Welcome to the cutthroat world of high stakes, high-roller sports gambling, a $200 billion industry.
Fortunes are won on Sunday and lost on Monday in Two for the Money— a dicey drama set in the adrenaline-filled world of wheeler-dealer gamblers where riches are made and destroyed with the flip of a coin. With millions of dollars on the line, reckless players, like Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey and Rene Russo, engage in a “who’s conning who” game where the bets are high and the losses are even higher.
Based on a true story, Two for the Money marks the return of Pacino in the not-too-surprising role as the quintessential power player Walter Abrams, a recovering addict (in every sense of the word)-turned-betting advisor with a lust for money and power. He does anything he can to get it–even if it means not trusting the people who love him most.
It was the Pacino-packed motivating force on set that neither Matthew nor Rene had ever experienced before. But Rene wouldn’t let his intimidating Godfather-like presence get to her– well, not completely.
“I was really intimidated. I was intimidated until I looked across the table and said, ‘Oohh, I know you,'” said Rene, laughing. “Then the acting kicks in and you go, ‘Okay, look, I can do this because I’ve lived where you’ve lived your whole life and I know where you live so I can play you, I can play with you. I can play with you because I see you.’ And we have sort of a similar fire, so he doesn’t intimidate me in that way because I grew up really angry, you know, so I can sort of get in your face. I mean, I can sort of say, ‘Okay, it’s Al, but I gotta get over that part now and just play the part with you.”
Matthew‘s experience with the legendary Pacino was, let’s say, a little more laid back, a little more ‘hanging ten.’
“It’s like dancing, man. It’s like dancing with a great partner. It’s fun, it’s free, it’s unexpected all the time. He’s gets on waves and he rides them all the way. Sometimes they end up going, landing in the perfect spot, sometimes they don’t. But he rides them every time, and that’s one of the things I learned and loved to watch him from the outside and also working with him,” said Matthew. “You give him something and you catch a wave; you don’t know where it’s going, but while you’re doing it you’re not trying to stay ahead of it you’re on it, you’re riding right there at the top just before you surf it. And if you hit it and you land, you kind of have that feeling afterwards like, ‘Okay, I don’t know what that was, but it worked.'”
Not a true sports fan herself, even though she loves the Boston Red Sox, Rene could still hold her own with all the testosterone on the New York City set.
“I’m kinda used to working with the boys. So I’m used to that. These boys are great boys.”
But the token phrase “boys will be boys” was apparently not true on this 43-day shoot. “Everybody was really focused on the work,” said Rene. “Al had like pages and pages of dialogue to do and scenes back to back that were just like overwhelming so he was like just running lines all day long, all day long. And [Matthew] was so into his character because he had to be in these really dark places; it wasn’t time to just have a good time, really. It was a very serious set in a way.”
Entering into this “dark world” is Brandon Lang, played by McConaughey, a self-assured but washed up former college football player who is also sort of a sports gambling phenomenon. He knows how to consistently pick the big football winners. This talent catches the eye of Walter, who takes him out of his small-time world of $10 an hour and 900-services in Las Vegas and into the big-time ‘Sin City’ of New York. In this world of addicts, Brandon doesn’t quite know what he’s getting himself into.
“Brandon’s not addicted to anything. He’s in a world with addicted people. But addicted enough where he’s going to do whatever to keep winning, and that’s a healthy thing. He was not addicted to something that he was losing life from. That’s just kind of who he was. He was a winner,” Matthew said.
Personally, Matthew knows a thing or two about pushing the limits.
“I know I can [have an addicted personality], and that just probably comes from me liking to… if I’m doing something, I do like to take it to the limit just to test it,” said Matthew, laughing. “I’ve got a high ceiling; I’ve got a wide threshold whether it’s left, right, up or down, ceiling, basement, I’ve got a wide threshold for seeing what those boundaries are for myself.”
Back in cinema reality, soon Brandon is enjoying his status as Walter’s golden boy and protégé. Walter evolves into Brandon’s surrogate father with Brandon growing even more comfortable with Walter’s wife Toni, played by Russo. Brandon is now morphing into John Anthony, a pseudonym superstar sports advisor with everything money can and cannot buy–women, cars and worship.
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When he came on board the movie, Matthew saw Brandon as a winner in more ways than one, even when the Midas touch slips from Brandon’s fingers and Walter and Brandon engage in a treacherous con game trying to outwit each other.
“What I saw was a guy who’s a winner and all of a sudden starts losing. There’s where the drama was for this character for me,” said Matthew. “What do you do if you’re a winner, man? Not that you think you can win. You are a winner and you all of a sudden are not winning. And so what do you do? You go back to a world where it all main sense when you were winning and all of a sudden you find that world wasn’t real; that was an illusion. You go to the people that kind of become your family and you find out that rug is kind of pulled out from under your feet. And then to top that off not in any certain order but you find out that you don’t only need to win to get somebody’s money back, you need to win to survive and help your family survive because the people that lost the money took it real personal and went to make threat on the family.”
Winning can sometime come at a heavy price. And the same can happen in Hollywood, a fact that Matthew is keenly aware of and attributes to his “Spidey senses.”
“I’ve got a lot of self respect, so even those times where you’re not feeling the best, your inside clock let’s you know, man; your instincts. You learn things first when you try them out first in your head and then you marinate them for a while and you understand what they feel like inside,” said Matthew. “Then you do by your gut. Listening to my instincts; my ‘Spidey senses’ have always been pretty damn keen.”
He continued, “You like what you like and you just stick to it. Other things you like what you like, but the things that come with success or celebrity comes more options. All of a sudden they’ll be 99 things to say ‘yes’ to that you didn’t even have the option to say ‘yes’ to yesterday. One thought of it is, ‘Well, man, I never had the chance, so let’s try it out and see what they’re talking about.’ No one comes out and says, ‘This opportunity will be offered, but don’t taste.’ But again, good advice is, ‘There it is, be cool, check it out, don’t forget yourself.'”
Unlike her character on screen, Rene‘s so-called “BS detector” is not always on target.
“[It’s] not good. Not good in some ways. As negative as I can be in life, and when I say that I can be really negative and I have great faith. And I know that sounds like ‘Whoa, how can you have both of that?’ I don’t know, but I do. But I don’t know if I’m necessarily a good judge of character or of a person because I always believe the best,” said Rene. “You know, maybe that’s a good thing too because I don’t care what you do, I’m always looking underneath and I say, ‘Well, why are you doing it?’ Well, you’re doing it because you’re afraid. So that’s how I look at people. It’s not that you’re like bad necessarily, it’s that you’re afraid. So that can get me in trouble.”
In a role that was written for her by her writer-husband Dan Gilroy, Rene also plays a recovering drug addict-turned-salon owner. Trading heroine for control over everyone’s else’s life, Toni wields the true power in her home–trying to balance Walter’s ambition and serving as a reminder that his inner demons, and hers, are not far from the surface.
“It can be a blessing in a way to have that dark side because it gives you compassion and you can experience things maybe other people can’t, but you also have to realize that it will stay with you forever. It doesn’t go away and that you have to like get grace day by day. That’s what I feel and I think that’s where Toni was living in a way until it was like, ‘Holy hell, everything’s crumbling around me and this happened so fast and now I’m completely out of control.'”
When it comes to family, friends and gambling, Matthew never lets it get too out of control.
“My friends and I get a lot of grunge matches going,” Matthew said. “As we call it, ‘Buy a ticket to the game,’ so we can watch every play in front of the TV and either say, ‘I told you so,’ or blame it on some conspiracy. It’s the fun of it; ‘Buy a ticket to the game, baby,’ and then if you win, you get to talk noise for the rest of the week and if you lose, you get to talk about how you got screwed over. It’s fun.”
Although Matthew will always be a football fan, he admits he’s gotten more into baseball in the last four years. But he’s easy to please. Forget those infamous bongo drums and pro sports on the small screen. All Matthew needs to unwind is a little background noise.
“One of the most relaxing things for me is Wednesday nights, Joe Morgan and John Miller, just to have them on TV in the background no matter who’s playing.”
Two for the Money also stars Jeremy Piven and Jamie King. It opens in theatres Oct. 7..
