Who is the movie rounders based on

Released 20 years ago this month, the drama pushed high-stakes poker, then very much still an underground pastime, up into the mainstream. It helped usher in the poker boom. Among modern pros, it remains an uneclipsed cult classic. To come together, Rounders needed more than just two first-time screenwriters who knew they were good enough to sit at the Hollywood poker table. David Levien cowriter : I was bartending.

I had just finished a novel. I want to write. I want to write something. I want to write a screenplay. Koppelman: I know when I [first] went into a poker club. It was December 15, Because bizarrely, two years later to the day we started filming Rounders. And we were friends. And we had this interest in poker. I remember sometimes we would spend a few hours in his office in the middle of the day playing poker together, just heads up.

Professional poker players playing in an illegal setting in New York. It was so fucking cool. Shecter: I initially started playing in other parts of New York, deep in Brooklyn, in these Russian sort of mob places, including at one point, in a synagogue, if you can believe it.

My first underground poker game was inside the back room of a Russian synagogue. I remember it was near Avenue X. Then somebody told me about the Mayfair and brought me down there. Comparatively speaking it was a very upscale place. First of all, it was in Manhattan. It was in what they called the Midtown South district, which was famous for many vices being allowed to happen. Edward Norton Worm : Now this shit is all organized. At the Mayfair, the girls at the desk and the servers, they all wore the panic buttons around their neck.

The word was that they were wired to the precinct in case someone came [to bust the club]. Because there was a lot of money in the room sometimes. You sort of have to be approved.

Shecter: Joel Bagels was probably in his mids when I met him. He got his name because he had a bagel delivery route. He would play poker all night and then he would leave at like six in the morning and go get in his truck and deliver bagels in different parts of the city.

And that just gives you a sense of the kind of guy he was. I spent a lot of time telling Brian about this guy. He was a guy with a very clear philosophy about poker. And his philosophy was he was a grinder. He was never a guy that was ever gonna play big.

Shecter: Brian was a very aggressive poker player. The kind of player that everyone loves to play against. Because he was playing every pot, almost, and playing to the end, throwing money around. Typically the regulars are gonna be much more conservative. Brian was not that. Brian was playing a hundred miles an hour.

And everyone loved him. It was amazing! You gotta come see this place. These people, the way they talk. Who are the characters? The setting is amazing. Levien: Nights we would meet up late and go down there to play poker, and that was like the research part. And it was an amazing time. We have enough of this stuff. Levien: We would meet in the mornings from 8 to 10 before he went to work to do the sort of writing parts. Koppelman: It was this tiny little room.

It had a slop sink in it, a real old-fashioned slop sink, a very small desk that had no room at it. I was smoking sometimes these Schimmel Pennicks, tiny cigars, as we were writing.

I was just trying to get out of my own head. And the two hours we would write I know we felt more alive than any other time of the workday. Levien: We were trying to entertain each other and crack each other up. Koppelman: I found a dictionary of old poker terms. And I remember like reading it over and over, trying to incorporate it. People ask about that language. Because one of the things that happened in that basement is we invented a language, right? That that was an archaic term, and using it.

And the notion of calling them checks, not chips. That was a legitimate term for a top game, it was just a term used a long time ago by a select group of people. These guys are sitting there looking at each other thinking. We needed a way to open up what their thought process was. Gimme three big dimes.

Levien: The day we finished the screenplay I remember going back to my apartment and seeing an announcement in Variety that [Al] Pacino and [David] Mamet were going to redo The Cincinnati Kid. And ours found its way. But around that time I had signed on with a young literary manager in L. His name is Seth Jaret. Seth would really appreciate it if you gave it a read for Ted Demme. Falco: At the time, I was 27 years old. Because the rest of the movie was working so well on the page.

Falco: I felt it was so authentic that regardless of what I know about the truth of poker and how the game was played, it read like the writers had definitely had inside knowledge of the game. And the story itself held up regardless of what the backdrop was. So I gave it to Ted and his partner Joel Stillerman.

Stillerman: She had amazing taste. And she was out doing what she was supposed to be doing, which is shaking the trees. Levien: Somehow after years of no poker screenplays in the world, there were like four that went out. Falco: There were a couple of poker scripts, and we looked at the competitive projects, but nothing was as insider as what this was.

So we actually never bought the script. And we had a clause in the deal that allowed us to designate certain projects as having a sense of urgency. We basically put them on a short clock. In May, he was charged with first-degree and third-degree rape and a first-degree criminal sexual act in a second case. Koppelman: March 3, I know when that sold. Koppelman: We knew we had the beginnings of the possibility of a career. This is just one example of how easy it is now to learn the basics of a game that Rounders brought to a mainstream audience — albeit a little bit after the original release.

If a sequel were to be filmed, much of it would be around New York City, as Rounders used several locations back in The East Jersey State Prison was one of the most recognizable locations in the original. It appeared when Mike went to meet his old friend Worm upon release. The film is based in part on actor Norm MacDonald. There are many types of games being played throughout the movie.

The film was set in New York but was shot in New Jersey. The writers have cameos in the film. The chips and cards provided for the film are all authentic. At which point Matt Damon looked John Malkovich very confused, John Malkovich seeing him looking confused leaned over and said "I'm a terrible actor. Early on, Mike is seen taking money out of a poker book called "Super System", which was written by poker legend Doyle Brunson.

He later pulls quotes from the book with the lines "Texas Hold 'em is the Cadillac of poker games" and "The trick to no limit is to put a man to a decision for all his chips. Writers David Levien and Brian Koppelman have cameos in the Atlantic City poker scene; they're two of the players used to illustrate giveaway tells. Right before we see Worm released from jail, he shaves his goatee off.

This was the same goatee that Edward Norton featured in "American History X" which had had filmed months prior to this film. You also notice that his hair is shorter than the rest of the film and that was the result of Norton's hair growing back after completely shaving it off entirely for that film. Tom Aldredge's character Judge Marinacci's last name is a reference to poker consultant Johnny Marinacci.

Neve Campbell turned down the role of Jo. The film was also written by Michael's friends. Director of photography Jean-Yves Escoffier based the look of the film not from the neon garishness of New York but on somber Flemish art. Composer Christopher Young wrote two scores for this film. The first original score he wrote was a completely dramatic work that did not go over too well with The Weinstein's as well as director John Dahl.

Young was then in a bind and was forced to write a second score, which was a jazz based score featuring a jazz combo orchestra as well as a quintet.

Rather than lose and write a complete new score, Young reintegrated the original score with the jazz material which was met with approval by Dahl. The soundtrack released by Varese Sarabande at the time of the film's release features both elements of the score. The film was shot in actual New York locations around the city including Manhattan and Queens some of which no longer exist with the exception of the law school which was actually filmed in Newark, New Jersey at Rutgers University.

The playing cards used during both games at KGB's place are a deck of red and a deck of blue backed Arrow-design, standard index, wide plastic cellulose-acetate cards of the KEM range manufactured by the United States Playing Card Co. Edward Norton wears almost the same costume throughout the entire film especially the brown leather coat that he wears.