A couple weeks back, ComingSoon.net was in Las Vegas for the premiere of Sonyâs upcoming blackjack caper flick 21, based on the best-selling novel âBringing Down the Houseâ by Ben Mezrich about a group of MIT students who learn how to beat the Vegas blackjack system by counting cards.
The action-packed caper film stars Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) as Ben Campbell, a student from a poor background who joins a team assembled by Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) to learn how to count cards and make money to pay his medical school tuition. Along the way, he gets closer to his beautiful and brainy teammate Jill, played by Kate Bosworth, and encounters Laurence ishburneâs Cole Williams, a tough old school security man who doesnât particularly appreciate seeing his casino losing money to card counters.
The premiere at the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino was as flashy as these things usually goÂlots of fancy dresses, suits and even a trio of showgirlsÂand for roughly an hour, our roving reporter stood on the red carpet amongst a bevy of local and international outlets, most of them with video cameras and sizeable crews, while we stood there with our lowly Olympus recorder grabbing whomever we could that didnât necessarily need a camera in front of them to talk to us. (And believe me, youâve never been challenged until you come face-to-face with someone without having prepared any questions beforehand!)
Fortunately, we did have a brief chance to talk to the man of the night, actor and producer Kevin Spacey, who wouldnât be around on Friday when we spoke to director Robert Luketic and the rest of his cast from the casino floor of the Red Rock Hotel and Resortâvideo interviews that you can watch later this week.
âI always thought this was a great story, and this was a story people could relate to whether they were gamblers or not,â Spacey told us as he stopped by just before the start of the premiere. âThe idea of being able to learn how to count cards is not illegal and breaking the bank is something that anybody would want to do, but it was entertaining and also it had some echoes to âRisky Business,â that coming-of-age story of a young guy suddenly finding a way to make lots of money, and how will that change him? What kind of moral questions does that raise?â
âMy interest in this started way before I knew there was a book,â he continued. âProbably about a decade ago I started hearing these rumors from friends I knew in Boston, but we could never get any confirmation. It was sort of just a rumor, and then more than five years ago, a Wired magazine article came out that Ben had written, but I didnât even know there was a book.â
Spaceyâs Trigger Street production partner Dana Brunetti filled us in on the rest of the story. âA friend had told me about these MIT teens that go to Vegas and perfect the art of card-counting, and I thought that would be a great idea for a movie, kind of wrote a little treatment about it, and two years later, I saw the Wired magazine article and said âThatâs the movieâ, so I got a hold of Ben the next day, had him fly to L.A., got the rights to the book, set it up at MGM.â Brunettiâs co-producer Michael De Luca, who admitted to being a fan of ComingSoon.net for many years, came on board when the project was picked up by Columbia for him to work with Dana and Kevin on developing the film.
Earlier, we had a chance to speak with author Ben Mezrich about the origins of the novel that inspired the movie and how he got involved with the MIT students. âWhen I wrote the book, I knew what story I wanted to tell,â he said. âTo me, this is sort of an American myth come to life, itâs like young kids taking on a big system, and it had a natural ending to it, so writing the book was actually the easiest book I ever wrote. I went to Vegas. I spent a different night in a different casino every night for a month and thatâs where the book came from. I was with Jeff and the team following them around so they basically let me join the team to write the book, so I would go to and from Vegas with the team and carry money on my body, I was like one of the players. It was like method writing.â
Mezrich wasnât too nervous about the studentsâ story getting more attention with the release of the Sony movie. âWhen I first wrote the book, there was some nervousness. I was telling some secrets, but they loved the movie, the ones that I know whoâve seen itÂthereâs definitely a few of them I havenât talked to yetÂbut Iâm pretty sure that most of them liked it a lot.â
Most people who read the book that may be interested in the movie might want to know how much of the book made it into the movie and how accurate it remains to the true story, and Mezrich expounded with his own opinion. âThe way Jeff (Ma, the main MIT student involved with the card-counting) says it is that basically it was seven years of his life that I condensed down to a 300 page book and then we condensed that into a two-hour movie. Thereâs a lot of scenes that are right out of the book and reality, and then the ending is very Hollywood, thereâs a lot more action. Kevin Spaceyâs character is spectacular, but itâs also a departure a little bit. There was someone whoâd been at MIT for 20 years who was sort of an authority figure who taught and trained the team, so thatâs very real. But Kevin is the perfect bad guy. He plays that so well so he took it to the Spacey level, and itâs a really good adaptation. I loved the movie. Jim is playing Jeff, which I think he did a spectacular job. I mean, they look differently, but in reality, when you see the film, he actually plays him very closely. Iâd like to think in honor of me, they called him Ben.â
Peter Steinfeld, writer of Be Cool and Analyze That, was given the first pass at adapting Mezrichâs novel, and he told us how that came about. âI first got involved with the book and the adaptation and really based my draft on that and worked on it for a couple of years and went through a couple different directors and different incarnations, and then Allan (Loeb) came on board and just completely rocked it and did an amazing job.â
This is a very different movie from Allan Loebâs debut, the drama Things We Lost in the Fire, something he was well aware of when he came on board. âDifferent themes, different genre. There is drama in this but I think thereâs a lot of fun and comedy in this. Itâs a funny movie. Itâs a lot lighter and a lot more fun. I would say that when I originally came on board it was already in great shape and it was just a question of bringing out possibly of the wish fulfillment, which was already there but just bring it out a little more, which is how the process works. I think there were a lot of directors on board and when I came on, there wasnât a director, so I was more free to not have to work under a directorâs supervision, which can be very liberating.â
The two writers talked about expanding the role of Kevin Spaceyâs Micky Rosa for the movie. âFirst meeting I went to, Kevin was there,â Steinfeld told us. âIn the beginning, Kevin wasnât even going to be in the movie at all, and we just desperately wanted him to play the Micky Rosa character, because if anyone was ever cut out to be an MIT professor, itâs Kevin Spacey.â
âThat was just an effort to bring all the parts to closer proximity,â Loeb explained, âbecause originally, in âBringing Down the House,â the Micky Rosa character had been an amalgamation of two different real people, who one of them I think was an MIT professor, It was just an idea to bringing everybody home to MIT, scenes in the classroom, just sort of let Kevin see these guys in action, see them with their intellect and brilliance and then bring them onto the team.â
Obviously, Mezrich must be happy with the results since he already has two other non-fiction books in development with Spacey and Brunetti Trigger Street with Spacey attached to star, his book âUgly Americansâ with DreamWorks and âRigged,â which was just sold to Summit.
Last but certainly not least, we spoke to two of the supporting actors who enhance the filmâs humor and sense of fun, two of Benâs fellow card-counters played by Aaron Yoo, who gained many new fans as Shia LaBeoufâs best friend in last yearâs Disturbia, and the ultra-cute Liza Lapira who appeared on various TV dramas and as a partygoer in J.J. Abramsâ Cloverfield.
Even though Disturbia is his biggest movie, Yoo can be seen in a lot of indies over the last few years including the upcoming Sundance favorite The Wackness and he mentioned that he liked doing both things. âItâs kind of cool. It gives me a little bit of leeway go be able to go back and do indies and also it got me to Sundance. I booked this when I was at Sundance with âRocket Scienceâ last year and I put myself on tape one night, and two days before I was supposed to fly back to L.A., they were like, âListen, donât get on a plane to L.A.; thereâs another car coming, youâre going to Vegas, you have a read-through for â21â on Monday.'â
âThereâve been a couple opportunities where itâs like âIs this project?â but I donât think the right thing has come along yet,â he said about possibly reteaming with Shia, although he did admit that it helped him bond with one of his â21â co-stars. âEveryone wants to work with Shia. Laurence and I bonded when we first met over how Shia does these things on set all the time that blows us on set as actors and Iâm thinking to myself. Itâs one thing for me to be like, âWow, Shiaâs one of the best actors Iâve ever worked with, but for Laurence Fishburne to think that is amazing.'â
We asked Yoo whether he was getting recognized a lot more since co-starring in the hit thriller. âI get a lot of âI met you beforeâ and because I donât have a very good memory I go, âOh, yeah. Where did we meet?â and then theyâre like, âNo, Iâve seen you in something.'â
Most of the cast got to spend time with Jeff Ma to find out about the characters they were based on, but Lapira was hoping to meet the person she was based on. âShe was the one who didnât come to set, but Kateâs character Jill, obviously Jeff, I believe Samâs character, Andrew in the book, came to set, and they all filled me in on what really happened to my character and how she was. â
âWe had two experts to teach us basic strategy and how to handle the chips and look like professionals,â she told us about the research she did for the part, âand I also read the book that they read, and they taught us the hi-lo count and how to count cards.â
Of course, we wanted to know if any of that research for the film helped her make a bit of extra money by playing blackjack while in Vegas, but Lapira admitted she wasnât as skilled as her character. âThe joke is that I counted while the boys were playing and I counted badlyÂI was moving my lipsÂand the dealer just looked at me âYouâre a silly girl whoâs counting. Stop it.'â
21 opens nationwide on Friday, March 28, and you should check back for video interviews with Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishburne and director Robert Luketic later this week.