The Grand

Koko: Yes, that is a giant, unpredictable, snarling bear behind Werner Herzog. But I ask you, who, really, is in danger here? Surely not a man who checks into hotels simply as "The German." Nor one who, while petting a white rabbit named Munchkin, insists that he has never felt more alive than when strangling a goat with his bare hands. Nor a man who calmly observes that "Las Vegas has no irony" shortly after remarking that "coffee is some kind of beverage for cowards." This fake documentary on high-stakes poker puts everything in and wins big. No, not thanks to smart direction or a good script, but because the man who thirty years ago brought a steamship to the Amazon and made a bunch of tired natives pull it--literally, pull it--over a mountain, who insisted that Steve Zahn brave a poisonous caterpiller just because that's what art is for, who ate his own shoe after losing a bet with Errol Morris, because this man briefly stopped making documentaries about the world champion of cattle auctioning and some nut who gets eaten by bears (see above) in order to hold a bunny for fifteen minutes and pretend to act.

That bear better watch hisself.

Slothrop: So this poker movie was not about poker. And the parts of it that were, were fucking stupid. And many of the jokes were stupid too. Poker players are assholes, so they're not much to root for, either. But as Koko observed with perspicuity, you add a german who hates coffee and who loves bunnies, and all of a sudden you find yourself asking: is the world better for allowing the possibility that Herzog might, indeed, exist? Yes it is.  And degenerate people are alright. 

I've really got to start start playing poker again. And whoring. Playing poker and whoring with Fitzaraldo playing in the background. That's what I need.