Yet Another Ted Binion Biopic in the Works

Filmmakers are seeking a distributor for their thinly veiled fictionalized account of the Ted Binion story. They're hoping for a wide release. Their name draw is Michael Madsen. Good luck with that. Actually, they make Madsen sound like a great fit for the doomed, dissolute Ray Easler (their Binion counterpart). Avid Vegas film buffs like me probably already stopped at the T/A truck stop in Kingman to pick up a DVD of Sex and Lies in Sin City, which featured Matthew Modine as the undisguised Ted, although it's hard to beat the casting of Woody Harrelson in Zak Penn's improv comedy The Grand, as a loser so obviously modeled on poor Ted that it isn't funny; at one point he's confronted in a men's room by his dad's ghost, based on guess who.

There's actually a whole 'nother movie to be made about how the squabbles between the Binion kids caused them to lose control of their father's legacy, the tragic hero of the piece being the uncut sheet of $10,000 bills that used to hang on the wall at the place.