Beating the Game — The Luckiest Man in America

I’ve mentioned my professional work a fair few times on this blog. If you’ve somehow missed those occasions, here’s the gist. I work primarily in game shows, both as a writer and an on-set judge. Essentially, my job is to create content for the games — and depending on the project help form the game itself — and when filming, be the first line of defense whenever there’s a dispute, usually about whether or not we can accept an answer from a contestant that doesn’t align with what we’ve come up with. It’s a tremendously fun job, one I could happily do for the rest of my life, and it’s a lot more involved than what you might expect.

Allow me to give you a brief (or as brief as I can make it) rundown of this process, depending on my role. Let’s say I’m working as the Head Writer (or Head of Content, as is my title on non-union shows) on the first season of a new program. In this scenario, I’m supervising the writing staff, providing them with guidance and feedback and approving the content they write, as well as creating my own. I also send the questions up the chain of command to the Executive Producers and the Network for approval, adjusting as needed, before “stacking” them into individual episodes (which are randomized on tape days so that no one can know in advance what the content will be). We’re also fine-tuning the game format as we go, conducting run-throughs and mock play tests to see what works and what doesn’t. Once we settle on that, it can fall to me to write the actual rules of the show, a legal document that all contestants must agree to in order to compete. We reserve the right to make alterations, which must also be put in writing and signed by the players. This is to ensure that neither they, nor we, can cheat.

This was a necessary change in the industry following the game show scandals of the 1950s, where outcomes were routinely rigged in order to maximize entertainment value. If you’ve ever seen the 1994 film Quiz Show, you have a general idea of what went down. Several laws were changed in the wake of this systemic match fixing, and every production I’ve worked on has employed a third party legal consultant to oversee our operations and make sure everything is above board. I’ve formed close relationships with our legal partners over the years, because the whole process utterly fascinates me. I’ll never be a lawyer myself, but that doesn’t stop me from being curious about it all and actively working to get things right the first time so as not to bog things down with red tape.

When I write the rules document, I send it off to the lawyers, producers, and other members of the staff for review. In short, I’m telling them to try to “break the game” so that there are no loopholes to exploit, and any victory or defeat is based purely on merit or chance as the rules dictate. We can’t foresee every contingency, and if something pops up during filming that we couldn’t predict then we have to conference about it and find the best path forward that’s fair to the contestants and gives the production legal cover. But in the end, we go through several rewrites to ensure that the players can’t manipulate the outcome beyond the scope of the game, and no one behind the scenes can do so either.

This is what drew me in to The Luckiest Man in America, which I saw last October during AFI Fest, and which has been given its full wide release this past week. The story of Michael Larson is famous and infamous in the game show community, because it’s that ultra-rare circumstance where the production was made to look foolish, but there was nothing that could be done, because Larson followed the rules. He just found a way to beat the game that few thought possible, and while he was something of a con artist (and not a very good one) outside of his most noteworthy accomplishment, in this one case, he was able to game the system in a way that was entirely fair. As was noted by Damn Interesting in 2011, Larson’s success was possibly “one of the only honest days of work” that he ever put in.

The film, directed by Samir Oliveros, takes a very “Hollywood” approach to the incident, by which I mean that, in the tradition of the quiz show scandals that inspired these legal reforms, the basic facts are maintained but sensationalized for dramatic (and occasionally comedic) impact. I know sure as I’m sitting here that half the things we see in this movie never actually happened, just from the nature of my actual work. However, I can’t deny that it’s still very entertaining. A lot of this is down to Paul Walter Hauser, perfectly cast to play Larson. He’s had a few roles ( I, Tonya and Richard Jewell chief among them) where he’s played shady characters thrust into the spotlight for the proverbial 15 minutes of fame, and he takes things to the next level, portraying Larson as a nuanced mixture of brilliant and pathetic that absolutely nails the extremes of the real man (Larson died in 1999, having spent his final days on the run from federal investigators due to his involvement in a Ponzi scheme).

The question becomes whether this dramatic effect is necessary, because the actual story is amazing enough on its own. In 1984, Larson appeared on Press Your Luck, which was my favorite game show as a kid. I absolutely loved the simple trivia format, where three contestants would answer questions to gain spins on the Big Board. Those spins involved rotating squares and spaces filled with cash and prizes, and it was up to the player to stop the spin (a ring of lights formed around various spaces) on one of those windfalls, all while avoiding the Whammies, cartoon baddies that wiped away your winnings if you landed on them. It was simple and fun, with incredible possibilities to gain a fortune, and some delightful silliness from the Whammy animations.

Larson, however, didn’t come to have fun. He came to win, and win big. And the man did his homework. Just like a football coach studying video of his players and opposing teams to come up with a gameday strategy, Larson pored over dozens of tapes he’d recorded of various episodes, eventually realizing that the board wasn’t fully randomized. In fact, every episode fell into one of five preset patterns for the lights and spaces. Once on stage, he took the necessary time to analyze the board and determine which pattern was being used, and after a couple early misfires, he timed himself out so that he’d almost always land on a space that gave him both a high dollar amount and an additional spin. Over the course of the two-part show (the first time this had ever happened, necessitated by his win streak), Larson racked up over $100,000, a record prize at the time.

Oliveros and Larson make this work through two very crucial elements. The first is immersion. While a lot of the goings-on of game show production are changed or created out of whole cloth for the sake of the plot, there are several details that are right on the money. The pressure of the moment, the heat of the lights, the sheer size of the set (the scale never really translates through the TV screen, whether it’s bigger or smaller than what meets the eye), the cheers of the audience, the put-upon Production Assistant (Maisie Williams) handling multiple requests and receiving contradictory marching orders, and even the consternation of the contestants in waiting stuck in the green room, all of it is very real and true to the experience of making these programs. Here’s a fun fact for you. Game shows normally bring in more contestants than they need for a shooting day. These “alternates” rarely end up playing and get paid a day rate for showing up, but sometimes, other contestants meant to appear on the show end up leaving the set, either due to the frustration of having to wait their turn or from any number of careless violations they commit while on location. Once they’re gone, the alternates take their place. So when PA Sylvia goes to the green room to give the other prospective players sandwiches to tide them over and placate their complaints, the anger and annoyance of everyone involved is pretty damn accurate.

The second is in depicting Larson as both a lovable loser and conniving strategist. Not much is revealed about Larson’s life outside of Press Your Luck, just enough for the viewer to know that he’s not exactly a model citizen. Anyone who’s interested can do research on him after the fact, but the picture gives you all you need to know to understand his motivations and actions within this narrow context. From his sad sack introduction where he pretends to be someone else just to get an audition, to the ice cream truck that he lives in, to his stated desire to just get a nice birthday present for his estranged daughter, Hauser’s Larson lays the sob story dynamics on pretty thick, but never in a way that makes him unlikable or needlessly obtuse. He also leaves behind evidence of his wrongdoings for Producer Chuck (Shamier Anderson, obviously a composite character) to find, keying us into the fact that Larson is very smart in some areas but very dumb and gullible in others.

In essence, Larson’s entire day filming this show is an exercise in morality, and it’s left to us to determine whether or not he’s a good person on balance. No better is this exemplified than in a late scene where a panicked Larson wanders around the studio lot and stumbles into a taping of a late-night talk show featuring Johnny Knoxville. In this surreal moment, Knoxville interviews and examines Larson’s conscience in a manner straight out of Requiem for a Dream. The confusion is palpable, but it ultimately brings clarity to the viewer because of how well Knoxville and Hauser sell the moment. It’s a complete non-sequitur of a scene, but it strangely fits.

Where the film started to lose me — and I wholly admit this may be because of my bias knowing how this stuff really works — is in the show’s attempts to sabotage Larson. David Strathairn plays Bill Carruthers, the EP of the show. Initially taken in by Larson’s act, he instantly casts him on the program to film the next day (which just doesn’t happen; casting takes months), but when he realizes that he’s been had, and that Larson has found a way to exploit the lighting patterns (portrayed in the film as being a shortsighted blunder on Carruthers’ part to only have five patterns when in reality it was a calculated risk they were aware of when the show was created, as they didn’t have budget to create more or program a fully randomized system), he works to get rid of him, with the help of Chuck and to a lesser extent, host Peter Tomarken (Walton Goggins in a shockingly accurate portrayal).

This, at times, provides for some tension, but you have to take it with a massive grain of salt, because literally every action Carruthers takes is patently illegal. The only leg he has to stand on is the fact that Larson misrepresented himself in the audition. However, he still decided to put him on the show, and once the camera starts rolling, no one is allowed to interfere with the game in progress, unless there is evidence of cheating. As their legal consultant Donna (Shaunette Renée Wilson) points out, however, he’s done nothing wrong within the game, strictly speaking. He’s operating within the rules. In this one instance, Carruthers et al simply got outsmarted.

That doesn’t stop Carruthers or Chuck from trying to manipulate the outcome, which is what fuels the “David vs. Goliath” narrative. He tries to disqualify Larson, change the game pattern, insert surprise spins, and in a very odd twist, tries to confront Larson with a “home viewer” who Larson just so happened to have scammed in the past in order to throw off his concentration. Strathairn sells it perfectly, but it strains credulity and makes an unnecessary villain out of one of the most storied game producers in TV history.

For me, it’s hard to separate the fact from fiction here. On the one hand, the simplistic nature of the conflict allows for more fun and excitement within the pressure cooker of the game itself. On the other, I know full well from experience that if Carruthers tried anything in real life like he does in the flick, it would be kiboshed immediately. I mean, for whatever character flaws Larson has, the instant Chuck breaks into his truck to find damning evidence against him, a crime has been committed, and Larson would be well within his rights to sue for massive compensation, far more than what he won on the actual show. I think this is why we have scenes of Larson running around the lot (contestants are rarely allowed to leave the stage while the show is in progress, and even then they have to have an escort to prevent them from doing anything untoward) or surreptitiously calling his ex-wife (Patti Harrison) during the taping (strictly forbidden; nowadays contestants routinely have their phones seized upon entry so as not to get any outside information that might advantage them), to create more ethical grey areas to contrast with the bright colorful lights of the Big Board.

I can safely say it works, but here’s the thing. Part of my job as a game show writer is doing research to ensure the accuracy of my content, lest a contestant challenge it and risk civil liability for the production. Ironically, it appears this version of Press Your Luck was altered in a way that would jeopardize the program had this been the actual show. Thankfully, there’s a clause in all those rules documents that bails us out of a lot of sticky situations: “At producer’s sole discretion.” Those four words cover our asses far more times than I can count. What ultimately makes the relationship between Carruthers and Larson so funny to me is that it was that discretion that got Larson on the show (at least within the confines of this story) and ultimately tied the production’s hands, to the point that in order to save face, a new spin had to be created to lean in and make Larson into something of a televised folk hero.

In the end, this is why I like this film. It has problems, believe me, but at the same time, Oliveros has accomplished something very intriguing by giving us an inside look at all the dishonesty that can be involved with a sector of entertainment that often appears rigidly aligned with facts and statistics that can’t lie. Michael Larson was a complex man who went to extreme lengths to beat and break a fairly simple game, and ended up changing the course of the industry in the process, though that was never his intention. The flashing lights can seem glamorous, but they can also be a distraction from what’s really going on. While far from perfect, Oliveros and company illustrated that exact dichotomy.

Grade: B

Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? What’s your favorite game show? Is there anything you’d like to know about the inner workings of these programs? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!

Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on April 10, 2025.