STEALING LADY LUCK: An interview with Owning Mahowny director Richard Kwietniowski. By Warren Curry 5/1/03 Part 2 of 2

How faithful is the film to the actual events? For instance, it seems unfathomable that a person could win and then lose $9 million in the course of one evening.

That absolutely happened, and there was a time when he did owe just a little more than that. I decided to keep it that way because I like the fact that he almost got up to the amount. You're usually allowed to play 5% of what you take in, so if you took in $1.4 million you can play $70,000 a hand, so you can quite quickly get up to $9 million. That was authentic. When the casino decided to fly the cage to Toronto airport for the transfer to be signed off on -- that absolutely happened. When he goes to argue about spending $5 on the yellow bag, that really happened, but I don't think on the night that he had $1.4 million. It was over a much longer period of time -- 18 months -- so it was a matter of condensing and building a pattern of things. I think the girlfriend was less combative; I think the girlfriend complained quite a lot, but I thought it would be more interesting if she was unaware of what was going on for the longest time. I like the idea that she has to journey not only from naiveté but a kind of pride -- her boyfriend knows a lot about horses. He might look like a chump, but this is his area. She defends him when her best friend points out that he spends all of his money at the track. She says, "He works so hard that he has the right to decide how to spend his disposable income."

Did you work at all with the real Mahowny?

I met him once. I didn't have to, but I met him for a private meeting about two weeks before we started filming. I had made all of the decisions -- I knew how my Dan was going to look and how he was going to speak. I did want to feel that he was happy with what we were doing. I knew it was problematic because this whole thing was now coming back into his life -- 20 years is a long time. I was a bit ambivalent about that. I felt that we had a responsibility to him, his family, but we had a greater responsibility perhaps to audiences and we had to give ourselves licenses to change stuff. What he was afraid of -- he liked the script and was a Philip Seymour Hoffman and film fan, but he understood the fact that we had to take an angle on how the story would be told to make sense of the film. I think he was concerned that it was going to be sensationalist, but when he saw it he realized that it was neither sensationalist nor a message movie.

Could you see any other actor aside from Philip Seymour Hoffman playing this role?

Not now, no. But I always try and write characters, so I'm not really seeing a person playing that character and I just have some kind of essence of the person. In the initial script Dan was handsome and all that went immediately because I had this idea of a chump eating a donut on the way to work in a bad suit, and he was a bit overweight. That was very appealing to me -- this idea that he would be treated like royalty in the casino. Then I saw Magnolia and The Talented Mr. Ripley within about 10 days of each other. In Magnolia, Philip plays a sort of angel and in Ripley he plays this kind of asshole, sleazy guy. He usually plays these open people and it was interesting to ask him to play somebody sort of closed, and who doesn't show emotion and yet taking the audience close to him. The strangest thing was that I thought I was going to have to make a list to do a lot persuading because he's not a conventional lead and they would want somebody who was more instantly box office. To my amazement, they agreed and now it does seem like, "How could I think of anybody else?" I honestly don't know who my second choice would've been.

Love and Death on Long Island was successful for an independent film and you've mentioned that you like to tell stories in a large way. Have you received offers to do bigger films and was it a conscious decision to again do something smaller?

Well, the problem was that a lot of the material I saw didn't interest me. There was no point in committing to something unless I could give it 100 percent. I'd quite like it if that thing (had a budget of) $60 million. For instance, there was one romantic comedy that I really thought was wonderful that I was attached to and I rewrote it. I had some exciting ideas for the casting and it would've been much more of a studio picture but then it suddenly evaporated for very odd, sort of business reasons. So much depends on chance. Would I have been allowed to make this film if I hadn't got Philip? If they said, "Well, let's try to get actor B or C," maybe I'd say, "Good luck; I think I'll pass on it." You just don't know -- there are so many variables involved. I'm relatively comfortable working from a slightly marginal basis but at the same time I'm very upfront about working on narratives, so I thought this might be a slightly unusual film, but it's not really an art movie.

This is a broad question, but after making this movie, how do you feel about gambling?

I think it's simply a question of control in a sense that if you allow something to happen 24 hours a day in perpetuity it's very easy for someone to spend the value of their real estate or their savings and just sort of go for it. The whole structure of casinos is to make you not want to leave. The food is practically free, it's there, you don't leave the building and if you go to Atlantic City, you don't even know there's a fucking ocean outside. You become sort of Pavlov's Dog and the only thing you care about is winning or losing and it's very therapeutic in a sense because you can leave all of your problems outside with the beautiful ocean! There has to be some responsibility -- it's like cigarettes, I suppose. Yes, they are addictive. I don't know what I think about gambling. I'd not like to think that I've made something that's prescriptive or says, "Look at the evil of gambling." It'd be like saying Love and Death on Long Island is about the evils of teen movies and how it can seduce ancient British scholars and ruin their lives. I've done a few interviews with people who are gaming correspondents and it's kind of scary. I thought they were going to say, "You're really painting our industry in a very bad light," and they say the exact opposite. I had (an interview) in Chicago yesterday, and (the interviewer) said he thought the film was riveting and masterful and was absolutely not surprised by the portrayal of casinos. I'm very happy that no one is seeing it as being judgmental. In an odd way it's not even judgmental of the central character who lies to his girlfriend, embezzles $10.2 million dollars and bullies people to get what he wants. I think you still like the guy, which is kind of weird.

It's not so much a movie about the evils of gambling as it is about compulsion and addiction. You can see this movie being about drugs, being about sex addiction -- any one of those things.

That's good to hear. At the same time, it's hard to tell a story which deals with addiction that is not specific. Because it's like, "Well, what way is the iconography?" You have to have the needles in the arm and such. The odd thing about gambling addiction is it pretty much is invisible. You can't smell somebody's breath or see syringe marks. It's one of those weird things because it's sort of an applied addiction and it's not doing something with the blood stream. It's a cerebral addiction but it's a very real one.

Gambling's such a part of a real life -- in the banking industry or even the film industry. You're putting your money into the film, other peoples' money into the film. It's such a part of everyday life.

Absolutely. Certainly when you make a film, and the fact is what (Mahowny's) being paid to do in the bank during the day is to gamble with other peoples' money. What should I bet my shares in? Buy, sell, buy, sell. Well, if he's paid to do that professionally, he's simply kind of doing that in his spare time as well. What's the difference? In one you wear a suit and the other is sort of subterranean. People look down on casinos as catering to base instincts or something, but then banks are above the law. Banks are like cathedrals of enterprise, whereas I'm sure they play just as many dirty tricks as casinos.

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