Great Scene: “Rounders”

A scene from the 1998 movie Rounders, written by David Levien and Brian Koppelman. IMDb plot summary:

A young man is a reformed gambler who must return to playing big stakes poker to help a friend pay off loan sharks.

It’s the final showdown between Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) and Teddy KGB (John Malkovich). The irony is Mike finds himself in this tense situation because of a debt, not owed by him, but his friend Worm (Edward Norton Jr.). This is literally do-or-die.

Here is the script version of the scene:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

One thing about a poker scene: You can really milk the tension as the filmmakers do here in spades. With Teddy’s increasing mania, several shots of the Heavy waiting to pound on Mike, a room full of thugs… and what looks to be a shit hand being dealt Mike’s way. But there he sits: “Check… check… check.” Great stuff.

This draft of the script was made available by co-writer Brian Koppelman. Some comments on the script by Koppelman:

This is the third draft, the one that went to agencies to get actor attachments, I think. It’s over twenty years old. But you will see we used Voiceover, we addressed the reader, we made notes about wardrobe. There are no camera moves spelled out in it, I don’t think. But that happened to be the style we found for it. I read it and I see very young versions of David and me. But I also see all the work we put into telling the story in a language that hadn’t been used very often. This made it harder to sell, but more distinctive, so that when someone liked it, they very likely loved it.

To read all of the entries in the Great Scene archive, go here.