A poker story, a Madison story
By Doug Moe
PHIL HELLMUTH is such a Madison kid that when Bob Soderstrom wrote a screenplay about Hellmuth, the once precocious and always colorful poker brat, he called it "The Madison Kid."
That was five or six years ago. Soderstrom, a lawyer dreaming of being a writer, wrote the script longhand in lined notebooks in between sips of coffee at Ancora on King Street. At the time Soderstrom was married to Phil's sister Kerry.
The script was good enough to win a 2002 Wisconsin Screenwriter's Forum contest, and now, in a business where it is said you can die of encouragement, it is this close to being made into a movie with a hot young actor named Hayden Christensen playing Hellmuth.
One of the questions still up in the air is where the movie will be filmed. You might think that a script titled "The Madison Kid" - with scenes set around the State Capitol and Union Terrace - would be a natural to be shot at least partly in Madison, but it's more complicated than that.
Beacon Pictures is tentatively set to begin shooting the $7 million movie, likely under the new title "Poker Brat," in October. Wisconsin is under consideration as a location for the filming - along with the Madison scenes, there is a poker game at the Pfister in Milwaukee and another in Green Bay.
The timing would seem to be excellent. In May, the state Legislature passed a bill allowing tax credits to film productions working in Wisconsin.
It is touted as making the state one of the most film friendly in the country, but there's a hitch - the legislation doesn't go into effect until late 2007.
With time running out for "Poker Brat," members of the Film Wisconsin Task Force, established in 2004, have been working behind the scenes with state officials to see if there is a way to offer a version of the incentives for films going in front of the camera prior to a year from December.
Right or wrong - and given the dollars and exposure they bring to a state, it's probably right - movie production companies have become accustomed to getting tax incentives from the states in which they film. States that offer good ones get movies, the others don't.
Earlier this month, the Indianapolis Star ran a page one story on Indiana's problems luring film productions.
It began: "Producers of a movie about one of the state's most notorious crimes - the 1965 torture murder of teenager Sylvia Likens in Indianapolis - say they wanted to shoot on location, but Indiana wouldn't offer enough financial incentives to bring the production here."
The story quotes filmmakers saying Indiana is losing "tens of millions of dollars in economic benefits." The producer of "Hoosiers," the classic Gene Hackman movie about Indiana high school basketball, told the Star that if he was making the film today, he'd be more likely to film it in Louisiana.
A media industry lobbyist told the Star that Indiana risks losing movies to Wisconsin: "If we don't step up to the plate, we're going to see a lot of our crew base and talented folks moving to Illinois or Wisconsin (another aggressive state) to do their work."
It sure would be nice if that aggressiveness could result in Phil Hellmuth's story filming here.
It's a great story. Phil graduates Madison West, attends UW-Madison, where his dad is a respected professor, but finds himself drawn to campus poker games rather than the class room. Inevitably, there is a father-son clash.
Phil - called "PJ" in the family as his dad is also Phillip Hellmuth - kept playing cards, and though he hit a few potholes along the way, in 1989, at the age of only 24, Phil Hellmuth won the World Series of Poker (and close to $1 million) at Binion's casino in Las Vegas.
In the 17 years since, Phil has moved to California, married and become a father. With the poker boom he has also become, in a sense, an industry unto himself. There have been books, a Web site, more championships, endorsements, personal appearances, all built around the "poker brat" image that usually culminates with Hellmuth throwing a temper tantrum when a card doesn't fall his way. Not to tamper with the golden goose, but the truth is Phil Hellmuth off camera is nice guy.
And the story of his poker ascendance is a good one, better than good. Back in 2002, when his script won the award, Bob Soderstrom told me: "When I told the story, at a dinner party, or wherever, people loved it."
How could they not? It ends with Phil Sr. in the audience in Las Vegas when Phil Jr. wins his world title. After all the harsh words, no words are needed. Father and son embrace.
This week, Soderstrom agreed when someone said the movie is about more than poker. "It's a universal story," he said. It's also a Madison story, and it ought to be filmed here. |
