A Minute with Stan Hooper – “The Hustler”

Stan HooperThe Fox sitcom A Minute with Stan Hooper pretty much came and went in about that much time. Premiering in late 2003, the series was cancelled after the first six episodes aired. That’s too bad. Based on the third episode, entitled “The Hustler,” the sitcom had some comedic promise, attributable in no small part to the offbeat humor of the show’s creators and writers Norm MacDonald (Saturday Night Live) and Barry Kemp (Newhart).

For those who blinked and missed this series, A Minute with Stan Hooper featured Norm MacDonald in the titular role as a famous newspaper columnist turned television commentator, who moves his family from New York to (fictional) small-town Waterford Falls, Wisconsin, where he hopes to connect with middle America in order to grow the viewership of his weekly minute-long television commentaries.

Stan HooperIn “The Hustler,” Stan is invited out by Lou Peterson (Garrett Dillahunt from Raising Hope), one of the locals, to “shoot a little pool, drink a little beer” at Jimmy’s Tavern, where they will play billiards for “nickels and dimes.” Feeling this will give him a chance to connect with the town’s denizens, he readily agrees and goes to the bar, where humorously everyone is named Jimmy. But, when he sees Lou unsheathe his cue stick and go through his routine of polishing and chalking, he questions if he is being hustled.

That suspicion increases after Stan sees Lou miss wildly on his shot after the break. Yet, the gaffe elicits “oohs” and “aahs” from the bystanders, and Lou’s good friend Jimmy consoles him with, “That was close.” Stan, who has already admitted he is not very good, botches his next shot, prompting Fred (the ever reliable Fred Willard) to share, “Gents, this has all the making of a great one.”

Confused? So is Stan. The television viewer’s vantage shifts from eye-level to birds-eye, hovering over the pool table, as simple shot after simple shot is horribly missed.   When Stan finally makes a gimme in the side pocket, the locals go crazy. Stan dryly retorts, “I’ve made three balls in 90 minutes.”

Finally, as the game hits the three-and-half-hour mark, according to a clock in the tavern, Stan lines up to shoot the 8-ball. Lou, drenched with sweat, shudders, “He’s not going to sink the 8-ball. That’s the hardest one.” And Fred, with an inside reference to Minnesota Fats’ character in The Hustler, says to all, “You are watching an artist. Watch that fat man [Stan] shoot with his fat hands.”

When Stan wins the game by five balls, he is owed “two dimes and a nickel,” which he learns does not equal 25 cents, but is equivalent to $2500, an enormous sum that will force Lou to close his diner to pay the bet. Stan later inquires why they play for such high stakes. The answer, according to Fred, is “they’re simple folks. It makes them feel important. And because no one plays well enough to finish a game, no one has ever lost. Until now.”   The remainder of the episode focuses on Stan’s ill-conceived attempts to return the $2500 to Lou. The full episode is available to watch here.

“The Hustler” is not the first television episode to focus on pathetic pool.   In the 1996 “City Slackers” episode of Boy Meets World, Eric challenges an opponent to a game of pool to win the heart of a girl, but his plan fails after “15 hours of someone yet sinking a ball.” A far more interesting spin on bad pool is the episode “Water Park” from Malcolm in the Middle, in which Malcolm’s older brother Francis competes with his Commandant to see who can lose in eight-ball in the most spectacular fashion. But, perhaps, the most hilarious take on bad billiards is from the 1984 “The Hustler” skit for The New Show, in which “Fast” Eddie Felson (Kevin Kline) challenges the Fat Man (John Candy) to $200/games of pool, and both proceed to shoot horribly.

Perfect Break (in production)

Perfect BreakUntil very recently, the “snooker movie” was considered by many to be extinct, a sub-genre that disappeared in 1991 after Legend of the Dragon pitted fish-out-of-water Stephen Chow against snooker sensation Jimmy White in a yakuza-backed tournament. But, propelled by the success of the BBC iPlayer 2016 biopic The Rack Pack, which details the tempestuous rivalry between ‘80s snooker stars Steve Davis and Alex “Hurricane” Higgins, the snooker movie has been resurrected and is making headlines once more.

Certainly, the surge in interest bodes well for Perfect Break, a British snooker-themed comedy that is in post-production and seeking a distributor for an anticipated 2016 summer release. Produced by Len Evans and directed by Ian Paterson, Perfect Break is a low-budget, family film about the once great snooker player Bobby Stevens (Joe Rainbow), whose humiliating loss has led to his current career nadir performing trick shots wearing a luchador mask. Through a chance encounter with a young girl, he regains his appreciation for the sport – and his nerves – enabling him to compete in the Jimmy White Invitational Cup. The full trailer is available to watch here.

According to Mr. Evans, a snooker player who admits he is “not very good,” the impetus for the film’s creation was the straight-forward desire to make a billiards movie. (Amen!) Feeling pool had been portrayed well on the silver screen (Mr. Evans’ favorite billiards movie is The Color of Money), Mr. Evans opted instead to focus on snooker – a sport that, per his research, had never been addressed on film. (His research appears to have overlooked Legend of the Dragon as well as Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire.) That decision was also well-suited for the selection of his director, Mr. Patterson, who is a member of the Romford Snooker Club.

Perfect Break

Jimmy White and John Virgo

For Perfect Break to succeed, it was critical to cast some household snooker names in a few key roles. Fortunately for all of us, Mr. Evans thinks big, and working through the Snooker Association, he secured Jimmy White and John Virgo. Mr. White, of course, is not only one of the sport’s greatest as a six-time World Championship finalist and a 29-time tournament winner, but also brings with him a large fan base, as evidenced by his 102,000 Twitter followers. (He is also a veteran of snooker movies, having starred in The Legend of the Dragon.)   Mr. Virgo is known within the snooker community for his ability (he was once ranked 10 in the world) and commentary, as well as his 11-year run as co-host of the famous snooker game show Big Break. According to Mr. Evans, the duo had quite the good time on set, and there are “some excellent outtakes of the pair messing their lines up and having a great time laughing and joking.”

Cineastes can also look forward to a decent amount of billiards: 18 minutes of Perfect Break is devoted to on-screen snooker, including the filming of a full maximum 147 break. According to Mr. Evans, the team insisted that no CGI was used, so instead they recruited Jamie Rous, an excellent Pro player (once ranked 128th in the world) who is relatively unknown, to shoot the scene, with seven cameras filming simultaneously to ensure perfect continuity.

So, if you love snooker and want to take the family to a film that promises “no swearing, guns, or violence,” then be on the lookout for Perfect Break.

Note: Since this movie’s release in 2020, I have posted a review.

Black Balled

A few days ago, the United States celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday that for the past 32 years has commemorated the life of the slain civil rights leader. However, for many Americans, the day, in practice, is a celebration of not having to go to work; the historical significance of the holiday is understood, but easily overlooked in light of many civil rights advancements.

Watching the nine-minute short film, Black Balled: The Story of Pool During Jim Crow, I wondered if race relations within billiards occupied a similar mental space among those enamored with the sport. The entire film is available to watch here.

As the movie’s creator and narrator Mark Ewings notes, 1962 marked the first time an African-American, Javanley “Youngblood” Washington, a “self-proclaimed Negro bank [pool] champion,” was allowed to participate in any large-scale US billiards competition, the Johnston City Tournament.[1] Prior to that time, blacks were barred from competing in such tournaments. Such exclusion was the writ of Jim Crow. Alabama, for example, said it was “unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards.”

In 1965, James “Cisero” Murphy, a Brooklynite who only started playing pool because a sports injury at an early age made ruled out baseball, became the sport’s version of Jackie Robinson by competing in – and ultimately winning in a 3-day match against Luther “Wimpy” Lassiter” – a Billiards Congress of America (BCA) regulated event, the Burbank World Invitational 14.1 Tournament. (Mr. Ewings shares that Mr. Murphy tried to compete in the inaugural 1961 Johnston City Tournament, but was allegedly excluded based on a majority vote of the participants.)

Black Balled

Ebony (September, 1966)

Mr. Murphy won the Burbank pot ($19,800) and the world champion title on his very first attempt. More historically important, this victory led to the Billiard Room Proprietor’s Association of America (BRPAA) reluctantly inviting Mr. Murphy to compete in the organization’s New York tournament. As billiards historian R.A. Dyer notes, once this happened, it “effectively ended all official race-based barriers to entry in major professional pool tournaments.”[2]

Today, there is little chatter about race relations and billiards (though there is a hilarious rant from Martin Lawrence in the 1982 comedy Boomerang about the symbolic racism between the white cue ball and the black 8-ball in pool). As legendary pool hustler and scholar Freddy “The Beard” Bentivegna tells Mr. Ewings in Black Balled, “If you seek racism stories, you are in the wrong venue. Pool is the least discriminating life area I have ever experienced.” Billiards is purportedly color-blind, tournaments are integrated, and the majority of players (in the US) are both cash-poor and unrecognized, black or white.

Black BalledLess clear, however, is why there are so few African-Americans competing in the top echelons of billiards today. Perhaps, history is not so simple or so long ago that we can disregard the African-American trailblazing pool players that helped get us to this point in time. Mr. Murphy, who was inducted into the BCA Hall of Fame in 1995, a year before his death, is the most famous, with the ultimate digital recognition of a Wikipedia page and a mural in the Flatbush neighborhood of New York. Some of the other legends – Mr. Youngblood, Melvin “Strawberry” Brooks, Leonard “Bugs” Rucker, John “Cannonball” Chapman – deserve more acclaim, but have fortunately at least been recognized by the One Pocket Hall of Fame. Yet others, such as James Evans, a man Minnesota Fats once described as the “greatest Negro player who ever lived” and a mentor to Mr. Murphy, are barely footnotes in today’s billiards annals.

This is a tragedy.

I give a lot of credit to Mr. Ewing for Black Balled, a film project he created while in college. No one else, to my knowledge, has even attempted to tell the story of African-American pool players before the modern civil rights era.

Still, I can’t help feeling the film falls so far short of what it could have been, had it truly tackled the topic. While the movie’s title suggests it’s about the racial segregation of billiards in the Jim Crow Era, which was roughly from 1890-1965, the film really is about the (white) Jansco Brothers, who launched the Johnston City tournament in 1961 (and integrated it in 1962), and Mr. Murphy, who vanquished the color barrier in billiards.

There is no reference to billiards racial conditions prior to the mid-20th century. For example, when black YMCAs opened in the 1920s, most included billiards tables in response to Jim Crow laws. And since segregation prevented black players from competing in tournaments, the Colored Billiards Players Association was created in 1914, though sadly very little remains documented about its history.[3]

Equally problematic, the film only briefly touches on the sport’s early pioneers, such as Mr. Evans, who pre-dates Mr. Murphy and helped contribute to his fame. Other players from the 20th century’s first half are completely omitted, perhaps because they are unknown..?

Black BalledIn past blog posts, I have criticized some of the missed opportunities to tell the story of African-American billiards. The Quantum Leap episode “Pool Hall Blues” which cast pool professional Robert “Rags” Woods as Charlie “Black Magic” Walters, is a particular flagrant offender. So, I consider Black Balled mandatory viewing. But, don’t convince yourself this film suffices as the telling of that history. The real stories must still be told and shared.

Oh, and about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr…he was reportedly a pretty sharp pool player.

[1]       Technically, this honor belongs to the late, great James Evans. As Mr. Ewings details, Mr. Evans was allowed to play in a 1961 tournament because he was “light-skinned enough to pass, so long as he signed his ethnicity as Italian.”

[2]      http://untoldstoriesbilliardshistory.blogspot.com/2011/02/celebrating-black-history.html

[3]       http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/billiards-pool/

Behind the Nine

Often before I blog about a particular movie, I’ll skim whatever user reviews I can find to get a temperature read on past audience reaction. For the 2003 billiards movie Behind the Nine, the reviews were particularly virulent and condemnatory. Nolan Canova bemoaned the “f*%king lifetime it took to sit through this movie.”[1] Kris Langley decried the film was “one of the worst examples of transparent attention-whoring I’ve ever seen in my life.”[2] And Fast Larry excoriated, “It’s so stupid, so bad, it is a disgrace. Just a bunch of ding dong nincompoop morons with a nice camera.”

Behind the NineHere’s the truth: these reviews are spot-on accurate. The film really is that bad.

For a suffocating, molasses-paced, 78 minutes, Behind the Nine, directed by Martin Kelley, focuses on an underground two-week, 9-ball tournament that pays $500,000 to the winner and $500,000 to the organizer, Alex (Derek Seiling), who puts on the tournament to “make ends meet.” The tournament has 200 players, but by the time the film begins, “192 gamblers, hustlers, and hacks have hit the streets empty-handed.” The movie’s audience is subject to watching the remaining eight players compete in a single elimination, race to seven games.

Though the premise is reasonably intriguing, Behind the Nine collapses under the weight of terrible acting; a boring and distasteful script riddled with racist and homophobic language; unimaginative cinematography and direction; and – the coup de grâce – a preposterous and stultifying approach to billiards.

Let’s start with the concept of the 200-person, single elimination tournament. Mathematically, that’s impossible, as the total number of people needs to sum to a power of two (e.g., 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256).

Even if there were 200 players, the math is still borderline questionable. A single-elimination tournament with 200 players equals (roughly) 198 matches (100 matches in 1st round, 50 matches in 2nd round, 25 matches in 3rd round, etc.). Since it’s a race to seven, assume the average match lasts one hour, with 15 minutes in between each match. Do the math and it adds up to 247 hours of tournament play – equivalent to 18 hours/day for the two weeks. Possible? Sure, with a full tournament staff. But, with just an organizer (Alex), a bouncer (Mouse), a bartender (Beth), and a hot girl (Wendy) whose job is to rack and make out with the female players (?!), I’m dubious.

Behind the NineMaybe I wouldn’t harp on the math if the opening lines of the movie were something other than Alex’s voice-over: “Three things I love: statistics, baseball, and pool. My dad wanted me to be an accountant, but as I said earlier, that’s for suckers.”

Speaking of statistics, the movie’s viewers are frequently shown Alex’s “files” on each player, which includes his computed odds of each person winning the tournament. But, given it’s a winner-takes-all pot, and there is no apparent side-betting, then there’s no conceivable reason to calculate a player’s likelihood to win, as it doesn’t impact any person’s financial outcome. This “love of stats” shows a blatant ignorance about its actual use.

Putting down the calculator, this tournament occurs in the basement of Alex’s house on a single, cheap-ass, red-clothed pool table. Call me cynical, but I don’t imagine there are too many players with $5000 of dispensable cash that are going to jump at the chance to play competitive pool on some twenty-something’s hobby table.

Behind the NineMore to the point, betting $5000 on a single elimination tournament is no paltry entry fee, considering a typical tournament fee might cost but one-tenth that amount. One would think the players must be pretty decent (especially if my assumptions about a race to seven lasting one hour) to risk that kind of moola. However, judging by the level of billiards shown among the eight finalists – i.e., the top 4% — these players are outright awful. Only the most basic straight-on shots are attempted, and many of these shots are missed. I don’t know what is more bat-shit crazy: the bonkers notion that any viewer would believe these borderline actors are pool players or that any viewer would wish to endure watching so many minutes of piss-poor pool.

Is there anything positive to say? Yes, Ted Huckabee, who plays the muscleman Pigman in the film was able to survive being cast in this cinematic dreck and now portrays Bruce on the mega-hit television series The Walking Dead. The rest of the Behind the Nine cast? Not so lucky.

Behind the Nine was once available to purchase on DVD, but no longer. It can be watched in its entirety online here.

[1]          http://www.crazedfanboy.com/npcr/popculturereview194.html

[2]          http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317135/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

 

The Jersey – “New Kid in Town”

The premise behind The Jersey, a vanilla television series that aired on the Disney Channel from 1999-2004, is that four teens – Nick, Morgan, Coleman, and Elliot – discover the magic of “the jersey,” a mystical football jersey that transports them into the bodies of professional athletes. So, when I first learned the series included a 2003 billiards episode entitled “The New Kid in Town,” I got a wee bit giddy. Perhaps, Nick would morph into Earl “The Pearl” Strickland, who reigned in 9-ball in 2002, or Morgan Hudson would transfigure into Jeanette “Black Widow” Lee, who won the gold medal at the World Games in 2001.

New Kid in TownWas I so naïve to think that the producers and writers of The Jersey might distinguish themselves by deeming billiards players professional athletes? After all, past episodes had featured not only familiar superstars like Terrell Davis (football), David Robinson (basketball) and Randy Johnson (baseball), but also household names from less popular sports, such as Kelly Slater (surfing), Dan Lyle (rugby), Scott Steiner (wrestling), and Dominique Dawes (gymnastics).

Alas, my hopes were dashed as I began watching “The New Kid in Town,” which, like many sitcoms, actually included two unrelated storylines, and most definitely did not include any billiards professionals. The jersey/athlete storyline involves Elliot Rifkin (Theo Greenley) assuming the body of professional BMX rider and X Games Dirt Jumping gold medal winner Ryan Nyquist in order to better understand why a “new kid in town” has a chip on his shoulder. Lots of killer bike jumps follow.

The non-jersey, utterly unimaginative storyline involves the show’s father figure, Larry Lighter (Michael Bofshever), having just re-felted his pool table, trying to relive his college glory days when he was known as – wait for it – Missouri Fats.[1] His first opponent is his daughter, Hilary, who has never before shot pool. Unfortunately, his skills have apparently atrophied over time, and he becomes insufferable after repeated losses to his daughter. As she says, “I must be really good considering you’ve been playing like 25 years and I’ve been playing like 25 hours.” (Of course, given his blatantly incorrect racking of the balls, it’s not clear he ever had the skills.)

New Kid in TownMore bad jokes follow (“It’s not me, it’s the table…somehow when they re-felted it, they messed it up.”) before Larry confesses to his wife, “I just want to be competitive at one thing, and pool was my last salvation, and now I can’t even win at that. Missouri Fats is no more.”

Last salvation?! And, in a final twist of the knife, Larry only wins a game because his wife bribed his daughter to throw it. Larry proclaims he will celebrate the win by buying himself a new graphite cue. Billiards fans, on the other hand, shrug their shoulders, dismayed that yet another television episode reduced their sport to bad racks, bad jokes, bribes, and the basement floor of avocations.

************

[1]       For a more original and funnier permutation of billiards legend Minnesota Fats’ name, watch the Aurora Skittle Pool commercial (1970), featuring comedian Don Adams as “Wisconsin Skinny.”

Chalk

Chalk billiards movieDesperation hangs in the smoke-filled air of the Crabtree, the run-down Southern California pool hall that serves as the primary setting for director Rob Nilsson’s 1996 independent drama Chalk. The locale is dirty, dank, littered with beer bottles and empty peanut shells. Thanks to the visual style of cinematographer Mickey Freeman, the air looks and feels sickly. It is no wonder that Watson (Edwin Jones), the Crabtree proprietor and a former heroin addict, spits blood or sleeps in his clothes, or that his son Jones (Johnnie Reese) always seems to be sweating. With its dilapidated centerpiece of a pool table, the Crabtree is a place where Watson’s adopted son T.C. (Kelvin Han Yee) can rule the roost hustling pool, but otherwise is terrified to leave. Which of course is at the heart of Nilsson’s metaphor: the pool hustler lifestyle is something almost cancerous and inescapable.

As one pool hustler shares with T.C., “Pool players don’t make as much as volleyball players–even dart players. If you’re not in the top 10, forget about it.” The hustler (played by “The Road Man” Chris McDonald) goes on to lament that as a result of pool, he lost his house, his wife, everything he had.

It’s an interesting perspective. Within the canon of billiards movies, many of which belie a certain romanticism toward the pool hustler, there is none as bleak as Chalk in its outlook on billiards and as hopeless in its portrayal of the player. Characters do not flash wide smiles, or run fancy trick-shots, or talk smack in the hustler’s argot. They play impatiently, the prey desperately on high school kids, and they wait listlessly for action – for opponents who may never materialize.

The main story, which takes a while to emerge from the haze, involves Jones coercing his brother T.C. to play a high-stakes game of pool against a man named Dorian James (screenwriter Don Bajema), who is a ranked professional with some anger management issues stemming from his violent past. (James is so psychotic that one truly disturbing scene has him screaming at his girlfriend to sodomize him with his own cue stick. Arguably, this scene did little to build fans for the film among the larger billiards community. As Freddy “The Beard” Bentivegna wrote in his “Encyclopedia” of Pool Hustlers, “This is evidently how Hollywood thinks a pool hustler bonds with his cue stick before a big match. [This is a] ridiculously insulting movie.”) T.C. only accepts the $10,000 match when he learns Watson is dying and this could be a chance to prove himself to his adopted father. Only later is it revealed that Jones has convinced his father to bet his entire life savings on the game.

The actual match, which consumes the last 45 minutes of the movie, is the first to win seven games in 9-ball. A variety of different editing and filming styles are used, some clearly an homage to Martin Scorsese for The Color of Money, but none succeed in giving this endless scene much life. As the players trade games, the pool drags on. Even the near rape of T.C.’s girlfriend, and the near death of Watson, don’t puncture the droll of the match. Subbing in for Yee and Bajema respectively are real-world pool sharks Billy Aguero and Chris McDonald, but even the expert billiards playing cannot pump energy into the final third of the film, which deliberately moves at an unnecessarily slow pace.

Chalk billiards movieThough the movie has trouble breathing beneath the weight of the Hollywood conventions it tries to avoid, it is refreshing to know its origin. In 1992, Nilsson, who had gained acclaim for his 1979 award-winning film Northern Lights, moved into a transient hotel San Francisco, motivated by a search for his missing brother. There he helped found the Tenderloin Action Group, a free acting workshop for homeless and inner city residents. Within the group, Nilsson discovered a number of promising performers and wrote Chalk with the help of Bajema, his longtime collaborator, around the talents of many of these nonprofessional actors.   In fact, aside from Bajema and Edwin Jones (who plays Watson), the rest of the cast are nonprofessionals.

Chalk is available to buy on DVD from Rob Nilsson’s website Citizen Cinema.

Martin – “Martin in the Corner Pocket”

About every six weeks, I read someone’s tweet sarcastically asking whether every black television comedy of the ‘90s had a pool hustler episode. Given there were 15 prime-time black comedies on TV at the decade’s peak in 1997, the answer, based on my extensive research, is a clear no. However, the question is also not uninformed, as four of the seminal ‘90s shows of the genre – specifically, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Steve Harvey Show, Family Matters, and Martin – all dedicated at least one episode to this subject matter. For Martin, it was “Martin in the Corner Pocket,” an uneven 22-minute episode from 1995 that couples laugh-out-loud moments with deplorable technical editing of the billiards.

Martin in the Corner Pocket For the uninitiated, Martin was an American sitcom that aired on Fox from 1992-1997 and was one of the network’s highest-rated shows at that time. The series starred comedian Martin Lawrence as Martin Payne, a smart-mouthed, self-centered, yet ultimately warm-hearted and loyal, Detroit disc jockey with a girlfriend (and later wife) Gina Waters (Tisha Campbell). Other main characters on the series included Martin’s two closest friends: level-headed and charming Tommy (Thomas Mikal Ford) and dimwitted but well-meaning Cole (Carl Anthony Payne II). Having attracted a viewership of more than 6 million (even at its nadir), Martin now regularly runs in syndication in most major U.S. cities.

“Martin in the Corner Pocket” kicks offs the series’ fourth season, with Martin and Gina returning from their honeymoon. Gina expects their first night at home as a married couple to be an intimate one, but Martin already had made other plans to meet his close friends, Tommy and Cole, at Nipsey’s to shoot some pool. As Martin says, “I do have business to take care of, Gina…I got to go down to the pool hall and open a can of whup-ass on Tommy and Cole.”

Martin.2The initial billiards sequence plays out over classic Martin banter, with Martin chest-thumping upon entering the pool hall, “Pool school is in session, now who wants the first lesson?” and later proclaiming, “Damn I’m good. I don’t know why I’m this good,” and even boasting in the third-person, “Marty Mar has the skills to pay the bills.”

The thin plotline involves Martin getting hustled by Vanessa (Alex Datcher), a hot-to-trot vixen who initially feigns she can barely hold a cue. After telling Vanessa she can shoot first and to “have fun because you might not get another one,” Martin wins the game on a four-rail shot, prompting Tommy to announce, “You beat her like she stole something.

Martin in the Corner PocketHaving won Martin’s confidence, Vanessa then tries to lure Martin into playing for $20/ball. Since “Marty Mar don’t gamble,” she suggests they play for his watch. As expected, Vanessa is a shark, and after winning the watch, subsequently hustles him out of everything but his undershirt, boxers, and one sock, winning the final match on a four pocket combination.

Where “Martin in the Corner Pocket” falls apart, however, is in the unforgivably awful technical editing of the billiards. Watching the episode on YouTube, it is disturbingly apparent that at 5:20 the rack only has 13 balls and includes no 8-ball. At 5:22, Martin breaks and the 9-ball falls in the corner pocket, but at 5:29, Martin continues to play with all 15 balls now back on the table. I don’t understand how a shows that invests the time carefully setting up trick shots (e.g., Martin’s four-rail, Vanessa’s four balls) can so glaringly screw up the basic fundamentals of how to do an opening rack or how ensure balls pocketed stay down.

Like many Martin episodes, “Martin in the Corner Pocket” ends with an only loosely-related post-credits sequence. This vignette features Martin Lawrence reprising his recurring role as Dragonfly Jones, a martial arts “expert” who is stalked by Kenji, a real martial arts student owed money by Dragonfly. In the scene, Dragonfly is pool hustling at Nipsey’s. Having just taken an old woman’s bus fare, he gets into a fight with Kenji that involves Dragonfly jumping on pool tables, breaking pool talc, knocking down pool balls, and ultimately going karate-crazy when one-hit wonder Carl Douglas’ 1974 “Kung Fu Fighting” blares from the jukebox. After four seasons of losing, Dragonfly successfully knocks out his nemesis, only to then be clocked unconscious by the old bus fare woman.

“Martin in the Corner Pocket” is available on demand from Amazon.

The Rifleman – “Shattered Idol”

“The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition.” – Mark Twain, April 24, 1906

Among my literary loves is historical fiction, that malleable genre that permits imaginary, engaging storylines through the creative and (hopefully) well-researched use of real people, places, and events. (If you’re itching for a good read, check out some highly entertaining and educational examples, such as Twelve Fingers by Jo Soares, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, or The Alienist by Caleb Carr.)

Shattered IdolThus, I got a bit giddy when I first learned about and watched the December 1961 episode “Shattered Idol” from the fourth season of The Rifleman television series. The Rifleman was an American Western television show that starred Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, a widowed Union Civil War veteran raising his son Mark (Johnny Crawford) during the 1870s and 1880s. The 30-minute episodes, all filmed in black-and-white, ran on ABC from September, 1958 to April, 1963.

The fictitious “Shattered Idol” episode begins with Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain, played by Oscar nominee Kevin McCarthy), in his trademark white suit, disheveled hair, and overgrown mustache, passing through the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory in stagecoach, when his vehicle has wheel trouble, forcing a several day layover. Unexplainably crotchety and rude to the local denizens, including the young, author-worshiping Mark McCain, Twain opts to hole up in the town’s inn, with its solitary four-cushion billiards table, removed from any contact with anyone.

So far, so make-believe (and the author’s surliness so intentionally bewildering).

Shattered IdolIn time, Twain emerges from his room and is prodded into making a billiards wager with Mr. Russell, the local cowpoke and pool shark, who says, “Here’s $70 you play billiards as well as you write: rotten.” Twain invites Mr. Russell to set up three balls anywhere on the table and that Twain can make a successful three-cushion shot (i.e., use the cue ball to hit the other two balls while also contacting three cushions). Twain makes the winner-takes-all shot, pockets the winnings, and dismisses his buffoonish opponent.

Twain’s demonstrated billiards acumen is rooted in history. According to biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, who wrote The Boys’ Life of Mark Twain (1916), Twain was passionate about billiards. Paine writes:

Every Friday evening, or oftener, a small party of billiard lovers gathered, and played until the late hour, told stories, smoked till the room was blue, comforting themselves with hot Scotch and general good-fellowship. Mark Twain always had a genuine passion for billiards. He never tired of the game. He could play all night. He could stay until the last man gave out from sheer weariness, then he would go on knocking the balls about alone.

In fact, Twain’s billiards room served as his “office, study and private domain…away from the bustle of a busy household, it was the place where the author would write his great works, fanning the manuscripts on the billiard table to be edited.”[1]

Shattered Idol

The real Mark Twain

“Shattered Idol” includes another historical fact – the early death of Twain’s son Langdon – which is revealed mid-episode to be the source of Twain’s dismissiveness and the rationale for his self-imposed isolation. Twain’s son Langdon died of diphtheria in 1872. In “Shattered Idol,” Twain believes he could have prevented hi son’s death, citing it as his reason to discontinue writing the then-serialized novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (In truth, Twain did lose interest in writing the famous American classic for several years, but the delay was not attributable to Langdon’s death.)

Fortunately, for Huck, Jim, young Mark McCain, and millions of voracious future readers, the titular rancher Lucas McCain is able to help Twain overcome his grief (and save the imperiled novel) through a rematch on the billiards table.

Twain is once again challenged by the local town hustler to a 5-point game of three-cushion billiards for $100. Lacking concentration and distraught with grief, Twain initially loses. But, when Lucas gives him a pep talk about not living in the past, Twain is able to rebound and makes a stunning, consecutive series of five three-cushion shots, thereby defeating the hustler, winning the wager, regaining his desire to live, and recommitting to finish writing Huckleberry Finn.

The “Shattered Idol” episode of The Rifleman is not currently available online or on DVD.

[1]       https://marktwainhouse.org/about/the-house/HartfordHome/rooms/

Sledge Hammer! – “The Color of Hammer”

Billiards has been the centerpiece of some great television parodies, such as Mad TV – “The Hustler” (1999), Mr. Show – “Van Hammersly” (1995), and, of course, the hilarious 1987 short “The Hustler of Money,” which featured Ben Stiller doing an over-the-top impersonation of Tom Cruise’s The Color of Money character, who has traded in his cue stick for a bowling ball.

Color of HammerUnfortunately, not all billiards spoofs have been this humorous. For example, way down at the other end of the baize is the insufferable and utterly uncomic Sledge Hammer! episode, “The Color of Hammer.”

Sledge Hammer! is a satirical police sitcom starring David Rasche as Sledge Hammer, a San Francisco Police Department inspector who is destructive, sexist, insensitive, simplistic, and calloused. As hinted by the opening sequence, a sensual close-up of a .44 Magnum resting on a satin pillow, Hammer’s natural instinct is to solve every case with violence. His crime-fighting ways naturally draw the ire of his partner, the beautiful, intelligent and sophisticated Detective Dori Doreau (Anne-Marie Martin) and the uptight, apoplectic Captain Trunk (Harrison Page). The series lasted on ABC for only two seasons before it was canceled in 1988 due to low ratings and direct competition from superior shows like Miami Vice.

“The Color of Hammer” aired in January 1987, at the tail end of the show’s first season. (Many of the episodes’ titles lampooned 1980s films and television shows – e.g., “The Spa Who Loved Me,” “The Secret of My Excess,” and “Miss of the Spider Woman.”) The full episode is available to watch here.

The episode centers on Sledge’s investigation of the murder of hardline Superior Court Judge Liam Jackson, who is killed shortly after inexplicably dismissing all charges against an obviously guilty mob figure. Though Hammer seems oblivious to the knife sticking out of the judge’s back, he has a flash of genius when he connects the blue chalk under the judge’s fingernails with the Cues ‘R’ Us matchbook in his pocket, and deduces that the judge may have been hustled and blackmailed, which ultimately got him stabbed. Sure enough, the judge had fallen victim to the sharking tactics of Lana (Martine Beswick, former Miss Jamaica), who had tricked the judge into a making a no-win bet of $50,000.

Hammer arrives at the pool hall to sniff out the hustler. Meeting Lana, he initially dismisses her, telling her to “go get her ears pierced.” Assuming a woman could not be the culprit, Hammer is persuaded to play her in 9-ball for $100/game. After winning the first game, he eventually goes down $50,000, which is enough to realize she is the villain. (The silver lining of this sequence is that the pool-playing is cleverly shot to Hall & Oates’ ‘80s anthem “Man-Eater.”)

Hammer encourages Lana to play one more double-or-nothing game. A dreadfully filmed game of nine-ball ensues, with balls falling out of order, and illogical shots getting made. Lana resorts to cheap distractions (e.g., blowing cigar smoke in his face, kissing his ear), but Hammer proves unflappable, and wins the game.

Color of HammerWhen Hammer calls out Lana as the killer (“Sorry lady, the pool party is over!”), her cue stick is unsheathed to reveal a stiletto, and the standard pool table battle occurs, with Hammer knocking out his opponent by making her trip on the cue ball (“Best shot I made all day”). And for true tired slapstick, this “The Color of Hammer” sequence even includes a jump shot that bounces off the table, caroming into the Captain.

The late great billiards legend Minnesota Fats once said, “When I played pool I was like a good psychiatrist. I cured ‘em of all their daydreams and delusions.”

Now that’s funny.

Telling the Captain after beaning him with a cue ball on a botched jump: “You knew when you signed up that police work is dangerous.”

Well, that’s just plain stupid.

Pool Shark Precepts

Pool Shark PreceptsThe most interesting aspect of Ross Smith’s 2011 Colorado Film School student project, Pool Shark Precepts, has nothing to do with the plot, dialogue, or acting, all of which are pretty unimpressive. Rather, the most interesting aspect is the unusual selection of the word “precept” in the title.

As any good SAT student knows, a “precept” is a “procedural directive or rule,” or more generally, a rule that helps one decide how to behave. Dating from the late 14th century, “precept” is hardly a common word. In fact, on Wordcount.org, which ranks the frequency of word use on the web, “precept” is #31,841 out of 86,800, just behind “webbs” and just ahead of “machynlleth.”

In fact, if Google is any indication, “precept” is waning in colloquial popularity. As the Google NGram chart below shows, back in 1900, the word was almost three times as common in books as words such as “billiards” or “hustler.” Today, that gap has closed significantly.

Pool Shark PreceptsMore revealing is a simple Google search. “Hustler” has 36 million search results, a whopping six times the number there are for “precept.” “Billiards” shows up in almost eight times as many search results.

Alas, the unfortunate truth is that “precept” is more likely to find a home on a standardized exam, as the scholarly minds at Kaplan know in producing the Top GRE Vocabulary List, which includes “precept,” than in any billiards movie. (Or any film for that matter: a quick IMDB search revealed zero titles using the word “precept,” except Pool Shark Precepts.)

Nonetheless, Mr. Smith, in selecting a title for the 6-minute movie he wrote and directed, at least chose his words accurately, for the short film details, albeit unoriginally, the five rules that a young pool shark uses to survive and win cash from his unsuspecting opponents. That quintet of precepts includes:

  1. Don’t get greedy
  2. Let the target come to you
  3. Know when to back down
  4. Don’t drink
  5. See rule #1

The movie was shot at Rack ‘Em Billiards in Aurora, Colorado, and subsequently won Mr. Smith nominations for “Best Editing,” “Best Sound,” and “Best Production 2/16mm” at his school’s 2011 student spring show. The full movie is available to watch here.

But, at this point, I feel comfortable introducing my own precept: steer clear of any film that uses “precept” in its title.