I write about sports every week.  Next week in this space, I’ll be writing about Super Bowl props.  Two weeks from now, it’ll be all about college basketball through the end of March Madness.  But not today.  Today, I’m going to write about movies.  Nobody needs two full weeks of Super Bowl hype!

There are no great sportsbetting movies --none.  Hollywood has produced a handful of great gambling movies – The Sting, Casino, Rounders, The Hustler and Croupier certainly stand out.  But when it comes to anything resembling realism in a sports betting movie, it doesn’t exist.  Every bettor in a Hollywood sportsbetting movie is a compulsive addict; every bookmaker is evil and they always win. 

There are no exceptions in this tried and true Hollywood formula.  If Richard Dreyfuss isn’t uncontrollably gambling on every race in ‘Let it Ride’, then Matthew McConaughey is forcing his clients into bankruptcy and letting his entire career path depend on a coin-flip in ‘Two for the Money’.  Even Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Vince Vaughn couldn’t save last year’s ‘Lay the Favorite’; just more tripe from the big budget studios.  No wonder it’s so hard for new sports betting projects to get the green light!

So when I was contacted by an aspiring young Hollywood filmmaker who wanted to make a legitimate documentary about betting on the Super Bowl, of course I was interested!  The young director, Isaac Feder, was most assuredly not a sportsbettor himself.  The guy was a true novice; a total square.  But he was absolutely fascinated with our world here in Las Vegas, and he wanted to tell our story.

And the bettors profiled weren’t caricatures – they were real, Las Vegas bettors.  Two time Supercontest champion Steve Fezzik came onboard.  So did hedge fund manager John Netto, who now appears regularly on both Bloomberg TV and CNBC.  Longtime Vegas professional bettors like Erin Rynning, Bryan Leonard, Bruce Marshall and Alf Musketa agreed to participate.  Even former mayor Oscar Goodman got on camera for a handful of memorable scenes.  All of a sudden, Feder’s low budget little movie had a pretty solid cast of characters.

Shooting the movie was easy – we just got mike'd up and let the cameras roll.  There were no second takes – this was a documentary, after all, not a scripted Hollywood production.  What we said was what we said, what we did was what we did, and what we bet was what we bet. 

There was no hidden agenda behind the project either.  Feder just wanted to capture the story as an unbiased observer.  Who are these bettors? Who are these bookmakers?  What are they thinking on a daily basis?  Why do they make the bets that they do? 

And what better way to do that than to follow us around for the week of the Super Bowl XLV as the Packers and Steelers squared off at Cowboy Stadium in Arlington.  So, Feder and his skeleton crew followed us around all week.  And they shot what I thought was a pretty cool movie, ‘Life on the Line’.  The key?  Authenticity! 

Never before has there been a movie that more authentically nails the experience of being a professional bettor.  We haven’t seen a movie that captures the electricity of a packed sports book on the biggest betting day of the year.  And we’ve never watched a movie that gives a real look at the bookmakers at work and their thought processes when setting and adjusting numbers.

The movie also established the love/hate relationship that bettors have with one another.  Wiseguy bettors scurry around town in a race to get the very best numbers before another sharp bettor can scoop them up into his own portfolio.  Yet despite that competition, there’s a real sense of camaraderie as we share information – the bigger battle is against the books, not each other.

The end result was a movie that truly celebrates Las Vegas.  Yes, Super Bowl XLVII kicks off in New Orleans on the first Sunday of February.  But, like every sports bettor in the world, I’d rather be watching the game and soaking up the culture right here in Sin City than watching it in person in The Big Easy.

We shot the movie two years ago.  There was editing to be done, music rights to deal with, all of that post-production stuff that we never see.  Over the course of the 2012 calendar year, Feder submitted the movie to festivals and shopped it around to networks.  But like so many sports betting TV pilots that have been shot here in recent years, it was too hot for the studios to handle.   The movie was in danger of sitting dormant forever, as the Super Bowl that it documented slowly drifted further and further into the rear view mirror.

Feder did not want this project to die on the vine.  For those of us in the movie, it was a week of our lives documented on film.  For Feder, it was a two year labor of love.  The end result was a movie that’s not going to be shown in theatres.  Instead, it’s the perfect 21st century piece, available for download online beginning on Sunday, January 27th. 

And what better place for an authentic Vegas movie than an authentic Vegas website – Anthony Curtis’ Lasvegasadvisor.com, a site that ‘in-the-know’ locals and savvy out of town guests have been visiting for years.  For less than five bucks, you can watch the 55 minute film from start to finish, and soak in the world that professional bettors like me live in every day.

I interviewed Feder for this column, and of course, like any guy from LA, he gave me a real Hollywood quote.   “There are so many similarities between Hollywood and Vegas.  People come from all over the country to take their shot on the big stage; the pinnacle of their profession.  Every bettor that moves to Las Vegas is a longshot to succeed, just like every actor or filmmaker that moves to Hollywood.  And there are no shortcuts to success either – if you’re not good enough at sportsbetting or movie making, you’re not going to last, a true meritocracy in both professions.  That’s what makes it so interesting to examine how the winning bettor and the winning bookmaker both manage to survive.”

You can view the movie trailer right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EogvyCCXOs  If you bet on sports or have any interest in betting on sports, I’d strongly recommend that you check it out.