Poker mockumentary on the cards

What better way to ensure that scriptwriter and director Zak Penn gets his poker fix than to make a film about it.

Sep 27 2004

Apparently Zak Penn, writer of X2, Behind Enemy Lines and the forthcoming horror/thriller, Suspect Zero, has been playing poker every week since he left school. So what better way to ensure that he continues to get his fix than incorporating it into the day job by taking a film crew to one of Vegas’ most famous Casinos, The Golden Nugget.

The film will be in the style of his last offering Incident At Loch Ness – a mockumentary similar to Christopher Guest’s This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show – which examined the fine line between truth and fiction by getting (literally) to the bottom of Loch Ness and its monster myth.

The idea of this new, as yet untitled, comedy is to create the characters and the basic scenes in advance and then let the cast improvise the rest.

Already taking their places at the table are fellow poker players Ben Affleck, David Schwimmer and German auteur Werner Herzog, who also starred in Incident At Loch Ness.

But considering Affleck won the Commerce Casino's California State Poker Championship in June this year, making him the first celebrity to win a major poker open, our money's on him. Even if he is cast as the loveable loser, we're betting he won’t be able to fold on a Royal Flush.

Having said that, though, the underdog who may yet be seen to be holding all the cards is William H Macy. If he can just replicate his character in The Cooler he could spread enough bad luck - using the power of his probability-bending personality - to take the pot.