A rewarding Gambler

If you are looking for a well-made crime thriller, filled with human drama and romance, The Gambler offers first-rate escapism. It's an emotional journey into the world of a man who risks everything to find himself and is ultimately rewarded with more than he gambled for.

Irwin Winkler, who produced the 1974 film on which The Gambler is based, turned to screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) to take on the adaptation after Martin Scorsese gave the writer a ringing endorsement.

Journey of self-discovery

Monahan notes that exploring Jim's unorthodox journey of self-discovery through the backdrop of a criminal underworld offered unique narrative possibilities. "Gambling in this adaptation is only one manifestation of a more general move toward self-destruction. He's a man who wants to strip himself down and start again." Monahan says of Jim. "Like any complicated person, he can't be easily expressed. If somebody is ever easily defined, they haven't been defined."

Monahan's screenplay found its way to Mark Wahlberg, who agreed to produce and star in The Gambler based on the strength of the script alone. "Most actors want to have a director attached. That is a rare show of enthusiasm," producer David Winkler says.

Wahlberg, who received his first Academy Award nomination for The Departed, was eager to re-team with Monahan. "I just fell in love with the idea of playing a part like this. He's extremely unapologetic. He doesn't care whether he lives or not until he meets Amy, who gives him a reason to get out of his situation. It's difficult at that stage of the game because he is in so deep with so many people. He finally finds a purpose in something to motivate him to want to have a fresh start in life."

Wahlberg began preparing for The Gambler long before principal photography commenced in January of 2014.

Extremely challenging

"Intellectually, it was extremely challenging, being a high school dropout and playing a professor in college," Wahlberg says. "It was a bit of a stretch, but something that I was excited about. I'm never one who shies away from a challenge. I jump at the opportunity to do something different and unexpected, but I'm going to make sure that I'm prepared."

In order to familiarise himself with the character, Wahlberg met the head of the English department at the University of Michigan, sat in on lectures at universities in Southern California, and read Monahan's screenplay twice a day. Wahlberg's dedication paid off when he surprised a group of unsuspecting background actors when he filmed his first scene as a professor. "Without prompting, he delivered an eight-minute monologue uninterrupted in one single take to a student body of about 300. I watched them as much as I watched him. I could just see in their faces this kind of look of complete awe," Wyatt remembers.

In addition to extensive character research, Wahlberg chose to lose weight to properly embody Jim. "I was going to try to get as heavy as possible, but the studio didn't like that idea all that much," Wahlberg jokes. "I changed my diet completely. Jim is the kind of guy who's not very concerned with his appearance. He is not the kind of guy who would be exercising or eating right, so it made sense for the role."

Wyatt agrees that an underfed pallor made sense for the character. Says Wyatt: "We made the decision early on that Mark should lose the muscular frame that he has had in so many roles. We wanted to create a wolf-like physicality about him. He's still very much the handsome movie star that he's always been, but he has this amazing, haunted look."

A really rare beast

Director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) found that the personal, character-driven narrative of The Gambler set it apart from other contemporary crime thrillers. "It's a really rare beast in modern Hollywood," Wyatt says. "It's a freewheeling story about a man searching for his own identity and coming up with a plan to expose who he truly is. He's a true outsider raging against the machine and looking for his individuality."

Wyatt was intrigued by the prospect of directing Mark Wahlberg as Jim. "I could see the strength that Mark Wahlberg as an actor could marry with this material," Wyatt recalls. "He's one of a few actors that has this amazing ability as a comedian, and he's an action star, and he's a dramatic actor. In this movie, there is all of that. Jim has a love of life and also this distain for it. He has the ability to make these sharp, fast, off-the-cuff remarks that many of us would could only dream of saying in the moment, and, of course, he has the ability to do it."

Irwin Winkler agrees that Wahlberg adds a sympathetic dimension to the role that might have been missing in the hands of a less capable actor. "He has a great, great charm about him," Irwin Winkler says of Wahlberg. "In spite of the character being self-destructive, you're pulling for him all the time. I think that's where Mark's great character comes in."

"I like seeing Mark in anything," Monahan agrees. "I think he can do anything. He's a phenomenally talented man. And he's from Boston, which gives him a good edge in my book."

Dangerous duality

Jim Bennett spends his days on the campus of a California university, and his nights tucked away in the seedy, less-travelled corners of Los Angeles. Wyatt explains the dangerous duality that defines The Gambler's central character: "It's a Clark Kent story in a way, because by day he's a literature professor working in a California university, and by night he's a nocturnal animal that inhabits and explores the very hidden-behind-closed-doors worlds of high society, elitist, exclusive gambling houses up in Hollywood Hills, as well as the criminal enterprises that go on downtown and underground. He manages to find his way into these unlikely places and, by day, he goes back to what some might consider a very normal conventional life."

Jim's nihilism strips him of his fear, leaving the professor an acerbic, cynical perspective that is often unfiltered. "He's someone who has no qualms about saying what he thinks, regardless of the consequences," Wyatt comments. "He's an appealing character in many ways because he gets to do and say the things that I think we all would like to."

Jim's precarious economic situation ultimately forces him to manipulate the worlds of three criminals: Frank (John Goodman), Neville (Michael Kenneth Williams) and Mister Lee (Alvin Ing). "There are three stakers, as we call them in the gambling world, in this film," Williams explains. "We are all, in a way, intrigued by Jim. We are the planets that are revolving around him trying to engage with this planet in the middle of us that is spinning out of control."

Loan shark

When Jim exhausts his borrowing options, he turns to Frank, a loan shark intent on making an impact on Jim's future. Unlike Neville and Mister Lee, Frank wants to see Jim end his self-destructive pattern. "He's trying to carve his own way in the world but I don't know if he's doing it the right way," Goodman says of Jim's predicament.

"Frank seems to me like a pretty smart guy, probably self-educated. Very controlling, low key, and he likes to make money. He's, he's a smart guy, but he has an edge to him," Goodman says.

For Goodman, working with Wahlberg was the major impetus for joining The Gambler. "I've always liked Mark Wahlberg. He's really interesting to watch, and I really liked the dialogue in the script. I thought it was it was great and it's an interesting compelling story about compulsion," Goodman says.

Goodman and Wahlberg enjoyed performing Monahan's original, surprising interpretation of the relationship between a loan shark and his client. For Goodman, Monahan's dialogue came easily: "Really good dialogue is easier to memorise. It wasn't a chore: it was a labour of love. They were easy words to say and there was a lot behind them."

Goodman also sacrificed his hair specifically for this role: "It's still a shock. Every time I look in a mirror I see Elmer Fudd with a beard," Goodman jokes.

Michael Kenneth Williams is familiar to audiences for his memorable work on HBO's The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, which is executive produced by Wahlberg. Unlike Frank, Neville looks at Jim as a curiosity who has squandered a life rich with opportunity. "In a lot of ways Neville likes Jim, but also despises him because of his easy upbringing. They share this chess game between each other. Neville enjoys watching the show that is Jim," Williams says.

David Winkler believes that Williams imbued a distinct charm in Neville. Says Winkler: "He has a great combination of being so intimidating, but then he smiles, and he's the most charming, warm, funny guy you'll ever meet. That combination keeps you on your toes. You don't know whether he is going to kill you or put his arm around you."

Top-notch performance

When Jim rejects the loan terms initially established by Frank, he turns to his mother, featuring a top-notch performance by two-time Academy Award-winner Jessica Lange. Irwin Winkler, who produced Music Box with Lange and directed the actress in Night and the City, saw Lange as the only choice for the role of Roberta. "She's somebody I'm obviously very, very fond of. When we started thinking about casting, we thought about one actress, and that was Jessica," Irwin Winkler muses.

As with Goodman, the prospect of collaborating with Mark Wahlberg was a draw for Lange, as was the intriguing disconnect between Jim and Roberta's perspectives on wealth and responsibility. "There is a reticence and a sullenness in his attitude toward his mother. It's a little bit of a cat-and-mouse game between the two of them," Lange says of Jim's relationship with Roberta.

Lange notes that Roberta is introduced at the end of a challenging relationship with her son. "I think her feelings about it are very layered. There's the maternal thing of seeing your child in that kind of situation, there's the sorrow of it, the grieving, but there's also the rage and the anger. She's run the gamut of whatever emotions she can muster and she's finished," Lange explains.

Adds Wyatt: "While she lives this very wealthy life, she's lost all of the relationships in her life, including with her own son. They have a dysfunctional relationship and she can't understand why Jim would possibly want to get out of his life of privilege where everything's offered on a plate, but he sees it as this gilded cage. That's where, where their dysfunction comes from."

"She can't understand why he doesn't embrace this privileged life the way that she does," Wahlberg says. "Jim wants nothing to do with it, and she doesn't even realise the reason he's doing all these things because of that and he wants to strip himself of all those things."

Read more about The Gambler and other new releases at www.writingstudio.co.za