This is an excellent thematic companion to 1994’s Quiz Show.
But while that earlier game show scandal drama is a handsomely mounted major studio production, this new film from director/co-scripter Samir Oliveros is cheekily retro and unapologetically low-budget ... which adds to its sense of period authenticity.
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| While fellow contestant Ed Long (Brian Geraghty, left) watches attentively, Michael Larson (Paul Walter Hauser) prepares for his firt spin of the "Big Board" on the TV game show Press Your Luck. |
Following a brief first act, events take place during a single day of taping for Press Your Luck, a CBS game show that ran from 1983 to 1986 ... and likely would be entirely forgotten today, were it not for what happened on May 19, 1984.
Shy, withdrawn, down-on-his-luck ice cream truck driver Michael Larson (Paul Walter Hauser), a hapless social misfit, sneaks into Press Your Luck auditions. He cheekily claims somebody else’s appointment slot, gets caught and ejected ... but not before winning over executive producer Bill Carruthers (David Strathairn), who suspects the guy would make “good television.”
Michael has a great back-story. He admits driving across the entire country in his ice cream truck, and hopes to win enough cash to impress his estranged wife and young daughter.
Casting director Chuck (Shamier Anderson) is dubious. Something doesn’t seem right about the guy.
Carruthers nonetheless books Michael for the next day’s taping. As requested, he arrives wearing a suit jacket and tie ... making him even more comical, atop baggy shorts (which won’t be visible during taping). The obviously nervous and twitchy Michael is ushered onto the set by Sylvia (Maisie Williams), a kind-hearted production assistant who nonetheless eyes him warily.
Michael takes the middle “hot seat” between co-contestants Ed Long (Brian Geraghty) and Janie Litras (Patti Harrison): the former a minister, the latter a dental assistant.
Walton Goggins is note-perfect as smarmy show host Peter Tomarken, whose occasional off-color jokes — sometimes at the expense of contestants — delight the studio audience.
(Tomarken is a product of that still less-enlightened time. Remember how Richard Dawson always kissed every female contestants on Family Feud? Yuck!)
The rules of Press Your Luck were a bit bizarre, even by daytime TV game show standards. Contestants answered and/or agreed with the answers to a few multiple choice questions, hoping to earn spins of the “Big Board,” with its 18 light-up squares illuminated rapidly in random sequence. A contestant earning a spin then pressed a giant button to stop the lights on one of the squares; rewards included cash, vacations or additional spins.
Each spin also had a one-in-six chance to hit a Whammy, an animated character who wiped out all accumulated winnings. Spin play therefore was a bit like Russian Roulette: the more a contestant kept spinning, in order to accumulate more cash and prizes, the greater the chance of losing it all.
At first blush, during Michael’s initial try on the button — his behavior an odd blend of determination and nervous terror — he hits a Whammy and seems destined for a hasty departure. But once into the game’s second half, Michael earns multiple spins and wins cash ... again, and again, and again, and again.
He quickly tops the show’s previous contestant record of $21,000 ... and keeps going.
In the control room, Carruthers, legal consultant Donna (Shaunette Renée Wilson), and two board engineers rapidly lose their cool, particularly when an upper-echelon CBS exec shows up, having been dragged away from his tennis game.
How is Michael doing this?
I don’t want to spoil the mystery, particularly since Chuck proves to be a perceptively shrewd amateur detective. (Anderson excels during those scenes.)
Let’s just say that the show was undone by a) its extremely limited budget; and b) early-gen computer software.
Opinions may vary — and could fuel a lively debate — but, in my view, Michael definitely was not guilty of cheating.
Hauser is terrific as Michael, with an all-in performance that defines this guy to every exhaustively painstaking degree: the twitches, awkward stance, slouching, guilty expressions, mumbled replies to unexpected questions, reluctance to make eye contact ... the list is endless. At the same time, Michael can unexpectedly burst into fan-boy enthusiasm, as when he initially shakes hands with Tomarken ... and, somehow, that’s even more unsettling.
The always-excellent Strathairn is similarly marvelous, particularly when Carruthers begins to panic ... and seeks scapegoats. Although this likely is where the script strays from truth, I’ve no doubt that Carruthers’ cowardly impulse to blame Chuck — Anderson silently seething in rage — is precisely the sort of cover-one’s-ass move that occurs when things go sideways in film and television production.
Geraghty and Harrison deftly shade their characters, as they’re forced to sit helplessly alongside Michael, while his streak continues. The solicitous Ed sympathizes with Michael’s rising panic attacks, as Carruthers keeps interrupting the show’s taping; Janie, in marked contrast, becomes hilariously exasperated.
Michael, Tomarken, Carruthers, Ed and Janie were actual individuals, when this went down in 1984; all other characters are composites or wholly fabricated.
The film’s title eventually becomes ironic, in light of what happens at the end of this eyebrow-lifting saga ... and also what eventually became of Larson.
(He and Press Your Luck were the subject of earlier documentaries in 2003 and 2018.)
Don’t stop watching too quickly; the end credits pause, after a few minutes, for brief archival footage of the actual Michael being interviewed by Tomarken ... which illustrates, to an astonishing degree, the accuracy of Hauser’s appearance and performance.
This is a fascinating slice of television history, sharply directed and well performed by the entire cast.
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