March 31, 2008

Mohegans left out of 21

'21' Makes A Curious OmissionIn Ben Mezrich's 2002 book, “Bringing Down the House” the Mohegan Sun was the scene of one of the more profitable plunders pulled off by a team of scheming MIT students who were raiding casinos by counting cards at the blackjack tables.

The MIT students, working the Sun on its opening weekend and the week after, won more than a half million dollars, according to the book, and were even comped with lots of free stuff, like a widescreen TV, a Sony stereo and camcorders, for being good customers.
But the Mohegan Sun doesn't appear in the movie:Maybe Mohegan Sun wasn't glamorous enough to be included in the movie. But I suspect the Sun scenes from the book just got dropped in the routine condensing of book to screenplay.

I guess we have to take the casino's word that the book was mostly wrong in suggesting that it lost so much money to counters at the blackjack tables those opening weekends that it had to change procedures and retrain staff.

The last night of the second raid by the MIT students, when they claim to have taken home more than $300,000 from Connecticut's newest casino, they had a scare when a pit boss finally approached them, the book says. They began to panic. Card counting is legal, but they were worried about laws on an American Indian reservation.

“Mr. Chiu, he said, using Kevin's alias at the moment. “We've been watching you all night.”

Kevin's stomach turned upside down, and he began looking for the exits.

“Why is that?”

“Because you are exactly the sort of customer we want to feel at home here at Mohegan Sun. Are you aware of our comp program?”
Comment:  Presumably the filmmakers left out the tribal sovereignty issue for the same reason they changed the main characters from Asian to white: they didn't want any social complexities to hinder their "get rich quick" fantasy.

3 comments:

writerfella said...

Writerfella here --
writerfella and cuz Milton saw 21 Thursday. While the film is not told linearly, it does contain a linear 'caper' story that was derived from the totality of the book. And in one hour 44 minutes or so, there simply isn't room for any and all details of the original book. When writing such a screenplay, each minute receives an inherent justification questioning: WHY is the writer showing this particular minute? Plus, it was interesting to writerfella that one of the Asian characters that survives to the screenplay is shown as someone who 'comps' himself, grabbing anything and everything in Vegas that is not nailed down. But then again the biggest thief of all winds up being the Kevin Spacey character, who doesn't steal ANYTHING small...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'

writerfella said...

Writerfella here --
Apparently, 21 is 'the little movie that could.' It has been the No. 1 film for two consecutive weekends, pulling in $46.1 million in 10 days. Trackers now predict it will reach $75 millions, darn good for a movie that cost less than $35 million to make...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'

Rob said...

I love how you state the producers' motivation as if it were fact. But as usual, this is nothing but your opinion--i.e., a guess.

It wouldn't have taken any screen time to make the main characters Asian rather than white, as they were in reality. This change suggests the producers' shallow and stereotypical thinking.

Similarly, the producers omitted any reference to an Indian casino or tribal sovereignty. I'm guessing they didn't want any hint of America's multicultural complexity to discomfort their largely white audiences.