The Return of Bruno! Bruce Willis Sings in Clip from Lay the Favorite!

January 18th, 2012 at 7:18 pm by Sheri

Stephen Frears’ Lay the Favorite is another eagerly anticipated film screening at the Sundance Film Festival this month. We don’t get a new Frears (The Grifters, The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons) film every day. His last was 2010’s Tamara Drewe, but considering it made half a million bucks in the US, I’m not sure how many people noticed. Lay the Favorite is a dramedy centered on Beth, a thirty-something woman who becomes involved with a group of geeky fiftyish men who have found a way to work the sportsbook system in Las Vegas to their advantage. The movie is based on the book, “Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling”.

From the book description: “Lay the Favorite” is the story of Beth Raymer’s years in the high-stakes, high-anxiety world of sports betting—a period that saw the fall of the local bookie and the rise of the freewheeling, unregulated offshore sports book, and with it the elevation of sports betting in popular culture. As the business explodes, Beth rises—from assistant to expert, trusted and seasoned enough to open an offshore booking office in the Caribbean with a few associates, men who leave their families up north to make a quick killing, while donning new tropical personas fueled by abundant drugs and local girlfriends, and who one by one succumb to their vices. They lie, cheat, steal, and run, until Beth is the last man standing.

The exciting news is that one of the “geeky fiftyish men” is played by Bruce Willis as Dink and Beth is played by Rebecca Hall (The Town). Catherine Zeta Jones plays Tulip, Dink’s ex-wife. While it’s billing itself as a ‘dramedy’, judging from the clip below, the comedy in Lay the Favorite is going to shine through.

Witness Rebecca Hall and Bruce Willis caterwauling to The Hollies’ “Air That I Breathe” and try to keep a straight face.