ACTOR SPENDS PROP MONEY

PREV ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V20 2017 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 20, Number 35, August 27, 2017, Article 31

There have been a rash of reports of people finding fake motion picture money in circulation. Most of it has nothing to do with movies and everything to do with the profit of makers, sellers and spenders. But this article documents a case where real movie money was really spent. -Editor

Robert Pattinson is certainly an actor known for getting into his roles, and when his latest movie Good Time was filming, the movie's creators Ben Safdie and Josh Safdie, have said that the actor liked to wander around wearing his Good Time costume. However, if you know anything about the theatrical release, you may know it involves a bank robbery. Reportedly after filming that bank robbery scene, the former Twilight actor seems to have gone out and spent some of the counterfeit money used to create the robbery for the silver screen.

According to Josh Safdie, the actor was filming a bank robbery scene that required the creative team to use a large amount of counterfeit money. Robert Pattinson pocketed some of the cash while filming the scene, and then during a break in filming, he walked off with the counterfeit money. Per Safdie,

This money is all perfectly counterfeit money that, uh, Rob actually spent. It literally looked like real money. He was so obsessed with being the character all the time, that he would go on walks on breaks in the costume. And he came to me and was like, 'I think I committed a federal crime. I'm pretty sure I spent $200 of that counterfeit money.' Because it was so realistic; our props guy was really, really obsessive with making sure it looked up to our standards.

While committing a federal crime is never a good idea, Safdie's story makes it clear that even Robert Pattinson had no idea if he'd spent real or counterfeit money that day he was wandering the streets during his free time between takes. The two directors also mentioned in their interview with Vulture that the props director really spent a lot of time on the counterfeit money and that even people with a keen eye could not easily tell real money from the fake money. If Robert Pattinson had some real money and some fake money in his pocket, it's at least fairly easy to see how a snafu of epic proportions such as this could perceivably happen. And perhaps did happen while filming Good Time.

I guess kudos to that props guy for not sucking at his job, although the business in question may not have been quite as happy if they indeed learned they were bamboozled later. Intent is a big thing and it's clear that Robert Pattinson accidentally may have spent the fake money rather than purposefully, but somewhere out in the big wide universe, someone is probably out $200 bucks.

Without images of the fakes it's hard to say how good they are, but they are typically marked pretty clearly as "Motion Picture Money". Still, the scenario is plausible; quite a few of these have been spent without the victim noticing until later, or when someone else informs them. -Editor