TV has broadcast what I’ve long known: my dad is cooler than me.
How much cooler? I’m the associate director of development for a nonprofit organization that provides legal services. My dad plays poker for a living.
Last summer he starred in a reality TV show—and not the kind where you have to eat bugs. Fox TV sought him out to appear in its show The Casino. Fox found him because he previously had been poker consultant for The Sopranos. He got the Sopranos gig after he consulted on the movie Rounders.
That much cooler.
It wasn’t always like this. My dad used to be an accountant for Arthur Andersen, in the days when wearing a blue dress shirt was considered daring. After several years, my dad decided he wasn’t a 9-to-5 guy. He started a consulting firm with two friends. I was in grade school then, and in the spring he worked an early day so he could coach my Little League team.
The rest of the year he worked an early day to play poker all afternoon. When the tax reforms of 1986 essentially legislated my father’s firm out of business, he entered the world of professional poker.
I clung to the “accountant” label throughout high school. A 15-year-old looking for acceptance in a suburban high school does not readily explain that his dad works nights playing poker with guys named Phil the Rabbi and Billy Moans. In those days, my father would leave money for dinner on the counter, then get up on two hours’ sleep to make me breakfast. It was our time together during the week.
When I went to college, our schedules started to sync. I was the only Stanford student I knew who regularly called “home” (wherever he happened to be playing that night) after midnight. The social dynamic around me changed, and suddenly my dad’s job was cool. I also stopped caring about other people’s opinion of my family. Poker is what my dad does, and he’s good at it. Most people who get involved in gambling burn out quickly. My dad has lasted nearly 20 years.
What I call his Hollywood phase started when my dad told me that he was going to be working with Matt Damon on a movie. I laughed because, while my dad doesn’t lie, years of poker have taught him to bluff really well. I figured he would be an extra, standing near Damon in a scene. I thought I could catch him on the details.
“Who’s the director?”
“John Dahl. He did that movie the critics loved. Something with Red Rock, or something.”
Red Rock West. A noir Western that I’d liked. Certainly not something that my dad would have seen.
When we went to the set, Matt Damon was standing on the street corner. A shaggy-haired man greeted my dad, “Hey, Mike.” That turned out to be the producer, Ted Demme. Mike, as the crew called him, introduced me around. He knew everybody. The caterer was a friend, the guy who handled parking was another mensch, and Bruce, the casting director, “is going to get us in some other movies.”
There haven’t been other movies. Yet. But for The Casino, my dad spent four days in Las Vegas. He played cards at the Golden Nugget, offered commentary on a stage game between the world’s finest poker players, and heard the Barenaked Ladies at an after-hour jam session. What, your father doesn’t call from a Vegas club at 2 a.m. to tell you that Barenaked Ladies is really good in person?
I like that my dad is cool. My friend’s parents are planning their retirements and counting the days until their grandchildren arrive. My dad is trying to write a how-to book on gambling that captures all the great stories he knows.
Best of all, gambling has brought us back together. The Casino tanked as a series, but it led my dad to a new opportunity here in Los Angeles. After 15 years, we live in the same city. During the week, I write grants so poor people can have legal help, and my dad works on new gaming ventures. On Sundays, we watch the Jets together. Life couldn’t be cooler.
MATTHEW SCELZA, ’94, MA '95, lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
