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Article From http://ca.news.yahoo.com/010404/6/40jl.html
(April, 2001)
Sunday's CTV movie Lucky Girl looks at the growing problem of teen gambling
By JOHN MCKAY
TORONTO (CP) - Kaitlin, 17, sits in class, furtively scratching a lottery card behind an open text book. While the math teacher drones on at the front of the classroom, she suddenly blurts out a cheer at winning $10.
Later at home, her father is watching a Giants-Packers game on TV, explaining to Kaitlin and her kid brother the difference between the score and a point spread. And so it begins. Lucky Girl, CTV's latest Signature Presentation movie (Milgaard, Dr. Lucille) airing Sunday at 9 p.m. ET, takes a hard look at the growing problem of teenage gambling.
Elisha Cuthbert (Popular Mechanics for Kids) plays Kaitlin, a straight-A student from a typical upper-middle-class suburban family, but who moves inexorably from scratch cards to poker to Internet roulette to underground casinos.
First she seems pretty good at it. She bluffs well in cards. She even starts her own sports pool at school. But soon she's in too deep, borrowing from loan sharks, lying, stealing and cheating even from her own family members.
"It had actually never occurred to me to make a film about gambling,"says director John Fawcett (Ginger Snaps). "Mainly because I find them all falling into the same trap."
Fawcett says he is interested in the nature of addiction itself, though, and if he accepted the challenge he wanted it to be real. So the first thing he did when he got the script was delete the cliches.
"There were guys named Fridge, there was the bad loan shark, the high-stakes poker games. There was, like, prostitution, the big things, I call them movie things. Do they happen in real life?"
Instead, Fawcett tried to create a believable world around Kaitlin, but one in which she didn't start from ground zero.
"There needed to be certain things already in place for a character like that. Like one, very organized, extremely good in mathematical skills, her father is a stockbroker, deals with money and gambles essentially on the stock market, likes sports, knows the sports pool."
And to make it all work required a believable lead.
Cuthbert has all the earmarks of an emerging star but the role required her to stretch beyond the Disney and after-school-special roles she's had so far.
Fawcett cannot say enough good things.
"She is really amazing. She's possibly one of the most professional actors I've ever worked with. Astonishingly consistent and up and happy and really willing to go for it, to experiment and try anything."
Fawcett brought some skills of his own to the project which, with a $3-million budget, was shot in and around Toronto over 20 days last fall.
What viewers might not notice is his effective use of camera movement. In the beginning, he employs the usual dolly shots, very polished, controlled and smooth. But as Kaitlin sinks deeper into her addiction, the nervous atmosphere is heightened by a more shaky, hand-held camera.
"I wanted it to start out looking like a Movie of the Week, and then turn it into something else," he said. "As her psychological state starts to crumble, to give it a more spontaneous feel, to keep us a little off-kilter. It keeps you on edge."
Unlike many Canadian productions, Lucky Girl does not hide its nationality. When cash is exchanged, the close-up shots make it clear it's Canadian currency.
Fawcett says there were no efforts to neutralize the film's nationality to possibly make it more palatable for export. And besides, he doesn't care.
"I don't think it was an issue for CTV," he says. "I get mad about the Americans living so close to us and the sense that we have to either cater to them or to try and do something completely different and not compete with them."
At some point, he says, if people start thinking the right way about films, being Canadian should become a cool thing.
Lucky Girl will be followed by a 30-second public service announcement that will direct viewers to help for teenage gambling addicts.
The file on Lucky Girl, the Sunday night CTV Signature Presentation movie:
Producers: Alliance Atlantis and Triptych Media, Inc. Executive producers Anne Marie LaTraverse and Louise Garfield.
Writer: John Frizzell (Dance Me Outside) and Graeme Manson (Cube).
Director: John Fawcett (The Boys Club, Ginger Snaps).
Stars: Elisha Cuthbert (Disney's Mail to the Chief, Airspeed), Sherry Miller, Evan Sabba, Greg Ellwand, Sarah Osman, Jonathan Whittaker, Victoria Snow.
Premise: A cautionary tale about a high school student who develops an addiction to gambling which begins to drag her into a downward spiral.
Internet Sites on compulsive gambling: www.responsiblegambling.org,
www.CTV.ca/luckygirl
Quote: "If you've ever been addicted to anything, you can maybe understand. If you've smoked cigarettes, or alcohol or over-eating, you can understand why it's so difficult to stop." - Frizzell.
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