Joe Rogan on "The Color of Money"

I went down a pathway with Queen's Gambit where I was like, is this a true story? Because if this is true that there was this beautiful young, flawed woman, that's very interesting to me. It's not a true story. There's a lot of people on the internet who think that it is a true story. It's based off a book, but chess sales are through the roof. You couldn't get a chess board when that thing came out. Really? Yeah. Like chess sales were going crazy, which chess is a beautiful sport. And much like long form conversation we have here, long form game. Yeah. I mean, months you could really play. They get into speed chess in that show. But you can play chess forever, man. Yeah. I'm scared of chess. I'm terrible at chess and I don't want to get good at it because I think it's something that I would get absorbed with. I remember there was a time where Howard Stern got obsessed with chess and he was taking chess lessons when he was talking about it on the show. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember thinking, oh, he's an obsessive. I think he eventually bailed and stopped doing it. But I've had problems with video games. I've had problems with pool. I used to play pool competitively and I get real obsessed with games and chess seems to be like the most intense of all intellectual games. It's going to trigger the shit out of your intellectual. What kind of billiards would you play? Nine ball? Yeah. Nine ball, 10 ball, straight pool. I played a lot of all those games, but I played a lot of pool, a lot. I played a lot of tournaments. Yeah. To the point where I have a table in my old studio. I have a table at home. I collect pool cues. I have a bunch of pool cues. Pool cues are fucking cool. Oh yeah. Especially when they unscrew and you take you up to the fucking briefcase and color money. Color money. What's in the case in here? That is such a good movie. My brother Todd got obsessed with pool and we had a pool table in our basement, but it was like classic Midwest basement and it wasn't fully unobstructed. We had this weight bearing pole right here. Oh, so you had a short stick? If you ever had to go in the middle, you had to do all this creative shit, short stick. We sawed one down. But Todd got really in the pool. My dad took us to the nine ball championships one year down in West Virginia and we're like, these guys are excellent at pool. I'm in the run racks after racks. It was wild how the brain, it's not how my brain works, but my brother's brain, we go one ball there, two ball there. Is he going to move it off here? That's geometry, chess, it's all like that. Yeah, it is. It's also finesse and touch and feel. Great sounds in the pool. It's also a sport that thrives on drugs. Really? Yeah. Like an Adderall type situation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they would gamble and they would play for 15, 16 hours. The thing about pool is that they would play until someone quit. And so guys- That was like the gentleman's rule? You would never quit on someone when you were ahead. Right. If you quit on someone when you were ahead, people would be mad at you. If you played for two hours and you won $1,000 and you'll be like, we'll play again tomorrow, they'd be like, fuck you, stay. And people would get mad at you. They would really get upset and you would have a hard time getting a game because you'd be a guy that- So you have to wipe out your opponent until they say, I can't do this anymore. Yeah, it's like to the death. To the death. Yeah, it's like amongst top players. Unless there was an agreement, like you could make an agreement. You could make an agreement, we will play two sets. I'll play you two sets, race to 20 for X amount of dollars per set, but we're going to make an agreement right now of two sets. That's rare though. Most of the time they would post up and they would play until guys went broke, like the hustler. The hustler with Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman, that was the theme of the movie, is that Paul Newman is winning for like 15, 16 hours. And then Jackie Gleason has character and Paul Newman is self-destructive and eventually Jackie Gleason overcomes him and wins him. I don't know if I've ever seen the hustler, but obviously that- That's great. That helped Paul Newman get cast in Color of Money. That was for sure. Sure, that was the original. That was the original. Yeah, okay, that's what I want to share. The Color of Money was the sequel. I didn't realize that. Yeah, they're both written by, I think Walter Teves is the guy who wrote it. But I've read the books too, they're pretty similar. The character in the second movie is different. There's a lot of things in Color of Money that are different. They're made for Tom Cruise. In the hustler, Paul Newman retires because he makes a deal with this mob guy and at the end of it he quits playing. So he's retired from pool. And then he meets Tom Cruise many decades later. I see, I see. So the hustler takes place, I think in, I want to say 63? Somewhere around then, that's when that movie came out. And so Color of Money's like 1984? I fucking loved Color of Money when it came out. That made pool go through the roof. People started playing pool like crazy. And people of the pool world have always said they need a movie like the Color of Money. And they, pool hall junkies some people liked but they never really had the same impact. It wasn't that good. It was okay. Like some people liked it but they couldn't really play. If a person who plays pool, like I watch it, it would be very frustrating for me. Because like if you were watching someone play tennis. Dude, it fucking infuriates me. Any commercial with tennis, they're holding the racket wrong. It's like just get anyone that plays tennis to quickly advise you on the right grip. And now I'm like, but all I can focus on is that. And I believe Color of Money, I remember reading about it that they like locked Tom Cruise in a room for three months and taught him how to ship his grip. Tom Cruise worked with Mike Siegel. Mike Siegel is one of the greatest pool players that's ever lived. Multiple time world champion, like literally one of the all time greats. I've had the opportunity to play Mike Siegel. I played him, I hung out with him. He's a great guy. And he was also left handed just like Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise is left handed. Yeah, and he taught Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise looks like a guy who can play a little. Paul Newman in the Hustler does not really look like a guy who can play. He does a lot of goofy shit. But Jackie Gleason could play. Jackie Gleason literally plays like a professional. You watch Jackie Gleason in the Hustler. He spent a lot of time playing pool when he was a kid. Look, Jackie Gleason was a guy who drank and smoked and hung out in pool halls. He was a man's man. He was a wild dude. And he could fucking play, like really play. How did you get introduced to pool? I hurt my ACL. I tore my ACL ligament and I couldn't work out for a while. And when I couldn't work out, me and my friend John, he was a comic as well. We started going to this pool hall in White Plains, New York. And I just stumbled upon one of the great pool halls in that area. It's one of the reasons why I moved to New Rochelle because I could be close to White Plains because I was addicted to this pool. People get fucking addicted to pool. That's how my brother was. What does this say? Yeah, the video game Doom got its name for the film. The video game Doom got its name from Tom Cruise opening up that because they wanted to know that. Yeah, because when he opened up the case and he goes, what's in the case? He goes in here. Oh my God. Doom. I remember that with his dumb accent. Yes. He was excellent on that film. That's what John... Doom. Yeah, that's what they wanted to... John Carmack wanted to say to the video game world when they released Doom. What's in there? Doom. Doom is in there. Because this game is so crazy in comparison to everything else. Yeah, so that's where I came up with the name. Yeah, it's something like the... I forget the character's name in Queen's Gambit, but once she kind of lays in bed, it looks up and watches the world. You kind of see pool players look at the table that way. This goes here. But with pool, there's execution. The difference is you could miss a shot where you're in perfect position. Whereas with chess, you just move the thing. You don't have to think about your physical hand-eye coordination and skill. So, nerves don't play a factor as much in terms of your ability to move your body. So with pool, the thing that excited me about it was it was about controlling yourself under pressure. And you're literally applying a certain amount of pressure to a ball, and you want to control the revolutions that the ball makes over a long period. So it's all touch and feel. And the more you play, and you get in what they call dead punch or dead stroke, where you understand exactly how much impact and exactly how hard to touch that cue, exactly how much impact it has on the ball to just perfectly place that ball in position for the next shot. It's a great game. My brother had a book called How to Hustle Your Friends at Pool, and he used to read it. And we'd have friends come over, and they would always get mad that he was reading the book, but he loved it. It's a great gambling sport. Yeah, it's great. Well, it's a game where people get mad if you pretend you're not good. Right. And it turns out you are good. Yeah. Isn't that what the hustle is? Yeah. Right. What's interesting about it is it's also a game where people lie about how good they are. Like, men always want to pretend they're really good at pool. It's a weird thing. Like if guys don't know you play, like, I play pretty good. Like I'm a B player. Which means, like, I'm not a pro, but if I practice for six months and really dedicated myself, I can run racks. I've run out three, four racks in a row. I can play a little. Yeah. And if I played a lot, I could play on a very high level. But most people can't. Like I played for years, eight hours a day. I played every day. I always played. I took a cue on the road with me everywhere I went. When I would go on the road and do gigs, I'd find pool halls, and I'd play pool all night long. That's great. That's what I always did. Most men lie. Like, they tell you, like, you say, do you play pool? Oh yeah. Are you good? Yeah, I'm pretty good. Like, oh, are you really? Like, how good are you? Oh, I'm good. I always beat my friends. Pretty good. You're like, are you really good? Like, have you ever played in tournaments? They lie. And then you play them and they suck. They suck. Golf is like this. What do you shoot? I shoot about 100. You go out there and you're like, you fucking lie. Or you cheat. Everybody cheats at golf. Everybody gets so surprised when they ask me if I'm good at golf and I say, I'm okay. And they say, what do you shoot? And I say, 110. They go, no, there's no chance. I get out there and you really count my strokes and the time that I moved the ball and the time that it followed the rules, I shot at 110. But everybody lies. Is that a good number? No. No. What's a good number? Par is 72. But I guarantee you, he's going to say he shoots in the 90s. And when we go out there and we actually play, he's going to shoot like 125, like a typical one. 90-ish is probably a good number. Yeah. 90 is a good number. I could get there, but... You would need a lot of time. You need some time. Yeah. And you don't cheat. But everybody is... It's true. People lie about... We'll do it the worst. If you're a single guy trying to pick up girls and you got to play pool with them and they're fucking garbage. Yeah, I beat you. They beat you. If a girl beats you a pool, good luck getting laid. Good luck. They don't want to fuck you if they could beat you a pool. Everyone knows that. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips. Easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.