Jon Favreau Poker

Poker: The Real Deal by Phil Gordon, Jonathan Grotenstein, Jon Favreau (Introduction by) starting at $0.99. Poker: The Real Deal has 2 available editions to buy at Half Price Books Marketplace. Self - Poker Pro / Self - Commentator / Self - Poker Player (6 episodes, 2004-2005). Self (1 episode, 2004) Dave Foley. Self (1 episode, 2004).

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Shot takers come in all shapes and sizes. Many of the shot takers you see at the casino are doing it out of an act of desperation, and others only after spending an ample time gaining somebody’s trust and confidence. But the celebrity-filled, high-stakes, private games that I have frequented over the years have had their fair share of shot takers as well.

For the uninitiated, let me set the stage. You are playing poker at your local casino, and you see a guy who you’ve sat across the table with for months. He sits down and suddenly realizes that he left his wallet at home. He asks if the dealer can lock his seat up while he runs home to get it, and the dealer makes no such promise since others are waiting to play. You recall this guy buying you the occasional beer, and decide to be a gentleman by offering to cover his first stake in the game. You could be handing him $500 or $5,000, but whatever the amount is, you are confident that by the end of the night, you’ll have your money back.

Cut to three months later, and you are now chasing this seemingly nice guy for the stake he owes you. But you can never catch up to him, and when you do, he always has a story or an excuse.

In an act of desperation, the guy “took a shot at you” knowing you would trust him, and now you’ll be lucky if you ever see that money again. One interesting psychological aspect of taking a shot at someone, and why it’s often impossible to make an accurate read on the situation until it’s too late, is the fact that often the shot taker starts out with the best of intentions. It’s when things go south that those intentions go out the window.

When the guy goes bust, he looks you straight in the eye and says, “I’m going to run home to grab my wallet so I can pay you back.” You thank him for being honorable. Hell, he might have even been telling the truth about forgetting to bring his wallet. Maybe he’s truly planning on doing the right thing for the entire drive home. But then, when he finally grabs his tattered old wallet, and only sees 200 bucks, and then logs into his bank account to find all he has waiting for him there is an overdraft fee… well, guess what? He won’t be coming back with your money! And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he knew the only way he could pay you back would be if he won using the loan you floated him. Or even worse, he might have known from the beginning that a day would come where he would take a shot at you, and you would be sucker enough to oblige him.

Now imagine a similar scenario, but this time you are in a high-stakes, invite-only, private poker game. The host of the game announces that a famous actor is stopping by and would like to play. The brutal bitch about getting scum bagged by a celebrity is the fact that confidence doesn’t need to be established for these cats to take a shot at you. Their fame is all the confidence they need to know that the ball is in their corner. Nobody in their life says no to them! They live in this beautiful little fantasy land we call Hollywood and whatever they want, they get. Most of the time anyway.

I’ve witnessed several Tinseltown shot takers in action over the years who used their celebrity status to try and screw over a poker game. Some of them were trying to take a shot at me directly, while others just wanted to freeroll on their fame without worrying about who was going to take it on the nose at the end of the night when it was time to settle up.

Some celebrity shot takers were small time scum bags. One night I was playing poker at some hotel near Silverlake and in walks this kid who was one of the actors from the movie Swingers, (the cult classic that launched the careers of Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau.).

I loved Swingers. It was close to my heart because I was coming up in Hollywood when that film came out and I could relate to so many things that happened in it. I used to live in the same area Favreau’s character lived in, I went to all the same bars they frequented in the movie, and I even ate breakfast at the same diner where Vaughn embarrasses himself playing peekaboo with a woman and her baby.

So when this actor (whose name I won’t reveal) sat down to play, I had no problem extending him credit. He didn’t have to post like everyone else, because that would have been an insult. After all, this guy was a star of one of the greatest pop culture independent films of the ‘90s! I just wish I would have thought to ask him what other films he had been in lately, because the answer would have been NONE! This guy probably hadn’t worked in ten years. There’s no telling what he was doing for a living at this point, but that night, his fading fame got him a freeroll into the game. He owed me $10,000 within the first hour, and minutes later he was out the kitchen door, never to be seen again.

Another world class shot taker was the delightfully charming Amir Vahedi, God rest his soul. At this time Amir was coming off a great run that took him deep in the 2003 World Series of Poker main event on ESPN, making him, Sammy Farha and of course Chris Moneymaker household names. He was the guy who first brought Ben Affleck to the Hollywood Park pot-limit game which I’ve written about previously.

I staked Amir one time in a cash game, against my better judgement. He told me he busted out with a bad beat, but someone else told me he used the stake to enter himself into a tournament. So the next time Amir came to me asking to stake him in a Legends of Poker event, I politely declined. He ended up winning it, but allegedly had sold 200 percent of himself prior to the tournament beginning. So, in that case, he took a shot and it backfired on him.

One of the funniest stories of a celebrity shot taker came from the time Tobey Maguire played Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst in a game of Backgammon for $100. Fred lost, but I think he figured since him and Tobey were both celebrities and it was only a hundred bucks, that Tobey would just forget about it. Of course, Tobey didn’t forget about it and even went as far as calling Fred’s publicist to shake him down for the debt… which Fred eventually paid.

But one of the ballsiest shot takers I ever came across actually took shots for a living! He was a professional basketball player for the Detroit Pistons that I mention in my book. This guy used his fame to penetrate a big game featuring myself, Tobey Maguire, The Joker and The Hangover director Todd Phillips, and others.

The first and only time he ever played in our game, he lost $40,000, and then walked out the door assuring everyone he would settle up the next day. But when the next day came, he called Molly Bloom and told her he felt he was cheated and therefore didn’t feel he had to pay! Of course, I’m sure if he would have won, he would have had no problem collecting.

I was owed about $25,000 from his loss, so I was pretty pissed at the time. He was the only player who ever stiffed our game. But I got him back over a year later at a completely different game in what I can only describe as a “double shot” of redemption.
There was a game in the valley that was hosted by a shrewd, but greedy dude who I’ll refer to today as Gringo. Gringo had been wanting me to bring big players to his game in exchange for inviting me to lay with the lambs. One night I invited El Drunko, a guy I knew who provided lots of action.

I got to the game and the Pistons ball player who had stiffed me a year ago was there, as was a few other celebs including comedian Kevin Hart. El Drunko went off the rails that night, dumping pot after pot to Mr. Piston. I was in a business deal with El Drunko at the time and owed him just under $40,000 on a royalty that was due in about a week. So when he lost 38 grand I immediately got up and cashed out. I instructed El Drunko to tell Gringo, “Houston owes me some money, so collect my $38,000 loss from him the next time you see him.”

I had previously told Gringo that the ball player was on my blacklist and to never invite the two of us to the same game. I swore to Gringo that this guy would eventually cause a major problem for his game, but he didn’t listen. So when Gringo asked for me to pay up what my El Drunko owed the game, of course I told him that he had broken our pact, and that he would need to deduct El Drunko’s loss out of the ball players winnings along with a reminder about the $40,000 debt he owed from the night he lost to me, Tobey, and Todd. Damn, that felt good!

But not every table loan story ends badly. A perfect example would be when Billionaire banker Andy Beal floated Rick Salomon a few million to play against him in his own house! Rick went on to Beat Andy for what was rumored to be around $40 million! I’m not saying that Rick wouldn’t have found a way to pay him back the buy-in if he would have lost… but you just got to love the balls it takes to beat someone over the head in their own house, with their own money for $40 million!

For all of my readers out there who have been stung in the past by someone who took a shot at you, allow me to provide you with a fun little video tutorial of a classic card hustle that you can use as payback. Either that, or it will help take your mind off the fact that you donked off some dough to an angle shooting scum bag!

Remember, there’s always going to be somebody out there trying to take a shot at you. So stay sharp! Stay KardSharp!

Houston Curtis, founder of KardSharp.com and author of Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist has lived a successful double life as both a producer and high stakes poker player for nearly 30 years. His credits include executive producing gambling-related TV shows such as The Ultimate Blackjack Tour on CBS, The Aruba Poker Classic on GSN and pioneering the poker instructional DVD genre with titles featuring poker legend Phil Hellmuth.

Barred for life from Las Vegas Golden Nugget for “excessive winning” at blackjack, Houston is one of the world’s most successful card mechanics and sleight-of-hand artists of the modern era. Curtis, who rarely plays in tournaments, won a 2004 Legends of Poker no-limit hold’em championship event besting Scotty Nguyen heads-up at the final table before going on to co-found the elite Hollywood poker ring that inspired Aaron Sorkin’s Academy Award-nominated film Molly’s Game.

Curtis now resides in Columbia, Missouri while maintaining offices in Los Angeles, and Phoenix, Arizona. In addition to running a production company and independent record label, Curtis also consults as a poker protection expert to clients across the globe seeking insight into master level card cheating tactics via advanced sleight-of-hand technique. In addition, Houston is now available for in-person and online speaking engagements, private sleight-of-hand instruction, and a variety of media creation/production services. Houston can be contacted directly at stacked@kardsharp.com.

Jon Favreau Poker Player

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a 1994 American biographicaldrama film written by screenwriter/director Alan Rudolph and former Washington Star reporter Randy Sue Coburn. Directed by Rudolph, it starred Jennifer Jason Leigh as the writer Dorothy Parker and depicted the members of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, actors and critics who met almost every weekday from 1919 to 1929 at Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel.

The film was an Official Selection at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. The film was a critical but not a commercial success. Leigh won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress.

Peter Benchley, who played editor Frank Crowninshield, was the grandson of Robert Benchley, the humorist who once worked underneath Crowninshield. Actor Wallace Shawn is the son of William Shawn, the longtime editor of The New Yorker.

Cast[edit]

• Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker
• Campbell Scott as Robert Benchley
• Matthew Broderick as Charles MacArthur
• Peter Gallagher as Alan Campbell
• Jennifer Beals as Gertrude Benchley
• Andrew McCarthy as Eddie Parker (Edwin Pond Parker II)
• Wallace Shawn as Horatio Byrd
• Martha Plimpton as Jane Grant
• Sam Robards as Harold Ross
• Lili Taylor as Edna Ferber
• James LeGros as Deems Taylor
• Gwyneth Paltrow as Paula Hunt
• Nick Cassavetes as Robert Sherwood
• David Thornton as George S. Kaufman
• Heather Graham as Mary Kennedy Taylor
• Tom McGowan as Alexander Woollcott
• Chip Zien as Franklin P. Adams
• Gary Basaraba as Heywood Broun
• Jane Adams as Ruth Hale
• Stephen Baldwin as Roger Spalding
• Matt Malloy as Marc Connelly
• Rebecca Miller as Neysa McMein
• Jake Johannsen as John Peter Toohey
• Amelia Campbell as Mary Brandon Sherwood
• David Gow as Donald Ogden Stewart
• Leni Parker as Beatrice Kaufman
• J. M. Henry as Harpo Marx
• Stanley Tucci as Newt Hunter
• Mina Badie as Joanie Gerard
• Randy Lowell as Alvan Barach

Given the historical impact of many of the people portrayed in the film, the ensemble nature of the cast led to opening credits displaying all 30 actors listed above. Other historical characters, in brief appearances, included portrayals by Keith Carradine as Will Rogers, Jon Favreau as Elmer Rice, lead character Robert Benchley's grandson – Jaws author Peter Benchley – as Frank Crowninshield, Malcolm Gets as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gisele Rousseau as Polly Adler.

Development[edit]

Director Alan Rudolph was fascinated with the Algonquin Round Table as a child when he discovered Gluyas Williams' illustrations in a collection of Robert Benchley's essays.^[2] Speaking in 1995, he said 'the Algonquin Hotel round table, what it symbolised, and the ripple effect that went out from it, was probably up there in the 50 most significant events of the century'.^[3] After making The Moderns, a film about American expatriates in 1920s Paris, Rudolph wanted to tackle a fact-based drama set in the same era. He began work on a screenplay with novelist and former Washington Star journalist Randy Sue Coburn about legendary writer Dorothy Parker. In 1992, Rudolph attended a Fourth of July party hosted by filmmaker Robert Altman who introduced him to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. Rudolph was surprised by her physical resemblance to Parker and was impressed by her knowledge of the Jazz Age. Leigh was so committed to doing the film that she agreed to make it for 'a tenth of what I normally get for a film'.^[2]

The screenplay originally focused on the platonic relationship between Parker and Robert Benchley, but this did not appeal to any financial backers.^[2] There still was no interest even when Altman came on board as producer. The emphasis on Parker was the next change to the script, but Rudolph still had no luck finding financing for 'a period biography of a literate woman.'^[2] Altman used his clout to persuade Fine Line Features and Miramax—two studios he was making films for—to team, with the former releasing Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle domestically and the latter handling foreign distribution.^[2] Altman claimed that he forced the film to be made by putting his own money into it and 'I put other projects of mine hostage to it. I did a lot of lying'.^[4]

Rudolph shot the film in Montreal because the building facades in its old city most closely resembled period New York City.^[2] Full financing was not acquired until four weeks into principal photography.^[5]

The film's large cast followed Leigh's lead and agreed to work for much lower than their usual salaries. Rudolph invited them to write their own dialogue, which resulted in a chaotic first couple of days of principal photography. Actor Campbell Scott remembered 'Everyone hung on to what they knew about their characters and just sort of threw it out there.'^[2] Actress Jennifer Beals discussed this in her appearance on the Jon Favreau documentary program Dinner for Five, where she stated that much dialogue was improvised in the style of the real-life characters actors were playing, but that many of those characters were not integral to the plot. As such, many of the actors had much larger parts that were edited to nearly nothing. The cast trusted their director during the 40-day shoot. They stayed in a run-down hotel dubbed Camp Rudolph and engaged in all-night poker games. Leigh chose not to participate in these activities, preferring to stay in character on and off camera. She did a great amount of research for the role and said 'I wanted to be as close to her as I possibly could.'^[2] To this end, Leigh stayed for a week at the Algonquin Hotel and read Parker's entire body of work. In addition, the actress listened repeatedly to the two existing audio recordings of Parker in order to perfect the writer's distinctive voice. Leigh found that Parker 'had a sensibility that I understand very, very well. A sadness. A depression.'^[2]

Reception[edit]

A rough cut of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle was screened at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival where it divided film critics. It was rumored afterwards that Leigh re-recorded several scenes that were too difficult to understand because of her accent but she denied that this happened.^[5] The film was an Official Selection at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or.^[6]

For her performance in the film, Leigh was nominated for both the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead.

Year-end lists[edit]

• 4th – Michael Mills, The Palm Beach Post^[7]
• 6th – Desson Howe, The Washington Post^[8]
• 10th – Scott Schuldt, The Oklahoman^[9]
• Top 10 (listed alphabetically, not ranked) – Jimmy Fowler, Dallas Observer^[10]
• Top 10 (not ranked) – Betsy Pickle, Knoxville News-Sentinel^[11]
• Honorable mention – Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News^[12]
• Honorable mention – Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News^[13]
• Honorable mention – Michael MacCambridge, Austin American-Statesman^[14]

References[edit]

1. ^Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle at Box Office Mojo
2. ^ ^abcdefghiCarpenter, Tessa (August 29, 1993). 'Back to the Round Table With Dorothy Parker and Pals...'The New York Times. Retrieved May 26, 2010.
3. ^Johnston, Trevor (March 10, 1995). 'Living by her wits'. The List. Retrieved August 26, 2020.
4. ^Weinraub, Bernard (July 29, 1993). 'Robert Altman, Very Much A Player Again'. The New York Times. Retrieved May 26, 2010.
5. ^ ^abAppelo, Tim (December 23, 1994). 'Finding Dorothy Parker's Voice'. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved May 26, 2010.
6. ^'Festival de Cannes: Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle'. festival-cannes.com. Retrieved August 30, 2009.
7. ^Mills, Michael (December 30, 1994). 'It's a Fact: 'Pulp Fiction' Year's Best'. The Palm Beach Post (Final ed.). p. 7.
8. ^Howe, Desson (December 30, 1994), 'The Envelope Please: Reel Winners and Losers of 1994', The Washington Post, retrieved July 19, 2020
9. ^Schuldt, Scott (January 1, 1995). 'Oklahoman Movie Critics Rank Their Favorites for the Year Without a Doubt, Blue Ribbon Goes to 'Pulp Fiction,' Scott Says'. The Oklahoman. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
10. ^Zoller Seitz, Matt (January 12, 1995). 'Personal best From a year full of startling and memorable movies, here are our favorites'. Dallas Observer.
11. ^Pickle, Betsy (December 30, 1994). 'Searching for the Top 10... Whenever They May Be'. Knoxville News-Sentinel. p. 3.
12. ^Simon, Jeff (January 1, 1995). 'Movies: Once More, with Feeling'. The Buffalo News. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
13. ^Lovell, Glenn (December 25, 1994). 'The Past Picture Show the Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- a Year Worth's of Movie Memories'. San Jose Mercury News (Morning Final ed.). p. 3.
14. ^MacCambridge, Michael (December 22, 1994). 'it's a LOVE-HATE thing'. Austin American-Statesman (Final ed.). p. 38.

Jon Favreau Movies

External links[edit]

Jon Favreau Parents

• Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle on IMDb
• Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle at Rotten Tomatoes

Jon Favreau Poker Game