Kevin Spacey tries to cheat the odds at blackjack and Laurence Fishburne tries to protect them in the Columbia Pictures drama 21. The film, which is inspired by true events, follows an M.I.T. professor (Spacey) and a group of his hand-selected students who master the skill of counting cards and take the Vegas casinos for millions of dollars at the blackjack tables. Fishburne plays the head of a security company hired by casinos to make sure card counters and other cheaters don’t make off with the casinos' money.
Spacey had a cagey response when asked at the film’s Las Vegas press junket whether he now believes, after starring in 21, that he can take on blackjack and win. “Well, we certainly hope that that's what the audience feels anyway. I have a feeling that's what the casino owners are hoping the audiences will. Everybody descends on Vegas to say, ‘Hey, I can break the bank.’ I always enjoyed this game. It's my favorite game of any gambling game. I've had, like you, experiences where you just have an unbelievable streak. And then I've had nights where I've been incredibly depressed because I lost $300. It's the gamut.”
“While I was here, I didn't really gamble. I don't think I gambled once the entire time I was here. Maybe one night, but I found that when you're here and you're trying to do a movie and all the other responsibilities I had as producer, I just couldn't be here and play the Vegas game you would normally play. If you come here for two or three days, that's one thing. But we were about a month and some weeks and that's a little bit too long to get into that lifestyle.”
Spacey's interest in making 21 dates back a decade. He and his producing partner, Dana Brunetti, heard about the exploits of the M.I.T. blackjack team back in the '90s, wrote their own screenplay about the M.I.T. students, put it aside for years, and then had their interest in the story renewed when Ben Mezrich’s first article on the subject was printed in Wired magazine in 2002 (Mezrich followed up his article with the bestselling book Bringing Down the House).
“Dana was walking down the street in New York and on a newsstand was a Wired magazine and on the cover was the true story of the MIT students who went to Vegas,” recalled Spacey. “He went, ‘F--k!’ He grabbed this thing and he called me immediately. He hadn't even read the article. He just called me and said, ‘I think I've found a source for the story.’ I said, ‘Well, track down the writer.’ So he went about doing that and ultimately he discovered this kid named Ben Mezrich. We had no idea that it was a book and it was coming out about a month later.”
“He Googled him and left a message on his machine, and Ben thought it was somebody playing a joke. And then he Googled Dana's name and found out that Dana actually did work for Trigger Street. He called Dana back and the next day he was on a plane to Los Angeles. So that was the first for us. That was the first thrilling moment where we suddenly had tangible, not only evidence that this story was true, but somebody would spend all the time researching it and there was a book on which this could be based. So we made a deal with Ben. We then almost immediately sold it to MGM, and then almost immediately MGM got sold itself. So we went into what I would call an exceedingly frustrating four and a half year waiting period while they got sold. Then Sony bought them, and then there was a period of time before Sony made the decision that they were going to pull two movies out of their potential movies coming up out of their roster. One of them was James Bond and the other was us, so we were very happy that we got picked up,” said Spacey.
Spacey’s very pleased with the final product although, without giving away any spoilers, both Fishburne and Spacey say the film could have ended a variety of ways. “The scenes with Kevin and I we did, I guess, three different ways. We shot it three different ways,” revealed Fishburne. “We played it three different ways. We had three different ways to actually end the movie.”
“Sometimes if you're just not sure and you're just in the writing process…I did this on a number of movies where you'll shoot alternate versions and then you'll look at them. That way, you don't have to go, ‘Well, we have these other two ideas but we didn't spend the time while we were there to shoot them, so now we have to go back and reshoot.’ We just kind of did a potential reshoot while we were there so that we had the material if in fact we decided actually it's better or more interesting that this happens, or it's better or more interesting that that happens. And, ultimately, I think we made the right decision,” added Spacey.
