Should've used a safety deposit box or at the very least made weekly deposits @ the bank. Hiding $300,000 in the ceiling of his dorm room is really careless and makes it hard to feel sorry for him when he gets ripped off.
shareI can understand why he would not deposit the cash in a bank account but there really is no excuse for not renting a safe deposit box. Not only is the ceiling a poor hiding place, the money is subject to fires or maintenance workers. For someone who was supposedly so smart, that was a bone-head move.
shareUmm because he would have to report it to the IRS. What he was doing wasnt technically illegal but it was shady.
shareUmm because he would have to report it to the IRS.
Yeah, the instant we saw that, we both looked at each other and said, "oh, no!" We knew exactly how that was going to turn out. A safety deposit box runs about 60 or 70 bucks a year. I think he could have found room for it in his budget.
shareIndeed, a pretty dumb move for a genius to hide all his dough in a singe, unsafe place.
When I'm gone I would like something to be named after me. A psychiatric disorder, for example.
In reality he most likely would have used a safe deposit box. For the movie however there had to be a giant conflict or an obstacle and him stashing the money in the ceiling provided the setup for that. It's one of those things that you have to ignore for the sake of the story.
sharemost banks do not allow you to put cash in a safe deposit box
sharehow come
sharemost banks do not allow you to put cash in a safe deposit box
Assuming he was getting a cash cut he wouldnt want to put it in a bank, and cant use a safety box for money. He should have either rented a storage space or gotten an actual safe.
Sorry Brother.
Are you the same person that made the same post to a similar post?
I challenge you to specify what that law is. I doubt that it exists.
How would the banks know?
shareThey don't know what you put in.
shareThe discussion "Money in the ceiling!!!!" was created Jul 16 2010. I see nothing significant in this discussion that is not in that other discussion.
shareYeah i was surprised someone so smart wouldn't hide his money better.
shareActually there's no need to hide it at all.
Gambling winnings are already taxable income, so he's committing tax fraud by hiding it in the ceiling.
It was a stupid plot point. If he's hiding that income, how will he explain suddenly having tuition money for Harvard medical?
(never mind how stupid it is that a Harvard medical admittee couldn't get loan money to cover tuition - he'll be paying it off the rest of his life, but welcome to the medical field)
There's nothing illegal about winning at gambling, and there's nothing illegal about counting cards. NOTHING the characters or real life guys were doing was against the law. The "risk" is that the casinos would find out and ban them.
It IS illegal to beat up card counters, though. Nowadays (and back when this movie and its inspiration took place), corporations run the casinos. They'd never risk the liability of using physical force. Just ban them from the premises and call the police if they return.
In the original account, the only beating-up was by a competing team. The beaten-up guy then resorted to the "nuclear option" of ratting out the other team to the casinos. And the casinos responded by tracking down and banning ALL of the MIT guys.
So the part of the film where even smart people can do dumb things? That part was true.
Interesting tidbit: a Rolling Stone writer actually accompanied one of the original MIT team to the Hard Rock Casino where the guy demonstrated by winning AND by getting (politely) thrown out. So the counting is real, the banning is real, and the non-beating is real.
You're right that it's not an especially realistic movie and that in the era the story takes place, goombahs beating up card counters was already a thing of the long past. Still though, it was a fairly entertaining film, and in a world where there just aren't many blackjack movies, I welcomed it.
Did you ever read Bringing Down the House? Excellent book, which this film is based on. Highly recommended if you haven't read it.
As I said, I think the film was okay, but I think it would've been a more interesting and more entertaining movie if they had kept it more grounded, less Hollywood, and closer to the true story.
Late reply to PrimeMinisterX from 2 years ago:
Bringing Down the House was the very first eBook I ever read.
The story could've made a great screenplay as it was, but this film had to conventionalize it by making the casino the villain.
In reality, the only "villain" was the players' own greed and immaturity. The only beating that occurred was believed to have been arranged by a competing team. And the casinos were essentially bystander/victims in the whole story.
Doesn't help, though, that all the characters would have to be Asian-American to be remotely accurate. Hollywood producers would never go for that.