Molly's Game (2018) - Quotes

Court Disagrees with Government's Sentencing Recommendation

Judge Foxman: Based on all available information, this court manifestly disagrees with the government’s sentencing recommendation. This courthouse is located within spitting distance of Wall Street. I know this from my personal experience trying to spit at it. The men and women who work there will commit more serious crimes by lunchtime today than the defendant has committed in this indictment. I simply don’t see how either the People or the cause of justice are served by locking Molly Bloom in prison.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] It was as casual as if he was ordering lunch off a menu.

Judge Foxman: Ms. Bloom, this court sentences you to two-hundred hours of community service, one year of supervised probation and drug testing and a one-hundred thousand dollar fine. This case is adjourned.

Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.

Misunderstanding Leads to Legal Complications

Harrison Wellstone: In Mike Davidoff's phone, intercepts alone, just Davidoff, your name comes up 19 times! "We need Molly..." "Get Molly..." "Bring Molly." It strongly suggests you were important to his business, so it's hard for me to believe that someone with your savvy and obvious intellect...

Molly Bloom: [interrupting him] They're talking about the drug. "Get molly" "Bring molly" "We need molly" It's... they're talking about the drug ecstasy'.

Charlie Jaffey: [pause] Shit. My office was next to yours for two years and I saw you make some bone-headed moves but I’ve never seen any prosecutor step in it the way you just did. You should thank all of the gods that there’s no physical record of that exchange.

Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.

Clarifying Misconceptions About Women's Roles

Harrison Wellstone: [in a deposition] Were the women who worked for you call girls?

Molly Bloom: No sir.

Brennan: They never exchanged sex for money?

Molly Bloom: No.

Harrison Wellstone: Have you ever exchanged sex for money?

Charlie Jaffey: [interrupting them] No!

Molly Bloom: I think he was talking to me.

Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.

The Cost of Losing Identity and Control

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] The game had given me an identity, respect, and a defined place in a world that was inaccessible and in one irrational heartbeat it was taken away. I was irrelevant and forgotten overnight. It’d been two weeks since I lost the game and I made an appointment to see someone because now the humiliation and depression had given way to a blinding anger at my powerlessness over the unfair whims of men who had leverage over me and I wanted to talk it out with someone. That was it, that’s what was making me angry. It was that there weren’t any rules. These power moves weren’t framed by right and wrong, just ego and vanity. Selfish whims with no regard to consequence. No fairness, no justice. And that giggling, cackling call from Player X...

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] I couldn’t lose to that greenscreened little shit and I didn’t want a therapist to make me feel okay about it. You know what makes you feel okay about losing? Winning.

Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.

Recognizing a Losing Streak in Poker

Molly Bloom: You're on tilt—everybody knows it. You're playing without the weapons you need to win.

Harlan Eustice: [nods] You're right.

Molly Bloom: [nods] Alright. Thank you.

Harlan Eustice: Give me five hundred thousand. I just got to get back to even.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over; Harlan returns to the table with fresh chips] That should be the second line of every gambler’s obit. “Mr. Feldstein died while trying to get back to even.” Harlan never did. And he never got to his wife’s birthday party. She filed for divorce two days later. But there was one last punch coming that would put Harlan on the floor for good. Harlan was heads-up against a guy named Frederick who was Austrian royalty.

Harlan Eustice: [pushes a few stacks of chips towards the center of the table] Call.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] Harlan had pocket queens. His Excellency had Ace-King. They were both in 65K pre-flop. The flop's queen-seven-seven. Harlan has a full-house again, queens full of sevens, with three rounds of betting in front of him. The Count has nothing.

Frederick: [puts his hand up] All in.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] And the Count goes all in. He wants Harlan to think he’s got two more sevens under there.

Harlan Eustice: [turns his cards face up and pushes his remaining chips towards the center of the table] Call.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over; Diego burns another card and deals the last turn: a King of Clubs] Nope, says Harlan. He’s not falling for this again and he snap calls all in. There’s $750,000 on the table. Diego burns a card and deals the turn. A king. Otto von Bismarck now has two-pair, kings and sevens, but two-pair’s nothing next to a full house. And at this point, the only hand left that can beat a queen full house...'...is a king full house.

Frederick: [smiles] Alright.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] Captain von Trapp bluffed two-pair and rivered into kings full.

Harlan Eustice: [shakes his head, stunned; grabs some food that’s on a plate and throws it at Diego] Motherfucker. MOTHERFUCKER! FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING MECHANIC!

Molly Bloom: Hey!

Harlan Eustice: FUCK YOU, YOU BOTTOM-DEALIN PARTY MAGICIAN!

Molly Bloom: [ushers Harlan away from the table] Hey, get out onto the terrace.

Harlan Eustice: You've been pulling this shit on me for two days!

Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.

High Stakes in a Poker Game

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] Harlan's got a boat, nines full. Brad's got nothing, but his pre-flop betting made it look, entirely accidentally, like there was a chance he had pocket kings.

Harlan Eustice: [pushes a few stacks of chips towards the center of the table] Twenty thousand.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] Which, if true, would give him the better full house. Brad's counting off twenty thousand, which means he's gonna call, and Harlan knows that if Brad's gonna call and not raise, it means he didn't have the boat, and he's betting a high two-pair, probably kings and queens. But then, instead of calling the bet, Brad pushes seventy-two thousand dollars into the pot.

Brad Marion: [pushes all of his chips towards the center of the table, Harlan frowns] I'm all in.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] Harlan looks at Brad. Every tell Harlan knows about—carotid artery pumping, stiff hands—Brad’s doing the opposite. Brad's bet had represented a huge hand by calling on the flop, check-raising the turn and bombing the river. Of course Harlan didn’t know that Brad didn’t know what any of that meant. So Harlan, always a good sport, said:

Harlan Eustice: [smiles; tosses in his cards] Nice bet. I'm laying this down.

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] As he tossed in what he didn’t realize was the winning hand. Brad tosses in his cards too and one of them flips over and Harlan sees:

Harlan Eustice: [frowns] You didn't have pocket kings?

Brad Marion: [smiles] I didn't have any kings, except the one in the middle.

Harlan Eustice: You had two-pair?

Brad Marion: I had one-pair, the nines in the middle.

Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.

The Dark Side of Poker Motivation

Player X: You know, I don't like playing poker.

Molly Bloom: Why do you play?

Player X: I like destroying lives.

Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.

The Dynamics of High-Stakes Poker Games

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] I’d overheard stories about games that folded after one bad night and I needed this one to keep going and I needed to bring value to it. I knew if I wanted to cement my place there was one guy I needed to team up with and that was this man. The game had regulars and the game had guests and four of the regulars were famous actors and I’m going to call one of them Player X. Player X subscribed to the belief that money won was twice as good as money earned. He lived to beat people and take their money. Here’s Player X talking one of the guests into folding the winning hand.

Player X: I swear on my--look at me--I swear on my mother’s life--I have you.

Molly Bloom: Player X was the best player at the table and tonight this guy was the worst. He’s staring at his cards - even a reasonably good amateur would know it was mathematically the best hand, which in poker is called the nuts. There was forty seven thousand dollars in the pot and the guest was holding the nuts but he was starting to get confused because a movie star was talking to him.

Player X: My mother’s life man, I’m not messing with you.

Guest: Why would you be telling me?

Player X: Either I am messing with you or you’re new to the game, you’ve had bad cards all night, you should’ve folded after the flop and I don’t want to win more of your money this way. I’ve got queens under here. Take your time.

Guest: Fold.

Player X: Fuck you!

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] A fish is a particular kind of player. A fish has money. A fish plays loose and doesn’t fold a lot. A fish is good but not too good. The Viper Room may have belonged to Reardon but the game belonged to Player X. People wanted to say they played with him the same way they wanted to say they rode on Air Force One. My job security was gonna depend on bringing him his fish. But where would I find people with a lot of money who didn’t know how to spend it and liked to be around celebrities?

Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.

Career Choices Driven by Personal Circumstances

Molly Bloom: Why did you leave the prosecutor’s office and become a defense attorney?

Charlie Jaffey: My daughter.

Molly Bloom: You needed to make money.

Charlie Jaffey: That and I was usually one of the few people who knew where witnesses were being hidden.

Molly Bloom: It was dangerous.

Charlie Jaffey: Mm-hm.

Molly Bloom: So you didn’t leave the prosecutor’s office because you wanted to stand up for the innocent and believe everyone’s entitled to the best defense?

Charlie Jaffey: Not really.

Molly Bloom: [[w:Spencer Tracy|Spencer Tracy; pause] It would have been helpful if you were ] or... I didn’t know who the Russians were. I can get you the two-hundred and fifty-thousand, I left ten times that on the street, it’ll just take some time.

Charlie Jaffey: We do pro bono work - we regularly lend out our best litigators like me to the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, veterans groups - but I don’t think I can convince my partners to take a flyer on the Poker Princess.

Molly Bloom: I didn’t name myself the Poker Princess.

Charlie Jaffey: “Molly Bloom, the self-proclaimed Poker Princess...”

Molly Bloom: That’s Us Weekly? I agree it would be unusual for them to print something that wasn’t true but it’s not true and if you think a princess could do what I did you’re incorrect. I’m getting that you don’t think much of me but what if every one of your ill informed, unsophisticated opinions about me were wrong?

Charlie Jaffey: I’d be amazed.

Molly Bloom: Yeah you know what, bud? You would.

Charlie Jaffey: You don’t need me, you need a publicist.

Molly Bloom: No, I need a fuckin’ lawyer!

Defending Molly's Game Against RICO Charges

Charlie Jaffey: [[J. Edgar Hoover; [Bobby Kennedy|Bobby] This woman does not belong in a RICO indictment, are you outta your minds?! She does not belong in a mob indictment, she raked a game, that’s it, for seven months two years ago. And why? Because she was giving credit in the millions and she didn’t want to use muscle to collect. She has had opportunity after opportunity to greatly benefit herself by simply telling the real stories she knows. Ok, I have the forensic imaging going back to 2007, and I'm talking about text messages, emails - movie stars, rock stars, athletes, billionaires; all explicit—some married with kids—but that’s the tip of the iceberg. What about the guy comes this close to being named U.S. Ambassador to Monaco, he’s withdrawn from consideration at the last minute, no one knows why. She does. CEOs with college-age mistresses, an SVP of an investment bank who wanted Molly to put a marked deck in the game, the head of a movie studio who texted her that a particular movie star was too black for his taste, ] didn’t have this much shit on ]! You know, she could’ve written a best seller, she could have been set for life. You know, you know she’s got the winning lottery ticket and she won’t cash it. Your office took every dollar she had in a Constitutionally fucked up seizure and then you put the IRS on her to tax what you seized? I mean, I’ve been in those strategy meetings. You broke her back so she couldn’t possibly afford to defend herself. And now she has an opportunity to guarantee her freedom by just...“providing color”...and she still won’t do it. This woman doesn’t belong in a RICO indictment, she belongs on a box of Wheaties. So yes, Harrison, I am imploring you to do the right thing. She knows nothing about the three Petes. Nothing about Taiwanchik. Nothing about RGO or insurance fraud. Between the two of us we’ve appeared in front of this judge 28 times as prosecutors and not once has he deviated from our sentencing recommendations, he’s not gonna start now. I know you’ve been putting this bust together for three years and there’s no one who doesn’t want to see mobsters go to jail, including and especially the one person in the room who’s had one of them put a gun in her mouth. Probation. Community service. Or better yet, just consider that all she did was run a poker game exactly the same way every casino in America does and drop the goddamn charges.

The Importance of Identity and Legacy

Molly Bloom: Because it's all I have left! Because it's my name... and I'll never have another.

The Illusion of Control and Consequences

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] When I lost the LA game I told myself it was no big deal. It was just supposed to be an adventure and a way to meet influential people. And I’d saved over two hundred thousand dollars. But that was just a weak firewall I’d hastily built to keep out the humiliation and depression I knew was coming. It had to end sometime, I just thought it would be on my time. I didn’t think it was gonna be taken away from me. And for such a stomach-turning reason.

Harlan's Risky Poker Strategy at Dawn

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] By 5 a.m., Harlan was down half a million. He'd abandoned everything he knew about poker and was playing like a frat kid, swinging for a home run on every hand.

The Risks of Underestimating an Opponent

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] By midnight, Harlan had tripled his original fifty-thousand dollar buy-in. But everything came off the rails with one hand. And that’s how it happens, that’s how you go full tilt. Harlan, the best player at the table, the best player at most tables, was about to get bluffed off the win by, of all people...Bad Brad. How? Because Harlan had never played with Brad before, and didn't know yet that Brad was bad.

The Essence of Competition and Exclusivity

Molly Bloom: [voiceover] My game had a tricky ecosystem. It was built around escapism and exclusivity. These guys could buy their way into anything and anyone but here in this room you couldn’t buy your win. You couldn’t buy me, you couldn’t buy the girls and you couldn’t buy a seat at the table. There’s nothing as sweet as a win you have to work for and the wins and losses were compelling and they were real. Of course it helped that the players were gambling addicts.

The Burden of Comparison and Competition

Molly Bloom: [voice-over; [wikipedia:Mack Robinson (athlete)|Matthew Robinson; [Jesse Owens; [Jackie Robinson|Jackie] There was a track star from Pasadena in the 1930s named ]. Matthew Robinson shattered the Olympic record in the two-hundred at the Berlin Games in 1936. Absolutely shattered the Olympic record...and came in second. The man who came in first was ]. Owens went on to be a legend. Matthew Robinson went on to be a janitor at a whites-only school in Pasadena. The difference was two-hundreths of a second. As if that wasn’t enough, Matthew Robinson had a little brother who was also an athlete. His name was Jack but everyone called him ]. I have two younger brothers who were also overachievers. While I was ranked 3rd in North America, my brother Jeremy was Number 1 in the world. And while I was placing into A.P. Chemistry as a junior, my brother Jordan was doing it when he was 12-years-old or something, I don’t know. I was a hotshot student and a hotshot skier everywhere but my own house. And that’s where we live. As I got older I began to bait my father into fights without really knowing why I was doing it.

The Pursuit of Winning Above All

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] People have asked me what my goal was at that point, what was my endgame. Back then I would have laughed at that question. I was raised to be a champion, my goal was to win. At what and against whom? Those were just details.

The Power of Listening in Diverse Fields

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] Poker was my Trojan horse into the highest levels of finance, technology, politics, art, entertainment - all I had to do was listen.

Understanding Risk and Precision in Sports

Molly Bloom: [voice-over; her ski comes off in the air] Now two things you need to know before the second trick. which’ll be a 720. The first is that when visibility is bad the way it is now, race officials jam pine boughs in the snow at the edge of the jump so the skiers have some foreground depth reference. The second is that the tightness of your bindings is determined by what’s called a DIN setting. If you’re a beginner your DIN setting is probably 2 or 3. If you’re an experienced weekend skier it’s probably 7 or 8. Mine’s 15. My boots are basically welded to my skis. Right...so how does this happen? It happened because I hit a pine bough and I hit it so precisely that it simply snapped the release on my bindings. Right in that moment I didn’t have time to calculate the odds of that happening because I was about to land pretty hard on my digitally remastered spinal cord which is being held together by spare parts from an Erector Set. None of this has anything to do with poker. I’m only mentioning it because I wanted to say to whoever answered that the worst thing that could happen in sports was 4th place at the Olympics - seriously, fuck you.

The Perception of Failure in Sports

Molly Bloom: [voice-over] A survey was taken a few years ago that asked 300 professionals one question, "What's the worst thing that can happen in sports?" Some people answered losing a game 7, and other people said getting swept in the 4. Some people said it was missing the world cup, and some Brazilians said it was losing to Argentina. Not just in the world cup. Anytime, ever in any contest. But one person answered that the worst thing that can happen in sports is 4th place at the Olympics.