Actor Kevin Spacey has two weeks left in Vegas, where he's on location, filming the extraordinary story of the MIT students who card-counted their way into the headlines for ripping off the Strip casinos.
"I don't think you could get away with that kind of a heist today," said Spacey. "There's just too much security."
We were chatting backstage in a rare interview session at the Keep Memory Alive Gala over the weekend at the MGM Grand. It's been seven years since the elusive and private actor last filmed here.
He admitted that blackjack also happens to be his favorite casino game. "I happen to love twenty-one," Spacey said. "That was one of the reasons I was attracted to this book and turning it into a movie; because I think it's the greatest game ever, and it's a beatable game. I've had some runs which have been pretty incredible." When I asked Kevin if he'd won enough to finance a movie, he laughed and replied, "Enough to finance a small independent movie, perhaps. A small, twelve-day shoot."
The current untitled movie began filming here last week and is in town for another two weeks before moving to Boston for location scenes near MIT. Actor Lawrence Fishburne plays the casino security chief who tries to stop the cadre of card counters. The cast has been shooting at the Aladdin, the Riviera, the Hard Rock and up at the Red Rock Resort. I asked Kevin if he found some delicious irony to the fact that the MIT students had been busted and run out of town back then, and that today the casinos were welcoming him back for the making of the movie!
"Probably Vegas will love us. In fact all the hotels have been great," Kevin told me. "I agree the movie will probably sell a lot of books on what the students did, and that'll send a lot of people to Vegas to see if they can still get the system to work for them. So actually, we'll probably send you a lot more business. I don't know what the analogy is but we've definitely been walking right into the den."
So does Spacey think it's possible to break Vegas? "If you read these books, it's absolutely possible to break Vegas," he said. "But, I don't know anymore if it's possible. There's so much technology now. There's face recognition so if they catch you and they know you're doing it, although it's not quote "illegal' because you're just using your mind. The people that are illegal are the ones who have cameras in their cuff links."
Spacey said it was more than his love of blackjack that led him to make the movie. "When I read Ben Mezrich's book 'Bringing Down the House,' which is what our film is based on, it just struck me as one of those great coming of age stories," he said. "It sort of follows his path. He doesn't have a lot of money, he's incredibly smart, perhaps a genius and certainly unbelievable at mathematics. He eventually discovered that he could count cards, up to six decks and his team was in with it. He goes on a kind of Faustian Bargain; the deal with the devil. These kids end up going to Vegas when they're not being MIT students and playing all these roles. They work as teams and play different people so they're pretending to be the son of a diplomat or the daughter of some southern rich guy but what they're actually doing is seeing how the deck is doing, they work in teams and they have all these signals."
"Of course now we're in a time when pretty much all this stuff would be spotted," Spacey continued. "But at the time these kids came to Vegas they made millions. There was one night alone when they made more than $650,000. And, of course, the movie is about what this kid loses in the interim, of himself and the kind of person he wants to be and ultimately he learns a great number of lessons. I met a bunch of the kids on the team and it's kind of an amalgamation of them all. The book was not specifically based on the actual people. We did a lot of research and then created some of the characters. The character I play is the professor that teaches them how to count the cards and organizes the team. There was a guy like that but it's an amalgamation of a couple people."
Kevin showed just how much he likes blackjack because after 3PM rehearsals and his hour-long, pre-midnight concert performing Bobby Darin and Dean Martin songs, he took off with his pals including Fishburne for the Playboy Club at the Palms. They stayed until 3AM enjoying the nightlife scene and playing several high roller hands. "We're just having a great time here," he told me. "We love the city. Everybody has been wonderful; and made us feel very much at home. We've had fantastic cooperation and we're enjoying a great shoot."
In the meantime, Kevin's movie for his own production company, Trigger and Sony Pictures remains untitled as the "Unknown Blackjack 21 Movie" while Hollywood studio lawyers try to clear a final name that prevents future lawsuits.
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1. IF KEVIN SPACEY ISN'T THE BEST ACTOR OF THIS OR ANY CENTURY; I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHO IS. HE'S TALENTED, HANDSOME, ADORABLE AND A GREAT SINGER; AS IRA GERSHWIN ONCE ASKED, "WHO COULD ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE?"
Marilyn at 12:47AM on Feb 13th 2007