Star to team with Milos
Forman for card-shark biopic
When
Nic Cage visited London recently to talk up National
Treasure, he dropped a few hints to us regarding his
future projects. One, a remake of The Wicker Man, is
still unconfirmed (with Cage unlikely to convince as a
prim Scottish policeman, a gaggle of screenwriters is
surely hard at work retooling the character as a groovy,
leather-jacketed street cop). Long-awaited comic book
adaptation Ghost Rider, he revealed, is finally ready to
go before the cameras. But one forthcoming film the star
didn’t mention is a biopic of professional poker player
Amarillo Slim Preston. Perhaps he got the idea in his
hotel room later that night, watching Celebrity Poker
Club into the early hours.
As colourful a character as Cage himself, Preston is
famous for his unerring ability to read signals around a
Texas Holdem poker table. As well as winning the Poker
World Series in 1972 and various other mega-stakes
tournaments, he claims to have wiped the floor with
porno-king Larry Flynt in a game for $2 million. He’s
also set himself up as a poker guru, inspiring wannabe
card-sharks with his book Amarillo Slim In A World Full
Of Fat People and sayings such as, “Look around the
table. If you don’t see a sucker, get up, because you’re
the sucker.”
Having lightened the wallets of some of the world’s
richest men, he’s not without his enemies. According to
Flynt, for one, he’s “a fucking liar… his whole
reputation has been built on lies.” It remains to be
seen which side the movie will come down on, but,
interestingly, the man in the director’s chair will be
Milos Forman, who championed Preston’s defeated foe in
The People Versus Larry Flynt.
Though the biopic will mark the first time that Cage and
Forman have worked together, the director had a
different real-life role in mind for the star back in
1998: the Andy Kaufman part in Man On The Moon.
Screenwriters Stephen Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson
are currently writing the movie, which will presumably
be made shortly after Cage dismounts from Ghost Rider.
Postscript: In case you’re reading, Mr. Cage, we
don’t actually believe that you have nothing better to
do late at night than sit in your hotel room watching
Celebrity Poker Club. Although, if you do happen to
enjoy the show, there’s really nothing wrong with that.
It can get quite exciting, especially when Keith Allen’s
on. |
