The Luckiest Man in America is only loosely inspired by a true story, which was the best way to frame its premise. Hollywood’s never shown any fealty to the truth of historical events, and the short blurbs that appear at the end of most biographical films are a reminder of how little context they provide. However, The Luckiest Man in America required some basis of reality because the story would be too on-the-nose were it presented as fictional. The film’s about a narcissistic con artist who used a public platform to make amends with his family; while he didn’t save his marriage, he did end up collapsing the notion that reality television was a beneficiary system. That a down-on-his-luck charlatan was able to bend corporations and advertisers to his will, only to fail in his altruistic efforts, is an indictment of 1980s consumerism too ironic to leave undramatized.
Michael Larson, as portrayed by Paul Walter Hauser, was a larger-than-life character whose disarmingly sincere, unassuming characteristics made him the perfect prey for a game show subject; since he appeared to have no shame, given that he was an ice cream truck driver who lived and worked in the same mobile unit, Larson would make for the type of ridiculous personality that a live audience would have a field day with. The Luckiest Man in America is set in 1984, which was before game show contestants were expected to have duplicitous motivations. Although Larson’s found to have misrepresented himself to take part in the television program Press Your Luck, a competitor of sorts to Wheel of Fortune and The Price is Right, executive producer Bill Carruthers (David Strathairn) decided to keep him on the show because it would make for good live entertainment.
The audience for a reality show is usually aware they’re being deceived, but they’re more likely to be engaged if they detect a hint of sincerity. Larson immediately stood out from the other guests, whose interchangeable personalities didn’t add any extra flavor to the trivia questions provided by host Peter Tomarken (Walton Goggins). His bumbling, awkward behavior would suggest he’d be doomed to embarrass himself, and to the credit of director Samir Oliveros, The Luckiest Man in America does initially hint at that. What happened was the opposite; after a successful answer to an obscure question, Larson began a winning streak that flummoxed the show’s producers, the network executives, and the institution of reality programming. Larson maximized the potential winnings possible within the parameters of the game, which any corporate parent would assume to be an impossibility.
The most obvious companion piece to The Luckiest Man in America is Quiz Show, the 1994 historical drama from director Robert Redford that explored the Twenty-One scandal that involved serial cheating. In Quiz Show, it’s the participant, Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), who became the scapegoat after it was revealed he received answers to form a narrative fixed by producers. Quiz Show indicated that any competition that presented itself as a free market was bound to be corrupted by the powers-that-be, who found it too tempting to rig the game for the sake of potentially multiplying their profits. The Luckiest Man in America is the alternative in which a willing participant, albeit one equipped with specialized talents, followed the rules and created a narrative of his own.
The danger that Larson presented wasn’t that his winnings would cost CBS a fortune, although that’s a ramification brought up by Carruthers when he’s interrogated by his employers. Rather, it was that he earned the investment of viewers who’d now actively root for him, and in turn root against the game itself. Press Your Luck was exciting because it created a fantasy where those with no hope of wealth could contend for any number of exciting rewards that would only be attainable by those with generational privilege. Any television producer would know that escalation is the only way to heighten the stakes, which was a lethal blow to Press Your Luck that caused the show’s cancellation in 1986.
Larson’s secret was that he memorized the patterns within the game, and successfully anticipated when to hit the buzzer to keep the round going indefinitely. This didn’t only cause him to soak up all of the rewards found in different spins, but prolonged the game beyond the restrictions of a traditional episode. The Luckiest Man in America doesn’t provide much background about Larson, other than that his stint on national television was part of an elaborate scheme to win back the affections of his wife, Patricia (Haley Bennet). Hauser’s an actor whose affability has allowed him to generate empathy for morally dubious characters, and it’s hard to not feel the same way about Larson. Regardless of whether or not he’d fairly earned or deserved his winnings, Larson’s success was interesting to watch, and was the ultimate mutiny against the institution of affluence. The only thing that CBS didn’t count on was that someone would be so enamored with their programming that they’d pay attention to it closely.
The Luckiest Man in America is clued into the perspective of all involved in the scandal, with a particular interest in the crew members who were helpless to stop Larson from humiliating the network. Sylvia, the attendant played by Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams, is the most appropriate audience avatar because any fears she had about the danger to her job were quickly mollified. When it's the establishment threatened, and not just an employer, the only people hurt are those who didn’t earn the right to get ahead.