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Team Behind High Fidelity Tells You to 'Lay Your Favorite'

by Ethan Anderton
November 6, 2009

If we listed the top movies about break-ups, there's no doubt High Fidelity would be near the top. Well, good news, as the team behind one of John Cusack's best is moving to the arguably more dangerous world of gambling as THR reports that director Stephen Frears and writer D.V. DeVincentis are re-teaming for an adaptation of Beth Raymer's upcoming memoir Lay the Favorite, Take the Dog. Story centers a woman in her early thirties who has made a series of bad choices but achieves a redemption of sorts when she meets a group of fiftyish math geeks who figure out how to work the sportsbook system in Las Vegas.

D.V. DeVincentis says: "It's a less violent, less sketchy version of the mob. This is the version of 50-year-old math geeks from Queens in basketball shorts who have pet guinea pigs." And while this film might seem like a big departure from High Fidelity, De Vincentis explains both films deal with the difficulties of truly maturing into an adult and much like the elitist record store employees of High Fidelity, the gamblers of Lay Your Favorite "have an intense pride in a very specific expertise - and a lack of socialization."

Sounds like there's plenty of opportunity for a great coming-of-age comedy to blossom out of this yet-to-be-published-novel adaptation, and it looks like Frears and DeVincentis are the right guys for the job. It can only get better if they get Cusack to join the picture in some capacity (hell, even a pit boss, or something!). As a fan of Cusack's 80's high school movies like Say Anything and Better Off Dead, it'd be great to see an unofficial modern version of his characters from those films. This may not be the same, but at least it sounds pretty damn good. Once we find out about any casting or other developments we'll be sure to let you know.

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