The Grand

The Grand is an improv comedy film directed by Zak Penn. The film has an ensemble cast including Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Chris Parnell, Werner Herzog, Jason Alexander, Dennis Farina, David Cross, Gabe Kaplan, Michael Karnow and Cheryl Hines along with several real Las Vegas poker stars. According to Penn, the film is styled after those of Christopher Guest, where each actor is given direction concerning their character, and the actors are left to improvise each individual scene. The plot of The Grand was somewhat more open-ended than Guest's work, however. The focus of the film is a poker tournament played at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas between the characters in which real poker matches were played by the actors as the scenes were filmed. The film's script did not specify the winner of the tournament, and the ending of the film was determined by the actual game played on set. The film debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival, and was distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment. The film opened in limited release in the United States on March 21, 2008, opened in wider release on April 4, 2008, and is now on DVD.