This Blog Contains a Spoiler for a Film You'll Probably Never See Anyway

Here's a movie pitch for you: it's the story of a gambling addict named Tom Carver. Cast some guy who's good at playing sleazy leading roles. Maybe Ray Liotta. Unfortunately for Tom, he lives right outside of Atlantic City, so he is able to indulge his addiction on a daily basis.

Tom likes the slots. He initially thinks they're fun, but as he loses more and more money, he starts to get desperate for a big pay-out, and devotes even more time to playing the slots -- thus losing even more money, making him even more desperate for a pay-out, motivating him to spend even more time in the casinos, which causes him to lose even more money, etc.

Problem is, Tom's got a wife and kid, and he's got to justify all this time he's spending at the casinos, so he cooks up a lie that quickly becomes routine. He's an author, and claims that he's been spending time at a coffee shop, working on his next novel. The truth is that he never got past the first sentence of this alleged novel, but it's been keeping his wife off his back, and he's been telling the lie for so long that he no longer feels even a hint of remorse for the dishonesty.

The thing is that Tom's spending so much time at the casinos, his family, once patient, now starts to feel neglected. The nature of Tom's lie means that his family eventually starts asking, more out of curiosity and hope than anything else, "hey, how long are you gonna work on that thing, anyway? Isn't it ever gonna be finished?" "Soon," Tom starts promising, which turns out to be a mistake, because when "soon" doesn't arrive, his family finally starts losing patience.

Coincidentally or not, Tom's wife Carolyn finds a new route home from work that just happens to pass the coffee shop Tom's been claiming that he spends time in. Uh oh, now he needs to elaborate his lie, so he explains that he doesn't always go to the same coffee shop. It's an innocuous claim, but it raises Carolyn's suspicions, and she starts to wonder if Tom's having an affair -- a possibility their daughter has already been considering for a while. At one point, Carolyn decides to call Tom's bluff, and goes to the coffee shop to see if Tom's really there or if she'll catch him in a lie, and he races over, arriving in the nick of time to make it look like he's been there the whole time. The immediate crisis has been averted, but things are clearly getting out of control.

Despite Carolyn's increasing suspicions that Tom's been having an affair, his only mistress has been the slot machines, but by the time Carolyn gets up the nerve to ask if he's been having an affair, the answer is a little more complicated. Tom has started to spend a lot of time with a show-biz gal named Danni, and while their time together is ostensibly innocent -- no lines have been crossed into outright romance -- Danni clearly has a crush on Tom.

Now here's where the stakes get raised. Danni, unaware that Tom is a gambling addict, introduces him to the blackjack table. Tom's first visit to the table results in a streak of beginner's luck, and he makes a small fortune. Not enough to compensate all of the money he lost at the slots, but it's still a thrill. This is, of course, the worst thing that could possibly happen to a gambling addict, because now he starts spending all of his money and time at the blackjack table. Soon, he has gambled away his family's entire savings, including his daughter's college fund.

Carolyn finally realizes what's been going on, but when she confronts Tom, his apology quickly segues into the old "I'm not perfect" defense, which in turn becomes a cruel verbal attack on Carolyn, whose patience and all-around sweetness are thrown in her face as "boring." Tom runs off to Danni, but returns later that night to beg forgiveness and promise that things will be different. Carolyn, however, has finally had enough -- the loss of the college fund was the last straw -- and asks for a divorce.

Tom decides to quit gambling cold turkey, in the hopes that this will win Carolyn back, but then Danni comes to Tom with a "sure thing", and they conspire to make one last big bet. Tom is confident that a big score will win Carolyn back, and is truly clueless that the mere knowledge that he's betting again would be enough to estrange Carolyn once and for all. When the "sure thing" turns out to be a bust, Tom is so upset that he doesn't care that Danni has lost everything she owned, and responds by angrily hitting her before storming out, leaving poor Danni in tears.

All of this may sound like a fairly by-the-numbers story of a loser whose flaws lead him to hurt everyone around him. I'll admit we've seen variations of this story countless times before, but here's the first part of the twist: I'm describing one of the plots of an actual movie, Even Money. The movie stars Kim Basinger as Carolyn and Ray Liotta as Tom. And here's the real twist: In the movie, Carolyn is the gambling addict and Liotta plays the loving spouse who is victimized by his wife's dishonesty.

Now, I could commend writer Robert Tannen for his inspiration to switch the genders of otherwise familiar roles, putting a new perspective on an old story. Or I could condemn him for the exact same thing, using the gender switch to hide the fact that his story is full of cliches and and tired melodrama. Both reactions would probably be equally valid. But I'm not interested in either of these messages.

Instead, I want you to consider how you felt about these characters while you were reading about the sleazy Liotta and the loyal but victimized and ultimately defiant wife played by Kim Basinger. And compare that to how you'd feel watching Carolyn's desperate attempts to win back the money she'd lost, and Tom's furious accusations and futile attempt to catch her in the act of her lie. How do you feel about the main character's almost-not platonic relationship with the exciting stranger now that you know that she's not some busty red-head, but he's a humble Danny DeVito? How do you feel about the scene in which Carolyn loses her temper and repeatedly strikes her male friend? Is it o.k. now, because it's a woman hitting a man instead of the other way around? Does the gambler go from "what a jerk!" status to "poor woman's got a problem"? Do the actions of the jealous spouse become less justified and more disturbing?

You should consider these questions and ponder what the answers say about you and the society in which you live. Maybe that's what Robert Tannen had in mind all along.