Change100 at PokerWorks

The Backstory

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I sat at a conference table across from half a dozen agents in the Beverly Hills offices of the “big five” agency that represents, among hundreds of Hollywood luminaries, filmmaker Curtis Hanson. The Big Man’s lieutenants and foot soldiers had these agency “walk-throughs” from time to time at all of the major percentaries on Wilshire Blvd., and these meetings were really just a way for us to get good face time with the agents and find out what their big clients were up to.

I was doodling something in my notebook when I heard one of the young Ari Gold wannabes at the end of the table say something about the World Series of Poker. My ears perked up like a puppy’s.

“Curtis is in pre-production on it right now. It’s a father-son story set against the backdrop of Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker.”

“I have to read that” I interjected, nearly cutting him off. “Could your office send that over to me?”

“Well… Warners is keeping the script under wraps. Numbered copies and such.”

“I’ll send it back when I’m done. I just have to read it.”

“She really does… Change here just won her seat into the World Series a couple of days ago” said one of my senior colleagues.

“Seriously?” said Ari Wannabe.

“Do you play on Poker Stars?” said the Asian guy next to him.

“Yeah, and Full Tilt too. It was just a preliminary event seat, though. $1500.”

“Still, that’s amazing! Lemme see what I can do for you on that script, OK?”

Like most agents, he was all talk and no action. I never did get to read the script and left the business a short time later. But I always wondered about Lucky You. Would it really be the second coming of the poker film that so many people wanted it to be? Was all that secrecy for good reasons or bad? It had to be one extreme or the other, otherwise it wouldn’t be such a big deal.

The Box Office

The first sign that Lucky You was in trouble were the 8 seperate release date changes. The film went from a 12/16/05 release to 3/17/06, then was moved to “TBA,” then to 4/7/06, again to “TBA” and then to 9/8/06. That date seemed permanent enough for Hanson, producer Carol Fenelon, and star Drew Barrymore to fly out to last year’s WSOP and hold a promotional press conference for the film. However, before the Main Event bracelet could be wrapped around Jamie Gold’s wrist, the release date was moved yet again, to 10/27/06. That date was dropped sometime in the fall, and when Warners came out with their 2007 release schedule toward the end of the year, Lucky You was parked on 3/16/07. Just as WB was about to start promoting that date, it got bumped again, to the date it would finally limp in to theatres– 5/4/07, right up against the franchise juggernaut that is Spider-Man 3.

Theoretically, I can understand why WB would put Lucky You up against Spider-Man 3. On every calendar weekend, there is a certain amount of money on the table for the box office taking. On an ordinary weekend in the spring or fall, that number might be $70 million. On a big release date like the first weekend in May (the unofficial kickoff to summer movie season) it could be as much as $200 million. Therefore, it makes more sense to put a troubled film out on a weekend where audiences are already expected to be at the movies in droves. Some poor schmuck is going to get sold out of Spider-Man and have to make a second choice. It’s like playing a junk hand like 2-4 suited in a multiway pot. Most likely, you’re going to miss, but if you do hit, you’ll get substantially more value.

Unfortunately, Lucky You completely missed the flop. It’s opening weekend gross was a paltry $2.7 million. Let me put that in context for you:

Opening Weekend Gross of Lucky You: $2.7 M
Opening Weekend Gross of The Adventures of Pluto Nash: $2.1 M
Opening Weekend Gross of Glitter: $2.4 M
Opening Weekend Gross of From Justin to Kelly: $2.7M
Opening Weekend Gross of Gigli: $3.7 M
Opening Weekend Gross of Death to Smoochy: $4.2 M
Opening Weekend Gross of Battlefield Earth: $11.5 M

$2.7 isn’t just bad. It’s epically bad. In the words of my Hollywood mentor Charlie, it’s “tank-tastic.”

$2.7 means that Lucky You’s total domestic box office will land somewhere in the $5.5-$6 M range. It makes Rounders’ $21 M take look positively Titanic.

I can’t claim to know exact budgetary figures for this film, but in my best professional estimate, it probably cost around $50-60 million to make and another $30-40 million to market. That shakes out to anywhere from a $75-$95 million writedown at the end of the year.

Sweet Jesus, the movie wasn’t THAT bad…

The Review

(The following contains some spoilers.)

If there is a signature to Curtis Hanson’s films, it’s that they take the viewer deeply and authentically into a world. Detroit in 8 Mile. 1940’s Los Angeles in L.A. Confidential. East coast academia in Wonder Boys. It’s easy to tell that Hanson has great affection for these worlds with the way he expresses them on-camera. In Hanson’s dark places, there is always a pinprick of hope. Even a bit of romance.

In terms of bringing Las Vegas and the pre-boom poker scene to the screen in a faithful, realistic manner, Lucky You succeeds admirably. Binion’s Horseshoe has been re-created so faithfully you can practically smell the decades of stale smoke caught in it’s foul carpeting. The replica of the old Bellagio poker room is stunning in it’s accuracy, down to the chairs and the chip colors. Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time in Las Vegas will find familiarity in the golf courses of Summerlin, the ranch-style subdivisions that all look the same, the sketchy coffeeshops with questionable clientele, and the blazing lights and dancing fountains of the Strip. It all feels authentic and real.

On a character level, however, the film totally fails. Eric Bana’s Huck Cheever, a perpetually broke poker pro living in the shadow of his World Champion father (Robert Duvall), is thinly sketched, never delving too deeply into his emotional backstory. Father and son have problems, they’re far too competitive with each other and Bana goes on tilt whenever Dad walks into the room, but we don’t get too much more than that. Barrymore’s character is even worse. Her Billie Offer, a naive singer from Bakersfield, is little more than a cliche-spewing Pollyanna who has the unenviable task of delivering some of the film’s worst lines. Usually Barrymore can make at least some of the cutesy crap work, but not here. When she stood in front of the Bellagio fountains with Bana and said “I think people are just trying not to be lonely” I was ready to hurl. I never cared about their relationship, I never understood why she was with him (especially after some of the crap he pulled early on) and didn’t care whether they stayed together in the end. Not exactly what you want from the A-plot character romance.

Every poker player under the sun makes a cameo in Lucky You. Brunson. Matusow. Lindgren. Negreanu. Chau Giang. Minh Ly. Ted Forrest. There were at least thirty some-odd bracelets represented onscreen. And, if you didn’t know this before, most poker players are appallingly bad actors. The sight of Barry Greenstein’s beard-less face on camera recalls Nosferatu, and Jason Lester delivers a couple of awkward lines to Bana’s Huck. Sammy Farha, however has a great on-camera presence and got a nice laugh when he bemoans his WSOP bustout at the hand of “some internet guy who’s never played a live tournament before.” Jennifer Harman has a small part as a player Huck faces in a WSOP satellite. She looked great on camera and didn’t try to overplay anything. Harman’s husband Marco Traniello shows up as an extra in a bar scene. My Oscar for Best Performance by a Poker Player in a Motion Picture goes to Johnny “World” Hennigan, who plays one of Bana and Duvall’s opponents at the final table of the WSOP Main Event. He doesn’t say a word, just stares them down and puts on a pair of fierce-looking shades– less is definitely more.

There are a lot of players in this movie and there is a LOT of poker. So much that I think non-poker players are going to have a hard time with this film due to the sheer amount of hands depicted. At one point, the camera pans to a “Stud 8 or Better” placard on the table of the Bellagio “Big Game.” Even most hold’em donkeys have never played Stud 8. The hands are all well-constructed (by Doyle Brunson himself) and showcase practical situations in hold’em– there’s no bullshit like full house over quads over straight flush like you’ll see in Casino Royale. However, there is just so MUCH poker in the film that I think the story and character development suffers greatly for it. I’d much rather have had two more meaty character scenes with Huck and Billie or Huck and his father, or all three of them, than to watch Huck go broke one extra time and have to run up his stake again in a cash game.

There were two scenes I genuinely enjoyed. The first was when Huck takes Billie to Binion’s and shows her how to play poker. At one point Huck has the 9-T of hearts and flops a flush draw when Billie whispers (too loudly) to him, “one more heart and you’ve got a flush!” Later in the scene, he turns a set of eights and she literally kicks him under the table with excitement.

The other was the golf course prop bet sequence. After Huck loses the $10K his backer gives him to buy into the Main Event, he makes a prop bet with this crazy degenerate gambler guy who will bet on anything (played by Horatio Sanz) that he can run 10 miles and shoot 18 holes at a 78 or better in under 3 hours in order to win back the $10K. I won’t ruin the outcome of the bet, but the sequence is well-shot, with Huck racing from hole to hole and Billie following him around in a golf cart with a stopwatch. There’s a prop-betting subplot that runs through the film and I’m happy they paid tribute to that crazy subsector of the gambling world that is in turn such a big part of poker.

The film left me a bit empty on a thematic level. Huck doesn’t really change in the end– he might have some money now, but he’s no less of a degenerate than when we first met him. He’s mended fences somewhat with his father, but nothing is certain. And now poor Billie is headed off into the sunset with her new degenerate boyfriend while singing in a bar in a sketchy hotel up on that stretch of the Strip north of the Stratosphere where the cops are always finding dead hookers in dumpsters. What kind of ending is that? With this cast and director there was such potential for rich, complex character work. I mean, we’re talking about gamblers here. Is there anyone more emotionally fucked-up and psychologically compelling than a gambler?

My original expectations for this film back in that Beverly Hills conference room were that it would be a complex character piece about poker players set at the WSOP and have all the brilliance I’d come to expect from a Curtis Hanson film. With each abandoned release date, the bar fell lower and lower, until I almost dreaded seeing it for fear that it was so bad it would ruin poker films forever. Though I don’t think any studio will be rushing to make a mainstream poker film for the forseeable future, Lucky You wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. I give it a J-T suited– it had tons of potential, and totally missed the flop, but I don’t regret getting into the pot.

Special thanks to B.J. Nemeth for taking me to the screening!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.