggressively at Brandon, but Walter comes in and cuts him off before he can really hit his stride. ‘What are you doing in here? Hit the phones, man.’ It seems Jerry’s tips have been driving people towards the Samaritans in their droves because Walter advises him to ‘do some damage control, rewrite that frigging computer programme’. Jerry is incredulous. ‘Hey, it was a f****d weekend.’ ‘For some people,’ Walter retorts. ‘There’s a fifty dime bettor on line three, he wants to talk to John Anthony.’ Brandon asks for more info. ‘His name’s Carl, he’s a gazillionaire. He owns a couple of dozen McDonald’s franchises.’ This news adds yet more grist to Jerry’s mill of fury. ‘I landed that lead. He’s my guy.’ Walter continues to treat his former top man with complete contempt. ‘Was. (He) Was your guy.’ ‘He’s raiding my lists now?’ Jerry asks. Surely it’s time for Walt to put his arm around him, lead him somewhere private, and gently explain that, with John Anthony on a hot streak, it’s natural for some clients to seek his counsel, and that they’ll no doubt be back with Jerry when his own form changes? Instead Walter opts for the more confrontational: ‘Your clients are jumping ship, you lactose-intolerant f***! Get out of my sight. Come on.’ Brandon ‘helps’ matters by saying excuse me and gesturing towards his phone.
Toni and Julia arrive home, Julia goes upstairs to play. Walter emerges from a room at the end of the hall with a nubile woman in tow. He gives her money for ‘cab fare’ and greets Toni pleasantly before claiming the awkward situation is easily explainable and introducing Toni to ‘Gail’. Toni looks very angry, as Gail leaves, saying she’ll talk to Walter later. It’s all so blatant that there is obviously nothing going on between them but Toni is fuming. ‘What the hell’s going on here Walter?’ Walt is surprised by her hostility. ‘I just brought her up here to pay her off,’ he says. ‘I got her for John. Come on!’ Toni is furious and whirls around, pointing her finger at him. ‘Don’t b******t me, Walter!’ she advises. Walter laughs disbelievingly. ‘You can’t be serious. You think I slept with this girl?’ He’s got a point, even Walter wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring a hooker he’d procured for himself back to the house with wife and daughter expected back at any time. ‘Who the hell’s John? Who’s John?’ says Toni, who is unrealistically lacking in street-savvy in this scene. It’s not as if Brandon/John isn’t all Walter ever talks about, plus it was her who made such a fuss regarding Brandon’s identity switch in the first place. Walter says all that far more succinctly. ‘John. John Anthony. Ring a bell?’ ‘You got Brandon a hooker?’ Walter explains his rationale: ‘He’s working late at night. He’s in a new city. He has no friends.’ I would love to shout Walter down here but I once moved to a completely different part of the country for a new job and did not receive a paid-for prostitute into the bargain. Quite frankly, I’d have considered it a thoughtful gesture. Toni is horrified, though. ‘Are we actually gonna stand here and have this conversation? Are you completely, completely clueless, Walter?’ Walter is genuinely baffled by her reaction and accuses her of being ‘jealous’. Never a smart move. He continues on the attack, ‘Are you jealous? You look jealous to me,’ so Toni asks what he’s on about. ‘I don’t know, Brandon getting laid or something?’ About five paragraphs ago this pair were ranting on about how Brandon, to all intents and purposes, was dead. Looks like he’s risen again. Toni thinks Walter is ‘crazy … ’cause that sick thought never entered my mind.’ ‘That’s not where those thoughts enter,’ says Walter. Toni storms off, as Walter shouts out, ‘You’ll be happy to know he didn’t sleep with her. I just paid her for coming. Pardon the pun.’ She wheels around in anger yet again but the nipper comes charging down the corridor before Toni can tear strips off Walter. The Brandon-Toni-Walter thing really is tiresome and I fear the worst is yet to come.
We watch an advert for the ‘Sports Advisers’ TV show. ‘New star’ John Anthony ‘went an amazing 24 and six in last weekend’s games’. On the set, it’s time for Jerry to receive his latest f***-you pill. ‘John’s up first tonight,’ Walter tells him. A less shrewd man-manager might have told Jerry hours, rather than seconds, before the show starts, so he had time to get used to his new place in the pecking order, but why do that when you can let the rancour and bitterness which you have created seep into the show? Jerry thinks he may have misheard. ‘What?’ ‘John Anthony is leading off tonight.’ ‘John Anthony’s leading off?’ True to form, Walter quickly tires of this and starts to belittle Jerry. ‘There an echo in here? Engineer? Sound? Help me. I’m hearing everything twice.’ Jez is appalled by his treatment. ‘Two years I lead off for you and you bury me in the deck over a couple of lousy f*****g weekends? This is b******t Walter.’ There’s no time for Walter to respond because the show is starting. I hate to be so pedantic but it’s simply ludicrous that he would tell Jerry about this 30 seconds before the show starts. It makes Walter look stupidly capricious and idiotic, which he can’t be to have built up a (relatively) successful business.
Later on, Brandon talks to Denny on his mobile. Denny has furnished the car he’s working on with a very loud stereo, I think purchased by Brandon, which he now plays for his brother’s delectation. ‘It is the bomb, B!’ Brandon loves it too, then asks if ‘everything else (is) cool?’. ‘Did Dad reach you?’ Denny enquires. He did not. ‘He saw you on TV and he wants to talk to you,’ says Denny. As we know from the film’s opening, ‘dad’ is something of a deadbeat, but I still can’t believe he watches that moronic show. ‘I gave him your work number but he says they won’t put him through,’ Denny adds. Brandon looks over to see Walter talking to Chuck. He says he’ll ‘check into it’.
Boring Love Triangle. Walter is indulging in his favourite activity, namely heaping overwrought praise on Brandon. He refers to Brandon as ‘Jimmy the Greek’, a reference to American sports betting legend Jimmy Snyder, and adds: ‘He makes Nostra-f******-damus look like a novelty act.’ I think we should call Brandon Nostra-dumbass. Toni laughs at these inanities as they emerge onto the street but Brandon has the hump because his old man is being given the bum’s rush. ‘Have you been blocking any of my calls?’ he wonders, taking the circuitous route. ‘Of course,’ says Walter. ‘You don’t need distractions right now, my boy. Lot of crazies out there.’ Brandon doesn’t take kindly to this response. ‘Does that include my father?’ Walter pauses for a second but is undaunted. ‘You’re asking me, I’m gonna tell you. Yeah.’ ‘You son of a bitch,’ says Brandon. It turns out that pops has been trying to get through for a fortnight or so. Walter, completely unapologetic, wants to know if Brandon would ‘have taken the call if I put it through?’ Blimey, Walt’s such a hands-on boss he even mans the phone banks, no wonder he hasn’t got time to cosset prima donnas like Jerry. ‘That’s not the point,’ Brandon insists, marching off. Walter, intransigent to the last, marches after him, demanding to know what’s going on with Brandon and his old man. ‘Hey man, I was just trying to spare you something.’ Walter has the unfortunate habit of infuriating people to such an extent that they wheel round mid-stride and get in his face. ‘What are you gonna spare me from, huh?’ asks Brandon, not entirely cordially. ‘He was a goddamn drunk. Left when I was nine. I couldn’t compete with the bottle, end of f*****g story. You don’t spare me nothing. If I want to talk to him, I will.’ He ambles off again, muttering: ‘Spare me. You f***.’
Literally every single one of the billions of other people who inhabit this planet would have either left Brandon to walk off at this point or perhaps even shouted out an apology for their insensitivity. But Walter’s definitely a bit of a ‘has to have the last word’ merchant. ‘Is that it?’ he barks. ‘Is that all you got?’ He rushes to catch up with Brandon. ‘Because I will match my dysfunctional childhood and Toni’s against yours, any day of the week.’ If the scene had finished at the end of the last paragraph it would have been a rock-solid addition to the film but this little coda is beyond ridiculous. Did I miss the bit where Brandon bragged to Walter and Toni about how he had by far the most dysfunctional childhood. No, I did not. He’s not complaining about his rubbish childhood, he’s complaining about Walter taking a decision which was Brandon’s to take. I think the screenplay writer just wanted to give Pacino as many grandstanding speeches as possible. ‘My father, five foot, arms like this,’ he reports. ‘He had a cock like a Hebrew National. I even looked at him the wrong way he smacked me across the room like Jake LaMotta.’ He continues in this vein, then asks Toni to join in. Instead of pointing out that Brandon wasn’t trying to instigate a ‘who had the worst childhood’ debate and telling her deluded husband to shut it, she remarks: ‘I didn’t have a great childhood either Brandon.’ Well, whoopee, everyone had a bad childhood! Brandon’s pissed off that Walter’s been blocking calls from his father, these two decide to throw a pity party. ‘Tell (Brandon) about the uncle,’ Walter insists. ‘Well, I think he gets the idea now,’ says Toni. He certainly does, that’ll teach Brandon to loudly proclaim that he had the worst childhood in the history of mankind. Walter angrily (!) tells Brandon that Toni was ‘abused by everybody but the family pet’. Obviously, I’m not making light of such horrendous happenings, but they could either have been shoehorned in more artfully or, better yet, we could have guessed from some of the more subtle hints that have been dropped, that Walt and Toni have had it tough. More from Walt: ‘Your father was a drunk. He was a jerk. So what? It happens. I’m glad I blocked those calls. You know why? You need a new image of a man. How about me?’ Toni laughs and Brandon, smiling now, remarks: ‘That’s a scary f*****g thought.’ That no swearing thing has gone out the window good and proper.
Still Walter won’t put a cork in it! ‘The s**t that happened to you, to me, to Toni, you know what that is? It’s just that, s*** that happened.’ Thank you Descartes. I don’t remember Brandon saying anything different, by the way. HE’S JUST ANGRY THAT YOU WERE BLOCKING CALLS FROM HIS FATHER! ‘We’re all f****d up,’ Walter adds. ‘We are all just so f****d up. Now you gotta just say that s**t out. I am f****d up, and I ain’t gonna take it anymore.’ Is that a knowing parody of the famous line in ‘Network’ (‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’) or is the screenwriter genuinely trying to pass this off as original thought. Walter gets Toni to join them and shouts ‘We are so f****d up, we’re not gonna take it anymore.’ He yells it again. Someone from the building they are alongside shouts down, ‘I’m trying to sleep here asshole!’ ‘That you Dad?’ Walter ‘humorously’ responds as a laughing Toni ushers him away. The irate building dweller hurls abuse at him, while I’m left to wonder why on earth I spent so much time on that hugely irritating scene.
We cut to the office. While an elderly gent measure his leg, Brandon is on the phone to Amir, and he’s not happy with what he’s hearing. ‘You’re going to sit here and haggle with me over fifty grand after the two hundred and fifty thousand I just made you last weekend?’ Things are on the up for Amir. We see him standing by what looks like a brand new sports car. ‘Fifty thousand seems slightly steep,’ to him. Brandon is marching around smoking a cigar while he reminds Amir about their first conversation. ‘You’re in a hole the size of the Grand Canyon, you’re crying to me about having to hock your fiancee’s ring. Now, today, you’re calling me from a red convertible F1 Ferrari.’ Divulging that nugget of info was a definite error on Amir’s part. Brandon threatens to cut him off and says he’s considering charging Amir ‘a ten per cent aggravation tax’. Brandon’s bottom line? ‘Wire me seventy-five grand and maybe we can kiss and make up.’ Amir acquiesces.
Time for B’s next caller. ‘John Anthony, talk to ME!’ he bellows annoyingly. It’s his mum, wanting to know how he’s getting on. ‘Mum, I have never been better. I’m kicking ass and taking names. Listen, did you get the money that I sent you?’ Someone close to his mother, as Brandon clearly is, would surely phone her up fairly regularly, but the tenor of this conversation suggests they’ve barely spoken since he moved away. Ridiculous. Brandon is planning to fly mum and Denny out ‘next month, first class. I’m gonna put you up at The Plaza. You’re gonna meet Toni, you’re gonna meet Water’. Mum’s in a for a rare treat. She protests that he’s sending too much money. Brandon thinks otherwise. ‘I made that money, I earned that money. Every f*****g cent of it!’ I don’t think she was hinting that the money came from disreputable sources and she’s unimpressed by new-model foul-mouthed Brandon. ‘It’s just how people talk out here,’ he says. He’s hardly moved to New York from a haven of clean living, he was formerly resident in Vegas for Pete’s sake. He tries to wind up the call while patronisingly saying ‘no cuff Francisco’ to the tailor but mum wants to know about ‘this John Anthony person’. Brandon explains that John Anthony is the reason for the cheques coming her way as Walter bursts in. ‘We gotta go to Puerto Rico,’ he says. Brandon puts his mum on hold and asks the reason for the trip. ‘C.M. Novian just called, he lives in Puerto Rico. He’s the biggest sports bettor in the world. We have hit the jackpot. He wants to sit down and talk, in person, with John Anthony.’ They’ve got 45 minutes. Brandon tries to get his mum back on the line but she’s hung up. Bit harsh that Mrs Lang. Granted, Brandon was a bit curt but, to be fair, cheques in the post, first class trips to New York? The boy’s doing his best! I think that we’re supposed to think it would be better if the family was still mired in poverty, if it meant Brandon didn’t say f*** every now and again. Anyway, Brandon is upset by this turn of events.
The tipping twins have now arrived in Puerto Rico. Walter tells Brandon about Novian. ‘He’s a world-class prick. Wouldn’t return my phone call. Treated me worse than my Hong Kong tailor. You know how long I’ve been trying to bag this guy? Have you any idea what this thing is worth?’ Brandon does not but wants a bonus if it all goes swimmingly. Walter briefly turns into Yoda from the Star Wars films: ‘No ‘if’. It’s only ‘when’.’ Walter gives Brandon a pep talk, then starts tottering around and struggling for breath. Brandon holds onto him as he collapses to the ground. ‘Is it your heart?’ asks Brandon. Brilliant diagnosis Dr Kildaire. ‘Where’s your vial? Easy, easy. (To concerned onlookers) Get me a doctor and get me some water, now.’ He gives Walter a couple of pills and tells him to ‘suck on them, man’. Wouldn’t swallowing them be more efficacious? Wide-eyed Walt manages to speak. ‘You love me?’ ‘You know I love you. You know I love you. You ain’t going nowhere.’
Tense music ratchets up the excitement, as Walter fights for his life. ‘Would you love me if this was a joke?’ he asks. ‘I’m okay. I was just practicing.’ That Walter, he’s incorrigible! He gets up and assures the onlookers that he’s fine. ‘Little indigestion. Too many peanuts on the plane.’ Brandon is, naturally, volcanically pissed off. Come on Brandon, practice makes perfect! ‘That’s pushing it too far,’ he tells Walter, who now has to sweet-talk his way out of trouble yet again. ‘You pay attention to me right now. There’s no such thing as ‘too far’. Understand? You push everything as far as you can…’ Blah blah blah, keep pushing, ‘remember that when you’re with this guy today’. What would he have come up with if Brandon hadn‘t made the ‘too far‘ remark? And is pulling such a lunatic stunt the best way to prepare for such a vital business meeting? And isn’t it time I stopped questioning Walter’s crazy methodology and just went with the flow?
The betting buddies arrive at Novian’s impressive dwelling. The man himself (Armand Assante) arrives and greets Walter, who introduces John Anthony. Once everybody is seated, Novian points out that ‘these sports services of yours, (are a) complete f*****g scam, huh?’ Brandon laughs and Walter joins in. Novian asks for Walter’s system but Brandon chimes in. ‘Let’s start with how much you bet.’ ‘A million a game, across the board,’ says Novian. Brandon nods. ‘Is that our ceiling here? Is that the most we’re working with?’ It’s Novian’s turn to laugh, ‘Oh, it depends. I mean, s***, Benny (he turns to a grinning henchman), check your wallet. See if you’ve got any cash hanging around.’ Novian is keen to get onto the upcoming weekend’s betting good things but Brandon gestures towards a yacht and wants to know if Novian rents it. He doesn’t, he owns it. ‘That’s how I feel about this weekend,’ says B, ‘And I’m not being cocky. I’m talking straight commerce with you, Mr Novian. I didn’t come down here to b******t you.’ ‘Wow, you got steam,’ says Novian, bewilderingly impressed by this speech. Did he expect John Anthony to say that he didn’t have a clue who was going to win at the weekend? ‘I know these teams better than they know themselves,’ Brandon continues. ‘I’m going twelve for twelve this weekend and that includes the Monday Night parlay.’ Monday night par-tay, more like, if you follow Brandon’s tips! Novian asks for Walter’s take. ‘I don’t believe him,’ says Walt. ‘You cannot afford not to,’ says Brandon. Novian says that actually he can afford not to. ‘Can anyone afford to lose as much as a man like you needs to bet to actually feel a win?’ Brandon muses. It’s not quite ‘To be or not to be,’ but it’s certainly a fascinating philosophical debate. ‘Winning’s a funny thing,’ Brandon continues. ‘It’s one of those rare commodities on earth that money cannot buy, until you called me.’ ‘I didn’t call you, I called your boss,’ Novian points out. Brandon is in bullish mood. ‘And he called me,’ he barks. ‘The price is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars up front, plus ten per cent of every game you win.’ Novian thinks such a proposition is ‘wild’ and looks at Walter for support. Walt gives him a blank look. Novian checks with his henchman that he ‘never paid up front before’. H-Man shakes his head. ‘We’ve never charged it before,’ Brandon informs him, as Walter puts his sunglasses on in the background for some reason. Is he trying to intimidate the billionaire? ‘But considering whose picks you’re getting,’ Brandon drones on, ‘and the amount of money that you’re betting, Mr Novian, two-fifty’s a bargain. You know it and I know it. If you want this weekend’s winners, that’s my offer. You can take it or leave it.’ ‘Let’s step outside,’ says Novian, after brief deliberation. There’s one born every minute!
Back at base camp, Brandon is deliberating over his picks at his desk. A nervous minion comes in to tell him that ‘they need it, Mr Anthony’. A propos apparently nothing, Brandon asks ‘Mitchell’ what his mother’s name is. It’s Sheila. ‘What street did you grow up on?’ ‘Atlantic Avenue.’ ‘Who do you like Monday night?’ Mitchell has not got a Scooby. ‘Pick one,’ Brandon encourages him. ‘Well, that’s your job,’ Mitch counters. ‘I’ll do your job tomorrow,’ Brandon lies. ‘Today, you do mine. Who do you like?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ Mitch asks nervously, and truth be told, rather dumbly. He’s asking who you think is going to win the Monday night game Mitch. ‘Mitchie,’ Brandon wheedles amusingly, ‘Seattle versus New Orleans. Stop stalling. Who do you like?’ Mitch looks back into the outer office for some reason, then again professes ignorance, before finally caving in. ‘I guess I like Seattle, plus the two points.’ Brandon circles Seattle but he’s still not satisfied. ‘Over or under?’ ‘You can’t do that,’ says Mitch, alarmed that thousands of pounds are going to be wagered on the basis of his half-baked opinions. ‘No, I can do this,’ says Brandon tetchily. ‘Over or under? It’s 44 points. Come on.’ ‘Over?’ Mitch ventures. Brandon fills in his sheet accordingly and hands it to Mitch, who echoes my earlier point. ‘I’m not going to hand that in, there’s, like, a million dollars riding on that game.’ Mitch, if this arrogant son of a gun wants to use your tips, then so be it. He’ll be the one who takes the fall. ‘Oh, there’s like a whole lot more than that,’ says Brandon, the epitome of smug complacency. ‘Look, we all know I can pick. Today, I’m picking you. The outcome will be the same.’ ‘And what if I’m wrong?’ Mitch wants to know. ‘There’s no ‘if’,’ Brandon replies. I think he’s trying to out-Yoda Walter from the airport scene, but, if you think about it, what he’s just said implies that Mitchie will definitely be wrong. Nice try though, B.
Walter and his staff are watching an American Football game in a state of high anxiety. ‘They score, we win,’ Walter repeats over and over, as we see Brandon look on from the back of the room. It’s the Seattle Monday night game - Mitch’s handiwork. Touchdown Seattle! The two teams on the TV look nothing like Seattle or New Orleans, so it’s safe to say the NFL have not collaborated on this film, understandably I suppose, given it’s betting theme. The office celebrates, led, as ever, by Walter, who yells: ‘We won a hundred-f*****g-per cent!’ He does a comical dance of joy while Brandon takes the congratulations.
Later on, the party is in full swing, and Mitch is telling an interested throng how he was the man behind it all. ‘It was like he mesmerised me a little bit, you know? And then, like Spock or something, I just visualised it. Seattle and the over. And he just wrote it down. I mean, he just said, picking me was like the same thing as him doing it.’ Ha, ha! It was like getting blood out of a stone as well, but don’t mention that old son. To add to the hilarity, Jerry emerges from a room next to the group as Mitch finishes recounting his exploits.
Walter is counting out money and Brandon raises a glass to him from across the room. Uh oh, here comes Jerry. However, he seems to be oozing bonhomie. ‘Congratulations Brandon, or, should I say, John?’ he remarks, drunkenly putting his arm round Brandon. ‘Either way, it’s amazing. I am very impressed. Are you kidding me? Letting salesman make your picks? That’s balls.’ To be ultra-picky, I feel like, in a really great film, we’d have just seen Jerry overhear Mitch’s bragging, look a bit hacked off, and not hear anymore about it. Brandon tells Jerry he should head over to where Walter seems to be blithely handing out cash to all and sundry. ‘With the way you’re picking, you’re gonna need some for a rainy day,’ he can’t resist adding. But Jez has some words of warning: ‘Gambling Gods, (are a) fickle bunch, so easily offended.’ Brandon makes noises of acknowledgement while staring vacantly into space.
Walter sits on a desk holding wads of cash. ‘I tell you,’ he tells everyone within earshot. ‘There might be businesses (in which) you can make more than two million dollars in a weekend (Brandon thanks Jerry for ‘looking after’ him in the background.) but will somebody tell me, somebody please tell me, where else you can have this much f****** fun?’ He throws the money into the air in delight. Brandon comes over. ‘You the man, big papi,’ he tells Walter. ‘I love you forever,’ says Walter as they embrace. Or until he has a bad couple of weeks and some hot-shot new kid comes along, Jerry might ruefully remark. Instead we just see him watching on like a Shakespearean villain from the corner. ‘How much of that Dough-Re-Mi be for moi?’ Brandon asks Walter. ‘How about a one, with five zeroes behind it?’ suggests Walt. ‘A hundred thousand?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘On two mill?’ ‘You be working out of my shop.’ Brandon concurs: ‘This is your place. It’s your shop, Walter’s shop. I understand that. I’m just saying, feed the horse, baby. Maybe ten per cent?’ ‘Ten per cent?’ Walter literally finds this a laughable suggestion. He tells Brandon to forget it but our man ain’t leaving until he’s got a pay rise. ‘We got Novian. We got the two hundred and fifty grand …’ An angry Walter grabs him round the neck before he can continue. ‘I want to tell you something now, okay? I’m gonna say it only once. If you want something more from me than a gesundheit after a sneeze you’re gonna have to do more than come to me with this s***. You understand? You’re gonna have to earn it. And once you earn it, you’re gonna have to fight me for it. You’re gonna have to challenge me. You’re gonna have to rip it out of my f*****g talons. That’s how you get ahead with me. Now, John Anthony would know that, see? As a matter of fact, next time you come to me with this s***, you come as John Anthony. I ain’t talking money with you.’
I can’t believe I transcribed that risible speech. For starters, I’d say ‘John Anthony’ would have asked for more cash in exactly the same way that Brandon did but, more importantly, why is Walter such a w****r about everything? After all the stuff about how much he loves Brandon, he speaks to him like this? Yes, Brandon’s being greedy and ungrateful but he’s young and over-excited after, let’s not forget, landing Walter his biggest client ever and then picking the winner of every single game, massively enriching his employer in the process. Do: Put your arm round the kid, tell him that’s not how it works, remind him how you plucked him from obscurity in Vegas and tell him that, if he keeps coming up with the goods, he’ll be rewarded. Don’t: Start mouthing off about f*****g talons. Anyway, Brandon edges backwards, glaring at Walter, as a cheerful Toni bursts in and congratulates him. He raises his arms, tells her he’s ‘winning’ and departs. Walter asks Toni to dance with him. They kiss happily and Walter talks crap about extravagant things he’s going to buy, while Toni, as per, laughs happily, even though his remarks aren’t funny in the slightest. ‘Just tell me you’re not gambling Walter,’ says Toni. ‘Eighteen years straight, okay? That s***’s over,’ he assures her, angrily. ‘It’s never over,’ she tells him. ‘How about a truth serum in the veins,’ he belligerently suggests. I’m sure we’re not supposed to find Walter this obnoxious. He wants to ‘just enjoy a dance,’ and she hugs him in a desperate attempt to shut him up.
Brandon decides to give Alexandria a call. ‘I happen to be in the neighbourhood.’ She meets him in the lobby and he informs her that she has ‘a Doberman for a doorman’. He kisses her but she looks perplexed. ‘What are you doing here?’ He suggests they go out for a ‘late-night dinner, right now. Have a couple of killer bottles of wine, go back to that place where we first met’. This point is about to be made redundant anyway, but going back to the place you first met is something couples usually do after they’ve then been out a few more times. You don’t generally sleep with someone, fail to get in touch with them for a few weeks, then turn up out of the blue and suggest returning to where you first met, as if it’s a fantastically romantic idea. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ Alexandria wonders. ‘I live in this building, asshole. This is home. I don’t appreciate you stopping by without calling.’ It’s a tad tricky to get on board with this, seeing as … he did call! She could have just told him to get knotted on the phone if she so desired. It’s Brandon’s turn to be baffled so she makes ‘this s*** real clear, so this doesn’t happen again. You meant five thousand bucks. Your friend set it up.’ She stalks off, Brandon looks gob smacked. Expensive old night for Walt that one, and you have to admire his generosity. He lost ten large in a bet with Brandon, having already paid five large to ensure he lost. I take it all back, I want Walter as my next boss!
At the office, presumably the next day, Brandon is clapped in by the staff and graciously raises his hand in acknowledgement. He finds Walter in his office, demanding to know if Brandon is aware of the time. ‘It is 8.37 in the am,’ says Brandon. Nope, it’s time to press, according to Walt. ‘When you’re winning, you press, you don’t rest on your laurels.’ Brandon gets his golf clubs out. ‘Got a ten-thirty tee-time at Wingfoot with a client, that Howell guy,’ he informs Walter. ‘So don’t call me unless the lines change, you got it?’ Walter doesn’t like this one little bit. ‘The salmon are running, my man. You gotta stay here… You can’t go out playing golf, having fun.’ ‘Fun? Senor, you have obviously never played Wingfoot,’ Brandon jokes. Walter wants Brandon to stay but Brandon is a changed man. ‘I’m not asking you if I can leave, Walter. I’m telling you. (He puts his hand on Walter’s cheek.) That’s how it is, all right?’ For once, Walter is silent. Brandon asks if Walter wants his picks, then starts working on them. ‘You’re gonna start picking on Tuesday for the weekend, huh?’ says Walter, unhappily. Walt, you’re only reaping what you sowed, although I’m not sure if this rebellious Brandon is a consequence of the money dispute or the fact Walter paid for him to sleep with Alexandria. If the latter, well, I suppose it would be a bit of a blow to Brandon’s ego that a gorgeous woman who he thought had succumbed to his charm, actually had to be paid five grand to put up with him. On the other hand, Alexandria’s very hot, he got to sleep with her, and there’s no denying old Walt meant well. Why does this particular stunt go beyond the pale, considering everything else he’s pulled? Brandon continues to make his picks, muttering team names to himself and basically paying them scant attention. Walt tries again: ‘You know, we’re gonna be advising somewhere in the neighbourhood of twenty million dollars this week.’ ‘That’s a nice neighbourhood,’ says Brandon, barely listening. ‘We should be doing double that by week ten, Walter.’ Walter’s still unhappy about Brandon’s nonchalant approach to his picks. ‘No study, no analysis. You’re just gonna pick ’em.’ ‘Locked in, Walter,’ Brandon explains. ‘I don’t really need it.’ He hands over the picks. ‘Now, if you want next week’s picks, I can give you those by Friday. You want to join us, you can.’ ‘No, I’m starting to get the drift here. I tell you what, we’ll keep these picks on ice and go over them tomorrow, okay?’ Brandon puts on his sunglasses. ‘I won’t be in tomorrow.’ ‘Well then, the next day,’ Walter pleads. ‘Ahhh, we’ll talk about it,’ says Brandon, well on his way to the exit. Throughout the film, Walter has flown into a fury at the slightest provocation, but now Brandon waltzes in, acts like he owns the place, and Walt doesn’t really say s***. Who kidnapped angry Walt?
‘Amir, my man, John Anthony here!’ Amir (Craig Veroni) is in his dry cleaner’s shop, as evidenced by the fact we see him with phone in one hand, freshly-cleaned garment in the other. Brandon launches a charm offensive: ‘Yes, hello to you, sir. How’s your morning going? Mine started off pretty outstanding. But not as outstanding as I plan on my weekend being.’ Outstanding on its own basically means well above the norm, so I can’t see the B-meister’s efforts to introduce gradations of the word catching on.
For some reason, we then cut to the outer office, where there’s a general hubbub as fools are parted with their cash. Back to Brandon, who is trying to persuade Amir to bet big. ‘How much can you lay with your bookie? Twenty grand?’ How much cash does Brandon think the dry-cleaning racket brings in? Amir agrees with me and asks ‘John’ if he’s crazy. ‘Listen, I was betting a thousand a game.’ Brandon couldn’t give a monkey’s. ‘I’ve got a game that I’m calling my lock of the decade. Okay? (Walter comes into the office.) Texas versus O.U.’ JA thinks Texas are going to win the game easily, even though they’re the underdogs. ‘I like Oklahoma in that game,’ Amir protests, although if his own opinions were worth sixpence, I doubt he’d have to phone these self-styled experts to put him straight. Amir tries to wrap up the call but Brandon butts in, ‘Hold that thought, I’ve got Vegas on the line’.
Cut to Reggie barking at some punter. Cut back to Walter leaning over Brandon, fresh back from Mount Sinai with another tablet of sports betting wisdom. ‘The only thing you got to know about any of our clients is that they’re all in the hole. The second they pick up the phone, wham, you got them…Get to the point. You’re above them. Let ’em know it. Let ’em feel it. More John Anthony.’ Brandon gets back to Amir and asks what his favourite drink is. It’s a pina colada. Come on Amir, you’re better than that. Brandon is equally bemused. ‘Tomorrow, we gotta get you a new drink. But today, here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna go down to your bookie and lay twenty large on Texas. Then you’re gonna go home, put on your favourite Hawaiian shirt (Walter mouths something and leaves. I’m pretty sure it was ‘I love you’.), and you’re gonna sit back, twirl your little blue umbrella, after you’ve made that little rum concoction that you love so much with the orange slice and the cherry, and you’re gonna watch Texas rip those Oakies a new asshole. And after you win the twenty grand, you’re gonna call me back and you’re gonna tell me ‘Thank you sir. May I have another?’’ If I had thousands of pounds riding on some college football game, I doubt I’d be sitting around drinking pina coladas (afterwards maybe) but Amir seems impressed by Brandon’s braggadocio.
Night seems to have fallen but Brandon is still in his office, marching around with a ball in his hand and telling his customers what’s what on a hands-free gizmo. ‘McNeil’ has apparently lost his dog in a hunting accident so his team should be heavily-backed. ‘You don’t mess with a man who just lost his dog!’ What about the 50-odd players on the other team? Haven’t any of them got any extra motivation? Clearly not, as Brandon tells his mark to ‘Western Union me ten thou by tonight. Let’s ride this wave into Sunday,’ as if he was asking him (or her) to pick up a pint of milk. ‘Denny Boy!’ is next on the line. Remember Brandon’s brother from earlier? He’s told to lump ‘five hundred dollars on the Cheeseheads (Green Bay Packers). Let Stu in on that too and take care of Mama. Talk to you later.’ There’s not much time for small talk in this game! ‘Tammy, who’s on line four?’ Brandon enquires. Ha! I bet (geddit?) she wouldn’t have been so quick to straddle him earlier if she’d known she’d be answering the phone until all hours. Moving on, Bran’s got a real troublemaker here. ‘Forget the other four games you wanted to bet,’ he says in exasperation. ‘Let’s throw that four thousand on this one thousand and make it five, take it money line and turn it into twelve thousand.’ It all seems so simple!
Walter is in his office, football games are on his TV screens. He’s got eight screens, not four, as I wrongly claimed last time. We take a look at an Internet page. It’s ‘The Sports Advisers Exclusive Web Picks’. Brandon’s smiling visage is in the top right-hand corner, while the text on the page informs us: ‘John Anthony. I hit my $50,000. Texas 42 Oklahoma 7.’ That’s a pretty good tip, Amir should be okay for pina coladas for the foreseeable future. ‘Yes!’ says Walter as another game finishes. ‘Good ball game,’ the commentator enthuses. ‘10-7, Oakland upsets New York.’ Brandon no doubt predicted the result, winning margin, first touchdown scorer and the number of times a controversial call went to instant replay. Walter turns off the last TV, a good night’s work completed, but then starts coughing. He’s in a bad way.
At Walter and Toni’s, the lady of the house is on the phone, Brandon is mooching around and Walter is crawling around the house while one of his kids rides on his back, imploring him to speed it up a notch. Walter sees Brandon and addresses him as though he didn’t even know he was there, ‘Hey, ten and two, pro football?’ John Anthony can obviously pop round whenever the hell he likes. ‘85 per cent weekend, you’re a mutant!’ Walter adds. (‘Coming soon: X-Men IIII. The latest strain of good mutants use their uncanny ability to predict the results of trivial sporting events to defeat Magneto once and for all!’) It transpires that Brandon has brought some food round, as a favour to Toni . She gets off the phone and thanks him for saving her life, in the figurative sense. He wants to know what she was yapping about on the phone. Try minding you own business, pal! ‘Walter’s doctor, this is good news, finally put him on an exercise programme,’ she reports. ‘I want to be there the first time he goes to make sure the trainer understands his aversion to consistency.’ Walter’s ‘always been that way’ she adds. Walter, sitting on the floor in an other room, looks on somewhat jealously as Toni and the B-man talk at the kitchen table. I don’t think he can hear that they’re actually discussing him and his highly irritating ways. ‘Well that’s consistent,’ ‘jokes’ Brandon, causing Toni to crack up. ‘You are cute,’ she says, and feeds him something. Walter is horrified.
The Bizarre Love Triangle are now sitting at the table. ‘Life is f*****g good,’ Walter remarks. ‘So, let’s talk about making it better.’ ‘Duck Brandon, here it comes,’ says Toni. ‘I’m thinking of putting John Anthony on TV this week,’ Walter portentously announces, as if putting some clever-dick on a crappy cable TV show will cause a stir akin to Jackie Robinson’s Major League debut. ‘If you do this, from here on out, you’re gonna have to eat, sleep, drink, breathe, talk, walk, and fart John Anthony.’ Toni and Brandon laugh. ‘Just think it over,’ Toni tells Brandon. ‘Don’t decide now.’ F*** me, they’re not asking him to donate a kidney. And, incidentally, as Walter’s employee, if Walt wants him on his show, then he’d better, quite literally, get with the programme. I think the issue they’re trying to stress is that Brandon might find it hard to be ‘John Anthony’ on a more permanent basis but it’s a non-issue as far as I can see and the man himself thinks likewise. ‘Look, it’s the only move,’ he says. ‘It means I got to do a little acting, I’m cool with that.’ Walt won’t have it though. ‘No, no acting. This is living.’ Why, exactly? I’m sure a lot of real-life tipsters have monikers, but that doesn’t mean when they go out for a meal with friends they have to reserve the table under the name Winston Wins-a-lot. Walt won’t do the decent thing and shut it though. ‘From here on out, Brandon Lang and his fettuccini knee and his self-f*****g-pity is as flat dead as Donald Trump’s hair.’ Walt certainly knows how to sell something with sweet talk and I’ve seen no evidence in this film whatsoever of Brandon being at all self-pitying. Yeah , he wanted to get back into football, but he wasn’t moping around, quite the opposite. Walt continues, ‘And John I-can-walk-on-f*****g-water Anthony has taken his place’. That’s pretty funny, but we’re straight back to farce mode as Toni pleads, ‘Listen to what he’s asking you Brandon’. ‘I’m gonna build an empire around you,’ Walter promises. ‘It’s gonna cost me. You understand what I’m saying?’ I don’t, unless he means Jerry and the other tipsters will be pissed off, which they wouldn’t be if he handled the situation with any tact whatsoever. Brandon grins from ear-to-ear. ‘Hell, yeah, I understand. I’m John f*****g Anthony. I’ve got a crystal ball.’
Even though Brandon already looks, somewhat unsurprisingly, like a hugely attractive film star, it’s time for him to be beautified, ready for the limelight. Toni cuts his hair, they have crap banter, Walter buys him a sharp suit, they have crap banter, Brandon buys … a top-of-the-range car! I was going to take the piss out of this but I suppose the brilliant John Anthony can’t be seen driving around town in some old banger. The car salesman asks if Brandon has any credit. Upon being answered in the negative, he speaks sotto voce to Walter. ‘I don’t know, Wally. Can you trust him?’ ‘With my wife, naked,’ replies the ever-confident Wally. ‘The floor is yours,’ the salesman tells Brandon, who points at a tasty silver model.
Brandon pulls up somewhere in his new motor, which has the personalised number plate ‘900 KING’. You don’t have to wait long for your licence plates when you’re the top betting guru in town. The parking valet wants to know what the plate means. ‘That’s me, John Anthony,’ says Brandon, handing him his card and a tip. ‘I don’t lose.’ He is greeted by Walter, who is in typically buoyant mood. ‘I want you to meet Mr Miracle, John Anthony.’ Brandon shakes hands with some big-shots.
Walt’s now in make-up, prior to taping his show. ‘It’s never, ever gonna go down,’ he complains, I think referring to his hair, rather than the fact he went a little overboard on the old Viagra earlier on. The beautician sprays him liberally with aftershave, although I’m not sure the show ‘Mad Walt and his zany soothsayers’ will be airing in smell-o-vision. It transpires that Brandon was sitting in the next chair. He’s looking intensely into a mirror. ‘A star is born today,’ says Walter encouragingly. Bran’s got the sweats on. He’s ‘scared s******s’. ‘You just read off the teleprompter,’ Walter explains. ‘You’ve been here before, kid. Remember football?’ Hey, John Anthony didn’t play any football, that was Mr self-pity Brandon Lang, remember? It’s bizarre how they’re making such a big deal about this TV show. No one watches rubbish like this and, if they do, they’re unlikely to make too much of a fuss about the appearance and delivery style of the assorted presenters. Brandon thinks this is different from football. Too right. In football the quarterback has to play at least reasonably, or there’s a good chance his team will lose, so at least something is at stake, whereas he could go on to this show and do a lame, long-winded Jack Nicholson impersonation and I doubt anyone would give a fig. They’d probably view it as an upgrade when compared with Walter’s monologues. But no, the B-dog is worried because there’s ‘no opponent’. ‘Well then, you’re a lock to win,’ Walter points out. It’s time to get going. ‘Remember, stay with the script,’ is Walter’s parting shot.
The tipping experts sit around, ready for the show, while TV technical types shout things out. ‘John Anthony, huh?’ asks Jerry. Is he coming on to Brandon? (If you haven’t read part one of this marathon, you won’t get that joke.) ‘Yep,’ says Brandon. ‘Alls I see is another wannabe in a thousand dollar suit,’ Jerry remarks. ‘Word to the wise, keep the suit you came in with. All right, Jethro?’ ‘Jethro?’ How many pseudonyms has Brandon got? He smirks smugly and says he’ll do that, while we hear a woman say ‘good luck to you’. I think it’s someone (Toni? Tammy?) speaking into Brandon’s earpiece.
The show starts. ‘Welcome to this week’s edition of ‘Sports Advisers’,’ says Walter. He introduces himself, ‘Jerry Sykes, Chuck Adler (Charles Carroll) and a truly gifted newcomer to the Sports Advisers panel. I want you to meet him, a substantial find, and his name is Brandon Lang … I mean, er, John Anthony.’ Okay, okay, he doesn’t really mess it up like that. Brandon nods arrogantly into the camera. Walter engages full-on twitter mode. It’s week six in professional football and thinks are getting really ‘hot’. ‘This is oven mitt time, am I right?’ Well, we’d better hear from the ‘Wizard of Odds, Jerry ‘The Source’ Sykes,’ in that case. Jerry launches into his spiel. While each of the panel speak, by the way, TV viewers see the number they can call ‘1-800-BET-ON-IT’ beneath them, plus some encouraging blurb on the crawl: ‘Call now for your free picks etc’. Jerry’s evidently got some computer programme with which he makes his predictions. ‘The Sykes System uses 42 proven indexes to eliminate the guesswork in sports wagering.’ This is all news to us, of course, but regular viewers, if that’s not an oxymoron, must have to listen to the same old bull every week. Without Jerry’s ‘computer-based picks, you gotta a better shot of having God show up at you door with nine strippers, a bag of pure Bolivian cocaine (we see Walter laugh indulgently, though I can’t believe the FCC welcome this sort of material), enough Viagra to make Chuck’s head blow up, than picking these things on your own. You call me, absolutely free, I got five picks this weekend that are incredible.’ Speaking of Chuck, it’s time to hear his sales pitch. ‘How many gamblers did I bail out last weekend with my game of the year?’ He recounts how some of his clients struck it rich, his face turning an alarming shade of red as he does so. He’s got six games this weekend, he’s releasing them free, blah blah blah. I can see how people like Amir might give John Anthony kick-backs to keep the tips coming but what’s with all this giving some of the tips away for free? Can’t people just keep calling back with a different name or maybe this is just a one-week thing? I’m probably over-thinking it.
Chuck exudes confidence about his selections. ‘These games are a burial, a blow-out, a human lock! You can bet your children’s unborn children’s children on these six games absolutely free!’ Chuck is yelling incoherently by the end of this rant, and the final two words would be unintelligible without subtitles. He has turned purple, but at least it’s a bit of entertainment for the viewers. ‘I believe, I believe,’ says Walter. ‘I believe you’re trying to make me deaf.’ Brandon laughs, Chuck cackles strangely and Jerry points out the unusual colour he’s gone. ‘Is that, would you say, that’s kind of a chartreuse?’ Not really, you prat. Chartreuse is yellowish-green, old Chuck’s now more of a maroon hue. Back to Walt, who helpfully reminds viewers that ‘Saturday comes before Sunday,’ which means college football, which means it’s Brandon’s chance to shine. ‘Thank you, Walter,’ he says. ‘This is John Anthony here.’ He spouts some drivel. ‘From Wall Street to Tokyo to Hollywood, all your big money is gonna stay and play with me That’s right, that’s why they call me the Million Dollar Man.’ Yep, I expect the guys were sitting around the office one day, and Walter said ‘What about this John Anthony character?’ and Jerry replied ‘Well, from Wall Street to Tokyo to Hollywod, all the big money stays and plays with him,’ to which Chuck exclaims, ‘That’s right! We should call him the Million Dollar Man from now on!’ Walter must have written this script, it’s beyond dire. Brandon realises this too and his voice trails off. Oh no, his TV debut is going to end in ignominy! ‘I can’t say that, man,’ he remarks. Jerry looks pleased and Walter is about to tell the techies to cut but Brandon recovers. ‘Somebody wrote some very clever stuff for me here like the ‘Million Dollar Man’.’ I think he’s taking tongue-in-cheek. ‘So let’s just call me John.’ Walter tells the cameras to start rolling again, if they ever stopped. Brandon continues: ‘I played quarterback, Division One. And every QB knows that the secret, the key, to victory, is anticipation. The ability to see the future and react to it. Now, that is what I do. And that is the truth. So I’m not gonna sell you today, all right? I’m just gonna tell you the facts. For over one year, I have been picking 80 per cent winners (way to not sell them Bran!). Unbelievable? Used to be. I know the leagues. I know the teams. I know these players. I know this wonderful game called football. Call the number on the bottom of your screen and ask for John. Let’s make some money.’ He grins ingratiatingly into the camera.
Walter gets home, looks in on his daughter (Julia - Chrislyn Austin) and then starts wheezing unhealthily. Toni wakes up and informs him that it’s 4am but Walter’s on a high after the show. ‘Man, you should have seen him.’ Walt, we all enjoyed Chuck practically self-combusting but I’m not sure it was worthy of a 4am bender, unless … you’re not talking about someone else are you? ‘I just sat there and watched him roll. I swear, he made me want to pick up a phone and call. (He laughs.) I took all the sales boys down to Smith and Wo’s, you know, get them primed for the weekend.’ That doesn’t sound like an optimal management strategy to me as the staff will be nursing hangovers and doing sweet FA all day tomorrow but Walt knows best. Anyway, ‘Chuck got so drunk he took a swing at one of the deer heads on the wall’. Now that’s a good scene, why can’t we view it for ourselves, instead of having it relayed to us by some drunkard? Walt cackles with glee, Toni smiles indulgently. ‘I’m gonna hire more guys on Monday,’ Walter adds. ‘I got to. I gotta get more phones.’ Unbelievably, with his gorgeous wife beckoning him to bed, Walt will not shut up about Brandon. ‘I’m going to do this whole dot-com thing around him, you know?’ But we’ve already seen a web page with Brandon’s grinning mug on it. Maybe Walt’s going to expand that side of his operation? He burbles on about how Brandon is his ‘protégé’. ‘If anything happens to me, he steps in.’ He gestures to his heart, to indicate the fact that his scenario is sadly not very far-fetched. ‘It’s like having a son.’ Toni again tries to entice him into bed but Walter is in that sozzled state where the most asinine ideas seem perfectly reasonable, and announces that he’s ‘gonna go for a run’. Walter changes into his gear while eulogising about his work-out but Toni cunningly gets him to lie down ‘for one minute’ and he gradually passes out while she whisper soothingly to him. Fair play to Toni, I can’t see many women showing such forbearance when their hubby wakes them up at four in the morning spewing nonsense.
Brandon’s office, Jerry bursts in. ‘You know anything about Stokey being out this weekend against New York?’ Brandon’s reading the paper in relaxed fashion and is more concerned about Jezzer’s office etiquette. ‘A knock would be nice, Jerry.’ The J-man points out that he’s ‘kind of underwater here, man’. Brandon doesn’t know anything about the Stokey situation. Jerry says that if he does hear anything, then he’s got to spill the beans to Jerry. ‘’Cause that’s the way we work.’ ‘I’ll rush right over,’ Brandon deadpans. ‘Stat.’ It transpires that Jerry’s concerns about Stokey are the tip of a mightily pissed-off iceberg. ‘I been working here for six years, you been doing it for one,’ he snarls, pointing aggressively at Brandon, but Walter comes in and cuts him off before he can really hit his stride. ‘What are you doing in here? Hit the phones, man.’ It seems Jerry’s tips have been driving people towards the Samaritans in their droves because Walter advises him to ‘do some damage control, rewrite that frigging computer programme’. Jerry is incredulous. ‘Hey, it was a f****d weekend.’ ‘For some people,’ Walter retorts. ‘There’s a fifty dime bettor on line three, he wants to talk to John Anthony.’ Brandon asks for more info. ‘His name’s Carl, he’s a gazillionaire. He owns a couple of dozen McDonald’s franchises.’ This news adds yet more grist to Jerry’s mill of fury. ‘I landed that lead. He’s my guy.’ Walter continues to treat his former top man with complete contempt. ‘Was. (He) Was your guy.’ ‘He’s raiding my lists now?’ Jerry asks. Surely it’s time for Walt to put his arm around him, lead him somewhere private, and gently explain that, with John Anthony on a hot streak, it’s natural for some clients to seek his counsel, and that they’ll no doubt be back with Jerry when his own form changes? Instead Walter opts for the more confrontational: ‘Your clients are jumping ship, you lactose-intolerant f***! Get out of my sight. Come on.’ Brandon ‘helps’ matters by saying excuse me and gesturing towards his phone.
Toni and Julia arrive home, Julia goes upstairs to play. Walter emerges from a room at the end of the hall with a nubile woman in tow. He gives her money for ‘cab fare’ and greets Toni pleasantly before claiming the awkward situation is easily explainable and introducing Toni to ‘Gail’. Toni looks very angry, as Gail leaves, saying she’ll talk to Walter later. It’s all so blatant that there is obviously nothing going on between them but Toni is fuming. ‘What the hell’s going on here Walter?’ Walt is surprised by her hostility. ‘I just brought her up here to pay her off,’ he says. ‘I got her for John. Come on!’ Toni is furious and whirls around, pointing her finger at him. ‘Don’t b******t me, Walter!’ she advises. Walter laughs disbelievingly. ‘You can’t be serious. You think I slept with this girl?’ He’s got a point, even Walter wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring a hooker he’d procured for himself back to the house with wife and daughter expected back at any time. ‘Who the hell’s John? Who’s John?’ says Toni, who is unrealistically lacking in street-savvy in this scene. It’s not as if Brandon/John isn’t all Walter ever talks about, plus it was her who made such a fuss regarding Brandon’s identity switch in the first place. Walter says all that far more succinctly. ‘John. John Anthony. Ring a bell?’ ‘You got Brandon a hooker?’ Walter explains his rationale: ‘He’s working late at night. He’s in a new city. He has no friends.’ I would love to shout Walter down here but I once moved to a completely different part of the country for a new job and did not receive a paid-for prostitute into the bargain. Quite frankly, I’d have considered it a thoughtful gesture. Toni is horrified, though. ‘Are we actually gonna stand here and have this conversation? Are you completely, completely clueless, Walter?’ Walter is genuinely baffled by her reaction and accuses her of being ‘jealous’. Never a smart move. He continues on the attack, ‘Are you jealous? You look jealous to me,’ so Toni asks what he’s on about. ‘I don’t know, Brandon getting laid or something?’ About five paragraphs ago this pair were ranting on about how Brandon, to all intents and purposes, was dead. Looks like he’s risen again. Toni thinks Walter is ‘crazy … ’cause that sick thought never entered my mind.’ ‘That’s not where those thoughts enter,’ says Walter. Toni storms off, as Walter shouts out, ‘You’ll be happy to know he didn’t sleep with her. I just paid her for coming. Pardon the pun.’ She wheels around in anger yet again but the nipper comes charging down the corridor before Toni can tear strips off Walter. The Brandon-Toni-Walter thing really is tiresome and I fear the worst is yet to come.
We watch an advert for the ‘Sports Advisers’ TV show. ‘New star’ John Anthony ‘went an amazing 24 and six in last weekend’s games’. On the set, it’s time for Jerry to receive his latest f***-you pill. ‘John’s up first tonight,’ Walter tells him. A less shrewd man-manager might have told Jerry hours, rather than seconds, before the show starts, so he had time to get used to his new place in the pecking order, but why do that when you can let the rancour and bitterness which you have created seep into the show? Jerry thinks he may have misheard. ‘What?’ ‘John Anthony is leading off tonight.’ ‘John Anthony’s leading off?’ True to form, Walter quickly tires of this and starts to belittle Jerry. ‘There an echo in here? Engineer? Sound? Help me. I’m hearing everything twice.’ Jez is appalled by his treatment. ‘Two years I lead off for you and you bury me in the deck over a couple of lousy f*****g weekends? This is b******t Walter.’ There’s no time for Walter to respond because the show is starting. I hate to be so pedantic but it’s simply ludicrous that he would tell Jerry about this 30 seconds before the show starts. It makes Walter look stupidly capricious and idiotic, which he can’t be to have built up a (relatively) successful business.
Later on, Brandon talks to Denny on his mobile. Denny has furnished the car he’s working on with a very loud stereo, I think purchased by Brandon, which he now plays for his brother’s delectation. ‘It is the bomb, B!’ Brandon loves it too, then asks if ‘everything else (is) cool?’. ‘Did Dad reach you?’ Denny enquires. He did not. ‘He saw you on TV and he wants to talk to you,’ says Denny. As we know from the film’s opening, ‘dad’ is something of a deadbeat, but I still can’t believe he watches that moronic show. ‘I gave him your work number but he says they won’t put him through,’ Denny adds. Brandon looks over to see Walter talking to Chuck. He says he’ll ‘check into it’.
Boring Love Triangle. Walter is indulging in his favourite activity, namely heaping overwrought praise on Brandon. He refers to Brandon as ‘Jimmy the Greek’, a reference to American sports betting legend Jimmy Snyder, and adds: ‘He makes Nostra-f******-damus look like a novelty act.’ I think we should call Brandon Nostra-dumbass. Toni laughs at these inanities as they emerge onto the street but Brandon has the hump because his old man is being given the bum’s rush. ‘Have you been blocking any of my calls?’ he wonders, taking the circuitous route. ‘Of course,’ says Walter. ‘You don’t need distractions right now, my boy. Lot of crazies out there.’ Brandon doesn’t take kindly to this response. ‘Does that include my father?’ Walter pauses for a second but is undaunted. ‘You’re asking me, I’m gonna tell you. Yeah.’ ‘You son of a bitch,’ says Brandon. It turns out that pops has been trying to get through for a fortnight or so. Walter, completely unapologetic, wants to know if Brandon would ‘have taken the call if I put it through?’ Blimey, Walt’s such a hands-on boss he even mans the phone banks, no wonder he hasn’t got time to cosset prima donnas like Jerry. ‘That’s not the point,’ Brandon insists, marching off. Walter, intransigent to the last, marches after him, demanding to know what’s going on with Brandon and his old man. ‘Hey man, I was just trying to spare you something.’ Walter has the unfortunate habit of infuriating people to such an extent that they wheel round mid-stride and get in his face. ‘What are you gonna spare me from, huh?’ asks Brandon, not entirely cordially. ‘He was a goddamn drunk. Left when I was nine. I couldn’t compete with the bottle, end of f*****g story. You don’t spare me nothing. If I want to talk to him, I will.’ He ambles off again, muttering: ‘Spare me. You f***.’
Literally every single one of the billions of other people who inhabit this planet would have either left Brandon to walk off at this point or perhaps even shouted out an apology for their insensitivity. But Walter’s definitely a bit of a ‘has to have the last word’ merchant. ‘Is that it?’ he barks. ‘Is that all you got?’ He rushes to catch up with Brandon. ‘Because I will match my dysfunctional childhood and Toni’s against yours, any day of the week.’ If the scene had finished at the end of the last paragraph it would have been a rock-solid addition to the film but this little coda is beyond ridiculous. Did I miss the bit where Brandon bragged to Walter and Toni about how he had by far the most dysfunctional childhood. No, I did not. He’s not complaining about his rubbish childhood, he’s complaining about Walter taking a decision which was Brandon’s to take. I think the screenplay writer just wanted to give Pacino as many grandstanding speeches as possible. ‘My father, five foot, arms like this,’ he reports. ‘He had a cock like a Hebrew National. I even looked at him the wrong way he smacked me across the room like Jake LaMotta.’ He continues in this vein, then asks Toni to join in. Instead of pointing out that Brandon wasn’t trying to instigate a ‘who had the worst childhood’ debate and telling her deluded husband to shut it, she remarks: ‘I didn’t have a great childhood either Brandon.’ Well, whoopee, everyone had a bad childhood! Brandon’s pissed off that Walter’s been blocking calls from his father, these two decide to throw a pity party. ‘Tell (Brandon) about the uncle,’ Walter insists. ‘Well, I think he gets the idea now,’ says Toni. He certainly does, that’ll teach Brandon to loudly proclaim that he had the worst childhood in the history of mankind. Walter angrily (!) tells Brandon that Toni was ‘abused by everybody but the family pet’. Obviously, I’m not making light of such horrendous happenings, but they could either have been shoehorned in more artfully or, better yet, we could have guessed from some of the more subtle hints that have been dropped, that Walt and Toni have had it tough. More from Walt: ‘Your father was a drunk. He was a jerk. So what? It happens. I’m glad I blocked those calls. You know why? You need a new image of a man. How about me?’ Toni laughs and Brandon, smiling now, remarks: ‘That’s a scary f*****g thought.’ That no swearing thing has gone out the window good and proper.
Still Walter won’t put a cork in it! ‘The s**t that happened to you, to me, to Toni, you know what that is? It’s just that, s*** that happened.’ Thank you Descartes. I don’t remember Brandon saying anything different, by the way. HE’S JUST ANGRY THAT YOU WERE BLOCKING CALLS FROM HIS FATHER! ‘We’re all f****d up,’ Walter adds. ‘We are all just so f****d up. Now you gotta just say that s**t out. I am f****d up, and I ain’t gonna take it anymore.’ Is that a knowing parody of the famous line in ‘Network’ (‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’) or is the screenwriter genuinely trying to pass this off as original thought. Walter gets Toni to join them and shouts ‘We are so f****d up, we’re not gonna take it anymore.’ He yells it again. Someone from the building they are alongside shouts down, ‘I’m trying to sleep here asshole!’ ‘That you Dad?’ Walter ‘humorously’ responds as a laughing Toni ushers him away. The irate building dweller hurls abuse at him, while I’m left to wonder why on earth I spent so much time on that hugely irritating scene.
We cut to the office. While an elderly gent measure his leg, Brandon is on the phone to Amir, and he’s not happy with what he’s hearing. ‘You’re going to sit here and haggle with me over fifty grand after the two hundred and fifty thousand I just made you last weekend?’ Things are on the up for Amir. We see him standing by what looks like a brand new sports car. ‘Fifty thousand seems slightly steep,’ to him. Brandon is marching around smoking a cigar while he reminds Amir about their first conversation. ‘You’re in a hole the size of the Grand Canyon, you’re crying to me about having to hock your fiancee’s ring. Now, today, you’re calling me from a red convertible F1 Ferrari.’ Divulging that nugget of info was a definite error on Amir’s part. Brandon threatens to cut him off and says he’s considering charging Amir ‘a ten per cent aggravation tax’. Brandon’s bottom line? ‘Wire me seventy-five grand and maybe we can kiss and make up.’ Amir acquiesces.
Time for B’s next caller. ‘John Anthony, talk to ME!’ he bellows annoyingly. It’s his mum, wanting to know how he’s getting on. ‘Mum, I have never been better. I’m kicking ass and taking names. Listen, did you get the money that I sent you?’ Someone close to his mother, as Brandon clearly is, would surely phone her up fairly regularly, but the tenor of this conversation suggests they’ve barely spoken since he moved away. Ridiculous. Brandon is planning to fly mum and Denny out ‘next month, first class. I’m gonna put you up at The Plaza. You’re gonna meet Toni, you’re gonna meet Water’. Mum’s in a for a rare treat. She protests that he’s sending too much money. Brandon thinks otherwise. ‘I made that money, I earned that money. Every f*****g cent of it!’ I don’t think she was hinting that the money came from disreputable sources and she’s unimpressed by new-model foul-mouthed Brandon. ‘It’s just how people talk out here,’ he says. He’s hardly moved to New York from a haven of clean living, he was formerly resident in Vegas for Pete’s sake. He tries to wind up the call while patronisingly saying ‘no cuff Francisco’ to the tailor but mum wants to know about ‘this John Anthony person’. Brandon explains that John Anthony is the reason for the cheques coming her way as Walter bursts in. ‘We gotta go to Puerto Rico,’ he says. Brandon puts his mum on hold and asks the reason for the trip. ‘C.M. Novian just called, he lives in Puerto Rico. He’s the biggest sports bettor in the world. We have hit the jackpot. He wants to sit down and talk, in person, with John Anthony.’ They’ve got 45 minutes. Brandon tries to get his mum back on the line but she’s hung up. Bit harsh that Mrs Lang. Granted, Brandon was a bit curt but, to be fair, cheques in the post, first class trips to New York? The boy’s doing his best! I think that we’re supposed to think it would be better if the family was still mired in poverty, if it meant Brandon didn’t say f*** every now and again. Anyway, Brandon is upset by this turn of events.
The tipping twins have now arrived in Puerto Rico. Walter tells Brandon about Novian. ‘He’s a world-class prick. Wouldn’t return my phone call. Treated me worse than my Hong Kong tailor. You know how long I’ve been trying to bag this guy? Have you any idea what this thing is worth?’ Brandon does not but wants a bonus if it all goes swimmingly. Walter briefly turns into Yoda from the Star Wars films: ‘No ‘if’. It’s only ‘when’.’ Walter gives Brandon a pep talk, then starts tottering around and struggling for breath. Brandon holds onto him as he collapses to the ground. ‘Is it your heart?’ asks Brandon. Brilliant diagnosis Dr Kildaire. ‘Where’s your vial? Easy, easy. (To concerned onlookers) Get me a doctor and get me some water, now.’ He gives Walter a couple of pills and tells him to ‘suck on them, man’. Wouldn’t swallowing them be more efficacious? Wide-eyed Walt manages to speak. ‘You love me?’ ‘You know I love you. You know I love you. You ain’t going nowhere.’
Tense music ratchets up the excitement, as Walter fights for his life. ‘Would you love me if this was a joke?’ he asks. ‘I’m okay. I was just practicing.’ That Walter, he’s incorrigible! He gets up and assures the onlookers that he’s fine. ‘Little indigestion. Too many peanuts on the plane.’ Brandon is, naturally, volcanically pissed off. Come on Brandon, practice makes perfect! ‘That’s pushing it too far,’ he tells Walter, who now has to sweet-talk his way out of trouble yet again. ‘You pay attention to me right now. There’s no such thing as ‘too far’. Understand? You push everything as far as you can…’ Blah blah blah, keep pushing, ‘remember that when you’re with this guy today’. What would he have come up with if Brandon hadn‘t made the ‘too far‘ remark? And is pulling such a lunatic stunt the best way to prepare for such a vital business meeting? And isn’t it time I stopped questioning Walter’s crazy methodology and just went with the flow?
The betting buddies arrive at Novian’s impressive dwelling. The man himself (Armand Assante) arrives and greets Walter, who introduces John Anthony. Once everybody is seated, Novian points out that ‘these sports services of yours, (are a) complete f*****g scam, huh?’ Brandon laughs and Walter joins in. Novian asks for Walter’s system but Brandon chimes in. ‘Let’s start with how much you bet.’ ‘A million a game, across the board,’ says Novian. Brandon nods. ‘Is that our ceiling here? Is that the most we’re working with?’ It’s Novian’s turn to laugh, ‘Oh, it depends. I mean, s***, Benny (he turns to a grinning henchman), check your wallet. See if you’ve got any cash hanging around.’ Novian is keen to get onto the upcoming weekend’s betting good things but Brandon gestures towards a yacht and wants to know if Novian rents it. He doesn’t, he owns it. ‘That’s how I feel about this weekend,’ says B, ‘And I’m not being cocky. I’m talking straight commerce with you, Mr Novian. I didn’t come down here to b******t you.’ ‘Wow, you got steam,’ says Novian, bewilderingly impressed by this speech. Did he expect John Anthony to say that he didn’t have a clue who was going to win at the weekend? ‘I know these teams better than they know themselves,’ Brandon continues. ‘I’m going twelve for twelve this weekend and that includes the Monday Night parlay.’ Monday night par-tay, more like, if you follow Brandon’s tips! Novian asks for Walter’s take. ‘I don’t believe him,’ says Walt. ‘You cannot afford not to,’ says Brandon. Novian says that actually he can afford not to. ‘Can anyone afford to lose as much as a man like you needs to bet to actually feel a win?’ Brandon muses. It’s not quite ‘To be or not to be,’ but it’s certainly a fascinating philosophical debate. ‘Winning’s a funny thing,’ Brandon continues. ‘It’s one of those rare commodities on earth that money cannot buy, until you called me.’ ‘I didn’t call you, I called your boss,’ Novian points out. Brandon is in bullish mood. ‘And he called me,’ he barks. ‘The price is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars up front, plus ten per cent of every game you win.’ Novian thinks such a proposition is ‘wild’ and looks at Walter for support. Walt gives him a blank look. Novian checks with his henchman that he ‘never paid up front before’. H-Man shakes his head. ‘We’ve never charged it before,’ Brandon informs him, as Walter puts his sunglasses on in the background for some reason. Is he trying to intimidate the billionaire? ‘But considering whose picks you’re getting,’ Brandon drones on, ‘and the amount of money that you’re betting, Mr Novian, two-fifty’s a bargain. You know it and I know it. If you want this weekend’s winners, that’s my offer. You can take it or leave it.’ ‘Let’s step outside,’ says Novian, after brief deliberation. There’s one born every minute!
Back at base camp, Brandon is deliberating over his picks at his desk. A nervous minion comes in to tell him that ‘they need it, Mr Anthony’. A propos apparently nothing, Brandon asks ‘Mitchell’ what his mother’s name is. It’s Sheila. ‘What street did you grow up on?’ ‘Atlantic Avenue.’ ‘Who do you like Monday night?’ Mitchell has not got a Scooby. ‘Pick one,’ Brandon encourages him. ‘Well, that’s your job,’ Mitch counters. ‘I’ll do your job tomorrow,’ Brandon lies. ‘Today, you do mine. Who do you like?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ Mitch asks nervously, and truth be told, rather dumbly. He’s asking who you think is going to win the Monday night game Mitch. ‘Mitchie,’ Brandon wheedles amusingly, ‘Seattle versus New Orleans. Stop stalling. Who do you like?’ Mitch looks back into the outer office for some reason, then again professes ignorance, before finally caving in. ‘I guess I like Seattle, plus the two points.’ Brandon circles Seattle but he’s still not satisfied. ‘Over or under?’ ‘You can’t do that,’ says Mitch, alarmed that thousands of pounds are going to be wagered on the basis of his half-baked opinions. ‘No, I can do this,’ says Brandon tetchily. ‘Over or under? It’s 44 points. Come on.’ ‘Over?’ Mitch ventures. Brandon fills in his sheet accordingly and hands it to Mitch, who echoes my earlier point. ‘I’m not going to hand that in, there’s, like, a million dollars riding on that game.’ Mitch, if this arrogant son of a gun wants to use your tips, then so be it. He’ll be the one who takes the fall. ‘Oh, there’s like a whole lot more than that,’ says Brandon, the epitome of smug complacency. ‘Look, we all know I can pick. Today, I’m picking you. The outcome will be the same.’ ‘And what if I’m wrong?’ Mitch wants to know. ‘There’s no ‘if’,’ Brandon replies. I think he’s trying to out-Yoda Walter from the airport scene, but, if you think about it, what he’s just said implies that Mitchie will definitely be wrong. Nice try though, B.
Walter and his staff are watching an American Football game in a state of high anxiety. ‘They score, we win,’ Walter repeats over and over, as we see Brandon look on from the back of the room. It’s the Seattle Monday night game - Mitch’s handiwork. Touchdown Seattle! The two teams on the TV look nothing like Seattle or New Orleans, so it’s safe to say the NFL have not collaborated on this film, understandably I suppose, given it’s betting theme. The office celebrates, led, as ever, by Walter, who yells: ‘We won a hundred-f*****g-per cent!’ He does a comical dance of joy while Brandon takes the congratulations.
Later on, the party is in full swing, and Mitch is telling an interested throng how he was the man behind it all. ‘It was like he mesmerised me a little bit, you know? And then, like Spock or something, I just visualised it. Seattle and the over. And he just wrote it down. I mean, he just said, picking me was like the same thing as him doing it.’ Ha, ha! It was like getting blood out of a stone as well, but don’t mention that old son. To add to the hilarity, Jerry emerges from a room next to the group as Mitch finishes recounting his exploits.
Walter is counting out money and Brandon raises a glass to him from across the room. Uh oh, here comes Jerry. However, he seems to be oozing bonhomie. ‘Congratulations Brandon, or, should I say, John?’ he remarks, drunkenly putting his arm round Brandon. ‘Either way, it’s amazing. I am very impressed. Are you kidding me? Letting salesman make your picks? That’s balls.’ To be ultra-picky, I feel like, in a really great film, we’d have just seen Jerry overhear Mitch’s bragging, look a bit hacked off, and not hear anymore about it. Brandon tells Jerry he should head over to where Walter seems to be blithely handing out cash to all and sundry. ‘With the way you’re picking, you’re gonna need some for a rainy day,’ he can’t resist adding. But Jez has some words of warning: ‘Gambling Gods, (are a) fickle bunch, so easily offended.’ Brandon makes noises of acknowledgement while staring vacantly into space.
Walter sits on a desk holding wads of cash. ‘I tell you,’ he tells everyone within earshot. ‘There might be businesses (in which) you can make more than two million dollars in a weekend (Brandon thanks Jerry for ‘looking after’ him in the background.) but will somebody tell me, somebody please tell me, where else you can have this much f****** fun?’ He throws the money into the air in delight. Brandon comes over. ‘You the man, big papi,’ he tells Walter. ‘I love you forever,’ says Walter as they embrace. Or until he has a bad couple of weeks and some hot-shot new kid comes along, Jerry might ruefully remark. Instead we just see him watching on like a Shakespearean villain from the corner. ‘How much of that Dough-Re-Mi be for moi?’ Brandon asks Walter. ‘How about a one, with five zeroes behind it?’ suggests Walt. ‘A hundred thousand?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘On two mill?’ ‘You be working out of my shop.’ Brandon concurs: ‘This is your place. It’s your shop, Walter’s shop. I understand that. I’m just saying, feed the horse, baby. Maybe ten per cent?’ ‘Ten per cent?’ Walter literally finds this a laughable suggestion. He tells Brandon to forget it but our man ain’t leaving until he’s got a pay rise. ‘We got Novian. We got the two hundred and fifty grand …’ An angry Walter grabs him round the neck before he can continue. ‘I want to tell you something now, okay? I’m gonna say it only once. If you want something more from me than a gesundheit after a sneeze you’re gonna have to do more than come to me with this s***. You understand? You’re gonna have to earn it. And once you earn it, you’re gonna have to fight me for it. You’re gonna have to challenge me. You’re gonna have to rip it out of my f*****g talons. That’s how you get ahead with me. Now, John Anthony would know that, see? As a matter of fact, next time you come to me with this s***, you come as John Anthony. I ain’t talking money with you.’
I can’t believe I transcribed that risible speech. For starters, I’d say ‘John Anthony’ would have asked for more cash in exactly the same way that Brandon did but, more importantly, why is Walter such a w****r about everything? After all the stuff about how much he loves Brandon, he speaks to him like this? Yes, Brandon’s being greedy and ungrateful but he’s young and over-excited after, let’s not forget, landing Walter his biggest client ever and then picking the winner of every single game, massively enriching his employer in the process. Do: Put your arm round the kid, tell him that’s not how it works, remind him how you plucked him from obscurity in Vegas and tell him that, if he keeps coming up with the goods, he’ll be rewarded. Don’t: Start mouthing off about f*****g talons. Anyway, Brandon edges backwards, glaring at Walter, as a cheerful Toni bursts in and congratulates him. He raises his arms, tells her he’s ‘winning’ and departs. Walter asks Toni to dance with him. They kiss happily and Walter talks crap about extravagant things he’s going to buy, while Toni, as per, laughs happily, even though his remarks aren’t funny in the slightest. ‘Just tell me you’re not gambling Walter,’ says Toni. ‘Eighteen years straight, okay? That s***’s over,’ he assures her, angrily. ‘It’s never over,’ she tells him. ‘How about a truth serum in the veins,’ he belligerently suggests. I’m sure we’re not supposed to find Walter this obnoxious. He wants to ‘just enjoy a dance,’ and she hugs him in a desperate attempt to shut him up.
Brandon decides to give Alexandria a call. ‘I happen to be in the neighbourhood.’ She meets him in the lobby and he informs her that she has ‘a Doberman for a doorman’. He kisses her but she looks perplexed. ‘What are you doing here?’ He suggests they go out for a ‘late-night dinner, right now. Have a couple of killer bottles of wine, go back to that place where we first met’. This point is about to be made redundant anyway, but going back to the place you first met is something couples usually do after they’ve then been out a few more times. You don’t generally sleep with someone, fail to get in touch with them for a few weeks, then turn up out of the blue and suggest returning to where you first met, as if it’s a fantastically romantic idea. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ Alexandria wonders. ‘I live in this building, asshole. This is home. I don’t appreciate you stopping by without calling.’ It’s a tad tricky to get on board with this, seeing as … he did call! She could have just told him to get knotted on the phone if she so desired. It’s Brandon’s turn to be baffled so she makes ‘this s*** real clear, so this doesn’t happen again. You meant five thousand bucks. Your friend set it up.’ She stalks off, Brandon looks gob smacked. Expensive old night for Walt that one, and you have to admire his generosity. He lost ten large in a bet with Brandon, having already paid five large to ensure he lost. I take it all back, I want Walter as my next boss!
At the office, presumably the next day, Brandon is clapped in by the staff and graciously raises his hand in acknowledgement. He finds Walter in his office, demanding to know if Brandon is aware of the time. ‘It is 8.37 in the am,’ says Brandon. Nope, it’s time to press, according to Walt. ‘When you’re winning, you press, you don’t rest on your laurels.’ Brandon gets his golf clubs out. ‘Got a ten-thirty tee-time at Wingfoot with a client, that Howell guy,’ he informs Walter. ‘So don’t call me unless the lines change, you got it?’ Walter doesn’t like this one little bit. ‘The salmon are running, my man. You gotta stay here… You can’t go out playing golf, having fun.’ ‘Fun? Senor, you have obviously never played Wingfoot,’ Brandon jokes. Walter wants Brandon to stay but Brandon is a changed man. ‘I’m not asking you if I can leave, Walter. I’m telling you. (He puts his hand on Walter’s cheek.) That’s how it is, all right?’ For once, Walter is silent. Brandon asks if Walter wants his picks, then starts working on them. ‘You’re gonna start picking on Tuesday for the weekend, huh?’ says Walter, unhappily. Walt, you’re only reaping what you sowed, although I’m not sure if this rebellious Brandon is a consequence of the money dispute or the fact Walter paid for him to sleep with Alexandria. If the latter, well, I suppose it would be a bit of a blow to Brandon’s ego that a gorgeous woman who he thought had succumbed to his charm, actually had to be paid five grand to put up with him. On the other hand, Alexandria’s very hot, he got to sleep with her, and there’s no denying old Walt meant well. Why does this particular stunt go beyond the pale, considering everything else he’s pulled? Brandon continues to make his picks, muttering team names to himself and basically paying them scant attention. Walt tries again: ‘You know, we’re gonna be advising somewhere in the neighbourhood of twenty million dollars this week.’ ‘That’s a nice neighbourhood,’ says Brandon, barely listening. ‘We should be doing double that by week ten, Walter.’ Walter’s still unhappy about Brandon’s nonchalant approach to his picks. ‘No study, no analysis. You’re just gonna pick ’em.’ ‘Locked in, Walter,’ Brandon explains. ‘I don’t really need it.’ He hands over the picks. ‘Now, if you want next week’s picks, I can give you those by Friday. You want to join us, you can.’ ‘No, I’m starting to get the drift here. I tell you what, we’ll keep these picks on ice and go over them tomorrow, okay?’ Brandon puts on his sunglasses. ‘I won’t be in tomorrow.’ ‘Well then, the next day,’ Walter pleads. ‘Ahhh, we’ll talk about it,’ says Brandon, well on his way to the exit. Throughout the film, Walter has flown into a fury at the slightest provocation, but now Brandon waltzes in, acts like he owns the place, and Walt doesn’t really say s***. Who kidnapped angry Walt?
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