In an earlier draft I sent Tyler 87 different movies so this is my favourite of those 87 movies. House of Games is a perfect movie about confidence art, which really is the same as visual art. My dad was a con artist, so I like this nonviolent way to revisit my childhood. Joe Mantegna (I smoked a joint with Mantegna in 1994 on the set of a film I was working on) and Lindsay Crouse are perfect, the writing is perfect, tight as a fucking trampoline like all Mamet stuff but not as sweary and unnecessarily verbose as his other stuff.I like seeing anything where smart people get played by people they think they’re smarter than. I like confidence art (The Grifters also v good) because (at least ideally), the victims are just idiots who want an easy buck, not fundamentally vulnerable, although that clearly happens also, and really this likely isn’t an accurate take on con-art but just some romantic reimagining on my part. Also Ricky Jay was one of the greatest character actors of all time.
