Handicapper Link hits screen as 'action' hero
Joe Hawk - Las Vegas
Review Journal
Wed Oct 5, 2005
Brandon Link thinks big, dreams big, talks big, acts big and, most significantly, bets big.
Why not, this 42-year-old former Las Vegas resident and one-time Sporting House gym rat asks in a fiery, forceful voice? Life is, after all, just one big, sweaty-palmed, hold-your-breath, do-you-have-the-stones gamble. To what degree you succeed, he says, depends upon how much you're willing to risk and how pure your karma is.
Link should know.
Nine years ago, he surrendered his position as one of the nation's top NFL handicappers -- and the lusty lifestyle that came with it -- to sell his jagged, high-stakes power story to Hollywood.
"I've never been afraid to chase a dream," Link says of his desire to take his tale from real to reel. "I knew I had a story to tell, one that Hollywood had never heard the likes of. All I needed was to catch the right ear. If I could catch the right ear, I'd have that person running naked down the street singing 'Kumbaya.' "
Convincing people is the strength of most sports handicappers. But Link brought something more to the other end of those pay-for-play phone calls during his six years in the business: an uncanny skill for picking winners.
That unique angle definitely caught the ear of screenwriter Dan Gilroy. Now, two years after he and Link first met, the credits are rolling for "Two For the Money," a Universal Pictures-distributed film starring Oscar winner Al Pacino, Rene Russo and Matthew McConaughey, the latter portraying Link's name-tweaked character, Brandon Lang.
The movie, directed by D.J. Caruso, will be released nationwide Friday. It premiered in Los Angeles last week and had its local opening Tuesday night at The Palms.
McConaughey could not attend because he was appearing on "Late Show with David Letterman" to promote the film's opening weekend.
"It's 100 percent the way I thought it would come out. It's perfect," gushes Link, who says he can't wait to attend a general showing so he can see the reaction of film-goers. "Matt absolutely nailed (his performance) to a tee. The only difference is that he plays me a little more down. I'm a little more hyper, a little more energetic."
In the interests of full disclosure, the movie is "about 80 percent" true, Link says, to his real adult-life story. Some changes were made to embellish the drama and enhance the performances.
Most notably, as it pertains to his time in Las Vegas when he was honing his skills as a handicapper, Link's character is a former college football star whose professional dreams were dashed by a career-ending injury. In real life, Link, who moved to Las Vegas in 1987 and had a passion for UNLV basketball, was a 37-point scorer in The Sporting House winter league before hyperextending his left knee in 1989 and giving up the game for good.
"Keith Starr (assistant to longtime UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian) saw me play one day and said, 'You should walk on and play for us,' " Link recalls. "That's what I was planning on doing, until I hurt my knee."
While certain liberties may have been taken with the movie's storytelling -- no, Link never was romantically involved with his boss' wife as Lang is with Toni, the wife of Walter Abrams (Pacino), who runs the East Coast-based sports consulting firm where Lang works -- the essence of his tale remains pure.
"The pressure to produce, to make the right picks, to sell the picks, to stay on top of your game, what happens when it starts to go the other way, how you want to punch a coach in the mouth when he calls a timeout with his team down by 30 (points) late and tries to keep scoring so he screws you with a backdoor cover ... it's all right there, and it's accurate," Link says.
"It shows the joy and the stress and everything in between."
Which leads us to wonder where karma enters the picture.
Sure, Link bets big -- he became a caddie at Riviera (Calif.) Country Club specifically to meet and network with Hollywood types, such as Gilroy, hoping they might make his movie -- but how does living right influence one's success?
"I learned a long time ago from my mother -- and I come from a very dysfunctional family -- that if your karma is pure, you'll reap what you sow," says Link, who has returned to sports handicapping, this time on the Internet (brandonlang.com). "I've kept my karma pure to keep the reap comin'.
"If there's one lesson I learned from all of this, it's don't go negative -- stay positive. If you keep things positive," he stresses, "the reap will always be trying to catch up to you."
===============================================================================
Bandon Link started out working as a score phone announcer for the Jim Feist Sports Sevice company in the late 1980's and early 1990's. He was offered a job by Stu Feiner in New York after the two met over telephone conversations during score phone advertising recordings at the Jim Feist operations.
Joe Hawk - Las Vegas
Review Journal
Wed Oct 5, 2005
Brandon Link thinks big, dreams big, talks big, acts big and, most significantly, bets big.
Why not, this 42-year-old former Las Vegas resident and one-time Sporting House gym rat asks in a fiery, forceful voice? Life is, after all, just one big, sweaty-palmed, hold-your-breath, do-you-have-the-stones gamble. To what degree you succeed, he says, depends upon how much you're willing to risk and how pure your karma is.
Link should know.
Nine years ago, he surrendered his position as one of the nation's top NFL handicappers -- and the lusty lifestyle that came with it -- to sell his jagged, high-stakes power story to Hollywood.
"I've never been afraid to chase a dream," Link says of his desire to take his tale from real to reel. "I knew I had a story to tell, one that Hollywood had never heard the likes of. All I needed was to catch the right ear. If I could catch the right ear, I'd have that person running naked down the street singing 'Kumbaya.' "
Convincing people is the strength of most sports handicappers. But Link brought something more to the other end of those pay-for-play phone calls during his six years in the business: an uncanny skill for picking winners.
That unique angle definitely caught the ear of screenwriter Dan Gilroy. Now, two years after he and Link first met, the credits are rolling for "Two For the Money," a Universal Pictures-distributed film starring Oscar winner Al Pacino, Rene Russo and Matthew McConaughey, the latter portraying Link's name-tweaked character, Brandon Lang.
The movie, directed by D.J. Caruso, will be released nationwide Friday. It premiered in Los Angeles last week and had its local opening Tuesday night at The Palms.
McConaughey could not attend because he was appearing on "Late Show with David Letterman" to promote the film's opening weekend.
"It's 100 percent the way I thought it would come out. It's perfect," gushes Link, who says he can't wait to attend a general showing so he can see the reaction of film-goers. "Matt absolutely nailed (his performance) to a tee. The only difference is that he plays me a little more down. I'm a little more hyper, a little more energetic."
In the interests of full disclosure, the movie is "about 80 percent" true, Link says, to his real adult-life story. Some changes were made to embellish the drama and enhance the performances.
Most notably, as it pertains to his time in Las Vegas when he was honing his skills as a handicapper, Link's character is a former college football star whose professional dreams were dashed by a career-ending injury. In real life, Link, who moved to Las Vegas in 1987 and had a passion for UNLV basketball, was a 37-point scorer in The Sporting House winter league before hyperextending his left knee in 1989 and giving up the game for good.
"Keith Starr (assistant to longtime UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian) saw me play one day and said, 'You should walk on and play for us,' " Link recalls. "That's what I was planning on doing, until I hurt my knee."
While certain liberties may have been taken with the movie's storytelling -- no, Link never was romantically involved with his boss' wife as Lang is with Toni, the wife of Walter Abrams (Pacino), who runs the East Coast-based sports consulting firm where Lang works -- the essence of his tale remains pure.
"The pressure to produce, to make the right picks, to sell the picks, to stay on top of your game, what happens when it starts to go the other way, how you want to punch a coach in the mouth when he calls a timeout with his team down by 30 (points) late and tries to keep scoring so he screws you with a backdoor cover ... it's all right there, and it's accurate," Link says.
"It shows the joy and the stress and everything in between."
Which leads us to wonder where karma enters the picture.
Sure, Link bets big -- he became a caddie at Riviera (Calif.) Country Club specifically to meet and network with Hollywood types, such as Gilroy, hoping they might make his movie -- but how does living right influence one's success?
"I learned a long time ago from my mother -- and I come from a very dysfunctional family -- that if your karma is pure, you'll reap what you sow," says Link, who has returned to sports handicapping, this time on the Internet (brandonlang.com). "I've kept my karma pure to keep the reap comin'.
"If there's one lesson I learned from all of this, it's don't go negative -- stay positive. If you keep things positive," he stresses, "the reap will always be trying to catch up to you."
===============================================================================
Bandon Link started out working as a score phone announcer for the Jim Feist Sports Sevice company in the late 1980's and early 1990's. He was offered a job by Stu Feiner in New York after the two met over telephone conversations during score phone advertising recordings at the Jim Feist operations.
