S4E26: Croupier

My uncle owns a fedora LMAO, he's like 70 and an anime fan.

If you're going to imprint on a 1998 movie about somebody who's so much smarter than all the gamblers they hang around with, you could do worse than Croupier. It could have been Rounders. (Also, are gambling movies close enough to heist movies that we could do a couple? Because both Rounders and Uncut Gems are rich texts...)

When I was an eggy teen I also did the trilby and skinny tie thing but it was different because I thought I was a girl at the time. Did we ALL do this?!?

You may be croupy Nova, but I am croupier than you

I used to dissociate to my glass coffin that orbitted neptune and I would just dream of watching the blue clouds

On my knees again, begging our esteemed podcasters to do Drive for robbery season.

Kicking my feet in delight whenever November and Devon reference the South African Sams

This was the first time I saw Paul Reynolds (Matt) in a role after Press Gang. Very much a ‘point at screen’ moment

Still waiting on y’all to do Lucky Number Slevin. It has Ben Kingsley in it and Morgan freeman! Both of whom have never made bad films

This movie could be great if halfway through, the Croupier from Croupier ended up in a Spells R Us

You know how you feel less depressed when people you think are cool ALSO like your special interest? Always nice to see some fellow River Song fans 💙💙

Woman who just realised why she hated sex, damn. Also I think I dodged the bad hats by being on a cringe message board - we all have our sins to bare

I think the trans masc version of the fedora is the saggy knitted beanie, not styling your hair and wearing studded belts

I had a fedora with a gryphon on it that I bought at the Hard Rock Cafe when I was 13

If you’re looking for morally ambiguous heists and a casino edge I HIGHLY recommend “Hell or High Water”

Not every emotionally ossified character haunted by their inability to truly inhabit the identity they feel forced to create is a trans woman in denial. Some are just *written* by trans women in denial. Those are the only two options, though.

Threw in my Mike Hodges directed these two weirdly different movies fact before I got to the end of the pod and realised November already did it. My bad. In my defence I consider it to be one of the most important cultural oddities of the 20th century and I will tell everybody about it at the drop of a (shit) hat. Hodges did a movie called Pulp way back when (1972), which has similar themes of the writer drawn into crime that Croupier has. Might have just been a personal interest of the man. The man who also directed Morons From Outer Space (WTF?). Genuinely I've seen most of his films and feel like I know less about him for having done so.

for Heist Season, i have a slightly out of left field suggestion - "Solo: A Star Wars Story". It is basically a heist movie and could stand to be examined as that, rather than as a "han solo origin story". Plus it ties in with some work that a certain host has done.

Firstly: fantastic episode. Secondly: as probably the last cis listener, please stop calling me out quite so unexpectedly brutally. I've got shit to do, I don't need have time to spend an hour dissociating whenever someone (usually Abi) mentions another part of her teenage years that align perfectly with mine. (I didn't have the hat though, but I did consider it)

Speaking of gamblers, Bob le Flambeur would be a good addition to heist season.

Honestly, I think you're underselling it by saying he's croupier. He's the croupiest of them all.

"The true jerk contains the seed of the false jerk" in analysis of a joke might be the most November thing she has ever said that doesn't include reference to lesbian BDSM, lol.

i nearly ended up going down the terrible egg hat route thanks to pokémon x and y. dark times

Would love to hear you all talk about the movie Brick. Also used to wear a black duster coat, until people started to compare it to the black trenchcoats worn by the Columbine shooters. Still have the coat, but only wear it around Halloween.

Watching this film and experiencing simultaneous gender dysphoria and really long joint dysphoria.

I love the concept of making the jerking off gesture sarcastically but actually holding my penis while I do it. I went to a boarding school (USAian, so it's different I guess) and it was a fantastic experience. I know it's terrible for some people, but going from a very conservative and shitty little rural school to a more diverse and not shitty school was amazing for me. I bought a beret as a sophomore in high school and wore for about three years before switching a bowler for a while afterwards. Generally hippy look along with that, not the trilby and skinny white tie look. I know my icon shows a cowboy hat, that actually belonged to my child. I'm more of a boonie hat in the sun/rain, toque in the winter guy now.

The bit about how emotional scenes in many ( badly ) written movies require women to get mad for illogical reasons made me wonder how much misogyny stems from media. If almost all of your interaction with women is from observing media, and the media shows them as being irrational, well. People got mad at Skyler White when she was mad for legit reasons. Willing to bet that extends into a lot of real world perceptions of women.

Going from pick up artist to pick up estrogen

Y'all weren't lying : that hat is *diabolical*

Nov with the yahtzee crowshaw drop, unexpected but welcome. I suspect next ep her or Abigail are gonna reference Let's Drown Out

The thing about things that you watched as a kid and really liked and then watched again as an adult and found they were cringe is that sometimes you need to give them some time and then watch them again because when you watch them and they're cringe you aren't objectively judging the film you're judging yourself.

I hope yall do bicycle thieves eventually, it is a phenomenal picture

Called out in a fully different way, where I dated this "guy" three times in a row despite the goddamn hat and each of them *obviously* being in The Dissociation Zone, and it just. Is not great to experience. The only one who is still presenting as male is clearly not happy about it!

My "trilby" in the years of my mispent youth bounced between a fleece top hat striped like the Cat in a Hats' when I was working on ski fields for a living, and a bowler hat that I practiced flipping around my fingers so I could put it on my head with a flourish. Dear reader, I want you to picture a fairly fey young man, a dancer and snowboarder by trade, with long hair and a melon farming bowler. I looked like Cousin Its deranged cousin who wasn't nearly as suave as Fester.

If you're going to do a mini Casino season with heist flavoring, I'd love to listen to your take on Hard Eight.

Ok, so two things (or 2.5 things): 1. Gang, thank you so much not only for causing me to do weird snort-laughs in public on a regular basis, but also for tempting me back to watching movies on the regular - not sure how common this is, but I think 2020 left me pretty wary of stuff that would make me feel too much, so my media consumption pretty much dwindled to edutainment and dumb comedy podcasts only. Meanwhile in 2025, I have taken a break from watching a rather sweet Finnish film on Mubi to drop you this message. (In case anyone's interested, it's 'The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki' - it's charming, under 100 minutes and shot on 16mm black & white! That said, CW for stuff about intensive weight loss) 2. So of course I got caught by some strays in this one, but also realised that a friend I grew up with and from whom I have since drifted apart (in part due to not feeling 100% comfortable being queer around them) has, in absentia, received a full-on broadside, and it's given me some Feelings and some Thoughts.

Catching FASCINATING strays as someone who grew up trying SO Hard to be a woman but who was deeply envious of all of the transfemme egg fits (I too owned that fedora at 14)... there's gender chess here that'll crack something in a few months I'm sure

i like. when you started describing him dividing stuff between jack and jake i had tonput the episode down because HOLY SHIT THAT GUY IS PLURAL. OH FUCJ THAT GUY IS PLURAL. HI. I USED TO DO THIS. I STILL SORTA DO BUT IN A WAY THAT ISNT UNHEALTHY. and also just fills me with this intense desire to make this movie but transgender and personality disordered and just like. feeling like stuff

Fucking sniped me with the "If I'm good at sex I'm good at masculinity. I feel nothing from this, but look how happy I'm making women". Never dysphoria shit

Fuckin' if you hadnt gotten me with Hedwig and The Angry Inch you would crouped me with this one. Cringing out ultra hard at me not that long ago. Thinking them egg ass thoughts

There's a lot of empty space in this episode, kind of strange.

This whole episode is bringing back to me that in college, when I was first becoming sentient, *years* before I heard about transitioning my damn gender, I literally had a noir character in my head that I talked to. His name was Anderson, he wore PI stereotypes including fedora and trenchcoat, he referred to everybody as "kid" or "sport", and I would mime debates with him whenever I was experiencing social anxiety. I thought of it as externalizing a viewpoint so that I could get out of my own head. In hindsight I was literally conversing with a personal avatar of masculinity in an effort to be more sigma male. I also wore several stupid hats during this phase.

Oh God, how long did November wear a trilby for? Was she wearing one while podcasting?

I can see these horrible hats and the heads they were on. My God what a horrific image.

"... And Nobody's dick is in my hand." Well if you gotta jerk somebody off, Odysseus isn't a bad choice, Abi.

"Novimba ah'm not very hippy with the sith efrican accent yu've bin doing"

I did not know that the Topshop Egg Hat was an entire generational pattern of behaviour rather than a thing I just did to myself. Horrifying. At least I know I'm not alone now.

Just listening to the intro to the episode: Bryan Quimby / Guys podcast would have been a good crossover. We need some sort of egg/magician/gambler Guys episode. (I, like Bryan Quimby, actually preferred a bowler because I quite literally based my personality and physical mannerisms off of Lou Costello. A fact that I had completely repressed/forgotten until I was watching Abbott and Costello meet the Wolfman in my late twenties and suddenly remembered.) Bryan says that he finally stopped wearing it when a drunk relative got angry at him, took it off his head, and stomped on it. The cool guy that I tried to channel was probably Timothy Olyphant's Raylan Givens from Justified. I started drinking bourbon because of Justified. I based the rest of me from any hitman from any movie I saw, and also any cool pool hustler like Tom Cruise from Color of Money or Freddie Prinze Jr from the Shooting Gallery. And part of admiring hustlers is being into the casino / gambling thing but I've kind of seen the horrors of it now and I don't think I'm slick.

Jesus guys, can you stop taking me back to how fun/easy lying was with an untreated personality disorder before my life fell apart?

Can report that the hat and the suspenders thing is a general egg situation. I'm a trans guy and I stopped wearing my black fedora (which I hat a legit hat maker add a white hat band onto) because people yelled at me. I was cringe but not free. Now I am both lmao.

With the Ocean's movies and this just cover Bob Le Flambeur for a casino heist

LORD MAYOR'S CROUPIER

Will Devon and the gang read the department of truth?