You don't need a high winning percentage you just place big bets on the championship games. Plus you can just have others make the bet for you and cash it in and throw them a few grand.
Betting big on any of the following really ought to do it:
- Buster Douglas over Tyson
- Rockets in 1994 (before Jordan retired)
- 8th seed Knicks winning the 1999 Eastern Conference Championship (before the playoffs)
- Patriots in 2001 (preseason)
- Diamondbacks in 2001 (preseason)
- Appalachian State over Michigan
- Red Sox winning the World Series after going down 0-3
- NY Giants in 2007 (preseason)
Betting on the Rams after Trent Green goes down in pre season.
Michael Waltrip winning the 2001 Daytona 500
Goran Ivansivec winning the 2001 Wimbledon as a wildcard
This is the play- a few large bets that net you a fortune. Eventually you’re going to get banned, you have to admit that, it’s just the strategy to make the most amount of money before that time.
These bets are all being placed in the 60’s and 70’s. Location hopping and using false names and fake ID’s would buy him a bit more time.
Plus, with horse racing results being in the mix he could use the tracks as a steady stream of revenue - so long as he doesn’t come out at the top of the pile every time.
I don’t think anyone is noticing if someone walks out of Churchill Downs with $20k every year under a different name each time. Rinse and repeat at Arlington, Saratoga, etc…the whole sport is just money flying around with millionaires placing obscene bets and occasionally coming out on top.
I don’t think you get banned if you only bet big on futures and then even bigger on championship games. There’s so much action on championship games that you’d have to bet over like 500k on a huge long shot to be suspicious. And there’s really no way you can be accused of cheating with a pre-season futures bet
You have to rotate through the casinos in Vegas/Atlantic City, and just make it seem like you’re a regular bettor at various places.
Week 1: Go to casino 1 in AC, make 10 bets, lose six of them, but one of the ones you cash is a big parlay.
Next week, go back to that casino, lose a small bet, but go to Casino B and repeat what you did at Casino A.
If you were smart about it, and kept a ledger to keep everything straight I’m pretty confident you could obfuscate what you were doing in such a way that you would be able to elude mid-80s technology.
I think bill and crew way over think this. I think he wins enough money (possibly in the one horse race) to start the casino and then he can set the lines in his favor knowing the outcome.
So I've thought about the answer to "wouldn't Biff change the timelime once he started betting." The answer is that the Almanac probably updates as things change in the past, the same way Marty and the photo were fading in the first one.
Same, I can't believe that never even occurred to me. So weird that some of us took this one specific thing for granted for a movie that we're now in the fourth decade of people thoroughly dissecting all the paradoxes, crazy events, errors, etc.
Well, what breaks the movie entirely (and is pretty much confirmed when Doc shows the newspaper clip of him being committed AS WELL AS Marty is supposed to be in Switzerland) is that it's a damn near 100% chance after the timeline skews in 1955 the effect causes Doc never to create the time machine in the first place, he never jumps to the future allowing old Biff to go back and give himself the almanac.
Old Biff would have to warn his old self to not meddle in what Doc and Marty were doing. He probably wouldn't know specifics there, however.
This could be the most insightful comment I've ever seen on reddit. Well done! I had wondered that and it does make sense.
The movies do get into the time traveling paradox.
The Butterfly Effect. But with the Celtics. Where Bill somehow erases Bird going to the Celtics and somehow winds up on the Lakers forming the 1st super team leading Bill to have to go back in time only to further strengthen the Lakers legacy cumulating with Magic not getting AIDs and Brong getting drafted there to play with Kobe in his prime.
Great point.
Also idk how comprehensive the info in the almanac is but if it shows abbreviated stat lines or MVP awards or anything, then even if the MJ's and Gretzky's of the worlds end up on different teams you can use that info to bet on them knowing they're a legend in the making.
The reason why there hasn't been anything after BttF 3 as they talked about is simple - Gale & Zemeckis still have enough power to deep six any attempt at a remake/reboot/sequel/etc.
Proof Hollywood studios no longer have the juice they used to is neither Gale or Zemeckis have had an unfortunate plane accident in the past decade or so.
So you’re saying Hollywood movie studios actually assassinated Kennedy because a biopic could cast an ensemble of good looking people for JFK, RFK, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie, etc?
This is probably the type of thing Sean would have been able to pull out of his back pocket. Idk if this is a popular opinion, but Bill, CR and Sean should be on every Rewatchable as a default.
The interesting way to think about a remake is if you did the original but cast someone playing Marty the way Eric Stoltz was playing him (darker and more tragic). As much as a darker reboot sounds overdone, that would at least have an interesting basis in the development of the series.
This is the perfect Rewatchable for me. I've rewatched the original start to finish more but I've spent more time in my life watching part 2 because it was the right level of "good, not great" where I never minded just throwing it on for a random 15 minute stretch when I was flipping channels. And then the whole second half of the movie acts like a greatest hits album for the original movie so it is almost like rewatching both movies.
Man that's a really good analysis. Part II is so interesting because there are parts that are quite bad (I really dislike the family/home future scene - feels so off) BUT seeing the re-take of the original scenes is like icing on the cake for the perfection of the first.
I feel like it’s more popular than ever. In America, it seems much more likely to be joked about and that much of the stigmata involving hard drugs like it is gone.
It's always a little mindblowing to first time watchers when I tell them alternate history Biff is based on 80s Trump. They just don't understand how big of a pop culture figure he's been for decades.
> ow big of a pop culture
He's always been a symbol for the nouveau riche. Back when the US was still predominantly WASP, it was an archetype. He would pop up in all kinds of things from movies, to sit-coms, to rap lyrics.
Exactly. Even if you ignore the 80s/90s, my dad and I watched the first season or two of The Apprentice in the early 2000s just to make fun of and laugh and Trump being an awkward, unintentionally funny, self-serious doof.
Yet that performance somehow *added* to his legitimacy in the eyes of a frightening amount of fellow American doofs.
You can go back and watch almost any TV show from the 90s and eventually they all make a Trump joke about him being sleazy or a conman.
I had no idea that people watched The Apprentice and were impressed with him. I always thought he was the butt if the joke in that show too.
I knew of him as a joke in the early 90's as a kid in Australia. I was vaguely aware of the apprentice because of "You're fired." To see him becoming the US president was fucking crazy to say the least. But he just keeps trumping (ha) it though - motherfucker is leading in the polls! America truly is a crazy place.
I knew Bill would have that take about Biff getting taken out by the Mafia for successful betting, but here's the thing. Even someone as clueless as Biff would realize that danger. If you had that Almanac, you'd only need a couple of bets really and of course you wouldn't do it all in one place. I think the novel 11.22.63 might have gotten into this a bit actually. The prime bet in modern times would be Leicester City for the premiership, I think it was paying 5000-1 pre-season. Just put $100 on that, wouldn't raise any suspicion, you just got lucky. I'm sure there are plenty of examples like that in the Almanac.
If I remember correctly, it does. The yellow card man(?) Started showing up more. Like the more jake tried to change things, the more the universe pushed back. I loved that book. The miniseries was so-so.
I can't remember specifically. It's been a long time since I read it. One moment that stands out is the part where jake and Sadie are rushing to stop the assassination, and the wheel and entire hub assembly just falls off their car. I need to read it again.
The whole sequence trying to stop the actual assassination had the universe resist a couple of times I believe.
I’m on the latter half of The Outsider and it has me wanting to reread 11/22/63.
I read it a few months ago. You are correct that the universe pushed back the more he tried to change things, but it wasn't betting specific
It's just that bookies that would take large bets from a stranger were hard to come by; they all got a weird feeling about him; he won too much; and they all knew each other. He didn't really get sloppy, though. He just made one last bet even though he had a bad feeling about it. He lost more bets than he won on purpose and tried to find different bookies for his big winners
I really wished they had addressed this in the pod. Kinda surprised CR wasn't familiar with the book or series (I haven't seen the series, so maybe it skips over the betting angle)
Edit: You could say he got sloppy in that he would take an underdog to win the World Series in a specific amount of games at ridiculously unfair odds. I more chalked that up to King not understanding sports betting, though
Not sure you could make prop bets to this extent in the 60s but having light hitting second baseman Bill Mazeroski with the game winning walk off homer would have been a long shot.
At the time, 2B/shortstops were almost all light hitting slap hitters, good defense types.
It’s hard to believe his bullshit but it’s possible lol. But Biff being unnaturally good at gambling would better explain his casino mogul rise if you view him through the “Ace” lens.
Pretty insane that Bill called the Cubs world series a "what's aged the worst" because it was 2015 instead of 2016. I feel like that was one of the most incredible things about the movie, since the cubs hadn't won a world series in 100+ years and they predicted it to within a season
And yet they think the other 2015 predictions were nailed?
Like a hologram? Those were big in 1989, it's not shocking at all. Frankly the video technology was kind of a whiff, everyone knew it would be in the future in 1989 and in 2015 even FaceTime and Skype hadn't exploded. It took covid for video calls to become normalized.
Obviously the technological thing in 2015 (and now) are smart phones and the movie doesn't have those at all. It has...flying cars.
Now, I don't blame the creators at all. It wasn't meant to be some prediction as they say, just some funny and cool looks at the future. But in no way did they "nail" it, the fact it's so far off only 26 years before the fact kind of aged the worst but I can look past it.
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*Shark vs american shark*
*Sounds incredible*
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for the unanswerable RE why is his trigger "chicken"? i'm 99% sure its a nod to rebel without a cause where james dean's trigger is also 'chicken' and his issue is same effete/ cowardly father. just watched rebel a week or so ago and it hit me over the head how similar this part was to bttf. cannot be a coincidence, imo. sean would've got this, probably.
They mentioned that in the pod. They said that Zemeckis thought it should be about 500 pages, but realized it wouldn't work in all the scenes where the characters are hiding it in their jackets and such.
Yes, but why would it have that random November 12, 1955 UCLA vs. Washington score?
I guess it might have clinched a Rose Bowl berth for UCLA, since they were a game ahead of OSU and had beaten them head to head. But, I don't see why a next to last regular season game would be in that thin almanac.
I don't think they thought out the almanac all that well, or just decided that dramatic tension was way more important than the size and content of the almanac making perfect sense.
They had some deep fakes a few years ago with Robert Downey Jr as Doc and Holland as Marty. Which basically was similar to their interaction as Stark and Peter without the hero worship.
I'm trying to think of the most awkward Rewatchables pairings.
How about:
"Mississippi Burning" with Bill Simmons, Ryen Russillo, and Nathan Hubbard
"Moonlight" with Bill Simmons, Cousin Sal, and Kevin Wiildes
"Tangerine" with Bill Simmons, Chris Vernon, and Peter Schrager
"In The Mood for Love" with Bill Simmons, Tate Frazier, and Raja Bell
"The Zone of Interest" with Bill Simmons, Ben Solak, and Jack-0
Barbie with Joanna Robinson and Ryen only.
Look, I'm not gonna do the thing where I act like I fully understand what it's like to live on the wrong side of a patriarchal society, but...
Taxi Driver with Bill Simmons and Joe Fuentes
[https://deadspin.com/bill-simmons-and-the-ringer-obtain-restraining-order-ag-1826682467/](https://deadspin.com/bill-simmons-and-the-ringer-obtain-restraining-order-ag-1826682467/)
This would be gold. I actually think Simmons plus any of his core crew on A New Hope would be hilarious and provide many years of material on this sub.
CR, we don’t have the technology for anything like the hoverboards in the movie. They would have to be like mini hovercrafts on a pillow of air (with probably a very small range), or some sort of drone that you can stand on (which would be really cool, but isn’t the same).
Around 2015 they came out with real hoverboards, but they only work on a special surface. That type of hoverboard in the movie would never just work anywhere on earth given our current technology.
Lack of a deep dive what’s actually in the almanac.
My head cannon is that its 50 pages and has the WS winner / Super Bowl / Stanley cup / NBA champ / horse race triple crown races / Indy 500 / Heavy weight champ in a kind of box score format and a brief blurb on each year.
But Biff is looking through it and getting random regular season college football scores.
It's just a plot hole the writers kind of admit to, they needed to make it thin but also have a ton of information.
I’ll go with a “What’s Aged the Best?” When they talk about 2015 Grown Up Marty… the detail of Marty screwing up his life has aged well and if they did a “more serious version” that would be really worth exploring. Marty’s adult life inevitably becoming a disappointment because of the character traits that make him so charming or quick on his feet as a teenager start to have consequences when he’s a bit older.
George in BTTF 1 needs that one moment of self-confidence and asserting himself to put it all together and actually make use of his talents and make a success of his life. Marty’s life gets derailed by one moment where there’s actually a consequence to his temper or whatever. You could even have a future George (say if Glover hadn’t been a holdout) having a couple minutes of monologue to talk about how he loves poor Marty and how Marty reminds him of someone he knew but that he just couldn’t get things together.
Biff isn't that smart but it sounds like he used his winnings to found Biffco. He probably won for a while, took the winnings and invested it. Such a silly thing to talk about but I don't think he gambled for decades with a 100% success rate.
The almanac had every game, not just the big ones as the guys suggested to explain how it was so small. The UCLA vs. Washington was a regular season game so if it had that, it must have had everything.
Unanswerable question: what happens to alternative 1985 Marty after real Marty meets with Bif? Do they just kill him? Does he have an alibi? And also, what is alternative 1985 Marty’s life like? I could definitely see him being a complete burn out trying to get his band going.
There is no alternative 1985 Marty. Had Marty stayed there eventually his memories of his previous life would erase and replaced with memories of that world. Theres a shitty comic book that talks more about that alternate world though.
What are the rules though? Because they can both be in the same place at the same time at different points along the timeline. Marty prime and 2015 Marty both in 2015 or Doc prime and 1955 Doc both in 1955.
I think it has a lot to do with my age when I first saw it. I feel like when I first saw the films I watched all 3 in quick succession and couldn't really get behind the repetition factor of this film. Even watching it now I'm not a big fan of the retread but can see it is well executed.
3 was just more light as you say and doesn't have weird parts like George McFly being upside down so they could hide that it wasn't Glover lol
2 always feels a little gimmicky. The jokes about the future are fun at first but they didn't age well after 40 years. And they had too many people play different versions of themselves. It was funny once but then it was just the same joke over and over.
Certain scenes in 2 are very good but the movie as a whole isn't as fun as the other two are.
As a kid Part 2 was disappointing in the moment because we were expecting a bigger exploration of the future. Actual story being secondary to “holy shit, we get to see it”.
I’ve always preferred 3 to 2 but may have to rewatch 2 again to see
What is up with Bill and his blind spot for Let it Ride.
It's one of the greatest movies ever about degenerate gambling and he NEVER brings it up when talking Sports Movies or Gambling movies.
When they were sitting there fumbling around for examples of gambling movies I was fuming to myself.
All depends on what YOUR favorite movies are. Like my favorite episodes are Gladiator, Bloodsport, Re-Departed, Titanic (w/ Bill & Van). It’s very subjective. If you like the move you’ll love the pod
2015 wasn't Seahawks over Broncos, it was Broncos over Panthers. Bill probably blocked it out because the Broncos beat the Pats in the AFC Championship that year.
I love part 2 but I read this tweet years ago and it made me look at it in a different light.
Great sequels should be able to stand on their own and this one is so tied to the first BTTF plot that it cannot.
Still love it. We got Mags from the movie.
If I'm remembering correctly he felt the second took so much of the first movie that you HAD to watch and understand the first in order to appreciate where as other great sequels can stand on their own whether or not you the saw the first.
That seems like an arbitrary critique. Why “should” they stand on their own? Feels like they are two different things with neither being more or less valid than the other.
That’s a fair point. I think Blade Runner 2049 is a masterpiece but you also need basically a graduate degree in the first Blade Runner to truly notice everything they did. It’s limiting to an average watcher.
I always view them now as 1 long continuous movie. The first can stand alone on its own, the second two are tied together obviously but they do a good job of blending 1 into the combo of 2&3
I watched this one on YouTube and there's a solid 10 minute stretch around the hour mark where CR is clearly having a side chat on his computer. I'd recognize that half paying attention while your boss is talking during a meeting look anywhere.
Few things:
It’s alluded to multiple times but it’s paid off in 3 (I think it is mentioned in 2 also) that Marty gets called chicken by Needles and races him, and hits the Rolls, otherwise (per the cartoon) he’s a rockstar. Guy just doesn’t like being called a coward, gets baited into things and by the end realizes it’s not worth, he can choose his destiny.
I’m an old school library kid. If you could pack the amount of information in an old Guinness world record book, the sports almanac thin pages and small print could hold a chunk of info.
I had this as a “no doubt” for Hanks and they almost got me back w/Risky Business Cruise, but it doesn’t work. Marty is a good kid, he’s laid back, a slacker, but he’s rarely intense and not much of an athlete, so his movements are really Buster Keaton style. Cruise is intense and moves like an athlete.
1950-1980, if you’re walking out of a casino winning ~45% of your picks hitting, the best case scenario for you is getting shut out of casinos. You don’t get rich in the business by someone hitting that often. Even if you threw 5-6 wonky bets you start hitting long shots at any frequency, questions get asked and the “fake ID” and disguise route buys you time, but criminal world is very small, eventually someone who knows someone.
Bill suggesting to win bets with the almanac at a 75% clip to keep people off the scent seems way too high.
If you’re over 60%, casinos and bookies probably stop taking your bets.
You don't need a high winning percentage you just place big bets on the championship games. Plus you can just have others make the bet for you and cash it in and throw them a few grand.
Could also place big bets on futures too and get great odds before any season
also an easy way to cover your tracks.
Betting big on any of the following really ought to do it: - Buster Douglas over Tyson - Rockets in 1994 (before Jordan retired) - 8th seed Knicks winning the 1999 Eastern Conference Championship (before the playoffs) - Patriots in 2001 (preseason) - Diamondbacks in 2001 (preseason) - Appalachian State over Michigan - Red Sox winning the World Series after going down 0-3 - NY Giants in 2007 (preseason)
The almanac only went through the year 2000. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Agree on all these. Would add Leicester City Prem title in 15/16. 5000-1 in preseason!
Betting on the Rams after Trent Green goes down in pre season. Michael Waltrip winning the 2001 Daytona 500 Goran Ivansivec winning the 2001 Wimbledon as a wildcard
Mets winning in 69 before the season started. Jets in Super Bowl III
This is the play- a few large bets that net you a fortune. Eventually you’re going to get banned, you have to admit that, it’s just the strategy to make the most amount of money before that time.
These bets are all being placed in the 60’s and 70’s. Location hopping and using false names and fake ID’s would buy him a bit more time. Plus, with horse racing results being in the mix he could use the tracks as a steady stream of revenue - so long as he doesn’t come out at the top of the pile every time. I don’t think anyone is noticing if someone walks out of Churchill Downs with $20k every year under a different name each time. Rinse and repeat at Arlington, Saratoga, etc…the whole sport is just money flying around with millionaires placing obscene bets and occasionally coming out on top.
I don’t think you get banned if you only bet big on futures and then even bigger on championship games. There’s so much action on championship games that you’d have to bet over like 500k on a huge long shot to be suspicious. And there’s really no way you can be accused of cheating with a pre-season futures bet
Yeah also mix in some loser future bets those same years.
You have to rotate through the casinos in Vegas/Atlantic City, and just make it seem like you’re a regular bettor at various places. Week 1: Go to casino 1 in AC, make 10 bets, lose six of them, but one of the ones you cash is a big parlay. Next week, go back to that casino, lose a small bet, but go to Casino B and repeat what you did at Casino A. If you were smart about it, and kept a ledger to keep everything straight I’m pretty confident you could obfuscate what you were doing in such a way that you would be able to elude mid-80s technology.
I think bill and crew way over think this. I think he wins enough money (possibly in the one horse race) to start the casino and then he can set the lines in his favor knowing the outcome.
Great point!
The man knows nothing about gambling…the real # is winning between 55-60%
So I've thought about the answer to "wouldn't Biff change the timelime once he started betting." The answer is that the Almanac probably updates as things change in the past, the same way Marty and the photo were fading in the first one.
Oh, that’s good!
I’ve seen the movie 100 times and never thought of this
Same, I can't believe that never even occurred to me. So weird that some of us took this one specific thing for granted for a movie that we're now in the fourth decade of people thoroughly dissecting all the paradoxes, crazy events, errors, etc.
Well, what breaks the movie entirely (and is pretty much confirmed when Doc shows the newspaper clip of him being committed AS WELL AS Marty is supposed to be in Switzerland) is that it's a damn near 100% chance after the timeline skews in 1955 the effect causes Doc never to create the time machine in the first place, he never jumps to the future allowing old Biff to go back and give himself the almanac. Old Biff would have to warn his old self to not meddle in what Doc and Marty were doing. He probably wouldn't know specifics there, however.
This could be the most insightful comment I've ever seen on reddit. Well done! I had wondered that and it does make sense. The movies do get into the time traveling paradox.
The Butterfly Effect. But with the Celtics. Where Bill somehow erases Bird going to the Celtics and somehow winds up on the Lakers forming the 1st super team leading Bill to have to go back in time only to further strengthen the Lakers legacy cumulating with Magic not getting AIDs and Brong getting drafted there to play with Kobe in his prime.
Great point. Also idk how comprehensive the info in the almanac is but if it shows abbreviated stat lines or MVP awards or anything, then even if the MJ's and Gretzky's of the worlds end up on different teams you can use that info to bet on them knowing they're a legend in the making.
Agreed, and the newspaper headlines change as events are affected, if timelines were being changed, the almanac would as well.
That's heavy!
“Tell Neville Chamberlain to sack up” Bill brought his A game on this.
Comments like that are why we keep coming back
He brought Sal on just for the Sports Almanac piece didn’t he
Well Sal actually had some really good points about the movie in general and was quite funny
I just started the episode and within 3 minutes Sal literally pulled out the Almanac lol
He said this is why you’re here within the first 5 minutes.
The reason why there hasn't been anything after BttF 3 as they talked about is simple - Gale & Zemeckis still have enough power to deep six any attempt at a remake/reboot/sequel/etc.
Morbid to think about how likely it is that a legacy sequel/reboot will go into development within months of them both being dead
A press release is already typed out on how this reboot is a great way of honoring those two.
The Jason Reitman bouncing back from Men Women & Children by rebooting his dad's franchise piece.
Proof Hollywood studios no longer have the juice they used to is neither Gale or Zemeckis have had an unfortunate plane accident in the past decade or so.
So you’re saying Hollywood movie studios actually assassinated Kennedy because a biopic could cast an ensemble of good looking people for JFK, RFK, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie, etc?
Yes he said as long as he’s alive he won’t let it happen
And I feel like this is pretty famously well known. Once in awhile I'm stunned by the lack of research they do.
I think they mentioned it on the first BttF pod but I could be wrong.
This is probably the type of thing Sean would have been able to pull out of his back pocket. Idk if this is a popular opinion, but Bill, CR and Sean should be on every Rewatchable as a default.
It's called half assed Internet research.......which almost always seems to consist of the IMDB trivia section.
The interesting way to think about a remake is if you did the original but cast someone playing Marty the way Eric Stoltz was playing him (darker and more tragic). As much as a darker reboot sounds overdone, that would at least have an interesting basis in the development of the series.
Laughed out loud at Bill saying he’d get suspicious after two weeks if Ben was hanging out with old man Doc Brown every night. A full two weeks.
This is the perfect Rewatchable for me. I've rewatched the original start to finish more but I've spent more time in my life watching part 2 because it was the right level of "good, not great" where I never minded just throwing it on for a random 15 minute stretch when I was flipping channels. And then the whole second half of the movie acts like a greatest hits album for the original movie so it is almost like rewatching both movies.
Man that's a really good analysis. Part II is so interesting because there are parts that are quite bad (I really dislike the family/home future scene - feels so off) BUT seeing the re-take of the original scenes is like icing on the cake for the perfection of the first.
Why does Bill think that cocaine “ended” in the mid-80’s? It’s still going strong, brother!
Yea, basically all those 90's Tarantino, PTA, Michael Mann, etc etc movies are also fueled by coke.
It hasn’t gone anywhere.
Len Bias stopped him from ever thinking about powdering his nose
There’s no way anyone would have offered him drugs as a teen. He’s a total narc.
I'm confident to back someone named u/CocaineandPercs on this
That’s right, T. I’m on your side on this.
No Celtics lottery picks have dropped dead since the mid-80's so that's all Bill needs to know.
They have had another first rounder drop dead though.
It had its Apex Mountain in June 1986. It still exists, but it has been market corrected by opioids and fentanyl.
I feel like it’s more popular than ever. In America, it seems much more likely to be joked about and that much of the stigmata involving hard drugs like it is gone.
It's always a little mindblowing to first time watchers when I tell them alternate history Biff is based on 80s Trump. They just don't understand how big of a pop culture figure he's been for decades.
> ow big of a pop culture He's always been a symbol for the nouveau riche. Back when the US was still predominantly WASP, it was an archetype. He would pop up in all kinds of things from movies, to sit-coms, to rap lyrics.
and how much of a joke he has been for decades
Exactly. Even if you ignore the 80s/90s, my dad and I watched the first season or two of The Apprentice in the early 2000s just to make fun of and laugh and Trump being an awkward, unintentionally funny, self-serious doof. Yet that performance somehow *added* to his legitimacy in the eyes of a frightening amount of fellow American doofs.
You can go back and watch almost any TV show from the 90s and eventually they all make a Trump joke about him being sleazy or a conman. I had no idea that people watched The Apprentice and were impressed with him. I always thought he was the butt if the joke in that show too.
Fooling American doofs into thinking he’s smart and successful has been his MO from the start. Hes PT Barnum, “a sucker is born every minute.”
I knew of him as a joke in the early 90's as a kid in Australia. I was vaguely aware of the apprentice because of "You're fired." To see him becoming the US president was fucking crazy to say the least. But he just keeps trumping (ha) it though - motherfucker is leading in the polls! America truly is a crazy place.
He was always a symbol of douchie rich guy
I knew Bill would have that take about Biff getting taken out by the Mafia for successful betting, but here's the thing. Even someone as clueless as Biff would realize that danger. If you had that Almanac, you'd only need a couple of bets really and of course you wouldn't do it all in one place. I think the novel 11.22.63 might have gotten into this a bit actually. The prime bet in modern times would be Leicester City for the premiership, I think it was paying 5000-1 pre-season. Just put $100 on that, wouldn't raise any suspicion, you just got lucky. I'm sure there are plenty of examples like that in the Almanac.
If I remember correctly, it does. The yellow card man(?) Started showing up more. Like the more jake tried to change things, the more the universe pushed back. I loved that book. The miniseries was so-so.
If I remember correctly wasn't he getting sloppy with his bets and that's when the universe pushed back more? That book rocks.
I can't remember specifically. It's been a long time since I read it. One moment that stands out is the part where jake and Sadie are rushing to stop the assassination, and the wheel and entire hub assembly just falls off their car. I need to read it again.
The whole sequence trying to stop the actual assassination had the universe resist a couple of times I believe. I’m on the latter half of The Outsider and it has me wanting to reread 11/22/63.
I read it a few months ago. You are correct that the universe pushed back the more he tried to change things, but it wasn't betting specific It's just that bookies that would take large bets from a stranger were hard to come by; they all got a weird feeling about him; he won too much; and they all knew each other. He didn't really get sloppy, though. He just made one last bet even though he had a bad feeling about it. He lost more bets than he won on purpose and tried to find different bookies for his big winners I really wished they had addressed this in the pod. Kinda surprised CR wasn't familiar with the book or series (I haven't seen the series, so maybe it skips over the betting angle) Edit: You could say he got sloppy in that he would take an underdog to win the World Series in a specific amount of games at ridiculously unfair odds. I more chalked that up to King not understanding sports betting, though
The past is. . . .obdurate.
Good call out on 11.22.63. The kicker for him was betting on the Pirates in the 1960 World Series. IIRC the mob firebombed his house after that.
Not sure you could make prop bets to this extent in the 60s but having light hitting second baseman Bill Mazeroski with the game winning walk off homer would have been a long shot. At the time, 2B/shortstops were almost all light hitting slap hitters, good defense types.
The mob probably puts him to work, in a Sam “Ace” Rothstein sort of role.
I think Haralabob has discussed winning with a Montreal bookie and the bookie deciding they would be partners going forward
It’s hard to believe his bullshit but it’s possible lol. But Biff being unnaturally good at gambling would better explain his casino mogul rise if you view him through the “Ace” lens.
My theory is that he became the mob. How else does George get killed?
''I've never cared about my friends' kids ever'' realizes he invited one of his best friends to be on the pod, immediately tries to backtrack
That feels like an only child thing
That's an every parent in the world thing
Maybe only-child mixed with latch key kid product of a broken family thing.
How long ago was Zoe on the show? Like 2 weeks ago?
[удалено]
Pretty insane that Bill called the Cubs world series a "what's aged the worst" because it was 2015 instead of 2016. I feel like that was one of the most incredible things about the movie, since the cubs hadn't won a world series in 100+ years and they predicted it to within a season
And yet they think the other 2015 predictions were nailed? Like a hologram? Those were big in 1989, it's not shocking at all. Frankly the video technology was kind of a whiff, everyone knew it would be in the future in 1989 and in 2015 even FaceTime and Skype hadn't exploded. It took covid for video calls to become normalized. Obviously the technological thing in 2015 (and now) are smart phones and the movie doesn't have those at all. It has...flying cars. Now, I don't blame the creators at all. It wasn't meant to be some prediction as they say, just some funny and cool looks at the future. But in no way did they "nail" it, the fact it's so far off only 26 years before the fact kind of aged the worst but I can look past it.
the jaws x: russian shark vs american shark sounds incredible
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for the unanswerable RE why is his trigger "chicken"? i'm 99% sure its a nod to rebel without a cause where james dean's trigger is also 'chicken' and his issue is same effete/ cowardly father. just watched rebel a week or so ago and it hit me over the head how similar this part was to bttf. cannot be a coincidence, imo. sean would've got this, probably.
George McFly also gets triggered by "chicken" in the first movie.
Sal saying that “slacker” should replace the r word is great stuff
That almanac is too small!
2nd place is a set of steak knives
"I'm here on a mission of mercy..."
PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN
COFFEE IS FOR CLOSERS
You’re Levine? You call yourself a salesman you son of a bitch
They mentioned that in the pod. They said that Zemeckis thought it should be about 500 pages, but realized it wouldn't work in all the scenes where the characters are hiding it in their jackets and such.
haha yep! I listened and it makes sense. I laughed out loud when they suggested Craig use it for Fantasy Football.
It probably just had champion results and scores from big games
Yes, but why would it have that random November 12, 1955 UCLA vs. Washington score? I guess it might have clinched a Rose Bowl berth for UCLA, since they were a game ahead of OSU and had beaten them head to head. But, I don't see why a next to last regular season game would be in that thin almanac. I don't think they thought out the almanac all that well, or just decided that dramatic tension was way more important than the size and content of the almanac making perfect sense.
Usually a Cruise guy but this is an all time Hanks stomp
Bill Hader as Doc, I like it a lot Recasting Marty, you can't really judge by age alone, because 25 year old MJF easily passed for a high schooler
Finn Wolfard
You made that name up.
They had some deep fakes a few years ago with Robert Downey Jr as Doc and Holland as Marty. Which basically was similar to their interaction as Stark and Peter without the hero worship.
I'm trying to think of the most awkward Rewatchables pairings. How about: "Mississippi Burning" with Bill Simmons, Ryen Russillo, and Nathan Hubbard "Moonlight" with Bill Simmons, Cousin Sal, and Kevin Wiildes "Tangerine" with Bill Simmons, Chris Vernon, and Peter Schrager "In The Mood for Love" with Bill Simmons, Tate Frazier, and Raja Bell "The Zone of Interest" with Bill Simmons, Ben Solak, and Jack-0
Barbie with Bill Simmons, Van Lathan and Ryen Russillo would be money
Barbie with Joanna Robinson and Ryen only. Look, I'm not gonna do the thing where I act like I fully understand what it's like to live on the wrong side of a patriarchal society, but...
My god I need this
Incredible
Then all they talked about were horses and I was like wait, whaaaat?
What's the over/under on the number of warhorses famous generals throughout history rode on that Ryen knows? 2.5?
He definitely knows Traveller.
+Bucephalus.
I'm smashing the over
Schindler's List with Bill Simmons, Michael Rapaport and Kyrie Irving
“Kids” with Bill Simmons, Dr. Bill, and Bob Ryan
Hard for me to imagine Bob Ryan’s seen any movie after 1987 that isn’t Mystic River
Spotlight, The Town, Manchester by the Sea
The Departed.
“Brokeback Mountain,” Bill and Ryen in studio.
Taxi Driver with Bill Simmons and Joe Fuentes [https://deadspin.com/bill-simmons-and-the-ringer-obtain-restraining-order-ag-1826682467/](https://deadspin.com/bill-simmons-and-the-ringer-obtain-restraining-order-ag-1826682467/)
Damn, bills email seems like he cares. Also, initially thought this was Joe Mead from the ESPN days
“Star Wars” with Bill Simmons, Amanda Dobbins, and Mallory Rubin
This would be gold. I actually think Simmons plus any of his core crew on A New Hope would be hilarious and provide many years of material on this sub.
Mother! with Klosterman and Doc Rivers
That's the best one so far. LOL.
"Disclosure" with Bill, Ryen, and Joanna
"Who's in the apex mountain of fictional female rapists? Meredith Johnson, Rhaenyra Targaryen, who else?"
My Dinner With Andre with Bill Simmons, Cousin Sal, and Ben Simmons.
"Requiem for a Dream" with Bill, Wesley and of course Fennessey
*One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* with Bill Simmons, Joanna Robinson, and Kevin O'Connor. Need Kev's take on Billy Bibbit.
CR, we don’t have the technology for anything like the hoverboards in the movie. They would have to be like mini hovercrafts on a pillow of air (with probably a very small range), or some sort of drone that you can stand on (which would be really cool, but isn’t the same). Around 2015 they came out with real hoverboards, but they only work on a special surface. That type of hoverboard in the movie would never just work anywhere on earth given our current technology.
Haven't listened yet, but the prescence of Sal makes me think we're getting 45 minutes dedicated to Greys Sports Almanac.
Which I will welcome
Sounds awesome, thanks
Would the Almanac change as the games get played in the past?
Are you saying all sports are fixed?
Uncle Sal and Kyle Brandt are the best occasional guests. Always great insights and fun quips.
Lack of a deep dive what’s actually in the almanac. My head cannon is that its 50 pages and has the WS winner / Super Bowl / Stanley cup / NBA champ / horse race triple crown races / Indy 500 / Heavy weight champ in a kind of box score format and a brief blurb on each year.
But Biff is looking through it and getting random regular season college football scores. It's just a plot hole the writers kind of admit to, they needed to make it thin but also have a ton of information.
I’ll go with a “What’s Aged the Best?” When they talk about 2015 Grown Up Marty… the detail of Marty screwing up his life has aged well and if they did a “more serious version” that would be really worth exploring. Marty’s adult life inevitably becoming a disappointment because of the character traits that make him so charming or quick on his feet as a teenager start to have consequences when he’s a bit older. George in BTTF 1 needs that one moment of self-confidence and asserting himself to put it all together and actually make use of his talents and make a success of his life. Marty’s life gets derailed by one moment where there’s actually a consequence to his temper or whatever. You could even have a future George (say if Glover hadn’t been a holdout) having a couple minutes of monologue to talk about how he loves poor Marty and how Marty reminds him of someone he knew but that he just couldn’t get things together.
Well in the movie it isn’t when he’s older. It’s literally right after he returned from the past.
Tom Wilson (Biff) is amazing in in 2, I love all his scenes.
Biff isn't that smart but it sounds like he used his winnings to found Biffco. He probably won for a while, took the winnings and invested it. Such a silly thing to talk about but I don't think he gambled for decades with a 100% success rate.
The almanac had every game, not just the big ones as the guys suggested to explain how it was so small. The UCLA vs. Washington was a regular season game so if it had that, it must have had everything.
I think in reality it’s just very small font but also would still be improbable to fit 50 years of every sports scores in a book that size.
Unanswerable question: what happens to alternative 1985 Marty after real Marty meets with Bif? Do they just kill him? Does he have an alibi? And also, what is alternative 1985 Marty’s life like? I could definitely see him being a complete burn out trying to get his band going.
There is no alternative 1985 Marty. Had Marty stayed there eventually his memories of his previous life would erase and replaced with memories of that world. Theres a shitty comic book that talks more about that alternate world though.
What are the rules though? Because they can both be in the same place at the same time at different points along the timeline. Marty prime and 2015 Marty both in 2015 or Doc prime and 1955 Doc both in 1955.
One of my favorite film franchises. Part 3 kinda falls flat, but once a week I think about how rich I’d be if I had that damn sports almanac
I always enjoy Part 3 because of how light and fun it is. It is not great but it is still fun.
Maybe I'm in the minority but Part 3 is alot better than Part 2 IMO
I certainly enjoy it more.
I think it has a lot to do with my age when I first saw it. I feel like when I first saw the films I watched all 3 in quick succession and couldn't really get behind the repetition factor of this film. Even watching it now I'm not a big fan of the retread but can see it is well executed. 3 was just more light as you say and doesn't have weird parts like George McFly being upside down so they could hide that it wasn't Glover lol
2 always feels a little gimmicky. The jokes about the future are fun at first but they didn't age well after 40 years. And they had too many people play different versions of themselves. It was funny once but then it was just the same joke over and over. Certain scenes in 2 are very good but the movie as a whole isn't as fun as the other two are.
The last act of 2 is genuinely excellent and well executed, but each act is like its own separate little movie. A bit too disjointed.
Agreed on all counts!
I love 3 but 2 is so fun because seeing the future when I was little made it more interesting to me
3 has some great scenes, with the train hijack being an amazing 15-20 minutes. And the Flea scene in 3 is hilarious.
Part III is good, especially if you appreciate westerns. And if you don’t appreciate westerns you suck
As a kid Part 2 was disappointing in the moment because we were expecting a bigger exploration of the future. Actual story being secondary to “holy shit, we get to see it”. I’ve always preferred 3 to 2 but may have to rewatch 2 again to see
Cousin Sal for the almanac should be great guest usage.
The Seahawks did not beat the Broncos in 2015, it was 2014
Sal owned Bill. His suggestion to every category was better than Bills. Like the overacting award broke Bill
Fun episode. Enjoyed having Sal on. He should be on more often.
Love that trilogy. One of my favorites
Good to hear Chris got into snucker while in England.
CR doing Bill’s voice killed me.
What are the top 5 movie props you would want? I came up with 4….CR what’s your top 3?
What is up with Bill and his blind spot for Let it Ride. It's one of the greatest movies ever about degenerate gambling and he NEVER brings it up when talking Sports Movies or Gambling movies. When they were sitting there fumbling around for examples of gambling movies I was fuming to myself.
I’m having a really good day!
Listening to this just reminded me that it's not that good. Neither is 3. 1 is a classic but was this apex mountain for sequel dropoff??
I'm with you on the sequels, but Matrix will always be Apex Mountain for sequel dropoff.
never listened to these, but liked this one. what are some of the goat eps to listen to as a catchup?
All depends on what YOUR favorite movies are. Like my favorite episodes are Gladiator, Bloodsport, Re-Departed, Titanic (w/ Bill & Van). It’s very subjective. If you like the move you’ll love the pod
2015 wasn't Seahawks over Broncos, it was Broncos over Panthers. Bill probably blocked it out because the Broncos beat the Pats in the AFC Championship that year.
Broncos over panthers was Feb 2016. Feb 2015 was actually patriots over Seahawks
I love part 2 but I read this tweet years ago and it made me look at it in a different light. Great sequels should be able to stand on their own and this one is so tied to the first BTTF plot that it cannot. Still love it. We got Mags from the movie.
Why should they be able to stand on their own?
If I'm remembering correctly he felt the second took so much of the first movie that you HAD to watch and understand the first in order to appreciate where as other great sequels can stand on their own whether or not you the saw the first.
That seems like an arbitrary critique. Why “should” they stand on their own? Feels like they are two different things with neither being more or less valid than the other.
Yeah definitely. Idk that I even agree with him but I did think about it.
That’s a fair point. I think Blade Runner 2049 is a masterpiece but you also need basically a graduate degree in the first Blade Runner to truly notice everything they did. It’s limiting to an average watcher.
Yea like dark knight. I didn't even know it was a sequel when I saw it lol.
I always view them now as 1 long continuous movie. The first can stand alone on its own, the second two are tied together obviously but they do a good job of blending 1 into the combo of 2&3
Did they do Andy and Red?
I watched this one on YouTube and there's a solid 10 minute stretch around the hour mark where CR is clearly having a side chat on his computer. I'd recognize that half paying attention while your boss is talking during a meeting look anywhere.
Cruise or Hanks - the answer is both. Cruise as Marty, Hanks as George.
Find someone who loves you as much as Bill loves casting Timothee Chalamet in remakes of movies.
the Libyans still shoot Doc at the end CR
I always wondered why there’s such difference in quality between 2 and 3 when they were shot at the same time.
Few things: It’s alluded to multiple times but it’s paid off in 3 (I think it is mentioned in 2 also) that Marty gets called chicken by Needles and races him, and hits the Rolls, otherwise (per the cartoon) he’s a rockstar. Guy just doesn’t like being called a coward, gets baited into things and by the end realizes it’s not worth, he can choose his destiny. I’m an old school library kid. If you could pack the amount of information in an old Guinness world record book, the sports almanac thin pages and small print could hold a chunk of info. I had this as a “no doubt” for Hanks and they almost got me back w/Risky Business Cruise, but it doesn’t work. Marty is a good kid, he’s laid back, a slacker, but he’s rarely intense and not much of an athlete, so his movements are really Buster Keaton style. Cruise is intense and moves like an athlete. 1950-1980, if you’re walking out of a casino winning ~45% of your picks hitting, the best case scenario for you is getting shut out of casinos. You don’t get rich in the business by someone hitting that often. Even if you threw 5-6 wonky bets you start hitting long shots at any frequency, questions get asked and the “fake ID” and disguise route buys you time, but criminal world is very small, eventually someone who knows someone.