I’d love to ask Pat Robins why she chose to make snooker the focus of her 1989 short film O’Reilly’s Luck. Active in New Zealand cinema since the 1970s primarily doing wardrobe and production design, Ms. Robins had only directed one film prior to O’Reilly’s Luck. That film was called Instincts and shot for just $17,000. O’Reilly’s Luck had a budget ten times that amount – still relatively small, but clearly a whopping increase over her inaugural film. And, easily, more than half the film’s 25 minutes zero in on an 11-frame snooker match.
The movie is about a young Māori woman, Cissy O’Reilly Ratapu (played by newcomer Poina Te Hiko), who promised her now-deceased mother that she would never let anything happen to her extended family’s land – her whānau’s whenua. When her father’s gambling problems lead to a risk of foreclosure, Cissy decides her only recourse is to bet their savings on her ability to win the annual snooker tournament.
O’Reilly’s Luck clearly reflects some of Ms. Robins’ signature themes.
For starters, O’Reilly’s Luck features a strong female protagonist. In an interview with Illusions, Ms. Robins said, “there was a growing awareness that most of the stuff I had worked on, the women took a back seat; men were making stories about their aspirations and feelings…It was pretty obvious there was an imbalance there, and a growing awareness that women’s stories were important too.” Year later, Ms. Robins similarly lamented, “Worldwide, only eight percent of film directors are women…That’s another reason why more women should be out there telling their stories.”1
The film also reflected Ms. Robins’ belief that “real people are actually much more interesting” than the glamorous, larger than life figures on TV. The characters in O’Reilly’s Luck are especially ordinary. Cissy and her brother work in a sheep shearing factory. There is a banker; some codgers who are behind the times, surprised to see a woman playing snooker; a crusty fella determined to seize Cissy’s land; a very unmemorable snooker opponent; and a bar full of locals, drinking, wagering, and hoping for a good match.
But, so much snooker?
Aotearoa has hardly been a mecca for the sport. Almost a century ago, a New Zealand professional player named Clark “Mac” McConachy almost won the World Snooker Championship. He was a runner-up again in 1952. He never won. And, for the most part, that pretty much removed the country from the snooker spotlight.
True, snooker received a huge boost in the 1970s with the airing of the British television show Pot Black, which was very popular in New Zealand, but that show ended in 1986, three years before O’Reilly’s Luck. There was also the Kiwi, Dene O’Kane, who cracked the top 32 in the 1980s, though his peak spot (18) came several years after the film’s release.
Perhaps, just as Cissy gambles on her own ability, the extended focus on snooker represented a similar gamble from Ms. Robins. Regardless of the sport’s waning popularity in her home country, snooker could provide an appropriately compelling backdrop for telling local stories of ordinary people and showcasing the determinism and perseverance of the film’s protagonist.
Made in association with the Short Film Fund of the NZ Film Commission, and Television New Zealand Commissioned Independent Productions, O’Reilly’s Luck is available to watch free on NZ On Screen.
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Both quotes are from: https://www.nzonscreen.com/profile/pat-robins/biography
So, it’s only fitting that ten years later, for my 250th blog post, I am honoring the cinematic garniture that adorns my cellar with my list of the Top 10 Billiards Movie Posters.
Most assuredly, this is not a list of the top billiards movies; some of these movies were terrible, and some never escaped pre- or post-production. But, each of these posters superbly achieves its goals of marketing its movie. It previews plot, tone, and visual aesthetic; more important, it creates a memorable imprint on the intended audience that hopefully sparks interest, conversation, and of course, viewership.
One additional note: where possible, I have credited the designer of the movie poster. However, this information is often not known. The substantial majority of movie posters are created and designed by marketing agencies. Sadly, the art directors or graphic designers behind this iconography are rarely recognized; their achievements are subsumed behind the corporate doors of their employers.
Created by graphic designers Cindy Conklin and Tina Lowry, the poster for 8 Ball foregrounds an eight-ball, which sits at the center of shattering glass to reveal the side profile of an unidentified gunman. The numerical character on the ball also doubles as part of the movie’s title. The poster screams urgency, instability, and the promise of darkness and danger. It’s not surprising that similarly-themed posters have been used to promote a variety of horror, suspense, and supernatural films. Unfortunately, 8 Ball never made it to the theaters. When I first interviewed David Barosso, the film’s executive producer, in 2014, his film had already been 10 years in the making. Now, almost 10 years later, it seems any interest drummed up by the poster will have to look elsewhere for its billiards suspense mash-up.
Alan Clarke’s loopy, snooker musical, Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, is unlike any movie you’ve seen. The same, however, cannot be said about the film’s original release poster or its more popular DVD cover; both are woefully unimaginative and confoundingly forgo the opportunity to showcase the film’s protagonist, a snooker-playing vampire! Fortunately, the poster for the film’s Czech release more than compensated. Designed by Věra Nováková, an icon of the Czech art scene, the poster mixes styles, colors, and perspective, to create a memorably compelling invitation to the film. And while the snooker is visually present (with the seven balls on the baize), it is Alan Armstrong’s vampiric character that unabashedly consumes the poster’s real estate. More of Ms. Nováková’s posters are viewable here.
8. Bred in Manila
Another movie that unfortunately ran out of funding before it could get made, Bred in Manila was a passion project for director Phil Giordano. In 2019, a post on the movie’s Facebook page said he had been “working on the script for the last three years and has done countless hours of research, location scouting, interviews, late night anecdote-filled drinking sessions, script revisions, pitches, meetings, begging, crying, cheering, and overall filmmaking heartache to make this film possible.” Based solely on the film’s poster, I held high hopes for this movie. The poster, which was created by Karen Abarca Giordano, is creatively bifurcated to show two intersecting environments. On the top, the movie’s protagonist, back to the viewer, passively competes in a billiards game. But, her body seems to continue, past the gun and the caution tape, into the poster’s bottom half. There, her legs are replaced by overgrown tree roots that extend into the slums, where people are passed out, lying in filth. The poster enforces the movie’s tagline about “gambling with her life” by visually reinforcing the player’s delicate straddling of a world of possibility (top) and a world of deadendness (bottom).
In Bai Xinyu’s 2019 Chinese billiards drama Metal Billiards (or Alloy Billiards), the main character is an industrial design student who creates a robotic arm that he uses to advantage his billiards game and ultimately to avenge his father. Along the way, he befriends a group of hipsters and competes against a rogue’s gallery of opponents, who look like they might have stepped out of Smokin’ Aces or The Suicide Squad. Similar to the posters promoting much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Metal Billiards poster acknowledges its comic book-like cast by making them the focus and cramming them all around a pool table. Heck, the main character even looks like Marvel’s Winter Soldier. I still have yet to locate the complete film to watch, but based solely on the power of the poster, Metal Billiards remains at the top of my must-see list.
The Baltimore Bullet should have been a much better billiards movie. Aside from starring two past Oscar nominees (Omar Sharif, Ronee Blakley), the film also featured a who’s-who of billiards professionals: Mike Sigel, Willie Mosconi, Steve Mizerak, Jimmy Mataya, Lou Butera, Irving Crane, Allen Hopkins, Pete Margo, Ray Martin, James Rempe, and Richie Florence. How did this film flatline? Well, you can’t blame Jack Davis, a founding cartoonist of Mad and the creator of the original artwork for the film. His wonderful, madcap, kitchen-sink style poster, featuring his signature cartoon characters with big heads and distorted anatomy, captured the movie’s aspirational rip-roaring zaniness. It’s a shame the movie couldn’t deliver on the promise. Interestingly, the posters for the European releases considerably toned down that harebrained bravado. Perhaps they resonated more with their international audiences, but in my mind, those posters (e.g., France, Italy, Spain) were far less original or effective.
I watched Kisses & Caroms in 2013 thinking I had discovered the Porky’s of billiards entertainment. The titillating (pun intended) poster, suggesting a woman’s private parts covered by a perfect rack (pun intended?), lured me in like an adolescent horndog. The movie promised humor, billiards, and sex (or at least sexual innuendo), none of which was remotely present in the actual movie. Though I found the poster effective (especially in the billiards movie genre, where the posters are rather light on both sex and humor), I acknowledge the artwork also falls into stand-up comedian Marcia Belsky’s poster category of “Headless Women of Hollywood,” a problematic trend that crops out women’s faces completely in favor of butt and boob shots. Perhaps not surprisingly, this treatment extended into multiple promotional posters for the film, including the “uncensored director’s cut” and the originally-titled American Balls version.
This psycho-fantastic, mindfuck of a billiards movie will leave you reeling in a hallucinogenic poppy field. Directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa and produced by Madhouse Studios, Death Billiards is a 26-minute Japanese anime film from 2013 that not only had audiences spinning in a whirlwind of WTF-ness, but also took the billiards movie genre through the looking glass. (In addition, it spawned a follow-up anime TV series called Death Parade.) To tee up this pilgrimage to pool purgatory, the promotional poster needed to be particularly wild. And, on this front, Death Billiards did not disappoint. Created by Long Beach-based graphic designer spencerlinds, the stained glass-like poster shows the film’s two competitors beginning a death game of billiards, while other, larger eerie characters hover disinterestedly in the background. The poster asked more questions than it answered, which is exactly the sentiment I had emerging from the movie.
3. The Hustler
One film that needs no introduction is The Hustler, which 60 years later is still the beau ideal of the billiards movie genre. However, 20th Century Fox blundered with its initial promotional poster for the 1961 release. It showed a hand-drawn Paul Newman cradling and kissing Piper Laurie beneath a cringeworthy tagline – “It delves without compromise into the hunger that lies deep within us all!” – that feels more appropriate on the cover of a Kozy Books novel. Fortunately, the movie’s popularity warranted a re-release in 1964, and this time, the studio (credit unknown) nailed it. The new re-release poster eschewed the pulpy sensationalism of its predecessor. Jumping on the Pop Art bandwagon that had recently kicked off in the US, the new poster creatively bisected the space with a cue stick and then featured tinted stills from the movie inside of abstract billiards balls. The chartreuse background, a sickly substitute for the baize of a billiards table, accentuates the primary colors of the balls. And thankfully, that original ill-begotten tagline was now replaced with the instantly quotable, “They called him ‘Fast’ Eddie.”
2. The Hustler (French version)
Disappointment with the first release poster for The Hustler was not limited to the United States; across the Atlantic in France, moviegoers were equally underwhelmed by the initial French poster for the film (aka L’arnaqueur). Created by Boris Grinsson, the hand-drawn poster is oddly disconnected from the film’s subject matter. While visually interesting, it’s baffling that the poster focuses on three faceless individuals attempting to subdue Fast Eddie. Thankfully, in 1982, French artist Jean Mascii corrected the problem with a positively brilliant reissue poster. Mascii, who designed more than 1500 cinema posters and 250 book covers, recognized the centrality of billiards, both as a driver of the plot and as a metaphor for the characters’ precarious situations. Building on the American poster’s concept of putting the characters in the balls, Mascii’s art is both more dynamic (with Fast Eddie bouncing off the table) and more focused on the arcs of its characters. Thus, Bert Gordon comfortably sitting inside the red ball, or Sarah Packard bleeding out the crack of her ball’s exterior.1 Within Mascii’s poster, the whole film comes to life in magnificent fashion.
As noted in my original review, there is so much to like about Louis Jack’s 2020 short film Petrichor. The director said his film is about the “psychological warfare on the billiards table, a life lived from a suitcase and relentless losses that have left [the main character] a shell of a man.” Everything – the acting, the music, the pacing – all create an intentionally unsettling and spookish experience. The film’s movie poster (credit unknown) is no different. Simply by rotating the table’s angle 90 degrees from horizontal to vertical, the player’s world – and therefore the viewer’s world – is thrown topsy-turvy. Every shot becomes a literal uphill battle, and the full 2500 pounds of the sport is visually and metaphorically close to crushing the pool player. The jet black background further enhances the effect. The player is losing his corporeal identity, fading into a billiards abyss. While The Hustler is the unparalleled leader in billiards movies, the little-known Petrichor wins my top spot in the Best Poster category.
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To my knowledge, The Hustler was not the first artwork to situate characters inside billiards balls. That honor seems to belong to a 1940s “Put Them Behind the Eight Ball” WWII billiards war poster. However, since The Hustler, it has become a periodic metaphor, most often used on magazine covers (e.g., Sinteza, 2014; India Today, 2013).
At least since 1948, when Milton Berle first hosted Texaco Star Theater, television has aired sketch comedy shows. Over the years, and propelled by the success of sketch comedy titans such as Saturday Night Live and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, hundreds of shows have followed.
“Van Hammersly” – Mr. Show
While they’re concentrated in certain geographic markets, such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, sketch comedy shows are a global television genre. Early progenitors arose in the Netherlands (Van Kooten en De Bie) and Mexico (Los Supergenios de la Mesa Cuadrada); more recent incarnations are everywhere, including Malaysia (Senario), Philippines (Lokomoko), Brazil (Hermes & Renato), and Indonesia (Extravaganza).
Given the global popularity of sketch comedy, it was only a hop, skip, and a jump to explore its intersection with another global phenomenon: billiards, of course. The sampling below is hardly the genre’s best (e.g., “The Hustler of Money” or “Van Hammersly” from Mr. Show) or comprehensive (as I have intentionally omitted England, since I recently wrote about British sketch comedy during snooker’s golden era), but it does represent 25,000 miles of billiards sketch comedies from around the world. Chalk up and enjoy!
Key & Peele – “Pussy on the Chain Wax”(USA)
Circled around an in-home billiards table, four friends begin a game of pool with the opening break. As Jordan Peele’s character lines up to take his shot, Keegan-Michael Key’s character recounts a recent fight he got into. There’s some friendly disputing of the facts, to which Key clarifies that he put the “pussy on the chain wax.” Two of the friends echo their support with laughs, hand slaps, and shoulder bumps. But, Jordan’s character is more suspect – not of the fight details, but of the authenticity of his friend’s phrase. Is “pussy on the chain wax” even a “thing”?1
This 2013 segment from the series’ third season is pitch-perfect, gut-busting fun. In this case, the phrase is absurd. Peele’s linguistic challenge is logical; he even Googles the phrase to find no matches. But, as the background piano fades in, Key shares his true plight: “I lost my job. My girlfriend left me…I just wanted to have a little fund with my friends today” and can’t understand why the origin of the phrase matters. Caught off guard by the rawness of his friend’s emotions, Peele unwinds his crusade without skipping a beat and joins in the brotastic bonhomie. Cue the choir: it’s time to put the “pussy on the chain wax!” The sketch is available to watch here.
SCTV – “Melonville Snooker Championship” (Canada)
Second City Television, a Canadian sketch comedy series which ran from 1976 to 1984, featured an all-star cast of rising Canucks, including John Candy, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, and Catherine O’hara. Many of the sketches were side-splittingly funny; unfortunately, the 1978 segment “Melonville Snooker Championship” was not one of them.
The sketch focuses on a snooker championship, pitting Lenny “Golden Arm” Bouchard (John Candy) against “The Greek Hustler” Alki Stereopolis (Joe Flaherty), at Dwayne & Tino’s Bowling and Billiards bar.2 Both players are a far cry from the formal, polished gentlemen of English snooker. But, the real grater is announcer Lou Jaffe (Eugene Levy), whose nasal, singsongy voice and random exclamations continue to interrupt the match and ultimately lead to fisticuffs between the two players.
Full Frontal – “Parko’s Good Sports: Snooker”(Australia)
On the positive, Full Frontal, the Australian sketch comedy series that ran from 1993 to 1997, introduced us to Eric Bana, who eventually stepped away from the funnyman role to headline Hollywood blockbusters, such as Troy, Hulk, and Munich.
But Full Frontal also included the the incredibly unhumorous segment “Parko’s Good Sports: Snooker,” which has our Good Sports host interviewing Milo Kerrigan, a punch-drunk ex-boxer (played by Shaun Micallef) about snooker, a “quiet game requiring a delicate touch and a lot of finesse.” The gag is that Milo is hardly delicate (or coherent). He garbles and babbles; he hits balls off the table and wears the rack on his head; he launches his cue stick into the wall – twice. The one thing he doesn’t do is act remotely funny, which makes me hard-pressed to understand why he was one of Full Frontal’s most popular characters.
Comedy Central Stand-Up, Asia! – “Mini Billiards”(Singapore)
With a big heart and a small billiards table, the “Mini Billiards” sketch from Comedy Central Stand-Up, Asia! has just enough humor and originality to keep viewers smiling and engaged. The sketch pits GB Labrador, a Pinoy stand-up comedian, against Eliot Chang, an NY-based comedian, in a game of billiards that is played on a desktop table less than a foot long.
Capitalizing on the popularity of billiards in the Philippines, Mr. Labrador embraces his nationality and declares, “Billiards is our game.” The two comedians then alternate taking shots, which seems much harder for Mr. Chang, who is “not used to small balls.”
The players’ quips are rather feeble (especially when Mr. Chang invokes Harry Potter), but the editors score humor points with some clever sound and visual effects. And, Mr. Labrador gets in a good laugh when he rebuffs Mr. Chang’s plea for mercy by telling him that he “already has a wealthy country.”
Chewin’ the Fat: “Ford and Greg on the Couch” (Scotland)
Chewin’ the Fat was a Scottish sketch comedy series that aired 30 episodes of guffaws between 1999 and 2002. In the season’s first episode, one of the segments takes us behind the scenes of the Snooker Semi-Finals at the Crucible to view some of the “lighter moments that have made this tournament so entertaining.”
Yet another sketch lampooning the formality of snooker, this wordless episode is a pastiche of boys behaving badly set to a ragtime soundtrack. The players drop their drawers, pick their wedgies, pick their noses, dance on tables, chalk their faces, give one another piggybacks, mock, jeer, cackle, and act like asses.
Perhaps the Scots had grown bored with snooker. Their national champion, Stephen Hendry, was so good he won seven world titles in the 1990s. But, otherwise I’m struggling to find the mirth in this puerile send-up. The sketch is available to watch here, starting at 20:18.
Top Lista Nadrealista – [name of segment unknown] (Yugoslavia)
Historians will recall that in 1991 Slovenia and Croatia became the first republics to declare independence from the former Yugoslavia. Around that same time, Top Lista Nadrealista, a Yugoslav sketch comedy show that ran from 1984 to 1991, aired a segment showing two Belgian members of the European Community Monitoring Mission in Bosnia trying to incite a Bosnian Muslim and a Serb, lifelong friends, to start fighting one another during a game of pool at a Sarajevo bar.
The episode is available to watch below, but only in Serbian without subtitles, so I can’t comment on the humor. But, as in Melonville, billiards begets bedlam.
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Teasing the question whether art imitates life, or life imitates art, “pussy on the chain wax” is now a real phrase in Urban Dictionary.
Largely wasted in this sketch, Mr. Candy returned to billiards in 1984, when he starred in one of the best billiards sketch comedies ever, “The Hustler” from the series The New Show.
There is no shortage of jargon in billiards. You can “ride the cheese,” “sweat the action,” or “dog a shot.” There are “donuts,” “bagels,” “nuts,” “lemonade,” and even “duck soup.” The cue ball alone has multiple monikers, including the rock, the stone, the egg, the albino, whitey, and Judy. Part of playing the sport is speaking the language.1
One of the sport’s more popular (and perhaps more intuitive) phrases is “break and run,” which refers to the opening shot (the “break”) and the subsequent shots in which the person who broke “runs” the table (i.e., pockets all his/her balls without giving the opponent an opportunity to shoot).
For many amateur players, it’s an aspiration, more than an actuality. It’s also the name of two different billiards short films (which is a welcome relief from the glut of 8-ball and 9-ball named movies).
Break and Run (2018)
Directed and written by Matt Baum as part of his final project for Michigan’s Motion Picture Institute, this 14-minute film has a lot of heart, humor, and billiards, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with a “break and run.”
The film focuses on Trey, a 25-year-old pool junkie with a drinking problem, who can’t hold a job long enough to move him and his longtime girlfriend out of his parents’ garage. His temper is too short, and his patience too thin, to last in roles as a Customer Service agent at a website company or as a Cashier at a video rental shop.
Jobless and out of options, Trey joins an 8-ball tournament at The Last Straw, with a $5000 cash prize. He finds his billiards mojo and steadily defeats all his opponents, including the final one, his father, who has a history of taunting him and telling him that he “can’t keep sucking on the family tit forever.”
The billiards playing is neither climactic nor interesting. (I’m still wondering what shots were so difficult that they required the director’s father, Loras Baum, to take them.) But, the film is upbeat, largely driven by Trey’s charm and a well-chosen soundtrack, including Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” Jonny Lang’s ode to pool “Rack ‘Em Up,” and Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” an obvious audio tribute to The Color of Money.
The billiards was filmed at Ball & Cue & Brew in Lincoln Park, Michigan, but unfortunately the venue has since permanently closed.
Break and Run (2020)
Brendan Gallogly’s movie is the more expertly filmed Break and Run though it tries too hard to pack too much into its 12-minute runtime. That’s likely because the film was intended as a proof of concept for a feature film the director intends to shoot.
Mr. Gallogly, who received an Outstanding Television Commercial Emmy nomination for his work on the 2015 Budweiser commercial, “A Hero’s Welcome,” is a seasoned Associate Creative Director, who has built his career at advertising agencies such as Anomaly and McCann.
The movie is about a group of twenty-somethings who are cash-strapped and unable to come up with the money to rent an apartment. They convene every Tuesday at a local bar, which hosts a billiards league night (though there is only one table). Jokes and jeers are exchanged, and then Bort (the director’s brother Liam Gallogly) has an opportunity to play and impress the new girl on the team.
There’s a comic bit where he improvises Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” in the bathroom and convinces himself to go for the “break and run.” That’s followed by a well-filmed billiards sequence, including some trick shots made by Andy Segal, but Bort ends up choking against his opponent, who he learns is the former New York Library President, accused of embezzling $500,000.
The movie then awkwardly pivots to Bort’s “break and run” plan, which is to break into his opponent’s house and run off with the money. It’s idiotic, even to his fellow league mates. There’s a final a-ha at the end of the movie, when Bort learns how his opponent hid the money, but it’s nonsensical on too many levels to count. Break and Run is available to watch here.
While the masses know the game of 8-Ball, the fanatics know the game of 9-Ball. Often characterized as a more difficult, more demanding game, 9-Ball exudes a heightened exclusiveness. It’s the cool kids’ clubhouse, the hipsters’ hideaway. Is it any wonder that Rihanna’s character in Ocean’s 8 is named Nineball?
Perhaps not surprisingly, the billiards movie genre’s most famous members – The Hustler, The Color of Money, and Poolhall Junkies – all focus on 9-Ball, even if it’s not spelled out in the title.
But, what happens to the mystique when everyone is obsessing over it? As it turns out, nineball is the focus of more than just the above billiards trifecta; in fact, 9-ball (in all its lexical variants) is in the title of nine different films and TV shows! So, chalk your cue, and get ready for a Nonet of Nineball-Named movies.
Nine Ball (1995, 2023)
The newest addition to this cinematic ennead is Nine Ball, which has a history considerably more interesting than the movie itself. Shot on Super 16 in 1995 for a budget of approximately $30,000, the movie was an alternate for the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Unfortunately, the opening at Sundance didn’t emerge; moreover, with no offers for distribution, the producer Rich Grasso, who also acts in the film, could not raise the additional $250,000 to finish the movie. The unfinished negative sat in a closet for 25 years, until the boredom of COVID prompted Mr. Grasso to give Nine Ball another look. With advances in technology, and streaming options that didn’t exist a quarter century ago, Mr. Grasso was able to complete his billiards opus, which is now available to watch on Amazon Prime. The movie stars Kenny Johnson (S.W.A.T.; The Shield) in his first feature film, though some of the other actors (e.g., Eugene Williams, Steven Benjamin Wise), who did not remotely achieve the same subsequent level of stardom, were far more compelling.
Nine Ball’s storyline is fairly rote. A quintet of friends in a small town find joy in their weekly get-togethers at a local dive bar. They have free access to alcohol and the pool table, where 9-ball is not a game, it’s a “religion.” But, beneath the booze-infested bonhomie, there is tremendous tension: economic, racial, relationships, dead-end ambitions. For all the talk about 9-ball, very little is actually shot, as players’ turns keep getting interrupted by drunken rage, scatalogical jokes, and bro-bonding. Most of the movie feels more like a play, with the five characters joshing and jostling for space in the single barroom. There are peaks of entertaining or dramatic dialogue, but they are undercut by the annoying narrative technique in which ghosts of the characters cut between past and present or hover in the scenes’ backgrounds.
Special thanks to director Victor Bevine and producer Rich Grasso for their interviews.
9 Ball(2012)
The grand poobah of nineball-named movies, or at least the most well-known, is this APA-sponsored, Jennifer Barretta-starring film, with special appearances by Jeanette Lee and Allison Fisher. The movie broke ground for casting a professional player (Baretta) as the main character, rather than in a supporting role to assist with the technical shots. It also focused on a female protagonist, which is a genre rarity. And, not surprisingly but most unusually, 9 Ball sought to portray pool as a professional sport. The actual movie was rather polarizing for audiences. In my original review, I rated it meh but acknowledged its obvious love and respect for the sport of billiards.
9 Ball (2012)
Directed by Isabel Logroño Carrascosa, this unimaginative Spanish short film is instantly forgettable. The movie revolves around a trio of characters, who are involved in an insipid game of 9 ball, while they seek to double cross one another. I don’t know what was a bigger distraction: the hair metal t-shirts the two players sported or their infuriating inability to make more than two shots in a row. The film is available to watch here.
9-Ball (2015)
A life of decadence. The ultimate price to pay for those sins. A game of 9-ball to decide it all. Blah, blah, blah…yeesh, that sounds like trope overload. Nonetheless, I’ve been searching for this Australian short film on-and-off for close to three years. I even successfully connected with the director, Darwin Brooks, in 2020, who committed to tracking down a copy for me. But, his email is no longer active, nor is BMC Productions, the company behind the film. This movie is officially WANTED. If you have any information on it, please contact me.
Nine-Ball (2004)
Stretching across 20 episodes, the Taiwanese television series Nine-Ball (aka Billiard Boy) focuses on You Li, a country boy / billiards hustler, who falls in love with a girl on the internet, thereby provoking the rage of her jealous ex, Kuai Da. Kuai Da happens to work for Shao Shi Enterprise, a company that has a reputation in acquiring pool halls using violence. Not surprisingly, Kuai Da seeks to leverage his commercial power to destroy You Li and the things he loves. Resentment, bad mojo, and lots of billiards ensues, but unfortunately, I’ve seen none of it because I can’t locate the series. The only discoverable relic is a music video for the series’ theme song, “I’m Not A Hero,” by David Chen. This series is officially WANTED. If you have any information on it, please contact me.
Nineball (2007)
Why does the film’s narrator, a self-described “billiards junkie,” cover his face with a rag and get called a “monster” by the local children? Why does he use his spoon as a cue stick to pocket raw potatoes? And, why does he introduce us to a crew of 9-ball players who compensate for their missing arms by using other parts of their bodies (or others’ bodies) to support their cue strokes?
Ricky Aragon’s hilarious, crude, and jarring 14-minute film rapid-fires the questions, continuously disorienting the viewer with ever-changing music and characters. For a moment, we’re doing mathematics with billiards balls. Then, our narrator is at the 2006 Phillipines World Championship, having a Forrest Gump moment, as he appears behind winner Ronato Alcano or takes a selfie with referee Michaela Tabb. Then, it’s on to the narrator’s true love, Donita, the girl with the “billiard boobs.”
What is going on? Hold tight. It all resolves with a 9-ball match, where our narrator’s puerile attempts to distract his opponent cause a freak accident – a lodging of the nineball in the narrator’s nose. He is a victim of his own obsession, deformed by his passion. Yet, the film’s true punchline comes in the final 30 seconds. As the befuddled doctor struggles to select a tool that might remove the ball, a cue stick magically descends from above. It is the narrator’s hero and savior – (the very real) Efren “The Magician” Bayes, who shoots the nine, grossly dislodging the ball, along with the surrounding nasal gelatinous membrane. It lands on a billiards table with a thud, but no one stops. The grotesque ball becomes part of the game’s action, proving there is nothing that can interfere with the indefatigable relationship between billiards and Filipinos.
A special thank you to director Enrico “Ricky” Aragon and the Cinemalaya Foundation, which secured a copy of the film for me to watch.
Nine-Ball (2008)
This Swedish short film is very unlike the others in this group. Directed by Nikolina Gillgren, the movie is about neuropsychiatric disorders, such as ADHD, Asperger’s and Tourette’s Syndrome, and how people who have these disorders, like the film’s lead character David, struggle with social dysfunctional behavior and social exclusion. A pool hall, and some awkward games, provides the milieu for discussing the fear, loneliness, and the discomfort that comes from social exclusion. My full review of Nine-Ball is here.
Ride the 9 (defunct)
Fingers were crossed, wood was knocked on, and stray eyelashes were wished upon that Ride the 9 would make it to the silver screen. Blake West and Jordan Marder first started teasing YouTube audiences in 2011 with a trailer (seen below) for this billiards movie that sported a Guy Ritchie vibe, a killer soundtrack, gritty New Orleans set locations, and jaw-dropping trick shots courtesy of Florian “Venom” Kohler. While there were many fits and stops, as late as 2016, hopes were still high that the film would find funding and get made. But, unfortunately, this one rode the 9 to the cinematic graveyard. My original write-up on Ride the 9, based on interviews with Mr. West and Mr. Marder, is here.
Behind the Nine(2003)
A great cruelty of the industry is that Ride the 9 could not get made, but Behind the Nine found its way into home theaters. This suffocating, molasses-paced film focuses on an underground two-week, 9-ball tournament that pays $500,000 to the winner and $500,000 to the organizer, who puts on the tournament to “make ends meet.” The movie 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. My full review of Behind the Nine is here.
Someone once said, “In 9-ball, the only thing harder than the shot is trying to hide your smile when you sink it.” That may be true, but it seems equally difficult to come up with a movie title that does not call out the nine. Maybe change the focus to 8-ball? Oh wait, that’s not a good idea either…
Every few months, I’ll commence my ritual of scrubbing IMDB for billiards movies using every possible permutation, combination, and amalgamation of keywords to hopefully uncover a new film. Usually, these fishing expeditions turn up cinematic chum: a short film with a few thousand views, maybe a #fakebilliardsmovie.
But, every so often, I strike what appears to be cinematic gold, which is exactly what happened this past February when my online sleuthing turned up the English billiards film Mr Doom. Directed by Leif Johnson, this dramedy, which currently is in post-production, hooked me with its poster art (credit to BRUTAL Posters) and its synopsis: “Jack and Charlie are an unlikely pair on a dangerous path to self destruction in a world of their own design. Both struggling to keep up a bygone lifestyle that revolves around a green felt table with six pockets and sixteen balls.” The official trailer for Mr Doom confirmed my instinct.
I rolled the dice and reached out to Mr. Johnson, who was more than happy to talk about his forthcoming film. Below are excerpts from our online interview this past April. When the movie becomes available to watch, I will post my official review.
Jason Moss (me): What is the origin of Mr Doom?
Leif Johnson: I feel like I’ve been researching this film all my life. Not necessarily the game of pool itself, but the characters I’ve met growing up. I come from a working-class family, in a grim town in the north of England, and when writing Mr Doom, I was thinking of all the real life characters that have stuck with me since childhood. The larger-than-life local legends, usually found in their local pub. No job or career to speak of but somehow had a healthy wad of folding money in their pocket. They always had a hustle going on…I was fascinated by these pub orators as they always had a story to tell, usually unsuitable for young ears…I loved it. The film’s title is a nod to The Color of Money when Vincent Lauria is asked what’s in the case and he replies “Doom.”
Jason: What’s the movie about?
Leif:Mr Doom is a dark comedy that follow the exploits of two men: one a professional hustler and the other a professional f**k-up. Both living on the fringes of society, day to day, bar to bar, hustle to hustle. Godlike with a pool cue in their hands but a total disaster in every other area of their lives. We follow this unlikely pair on a dangerous path of self-destruction, in a world of their own design, with the hope of making easy money.
Jason: What challenges did you encounter making the film?
Leif: We shot the film in 16 very long days. We also shot on one of the hottest days of the year in a café with no air conditioning, which was a challenge. Having a small crew taking on multiple roles and general logistics is always a nightmare on any shoot, but the team was incredible and did a remarkable job. I produced as well as directed this film, but I’ll not take on both those roles again. Producing is a big ol’ job, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for a good producer.
Jason: Did any directors or movies inspire you in the making of Mr Doom?
Leif: Indeed. When pitching Mr Doom, I wanted the main narrative to have a very British Shane Meadows type feel. The way we shot the scenes, the big characters and the snappy dialogue all have a gritty Brit film edge. But when we get to the tables and we’re in the game, we shift to more dynamically shot energetic sequences like an Edgar Wright movie.
Jason: For billiards movie fans, how much billiards should we expect?
Leif: There’s quite a bit. The games are fast, and we don’t dwell too much on the games because we have characters and a story to tell. But we do play a couple of different games, and the way we shot the actual games, such as by using probe lenses, is very dynamic.
Jason: How did you ensure the accuracy of the billiards playing?
Leif: First, the actors spent months getting to grips with the game to look like they at least knew what they were doing. They then had to learn how to look like they were pretending like they didn’t. The guys at the pool hall where we shot a lot of the film made sure we didn’t slip up and that the games made sense. It was an education, and I was brought back to when I played pool a lot as a teenager. I’ve not played it that much as an adult. That said, it never leaves you. So, I fell in love with it all over again.
Jason: When can audiences hope to see the film?
Leif: That I don’t know quite yet. The film is doing festivals over the coming months, but we’re keen to get it distributed soon. You’ll be the first to know mate.
You can follow Mr. Johnson on Twitter to stay current on the release of Mr Doom.
“Face it, America. You only watch pool because of Jeanette Lee.”
While billiards has always had its share of colorful personalities, perhaps no other player – certainly, no other woman or American – has possessed such magnetism and star power as the Black Widow, aka Jeanette Lee. Combining unapologetic swagger with knockout looks, an eye-catching wardrobe, and exceptional, rapid-fire, pool-playing prowess, Jeanette Lee captured imaginations, provoked controversy, and generated admiration, all while propelling the popularity of billiards in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Whereas many of the sport’s global superstars have had their stories told on screen (e.g., Jimmy White the One and Only; The Strickland Story; Shane Van Boening – The South Dakota Kid; Alex Higgins: The People’s Champion), it took more than 30 years for a biopic of this BCA Hall of Famer to appear. Fortunately, Ursula Liang, director of the award-winning films 9-Man and Down a Dark Stairwell, has gifted us “Jeanette Lee Vs.,” a 50-minute film as part of ESPN’s sports documentary series 30 for 30.
With its jarring, in-your-face title, Jeanette Lee Vs. makes it clear this is no ordinary life history. This is the account of one woman who has been battling opponents – the kids of Crown Heights, the tight-knit players within the Women’s Professional Billiard Association (WPBA), the hound-doggish media, and her biggest rival, a never-ending onslaught of health maladies – determined to undermine or destroy her. At her core, Ms. Lee is an undeterred, imperturbable fighter, which makes her story so compelling.
Jeanette Lee Vs.begins with Ms. Lee’s upbringing in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. As the only Korean-American girl in a predominantly African-American school, she was mocked with racist taunts, such as “Ching Chong” and “Cholly Wong.” Her father split when she was five; her mother was absent, working around the clock as a registered nurse. She was close with her older sister, Doris, but otherwise developed a chainmail exterior and a fiercely competitive mien. “I wanted to destroy the boys,” she recalls from an early age.
That tough childhood got tenfold worse when she was diagnosed with scoliosis at age 12. “They ripped apart my spine…it destroyed me. I was really tortured…I was in a very bad place,” Ms. Lee recounts.
Sadly, in what has now been well-documented, the scoliosis was just the beginning of a tortuous and agonizing medical journey. Now 51, Ms. Lee has had more than 10 neck and back surgeries. In a 2016 CNN profile, she shared, “I have developed multiple conditions including deteriorated discs, degenerative disc disease, carpal tunnel syndrome and severe sciatic pain. I have bursitis in both shoulders and both hips. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis.” And that was before she learned in 2021 that she had Stage 4 ovarian cancer, which even after six rounds of chemotherapy, has not and will not go into remission.
Jeanette Lee Vs. doesn’t skirt the fact that it is not clear how much longer Ms. Lee has to live. But, the documentary also doesn’t overly dwell on these chapters of her biography. Rather these diseases and their side effects are members of her rogue’s gallery, opponents that she must crush or die trying. Is it any wonder that Ms. Lee was once a spokesperson for Rocawear in their 2008 “I Will Not Lose” campaign?
Back to young Ms. Lee. The teen years were full of drugs, skipping school, and “punching holes in her ears.” It was only the opening of Chelsea Billiards, a 24/7, 15,000 square foot upscale pool palace, that fortuitously gave Ms. Lee a respite from her rebellion. One night, she witnessed straight-pool legend Johnny Ervolino playing, and she was mesmerized and hooked. She became a regular denizen and was fortunate to have billiards great Gene Nagy take her “under his wing.” Though she was “always in pain” and understood billiards was “the last thing she should be doing,” she threw herself into the sport. “Before pool, I wasn’t sure why I was here. I finally found something I loved. Everything changed. I could escape from all the things that made me unhappy.”
As Ms. Lee has often declared in interviews, she turned pro at 21 and became number one in the world 18 months later. It is during this chronicle of time when Jeanette Lee Vs. shines brightest. Her skills and sex appeal drew adulating fans and masturbatory manchilds (seriously – the footage from The Man Show with Adam Corolla putting cornstarch down his pants to ease the genital burn of watching the Black Widow is beyond the pale).
There is no denying Ms. Lee’s incredible billiards skills. She received more than 30 titles and awards between 1993 and 2005, including the WPBA U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship (1994), the 9-Ball Tournament of Champions (1999, 2003), and the gold medal at the World Games 9-Ball Singles in Akita, Japan (2001).
But, as the documentary makes clear, her meteoric rise was also fueled by the times. She discovered billiards right on the heels of The Color of Money, which created a national resurgence of interest in the sport (as well as led to the opening of the aforementioned Chelsea Billiards). ESPN2 had launched in 1993, hungry for programming that would appeal to younger audiences. Women’s billiards became a network staple, anchored by the allure of the Black Widow. For Koreans, who were attacked in the 1992 Los Angeles riots and longed for national icons in a country that now felt more foreign than ever, Ms. Lee personified a can’t stop-won’t stop grit and determination. And for the rest of America, which wasn’t used to seeing Asians on TV, Ms. Lee was a mystery, a modern-day domineering “dragon queen” (an unfortunate phrase that Ms. Lee said she heard more times than she can count). “I started to own the Black Widow,” says a glinting Ms. Lee.
That same persona, however, also provoked the anger and jealousy of her WPBA peers – some of whom are interviewed on-screen – who dismissed her talent and questioned her style and conduct. “I was thoroughly hated,” Ms. Lee shares. At one point, one of Ms. Lee’s opponents anonymously sent her a copy of Dr. Seuss’ Yertle the Turtle, accusing her of “stepping on everyone” to get to the top. Allison Fisher, her one-time “nemesis,” doesn’t mask her emotions when she decries the fame heaped upon Ms. Lee. Ms. Fisher matter-of-factly states she was the better player, yet no one seemed to know.
I can’t but wonder if, during the interview, Ms. Fisher was thinking about the proposed 2015 documentary The Fisher Queens (about Alison, Mandy, and Kelly Fisher, three unrelated snooker champions), which was never made due to the inability to raise more than $11,000. Apparently, there was a lack of interest in her billiards story.
Ms. Liang recognized the potential minefield she was walking in by asking Ms. Fisher, Loree Jon Jones, Kelly Fisher, and others to participate in the documentary. As Ms. Liang shared in an interview with The Moveable Feast:
[I made] a really specific point of asking each of these women in the interview what their reaction was to us doing a 30 for 30 on Jeanette, knowing that there has not been another 30 for 30 done on another female pool player and I think to a person, they each took a pause. Not that many female pool players are getting a documentary period, so I think they all have their opinions about where she falls in greatness in terms of physical skill and that everyone also puts an asterisk next to that, knowing that her career was derailed in some ways by her physical pain.
But they all [also] acknowledge that Jeanette is the most well-known player out there period and she came in at the right moment and she was not only incredibly visible, but incredibly charismatic and whatever she got for herself, she lifted all boats. They were all making more money because of what she was doing, so I think they understood how much she has given to the sport.
Jeanette Lee Vs. is a chronological account of The Black Widow; at the same time, her life and narrative is a complex web. Ms. Lee is the hero of this tale, which sometimes is almost hagiographic. But, she also was forced into the role of villain and otherized as an Asian-American stereotype. Her survival story is one of hope and incredible perseverance, but is also undergirded by loneliness. The story is rich and full of interesting chapters, but it’s also incomplete, at least according to Ms. Lee. Her final sentiments bring no closure, only more questions: “God, if you have a greater purpose for me, tell me. This is not all I was meant to do.”
Jeanette Lee Vs. is available to stream on ESPN. The episode aired in December, 2022.
In what Ronnie O’Sullivan described as the “greatest comeback in the history of the Sheffield venue,” Luca Betel beat Si Jiahui 17-15 last week in the semi-finals of the World Snooker Championship. The Crucible match was all the more extraordinary because Jiahui, who was ranked 80th at the beginning of the month, is just 20 years old. The Chinese wunderkind’s history-blazing path is a story of national pride (unlike the 10 Chinese snooker players who got banned in January from the tournament because they were charged with match-fixing).
Jiahui’s meteoric journey echoes the increasing popularity of billiards/snooker in the PRC. The sport emerged in China in the 1980s. At the turn of the century, China hosted its first international snooker tournament. The early aughts witnessed the arrival of Ding “Enter the Dragon” Junhui, who became the world’s top player in 2014. Other stars followed, such as Pan Xiaoting, Liang Wenbo, and Yan Bingtao.
Today, over 120 million people play and practice billiards in China. There are 1500 snooker clubs in Shanghai; another 1200 are in Beijing. At the World Snooker College, the only subject taught is snooker, with every student hoping to be the next Ding Junhui (or maybe now Si Jiahui).
Not surprisingly, the swelling popularity of billiards has extended from the baize to the silver screen. In fact, prior to 2010, I’m not aware of a single Chinese billiards film. But, since that time, I’ve discovered eight Chinese billiards movies.1,2
The problem is that, with the exception of A Magic Stick (2016), they cannot be found, at least not by yours truly, or they can be found, but have no subtitles, making them incomprehensible to me. Talk about a billiards movie gap in my corpus! I officially deem these Chinese billiards movies WANTED, and I beseech any reader to help me find them. Please note some of the titles below may be approximate translations from the original Mandarin.
Color Disorder (2010)
Color Disorder (or Color Barrier, perhaps) is a Chinese film about Chai Lu, a naturally gifted billiards player who lacks drive and ambition. At some point, he meets Chang Jianguo, who sees Chai Lu’s true potential. He takes Chai Lu under his wing and prepares him for the National Amateur Billiards “Golden Stone Competition.” While Chai Lu is suspicious at first, at the behest of his girlfriend Meng Rui, he ultimately grows to trust Chang Jianguo and his disciplined billiards teaching style.
Billiards Baby (2013)
Directed by Xie Yihang, this billiards short film is about Zhang Chao and Si Yu, who met one summer as kids and became good friends and lovers as adults. They live in Beijing, where Si Yu relies on the billiards skills she learned from her grandfather.
Midnight Pool Room (2016)
Just 11 minutes, the macabre Midnight Pool Room is about Huang and Liu, who hate the wealthy, so they launch some kind of sinister snooker game to retaliate and make the rich taste the shame they deserve. Sounds like The Menu meetsThe Hustler. I’m in!
Billiard Girl (2018)
In 2018, Xiao Liu directed the 95-minute youth film Billiard Girl. This Chinese billiards movie focuses on Ling Chun (YiYi Deng, who won a Best Actress Lily Award award for the role), a high school student who lives with her stepmother. Ling Chun has always felt unsatisfied with her life, until one day she plays billiards and everything changes. More than a couple reviewers criticized the lack of billiards realism. Maybe they were reacting to the blindfolded shot I saw in an online clip? The complete movie is available to watch online, but there are no English subtitles, unfortunately.
Sasha (2018)
Continuing 2018’s focus on young female billiards players is Chunze Dong’s rom-com Sasha. The movie tells the story of Zhao Shasha, a small-town hotel family’s daughter, who is a billiards genius. She flees to Beijing with Liu Hongyang, a simple, everyday, kind of homely man who dotes on her. At some point, she gets smitten by a hunky gent named Abu, forcing our teen billiards goddess to choose between Mr. Funny, Loyal and Ugly and Mr. Tall, Rich and Handsome. A Chinese trailer of the film is available to watch here.
Metal Billiards (2019)
Among this septet of missing Chinese billiards movies, my list-topper is Bai Xinyu’s 2019 billiards drama Metal Billiards (or Alloy Billiards). The film focuses on Lu Yan, an industrial design student, who creates a robotic arm to give more freedom and mobility to its user. Though he fancies himself a real-world Tony Stark, the invention is dismissed by various companies, and Lu Yan graduates unemployed. At this time, he also receives news that his father is hospitalized, having been injured over a large gambling debt. Lu Yan realizes that his robotic arm provides him a great advantage in billiards, specifically in determining the perfect angles and physics at which to make shots. With his robotic appendage, he can avenge his father and demonstrate that his time as an otaku was not for naught.
While the Metal Billiards trailer is no longer on YouTube, there are some extended clips available to watch on Chinese sites. These clips show that, irrespective of the plot, the movie has a hip design aesthetic and traffics in comically memorable billiards opponents, including a green-mohawked guy tattooed top to bottom, a pair of buxom vixens in French maid outfits, an obese woman with hair curlers who carries a pig’s head on a rope (?!), and some gargantuan yeti whose cue stick is appended with a sinister metal chain. Only ones missing from this Iron Man rogue gallery is Obadiah Stane with a cue stick and, of course, the Mandarin.
Billiards King of Northeast China (2023)
Just released in April, Billiards King of Northeast China (also possibly known as Northeast Champion or Northeast Ball King) is a rom-com from director Yin Bo. The film is about a rural billiards prodigy named Zhou Dafa who solves a kidnapping crisis, gets introduced to a business kingpin, falls in love, and then faces another crisis when the kingpin asks him to throw a billiards championship match or risk harm to his mother. Supposedly, Scottish snooker pro Stephen Hendry, who appeared in the 2017 TV documentary Enter the Dragon: China’s Snooker Star (about Ding Jinhui), makes a cameo in the film.
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Of course, some of this jump is attributable to the skyrocketing output of China’s movie studios. In 2000, China released just 91 films; by 2018, the number was 902 (source: ChinaPower).
This excludes movies made in Taiwan (e.g., Second Chance) or Hong Kong (e.g., Legend of the Dragon; The King of Snooker). I am focusing solely on the PRC.
Last week’s vandalization at the World Snooker Championship was so unprecedented and absurd, it felt like maybe Robert Milkins and Joe Perry were on some UK episode of Punk’d or Saturday Night Live. But as we learned real-time, the guerilla stunt was real. A Just Stop Oil protester had managed to climb on the table, while the Milkins/Perry match was in progress, and spray it with orange powder paint before getting hauled away by security.
Too bad. In a different universe, that would have been the set-up for an uproarious comedy sketch.
While televised snooker desecration is a relatively new phenomenon, televised snooker lampooning goes back five decades, when British comedians, such as Benny Hill and Tommy Cooper, trained their sights on the sport’s formality and increasing popularity.
This was the beginning of the Golden Era of Snooker, a time that has since been memorialized in the 2002 TV movie When Snooker Ruled the World and the 2021 TV series Gods of Snooker. Pot Black broadcast its first snooker tournament on the BBC in 1969. Ray Reardon eclipsed John Pulman as the man to beat. And snooker, having only recently removed its shackles as purely a “gentleman’s sport,” began to grow in popularity as a national pastime and eventually spread overseas. At the era’s peak, the 1985 World Snooker Championship between defending world champion Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor was watched by 18.5 million people – about one-third of the UK’s population.
While my list is surely not exhaustive, the following quintet of sketch comedies, from 1973 to 1986, provides a rollicking ride through snooker’s Golden Era, miscues, sneezes, warts, and all.
The Benny Hill Show – “Spot Black”(December 5, 1973)
Both boorish and brilliant, British comedian Benny Hill was one of the first to satirize snooker in his sketch “Spot Black,” a spoof on the popular snooker broadcast Pot Black. Dressed in an ill-fitting mesh shirt and sporting a mop of wild orange hair, Mr. Hill plays Hurricane Hill (a jab at Alex “Hurricane” Higgins, who won the World Snooker Championship in 1972). His opponent is defending champion Henry McGee. The skit includes almost no dialogue. Most of the six minutes consists of Hill making a variety of disturbing noises and grunts, interspersed with blatant cheating (e.g., giving his opponent a crooked cue, swapping the cue ball for one that doesn’t roll properly) and constant head pats and rubs to the bald-pated referee. It’s a pitch-perfect mockery of the sport’s chivalrous reputation.
Of course, no Benny Hill Show sketch would be complete without the eyeballing, eye-rolling, and eye-goggling that Hill gives to a sexy woman watching the match. Initially distracted, he becomes near paralyzed as she undoes a button of her blouse, rolls up her dress to reveal her garter, and ultimately, applies a dab of perfume to her cleavage. In a premature fit of cuejaculation, Hill loses his focus and misses the ball, spearing the baize. He is disqualified, and the object of his affection goes over to Hill’s opponent, kissing him and leaving the match together. The episode is available to watch here.
The Morecambe & Wise Show – “The 1981 Christmas Show”(December 23, 1981)
Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise were one of Britain’s most loved comedic duos. Their sketch series, The Morecambe & Wise Show, was ranked 14 on the BFI’s list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programs. At the end of 1981, they released “The 1981 Christmas Show” which included a snooker match between Mr. Morecambe and (the real) Steve Davis, who had won the World Snooker Championship earlier that year. The sketch was divided into three segments, interspersed throughout the episode. I was unable to find the first segment, the second segment is on Facebook, and the third segment is here.
The skit’s premise is that Mr. Davis is unable to pot a single ball, whether that’s because Mr. Morecambe is secretly descuffing Mr. Davis’ cue or interrupting his concentration with a loud sneeze. At the same time, Mr. Morecambe is making a series of incredible shots, such as a beautiful masse (in segment two, where the score is 0-40) or a three ball topspin trick shot (in segment three, where the score is now 0-59). Like the Benny Hill sketch, there is almost no dialogue; it’s all sounds, pantomimes, miscues, and stunning snooker shots (clearly made by an off-camera snooker pro). The announcer’s monotone voice-over ties it altogether.
Of course, at that time Mr. Davis had a reputation for being robotic; his manager Barry Hearn described him as having “zero personality” in those early years. Thus, it’s all the more enjoyable to watch Mr. Davis mock himself (and try to suppress a laugh – something he was not able to do in the “Invisible Snooker” sketch a few months later).
The Cannon and Ball Show – “Invisible Snooker”(May 8, 1982)
As its literal title suggests, “Invisible Snooker” was a sketch on The Cannon and Ball Show which pitted (once again, the real) Steve Davis against the comedian Tommy Cannon in an invisible snooker match. (The Cannon and Ball Show was a British comedy variety show featuring the double act of Mr. Cannon and Bobby Ball that ran 1978 to 1988.) The joke is that Mr. Cannon is not in the joke; the match is a ruse hatched by Mr. Davis and Mr. Ball to con Mr. Cannon out of 50 quid. The fourth season sketch is available to watch here.
While the gag runs a bit long, it’s funny because Mr. Ball’s deadpan description of the shots contrasts wildly with Mr. Cannon’s rising frustration that he’s the only one who thinks invisible snooker is absurd. When Mr. Davis pots his final ball and declares himself the winner who is owed 50 quid, Mr. Cannon has his best line:
“You can’t see any balls on the table,” Mr. Davis offers as proof of his victory.
“I can’t see any table!,” retorts Mr. Cannon.
As with The Morecambe & Wise Show sketch, Mr. Davis is a trooper for joining the roast of his own monochromatic foibles, even periodically breaking character to laugh.
Spitting Image – “Steve Davis Rap” (January 27, 1985)
By 1985, Steve Davis was a British household name. He had won the World Snooker Championship in 1981, 1983, and 1984, plus a host of other major titles. Yet, he still had to contend with his reputation for being “boring,” a moniker first given to him by his opponent Alex Higgins.
That’s what makes the “Steve Davis Rap” on the show Spitting Image so raucous. For those unfamiliar with the satirical puppet show, Spitting Image was a mainstay of British TV in the 1980s.1 The series used puppets to satirize British politics, sports, and entertainment. No one was safe from their derision – not Queen Elizabeth II, Margaret Thatcher, Mick Jagger, Princess Diana, Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson…and certainly not Mr. Davis.
The three-minute rap, available to watch here, features a puppet of Mr. Davis lamenting that he has no nickname and that he should be deemed Steve “Interesting” Davis. The lyrics include a mix of braggadocio, sexual double entendre, and awkward attempts to convince others that he is interesting:
Hey, you’re Tina Turner aren’t you?
You look just like the woman who just moved in next door to my Auntie.
That’s interestin’, innit?
‘Ello, I’m Steve Interstin’ Davis. I’ve got a new record out.
It’s called the Steven Davis Interestin’ Rap. It’s good.
I sing on it. No, I don’t sing, I speak actually.
Here, we had turkey for Christmas, what did you have?
We have lots of turkey every Christmas.
It’s really nice. I like Turkey.
Saturday Live – “Pot Snooker”(March 22, 1986)
Finally, there is a sketch from The Oblivion Boys (Steve Frost and Mark Arden) which appeared on the first season of Saturday Live, a British twist on the more familiar Saturday Night Live. Entitled “Pot Snooker,” yet another send up of the popular series Pot Black, the sketch consists largely of loosely glued together sight gags that deride the formality of snooker. It is available to watch here.
Like the Benny Hill skit thirteen years prior, there is little dialogue; in lieu, there are fake arms, a mechanized ref that slides across the rail of the table, a player sleeping on the table, a player emerging a hole in the table covered in sawdust, and a brief morphing into Robin of Sherwood, another 1980s British TV show.
In this viewer’s opinion, it’s a disappointing bookend to a pentad of parodies. The jokes and gags feel haphazard and recycled; earlier sketches nailed the landing with less effort and more creativity. Maybe it was a sign that the Golden Era of Snooker would soon come to an end.
Fortunately, it was not a sign that the comedic gods were finished deriding the sport. As new superstars would dominate snooker (e.g., Stephen Hendry, Ronnie O’Sullivan), the nineties and the aughts would usher in a new crop of acerbic humorists. Sketch comedy shows, such as Hale & Pace, A Bit of Fry & Laurie, The Fast Show, and one of my favorites, That Mitchell and Webb Look, would bring new levels of ridicule and mimicry. Such is the topic for a future blog post!
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If you grew up on 1980s MTV, you may also recognize the puppetry of Spitting Image in the 1986 “Land of Confusion” video for Genesis.
Back in 2016, I spoke to producer Len Evans about his forthcoming snooker movie Perfect Break, which was wrapping up post-production. (The movie was released in 2020.) Mr. Evans had promised a “low-budget, family film” that would generate a lot of laughs, showcase great snooker playing, and feature world snooker champion Jimmy White and famed snooker commentator John Virgo in key roles.
That promise proved paper-thin. Perfect Break is a perfect bust.
The setup had potential. Bobby Stevens (Joe Rainbow), an unknown snooker player, makes it to the finals at the Crucible. Performing a whitewash, Bobby is one point away from defeating his number one ranked opponent, Ray “Cannon” Carter, when he suddenly falls apart and ultimately suffers a humiliating loss. His girlfriend leaves him, the media suspects foul play, and Bobby disappears behind a luchador mask, relegated to performing trick shots at local clubs and community centers.
But, after that five-minute opener, the movie quickly spirals into looniness. Bobby takes a job as a resident masked snooker player at the Marine Cliffs Entertainment Center. This nondescript venue seems to be a holiday park for mobile homes. It features an offensively stereotyped homosexual security guard, who inquires about Bobby’s “pole” and whistles “toodle-oo” to unlucky patrons. The snooker table is in a room that can barely squeeze ten people. Running around Marine Cliffs is the proprietor Kate (Tia Demir) and her daughter, Sophie (Ella Tweed) a budding matchmaker who is determined to pair Bobby and her mom.
Meanwhile, in the snookerverse, Ray is determined to track down Bobby for a rematch, as he still suspects the original match may have been thrown. He hatches a cockamamie plan to get Bobby invited to the exclusive Jimmy White Invitational Snooker Tournament. This event features eight of the world’s top-ranked players, with unoriginal names like Mark “Magician” Ward (sorry, Efren Reyes) and Joe “Hitman” Waye (sorry, Michael Holt). Inexplicably, the Tournament occurs in some beat-up club room, where the players use cheap wooden cues, and which houses an audience of maybe 20 bored onlookers, including children.
[SPOILER ALERT] Bobby accepts the invite, especially after he learns that he was hypnotized by his ex-girlfriend to throw his infamous match. A little whisper-magic later and the spell is broken. Bring on the nine-frame rematch and a chance for another 147 perfect break.
Perfect Break suffers from a perfect mix of wooden dialogue, an idiotic plot, unconvincing settings, an over-reliance on random music, and terrible production. The snooker graphics look like they were done in PowerPoint. Mr. White and Mr. Virgo, who supposedly were on set, seem like they got Photoshopped into the movie. There is a black-and-white snooker training montage for no reason. There are random color filters applied to scenes and amateur special effects to simulate something as mundane as waking up. Sound issues and muffled voices plague every outdoor scene.
The snooker-playing was equally disappointing, most obviously because there’s surprisingly little snooker on screen. I’m not counting the unimaginative trick shots. Nor am I counting some of the background potting done by Phil Burness, who is the film’s “snooker consultant.”
I’m talking about actual snooker. Unfortunately, the Crucible match occurs off-screen. The Jimmy White Invitational matches are edited such that most of the time the viewer is looking directly at the player lining up a shot, rather than watching the player make the shot. Pots are disconnected from strokes. The few shots we see wide-screen are super basic, making me wonder what kind of bargain the producers got on Mr. Burness’ fees. As for Mr. White and Mr. Virgo, they’re ballyhooed involvement amounts to less than three minutes of stilted dialogue, literally done as talking heads.
If you’re looking for the perfect break to your day, you’re not going to find it with Perfect Break.
I’d love to ask Pat Robins why she chose to make snooker the focus of her 1989 short film O’Reilly’s Luck. Active in New Zealand cinema since the 1970s primarily doing wardrobe and production design, Ms. Robins had only directed one film prior to O’Reilly’s Luck. That film was called Instincts and shot for just $17,000. O’Reilly’s Luck had a budget ten times that amount – still relatively small, but clearly a whopping increase over her inaugural film. And, easily, more than half the film’s 25 minutes zero in on an 11-frame snooker match.
For starters, O’Reilly’s Luck features a strong female protagonist. In an interview with Illusions, Ms. Robins said, “there was a growing awareness that most of the stuff I had worked on, the women took a back seat; men were making stories about their aspirations and feelings…It was pretty obvious there was an imbalance there, and a growing awareness that women’s stories were important too.” Year later, Ms. Robins similarly lamented, “Worldwide, only eight percent of film directors are women…That’s another reason why more women should be out there telling their stories.”1
