On Monday, Victory Poker pro Dan Bilzerian made headlines for Tweeting the following quote from the movie “Gran Torino,” featuring Clint Eastwood: “A Mexican, a Jew and a colored fellow walk into a bar… The bartender looks up and says… Get the **** out of here.” The quote shocked Bluff poker reporter Joy Miller, who, along with Bilzerian, sat down with Poker News Daily to rehash the events following the now infamous Tweet.
You might be wondering why Bilzerian would post such a controversial Tweet in the first place, even if it only entails a quote from “Gran Torino.” Bilzerian told Poker News Daily, “I was watching ‘Gran Torino’ with some buddies, thought it was funny, Tweeted it, and Miller Tweeted something back to me. I didn’t know who she was at the time, so I just ignored it, and then she screamed at [Victory Poker CEO] Dan Fleyshman about how Victory Poker pros wouldn’t receive exposure on ESPN.”
For her part, Miller explained that she never threatened to stop Victory Poker pros from receiving face time on the cable goliath: “I don’t work for ESPN and clearly said that on the voice mail. He made up that he’d be banned from ESPN because I don’t work for them. I said I’m calling you as myself and never represented a company.” ESPN officials told Poker News Daily on Monday that Miller is not employed by the network.
Miller took the quote personally. “My dad fought for years to get into an all-white school in 1972 and had to deal with a colored drinking fountain and a white drinking fountain,” she explained to us. “I told Dan Bilzerian that I thought it was nasty and just wanted an apology. It’s not funny.” Bilzerian stated that he offered to make a public apology for his Tweet to his 243 followers: “I told Joy that I’d be happy to issue a public apology. Then she left me that voice mail where she was screaming and cussing. I’ve offered a public apology and given her an apology. There’s nothing else I can do.”
The TwoPlusTwo thread on the Bilzerian Tweet entitled “Dan Bilzerian Banned from ESPN” spans 45 pages and has received over 50,000 views. Miller believes that the stunt, which ended with Bilzerian making a YouTube video of her voice mail, may have simply been designed to give Victory Poker publicity: “It was shitty of him to get Victory Poker attention and use me as his stomping ground. I’m not wrong. You shouldn’t have used the word colored and you shouldn’t have posted the joke and not taken credit for it as being from a movie.”
Eastwood’s character says the controversial line in the movie, which was nominated for several awards and received a nod from the American Film Institute as one of the top 10 films of 2008. On why the evening of trading voice mails ended with Bilzerian posting a YouTube video, the Victory Poker pro explained, “I was worried she would publicly say something on ESPN or actually ban Victory Poker players from ESPN. She has a voice and she’s on camera, so I wanted to be heard. I tried to do everything I could, she was unreasonable, and so I decided to do the video clip.”
Bilzerian has since altered the privacy settings of his Twitter account. Now when viewing his feed, users are met with, “This person has protected their Tweets. You need to send a request before you can start following this person.” Miller has nearly 1,300 followers on the popular social networking site.
The question remains as to where the notion of Victory Poker pros being banned on ESPN came from. Bilzerian relayed, “She said, word for word, ‘No Victory Poker pro is going to be on ESPN his year. I don’t care how far they get.’ I really wouldn’t have cared, but when this negatively impacted Victory, that’s pretty outrageous.” Victory Poker pro Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little already has two top 50 runs in the 2010 WSOP, while Antonio Esfandiari took 12th in a $5,000 No Limit Hold’em tournament.
All told, the controversy has rocked the Twitterverse over the last 24 hours. Miller, however, seems to have returned to life as normal. Her latest Tweets indicate that Praz Bansi let her wear his newly won WSOP bracelet and that Phil Ivey has been nothing but supportive. On the soft-spoken Full Tilt Poker pro, Miller told Poker News Daily, “I had tears in my eyes earlier, talked to Phil Ivey, and he said, ‘Let Dan Bilzerian come tell me the joke.'”