To many of my more impassioned followers, today is Way Better Than Good Friday. Because at long last a particular independent movie that’s been on their radar since last fall’s Toronto Independent Film Festival finally hits the theaters and they’ve already secured tickets to a showing this weekend–not that it would have been impossible to get in today without that, if one has been paying attention to the sobering box office statistics that were rattled off at this week’s CinemaCon convention.
Suffice to say, THE LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA isn’t going to single-handedly reverse the negative trajectory course of the movie industry–if anything does do that, it’ll more likely be A MINECRAFT MOVIE. There’s eminently more gamers than there are game show fans out there, particularly in the demographic and socioeconomic stratum more likely to actually schlep into a movie theatre. And I suspect even among those who truly are anticipating it there will be some complaints.
While I’ve seen little more than the well-done trailer so far, I know an awful lot of folks who already have screened it. Additionally, I dare say I know the back story better than most. I was a passionate daytime TV viewer who would always watch the CBS mid-morning game show PRESS YOUR LUCK whenever opportunity presented itself. You might have grown up as a kid infatuated with the show’s ever-flashing lights, its over-the-top cartoonish “Whammy” that would cackle with high-pitched glee whenever a player happened to stop those lights on a square where it popped up, relieving that unlucky player of all of their winnings to that point. There’s a current version hosted by Elizabeth Banks that has earned a regular spot on ABC’s air for several years now that has upped the classic ante considerably yet pays appropriate reverence to its 80s roots, reviving the phrase “Big Bucks! No Whammies!” in the minds of millions of similarly inclined zealots.
So you might have some familarity with the story that inspired this film, which INDIE WIRE’s Christian Zilko initially captured last fall:
Daytime shows revolve around games of chance deemed simple enough to provide the most mindless of background noise while people do chores around the house, but the money involved often has life-changing implications for those involved. Samir Oliveros’ “The Luckiest Man in America” successfully exploits that tension in its semi-fictionalized telling of Michael Larson’s (Paul Walter Hauser) record shattering 1984 win on “Press Your Luck,” in which he took home over $110,000 by figuring out that the show’s seemingly randomized wheel spins were all based on the same five light patterns. Unfolding almost exclusively on the CBS lot where the game show was taped, the film treats the producers’ quest to figure out his impossible knack for the game with all the seriousness of a Secret Service counterfeiting operation.
I watched the Larson episodes when they first aired, and again when Game Show Network finally resurrected them, along with an accompanying original documentary BIG BUCKS: THE PRESS YOUR LUCK SCANDAL, which numerous friends of mine commissioned and starred in and for nearly a decade was GSN’s most-viewed episode of any ilk in its history. So LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA has that pedigree in common with Robert Redford’s memorable QUIZ SHOW, which a little more than 30 years ago took an even larger and more significant scandal–the rigging of the primetime quiz hit TWENTY-ONE and the revelation that its endearing champion Charles Van Doren had been fed answers by producers desperate to find an engaging contestant to appease sponsors. Redford was inspired by a PBS documentary from a few years earlier in which TWENTY-ONE’s surviving and by that point dying producer Dan Enright emotionally confessed to viewers with almost believable remorse “What I did was wrong, I do not excuse it nor condone it”.
But at that time, as Enright also points out in the PBS work and Redford’s film underscored, what he did wasn’t technically illegal; though America rightly saw it as immoral. And, as such, the fallout from TWENTY-ONE earned Congressional attention, national headlines and ultimately set back big money quiz shows for decades. In Larson’s case, there was similar exoneration from the reality that he merely figured out a way to beat the show at their own game, utilizing then-primitive VCR technology and his own obsessive habits, coupled with a job as an ice cream salesman that effectively allowed him to be homebound all winter, to figure out that the show relied upon only a small number of random patterns and disproportionately rewarded people who were fortunate enough to land on squares that would reward them with a bonus spin to continue their game. Larson laser-focused on those payoffs and with no specific rules to prevent him from doing anything otherwise he continued to rack up wins and spins. What would normally have been finished within an old-fashioned 22-minute time slot required two full daytime episodes to showcase his journey.
This all provided Oliveros with a tempting template which he wisely populated with strong actors, points that SCREEN RANT’s Nadir Samara picked up on with relish:
The Luckiest Man In America is yet another display of (Paul Michael) Hauser’s incomparable acting ability. Though he’s played the misunderstood loser before, he continues to find new elements within those characters. As Michael, Hauser plays it with a familiar sinister undertone, but there is true kindness behind his eyes. As the plot reveals itself, his tenor makes more and more sense. Hauser’s ability to play empathy as a note rather than a song is magnificent. The actor is truly a five-tool player; when the restraints come off and he is allowed to run wild, we know we’re in safe hands.
The supporting cast is full of actors you know, and actors you don’t know you know yet. The lovable Ed (Brian Geraghty) and the petty Janie, wonderfully portrayed by Patti Harrison, sit beside Michael as his co-contestants for most of the film. Sadly, Harrison doesn’t get much screen time, but her energy is always felt. Geraghty has always been reliable as a moral compass, but in The Luckiest Man In America, he is not righteous so much as he’s the only character who feels bad for Michael. He’s a perfect foil for the character as Ed tries to understand and Janie refuses to hide her aggravation.
I’ll add that my own personal favorite Walton Goggins, currently as captivating as anyone appearing in this season’s WHITE LOTUS and someone whose talents I’ve personally known since THE SHIELD and JUSTIFIED is more than believable, if not a doppelganger for, the show’s effervescent yet often difficult host Peter Tomarken.
But good as they all are, they’re not quite in the same league as the likes of Redford, Ralph Fiennes and Rob Morrow, among others, were in QUIZ SHOW, which earned a Best Picture nomination and several Golden Globes awards. That’s not necessarily a knock; it’s merely a reality check aimed at those predisposed to expect something of that caliber.
And as THE NEW YORK TIMES’ Ben Kenigsberg observed in his review from yesterday, the purists out there who may be inclined to nit-pick this death need to bear in mind the words “Based on a true story” a bit more than usual:
The ideal way to watch “The Luckiest Man in America,” a dramatization of a real-life game show incident, is to go in cold — to see these events unfold as TV viewers did. If you’ve never heard of Michael Larson, a contestant who appeared on CBS’s “Press Your Luck” in 1984, then it is best to save YouTube for later.
The events, and the mind games, appear to have been goosed for dramatic interest. (One preposterous, surely invented interlude finds Michael wandering onto a talk show set and baring his soul to the host, played by Johnny Knoxville.) But it is still fun to watch Michael and CBS compete for the upper hand.
And no, from direct testimony of those involved with the production and the extensive research that went into the 2003 documentary, Larson did not have free enough backstage reign to make phone calls during the taping. CBS and the production company did have checks and balances in place to prevent that. That was a direct result of the scandals which the Van Doren and TWENTY-ONE incident brought to the nation’s attention.
And unlike QUIZ SHOW, which was a major release from Disney’s Touchstone, this is an acquisition which IFC Films is rolling out as a pure alternative against what by all accounts will be the biggest box office draw of this otherwise downtrodden year. There are no McDonald’s characters morphing into video game characters here, though I imagine a Whammy or a Larson funko with a chia beard might be nice collectables to entice one to indulge in a McChicken or two.
If one’s hopes for transformative experiences are kept a notch below those that Larson had then those who have felt it necessary to pre-order tickets for THE LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA should feel vindicated. For those of us still contemplating it because these days “Big Bucks” is what describes the price of mac and cheese bites, we’ll simply have to avoid the Whammy of unrealistic expectaions.
Until next time…