Category Archives: Billiards Short Films

The Billiards Short Films category is about films less than an hour in length that prominently feature billiards or that have plots focused on billiards.

Help Me Find These Three Billiards Short Films

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Billiards professionals are a frequent mainstay of billiards movies and television shows, whether assuming leading roles (e.g., Jennifer Barretta as Gail in 9-Ball); acting as archrivals (e.g., Keith McCready as Grady Seasons in The Color of Money); portraying themselves for scene authenticity (e.g., Steve Mizerak in The Baltimore Bullet); or even making uncredited cameos (e.g., Willie Mosconi in The Hustler). [1]

billiards short films

An uncredited Willie Mosconi in The Hustler

Fortunately, all of the aforementioned films are readily viewable. However, I’ve recently discovered three  billiards short films – each featuring a professional billiards player – that I’ve been unable to watch anywhere. So I beseech my readers: If you can help me locate any of these films, please contact me directly.

Take a Cue

[Update: Since my original post, Take a Cue was posted on YouTube, but it has since been removed.]

The oldest of the three missing movies is Take a Cue, a nine-minute billiards short film that starred the future “Missionary of Billiards” Charlie Peterson, who was a tireless promoter of billiards in the United States and in 1966 became one of the inaugural inductees into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame.

Directed by Felix Feist and released in 1939, Take a Cue features Mr. Peterson (who was then known as the world’s Fancy-Shot Champion) as a high school teacher who redirects a group of students’ attention away from an important basketball game the school just won, and toward the fine art of carom billiards.  Most of the film features Mr. Peterson making some eye-popping trick shots, including hitting a coin off the far rail and back through a narrow opening between two chalk cubes. When Mr. Peterson is not making shots, he is either providing instructional tips (e.g., how to hold a cue, gauge distance, deploy spin to improve ball position), or he is thwarting the antics of Homer, the star basketball player who is ill-prepared to cede the limelight.

Champion of the Cue

[Update: Since my original post, an antique dealer notified me in January 2023 that he had found a 16mm Champion of the Cue on a reel of film in a recent estate deal. Unfortunately, he sold it privately on eBay and I was unable to watch it.]

In 1928, Columbia Pictures launched a sports-themed newsreel series, initially named “Great Moments in Football,” and while cycling through a flurry of name changes, temporarily used “Sports Reels,” before eventually landing on “The World of Sports.”

During the short-lived “Sports Reels” era, Columbia released in 1945 the eight-minute documentary, Champion of the Cue, in which popular sportscaster Bill Stern narrates in his engaging, theatrical style, while billiards champion (and future legend) Willie Mosconi demonstrates his cue stick prowess, with many of his shots shown in slow motion.

Mr. Mosconi starred in the documentary four years into his unmatched record of winning the World Straight Pool Championships 15 times (between 1941 and 1957). Nicknamed “Mr. Pocket Billiards,” Mr. Mosconi was another of the first inductees into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame. He set so many records and popularized such a variety of trick shots that his name became nearly synonymous with billiards for most of the latter 20th century.

Nineball

[Update: Since my original post, the film’s director, Ricky Aragon, helped me locate the movie. My review is here. A trailer for the film is below.]

Fast-forward 60 years, and the third and final elusive billiards short film is Nineball, a Filipino movie directed by Enrico Aragon. Released in 2007 and premiering at the prestigious Cinemalaya Film Festival held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the film won the Special Jury Prize in the Short Feature Category. Fortunately, a trailer for the film is still available here.

The film sounds absurdly enjoyable, if the following review is any indicator:

billiards short filmsIt is rude, crass, yet absolutely hilarious. It first pokes fun at the indefatigable relationship between Filipinos and the game of billiards…The center point is an obsessed billiards aficionado, his face covered by a horrid rag (it is the mystery that opens to the punchline) and is fed with raw potatoes (his obsession extends to his turning his eating utensils into cues and the potatoes into billiards balls); the punchline is that his misfortune is a freak accident in one of his usual games. The punchline of the punchline is the cameo of Efren ‘Bata’ Reyes, the aficionado’s savior. Aragon prolongs the comedy through the end credits: the suspect nineball passed from one cue to another in shocking yet deadpan fashion.[2]

Of course, part of the film’s brilliance in lampooning Fillipinos’ love affair with billiards is the casting of Efren “Bata” Reyes, one the most successful and most popular global figures in the sport. Mr. Reyes, aka “The Magician,” has won more than 70 international titles; made history by winning world championships in two different disciplines of billiards; taken home the single greatest purse in history by beating Earl Strickland in the “Color of Money” tournament; became the first Asian inducted (in 2003) into the Billiards Congress of America Hall of Fame; and, of course, starred on the silver screen in the billiards movie Pakners with fellow cultural icon Fernando Poe.

Three short films.

Three BCA Hall of Famers.

Three missing movies.

Please help me find them.

[1]       See my 200th blog post: https://www.billiardsmovies.com/top-10-pool-players-playing-pool-in-movies/

[2]       http://oggsmoggs.blogspot.com/2007/12/cigarettes-cues-and-cinema-filipino.html

 

Black Balled

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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/

Pool Shark Precepts

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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.

Extended Rest (screener)

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As millions of people get ready to start watching tomorrow the Betfred World Snooker Championship, many of the usual names will bandied about in acts of prognostication. Will Mark Selby successfully defend his title? Which Ronnie “The Rocket” O’Sullivan will emerge at the baize? Can “The Centurion” Neil Robertson reclaim the trophy? And on and on.

Extended RestYet, one name likely to get little mention amidst the cacophony is Terry “the Grenade” Kincaid. Never heard of him? Well, if Oliver Crocker has his way, that’s all about to change in the very near future.

Terry Kincaid is the fictional star of Mr. Crocker’s forthcoming snooker film Extended Rest, which I wrote about back in August. Played by the veteran actor Tony Osoba (from the BBC sitcom Porridge, as well as Give Us a Break), Kincaid is a snooker legend, who left the game after the death of his wife, and now lives in the shadow of his former reputation. Younger players no longer know his name. Other local curmudgeons deride him as a “has-been.”

Today, Mr. Crocker released a 20-minute screener of Extended Rest, available to watch here. The screener is intended to be a short film in its own right. While the feature film will include the same story, it will likely be reshot from scratch.

The majority of the short film takes place in the real-life Twickenham Club (in Twickenham, United Kingdom). As played by Mr. Osoba, Kincaid is soft-spoken and well-mannered, but clearly a shell of his former self. The Club has other patrons, who either contribute to Kincaid’s back-story or provide some comic relief.

At the center of the short film is a standoff between Kincaid and Alec Slater (Ian Cullen), a disagreeable, penny-pinching patron, who has not paid his annual dues to the Club and who seizes every opportunity to mock Kincaid as a washed-up snooker player. Ultimately, Kincaid wagers that debts and differences should be resolved in a single game of snooker. The outcome is decidedly resolved with Kincaid making a century break, thereby injecting a wee bit more liquidity to the struggling Club and, far more important, energizing Kincaid for the matches that presumably lie ahead.

Mr. Crocker shared with me that the feature screenplay is currently with a studio, and that he is meeting with them shortly to review the third draft. So, as you’re debating what the future looks like for recently recovered Ali Carter or 2005 champion Shaun “The Magician” Murphy, remember those names Crocker and Kincaid. Hopefully, we’ll be hearing a lot more about them in the near future.

The Chalk Up

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Though it’s hard to trump the rivalry that exists between the White and Black Swan ballerinas in the 2010 Oscar-nominated film Black Swan, the face-off between the two ballet dancers in the 2003 short-film The Chalk Up presents a pretty compelling runner-up.

The Chalk UpThe Chalk Up takes us behind-the-scenes (literally) of a local charity event where a pair of coryphées spar over a game of snooker as they await their turn onstage. Directed by Frank Conway and written by his wife Jo Conway, the film masterfully uses its three minutes to capture the disdain and disgust each woman harbors toward the other, starting with the first snarled utterance, “Shit.”

As one of the ballerinas (Marian Quinn) stretches her leg across the snooker table, the other (Aisling O’Sullivan) taunts her about “throwing [her] legs akimbo for all the world to see,” a thinly veiled allusion to the first dancer’s side job as a stripper. Not missing a beat, the first dancer saucily retorts that her “wax takes care of any glimpses of runaway shrubbery,” then pretends to lick the cue stick with her tongue in an obvious simulation of fellatio.

The Chalk UpThe ballerinas begin a snooker game, though the camera wisely does not focus on the potting of the balls, but rather keeps the viewer glued to the dancers, practicing their pliés and relevés, and otherwise trading venomous barbs about “breast implants,” “visible knickers” and the “amount of axle grease you smear over yourself.” The caustic tête-à-tête only comes to a halt when both are summoned for their parts, leaving their game – and their differences – most unfinished.

The Chalk Up, which premiered in October 2003 at the Cork (Ireland) Film Festival, is ingenious in its simple yet highly effective use of a snooker match as a backdrop to the larger tug-of-war between the two women. It gives their cattiness a channel, which is intermittently punctuated by the loud crack of the cue smashing into the balls and the hushed voice of the musical announcer directing people to listen for their cues. An incredible amount is conveyed in an incredibly short amount of time.

The full three minutes of The Chalk Up is available to watch here.

The Strickland Story

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Maybe it should come as no surprise that The Strickland Story documentary, produced and aired by Sky Sports Productions on November 27, 2013, provoked a lot of heated online debate, specifically around Earl Strickland’s claim, “I’m one of the greatest athletes America has ever produced.”

Strickland StoryIn the days after the documentary aired, billiards message boards and forums lit up with debates raging between ardent admirers and heated haters. Many professed their lifelong support for Strickland, calling him “amazing,” “a pool god,” and “brilliant.” On the other end of the spectrum, some of the borderline unprintable comments included, “Someone should just show him a picture of Efren Reyes and tell him to shut the f*** up!,” or “His arrogance and unsportsmanlike conduct make him an a**hole,” or “This guy is a nut sack! There is no talent here!! His ego is the only thing happening here!”

As a billiards movie blogger, and only an amateur pool player, I certainly do not feel qualified to deliver an opinion on whether Earl “The Pearl” Strickland is, in fact, the greatest. (Though given he won the US Open Nine-Ball Championship five times and the WPA World Nine-Ball Championship three times, I think anyone who tries to claim Strickland ‘doesn’t have talent’ should be forced to watch an endless loop of Strickland’s mind-blowing performance in the 1996 Million Dollar Challenge.) But, I do want to set the record straight on a few things:

  1. Strickland StoryThe documentary did not declare Strickland to be the “greatest player ever.” At some point in the lead-up to the film’s release or shortly thereafter, the title morphed into The Earl Strickland Story: The Greatest Ever, but this apposition never actually appears in the 46 minutes of film.
  2. Strickland is far from the first athlete to declare himself the “greatest athlete” in his/her sport. This superlative has been proclaimed, in one variant or another, by many, including Muhammad Ali (boxing), Ricky Henderson (baseball), Usain Bolt (track), Randy Moss (football), Federica Pellegrini (swimming), Maurice Greene (track), and Shaun Palmer (snowboarding). One or two of these athletes probably could make legitimate claims. Few, if any, probably set off such a backlash of anger.
  3. There have been many “Greatest Athletes of All Time” lists (e.g., Bleacher Report, ESPN). To my knowledge, not one of those lists has ever included a billiards player. Chew on that sad fact for a moment.
  4. Finally, Strickland’s complete quote was, “I’m one of the greatest athletes America has ever produced, whether the general public has acknowledged it or not. That’s how I feel.” Some may call this arrogance, others may call this confidence. In any event, it’s self-opinion from one of the most passionate, committed athletes alive.

Haters aside, there are probably two types of viewers for this documentary: (1) those who know very little about Strickland; and (2) those who know a lot about Strickland. Both viewers are in for a great documentary, which you can watch in its entirety here.

For those who know very little about Strickland, the documentary succinctly charts his biography, from learning to play billiards at the age of 8, when his father first snuck him into a pool hall in North Carolina to becoming “the best player in Houston by age 19” to entering tournament play and winning five US Open Nine-Ball Championships (more than any player in history) to participating in the Mosconi Cup. Some criticized the film for not including the Million Dollar Challenge or the Color of Money match against Efren Reyes, but with more than 50 titles and achievements to Strickland’s name, it would have been impossible to hit on all the highlights.

The film also effectively weaves in interviews with Strickland, sports event promoter Barry Hearn, and pool legends Johnny Archer and Rodney Morris, among others, to present the complexity of Strickland’s character. As Archer says, “He is not understood well. I think he is a genius on the pool table.”

Strickland StoryThose interviews reveal Strickland’s obsession with the sport (“Pool has taken over my mind, my soul, everything. I eat, sleep obviously, but other than that, I go to the pool table. It’s almost like a drug, I got to have it.”); his volatility (“he’s borderline mad”); his antics (i.e., jumping on the table after his win in Cardiff and declaring, “I’m king of the world.”); his occasional aggression to the fans (i.e., threatening them with a cue stick and later breaking it at the Mosconi Cup); and his intensity (“You think it’s some kind of game or something. It ain’t no game. I’m dead serious. I’ll shoot your liver out and hand it to you.”).

But, The Strickland Story is equally enlightening for those who sought more than the biopic headlines. For example, it delves into his bipolar personality, or what Barry Hearn calls his “Jekyll and Hyde character.” The film also reveals how the same fans he has been known to chastise are the ones who enabled him to pivot from a career as a gambler to a career as a professional player. (“People don’t clap for gamblers. I felt something inside of me when people clapped. Someone asked me for my autograph. I changed just like that…a better life where I was appreciated.”)

Strickland StoryRegardless of one’s familiarity with Strickland, it is impossible not to be moved by the documentary’s ending. Blaming both himself (“I made bad decisions. It’s not pool’s fault.”) and the general public (“Years ago, I would have been proud of who I am. That doesn’t exist anymore. You stripped me of that.”) for his pecuniary condition, he laments the state of pool today, including the lack of respect and financial options available for players:

“I have to live in a city of 30 million to make some money…exhibition are gone…I’m lucky I still have a name…every time we get some hope, it gets dashed…we have no hype, we’re all broke…I don’t understand how you could desert this game, how could my country desert this game…I am here to protect and preserve this game the way I found it…if pool deserves to die and not get us respected and make us millionaires, then all sports deserve to die.”

In all the many posted comments I read about The Strickland Story, the one that resonated most with me was from Aleo on the Two Plus Two forum. He writes, “The sad thing about this documentary is that you can see how heartbroken [Strickland] is about the state of the game. Everyone always talks so much about how talented or explosive Earl may be, but as good as he is, what’s always impressed me most about him is how much he genuinely LOVES pool. Honestly I’m not sure anyone loves pool as much as Strickland does.”

Wilson Jones

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In October 2013, snooker returned to its birth country when the Indian Open, a professional ranking snooker tournament, was held in New Delhi.   It was the first ever ranking snooker event played in India. Among the 64 participating players from around the world, two of the lower-ranked players, Pankaj Advani and Aditya Mehta, were both from India. Surprising many, both made it to the quarter-finals, where they played one another, and Mehta made it all the way to the finals, where he lost to China’s heavily-favored Ding Junhui.

Almost exactly one decade before that landmark historical event, the world lost one of the greatest Indian snooker (and billiards) legends, Wilson Jones, a man likely not well-known among many billiards fans, though surely revered by Advani and Mehta, who would have each been just 18 years old when Jones died.

Fortunately, the Films Division of India released from its vaults a 17-minute documentary film, Wilson Jones, about the snooker sensation.   Directed in 1971 by Vijay B. Chandra, the biopic reveals snippets of the life of this humble champion by interspersing billiards footage with family interviews and scenes of Wilson Jones presiding at his Bombay home and proudly displaying his stereo system. The film is available to watch here:

As is shared in the film, Wilson Jones not only won the amateur National Billiards Championship of India 12 times, and the World Amateur Billiards Championship (now known as the ISBF World Billiards Championship) twice, in 1958 and 1964, but also was India’s first world champion in any sport. He won numerous Indian awards, including the Arjuna Award (best sportsman), which is shown in the film (3:10), and the Dronacharya Award (best coach). At the time of documentary, Wilson Jones had already retired from billiards. He says the decision was driven to spend more time with his family, as well as a conviction that the best time to retire is when one is “at the top of [his] career.”

Wilson Jones 2The film’s narrative is not that revealing or insightful, though it’s interesting to hear one unnamed player describe him as an “extremely tough man to beat in competition because of his cool temperament and great determination,” and another describe him “as a person better than he is as a player because he is considerate, helpful, always willing to give a hand to any person who wants to learn.”

Perhaps, more disappointing is that the film itself is shot rather unimaginatively, given direction by Vijay B. Chandra and production by Pramod Pati, two leaders in Indian experimental film of that era. While there are a handful of unusual close-ups and camera angles sprinkled through the film, it’s still fairly vanilla, in comparison to Chandra’s surreal Child on a Chessboard or Pati’s psychedelic short film Abid.

Toward the end of the film, Wilson Jones says that, “in snooker [India is] a little way behind. The gap has been narrowed a bit [but] what we need is [for] these snooker boys to go out more often…and eventually, India should be very good.” It may have taken longer than he had hoped, but with players like Advani and Mehta now making global headlines, it seems Wilson Jones’ legacy has become complete.

One Too Many 8 Balls

I will concede that if I were writing or producing a billiards movie, I might consider throwing “8-Ball” or “eight ball” in the title, such as Up Against the 8-Ball or Behind the Eight Ball or even the whimsical 8 Ball Stud. After all, the eight-ball is laden with symbolism, given its inherent neutrality in the battle of solids and stripes, as well as its association with both good and bad, depending on whether it leads to someone’s victory or defeat on the billiards table.

But, to name the movie just 8-Ball? Where’s the originality in that? This is a crowded market folks, and as difficult to believe as it may be, I uncovered five billiards movies and short films called 8-Ball, as well as a couple of non-billiards movies of the same name. Welcome to a world of confusion.

8-Ball

8 Ball MovieAt the top of my watch list is the forthcoming billiards crime drama 8-Ball, starring and executive produced by David Barroso.   Mr. Barroso promises the movie will borrow elements, narration, and plot elements from Godfather Part II, GoodFellas, The Usual Suspects, and The Silence of the Lambs. According to the movie’s Twitter feed, it’s now expected to hit theaters this fall. Fortunately, this is the only full-length film with the title 8-Ball.

8 Ball

8 Ball MovieLess about billiards as sport, and more about billiards as an allegory for life, is the 2007 short film 8 Ball, directed by Inon Shampanier. As Shampanier shared with me, the larger allegory is that “like balls on a pool table, the lives of strangers collide and change course.  The film poses questions about the accidental nature of these collisions and the sense of ‘order in the chaos.’”

8 Ball

This seven-minute Australian film, shown as part of the 2012 Aurora Short Film Festival, anthropomorphizes the 8-Ball as an enlightened maverick, fleeing the confines of a pool table to explore the outside world. (“There was nothing these suckers could do to stop me.”) While the concept is interesting, the dialogue is terrible, including the encounter with a female tennis ball. A far better movie that brings pool balls to life is Pool Talk, a two-minute 2009 short film.

8 Ball

This four-minute American film, made some time in 2012 or 2013, has no dialogue, no plot, and sadly, no purpose. Directed by George Monard when he was probably 17 or 18, it features a “dangerous” pool player who is unsuccessful in his intimidation of the other players. A match ensues; he loses, so he shoots his opponent. I didn’t get it either.

8 Ball

8 Ball MovieUsing billiards as a backdrop, this four-minute American film, made a few years ago, was directed by Garrett Gutierrez, while a graduate student at the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University. It basically features two friends arguing about religion. The project was intentionally constrained to 3 pages, 2 characters, and 1 location.

OK, at this point, cinematic confusion should be setting in. But, now is when it gets really weird…

8-Ball

8 Ball MovieIn 2012, the short film 8-Ball was released in Argentina. Having nothing to do with billiards, the movie is about a man having a personal crisis who seeks solitude in a park, when a passing stranger named 8-Ball takes an unwelcome interest in him. The movie won a host of awards throughout the UK. Apparently, no one thought to question the inanity of the title.

8-Ball

8 Ball MovieFinally, there is the 2013 full-length Finnish crime film 8-Ball. It is about a single mother who, having just been released from prison, is trying to start her life anew. The return of her former boyfriend stirs up a past she preferred to leave behind. I don’t know why it’s called 8-Ball, but I’ll cut the director Aku Louhimies a little slack, since its original title is 8-Pallo.

 

So, the next time you’re thinking about making a film about billiards (or not about billiards for that matter), heed this advice:  There’s still an opportunity to cash in on the 5-Ball or 13-Ball. Just stay away from (un)lucky number 8.

Donald in Mathmagic Land

In October 1957, the Soviet Union kicked off the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik.  In the United States, instant humiliation was immediately followed by a wave of national panic, and then a wide range of federal initiatives, ranging from investments in defense to investments in science, technology, and mathematics education.

Donald in Mathmagic LandOne new piece of legislation, The National Defense Education Act, provided (among other things) a windfall for producers of educational films.  And according to historian Martin F. Norden, no company was better prepared to benefit from that windfall than Disney Studios, which had “already positioned itself as a significant educational force in the fields of education, science, nature and technology years before the Sputnik launch.”[1]  Less than two years later, Disney Studios, with support from the US government, released its 27-minute educational featurette Donald in Mathmagic Land.  This film, subsequently nominated for an Academy Award (Best Documentary – Short Subjects), was widely made available to schools and became one of the most popular educational films ever made.  It can be watched here.

As Walt Disney once explained, Donald in Mathmagic Land was created to “excite public interest in this very important subject [of mathematics].” The film features Donald Duck roaming a Wonderland-esque world of mathematics.  During his journey, in which he follows the voice of the faceless Spirit, he is told that he’ll find “mathematics in the darnedest places.”  This peregrination takes Donald from ancient Greece and a meeting with Pythagoras to the Notre Dame Cathedral, where he learns about the golden rectangle.

But, it is when the Spirit tells him that “practically all games are played on geometric areas,” that Donald sees the application of mathematics to baseball, basketball, hopscotch, and ultimately, to a game that involves “two perfect squares, three perfect spheres, and a lot of diamonds…in other words, billiards” — three-cushion billiards, to be precise. (The billiards sequence runs from 16:49 – 22:15 in the clip above.)

Though Donald initially believe billiards to be a game of luck, he learns quickly from the Spirit that it is a game of skill in which “you have to know all the angles…it’s a game that takes precise calculation.” As the Spirit talks, a real (as opposed to animated), unidentified billiards player makes one gorgeous three-cushion shot after another.  (The unidentified player, in fact, is Roman Yanez, the owner of a Los Angeles billiards hall in the 1950s and a periodic tournament player, who got 10th place in the 1964 U.S. National 3-Cushion Championship.)

The Spirit explains that the player is using “the diamond system as a mathematical guide.”  He then elaborates on the “simple” math used in which the player subtracts the “cue position” from the “natural angle for the hit” to determine the appropriate numbered diamond at which to aim.  It’s interesting to hear the Spirit attempt to simplify the diamond system, and wildly humorous to watch Donald Duck attempt to internalize it.

The particular version he is describing – the five-corner system – is far less common now, except perhaps in three-cushion billiards.  Ironically, the diamonds have become an ongoing source of debate.  Some world-class players don’t use the diamonds at all, some use them to check their instinct and some swear by the diamonds for special situations.  For example, WPBA professional (and star of the movie 9-Ball) Jennifer Baretta says, “For people who play three-cushion billiards these systems are absolutely essential, but they also apply on any table where the width (short rail) is half the length (long rail).”[2]

While Donald in Mathmagic Land may not have had a lasting impact on the adoption of the diamond system in billiards, it clearly has had a lasting impact on billiards players, many of whom remember it fondly from growing up.  There are an endless number of tender-hearted comments about the film online, but I particularly love the tribute below from John Sciatta’s blog:

The part that I loved, the part I looked forward to each year was when Donald would use math to explain three-cushion billiards. This part was brilliant. This part was fascinating. This part made total and absolute and perfect sense. I would watch this scene each year and be like, “Yes! You’re right, Donald! The diamond system…But then a strange phenomenon would happen; the movie would end, and with the diamond system dancing in your head, it would all start to get jumbled. And no matter HOW MANY times I watched it, I could never keep the diamond system straight. I felt like the guy from Memento… I rented it prior to going out and actually playing pool and it still didn’t stick. I swear, watching the DD in MM Land billiards scenes is like trying to solve one of the great mysteries of our day.

[1]       “A Journey Through the Wonderland of Mathematics: Donald in Mathmagic Land,” by Martin F. Norden.  Printed in Learning from Mickey, Donald, and Walt: Essays on Disneys’ Edutainment Films, ed. A. Bowdoin Van Riper.

[2]      http://www.pooldawg.com/article/pooldawg-library/diamonds-are-a-girl-s-best-friend

Pichitas (billiards documentary)

A beauty of billiards is that it has no singular, global definition.  Played around the world, the game has morphed and been shaped by local customs, cultures and personalities, assuming various rules and strategies and relying on different types of equipment, depending on where it’s played.  The sport encompasses everything from goriziana (Italy) to keglebillard (Denmark), from kaisa (Finland) to sinuca (Brazil), from yotsudama (Japan) to pyramid (Russia). The sport’s celebrities, too, span the globe, forming a transcontinental pantheon of billiards all-stars:  Efren Reyes (Philippines), Earl Strickland (US), Pankaj Advani (India), Thorsten Hohmann (Germany), Ronnie O’Sullivan (United Kingdom), Mika Immonen (Finland), and many more.

Pichitas - billiards documentary

R.A. “Jake” Dyer

One country, however, that receives little mention is Costa Rica. Perhaps, that is a grave oversight.  Certainly, that is the conclusion of R.A. “Jake” Dyer, the preeminent pool author (The Hustler & The Champ; Hustler Days), historian, blogger, and former documentary filmmaker.  Back in 1991 or 1992, Dyer returned to Costa Rica, where had lived for three years shooting pool among “some of the country’s greatest players” to make a movie about Luis “Pichitas” Calderon, the “best hustler, the best pool player in the world.”  Shot on Super-8 film in black-and-white and running about 23 minutes, Pichitas: A Costa Rican Pool Documentary is Dyer’s personal quest to find and film the legendary Pichitas, a billiards player of near mythic status.  The full film is available to watch on Vimeo here.

The documentary features Dyer as director, interviewer, and Spanish translator, intimately talking with the denizens of “Center Pool,” a (now-closed) pool hall in the market district of San Jose that had 50 billiards tables and was reputedly a frequent destination for Pichitas.

Pichitas - billiards documentaryInterspersed between the interviews is footage of this “wonderful cast of characters, some of whom were vaguely disreputable,” with the popular Cumbia tune “Juana La Cubana” by Fito Olivares playing in the background. Dyer also packs into this billiards documentary some sociological history, comparing the role pool halls played in the lives of turn-of-the-century heterosexual American bachelors to the role they play for men in Costa Rica today.  “Most the men are married, but you wouldn’t know it from their behavior.  They are here literally all day…they are not unlike the lifelong bachelors that one time thrived in the US.” [1]

Of course, the great irony of the documentary is that Dyer set out to “look for Pichitas and make a movie about him because he is legendary. That’s what this movie is about, that’s what we’re going to do.” But as the film progresses, Dyer is unable to locate Pichitas.   One starts to wonder if he is like the Yeti of Nepal, el fantasma de Costa Rica.  Even Dyer expresses doubts (or at least frustration), saying, “They’ve told me Pichitas is here, Pichitas is there…I have no idea, I can’t find him anywhere.”

For fans of documentaries like Searching for Sugar Man, there is an expectation that the denouement will result in the big reveal.  But, it never happens, at least not for the audience.  The movie technically ends with Dyer running off camera to pursue a possible sighting.  But, in the epilogue, Dyer returns, triumphantly announcing that he did finally meet Pichitas, though the moment is not captured on film.  As Dyer subsequently explains, “We saw Pichitas.  He was everything we promised.  He was the best hustler, the best pool player in the world. He was a great guy…but we ran out of film, sorry, that’s the breaks…maybe next time.”

“Sorry, that’s the breaks?!”  It is arguably the cruelest of endings, a final vanishing act, a punch line at the audience’s expense.  Or, maybe it’s the perfect capstone to this supernatural quest.  If one goes online today, the only mention of Luis “Calderon” Pichitas is by Dyer. There are no other stories, no images, no artifacts.

In a December 2009 blog post, Dyer wrote that Pichitas was like a “trickster figure,” a legend shared through oral tradition.  He added:

I also recognized in each case messages about the “culture” of the pool room, in that they would communicate lessons about such matters as gambling etiquette, attach value to certain sorts of figures and heap ridicule on others, and define the language common to members of the “tribe”.

So, who was Pichitas? Where is he now? Does he exist?  I don’t know the answers to any of these questions.  I only know my passion for pool just got a little stronger watching the wonderful documentary Pichitas.

 

[1]       Dyer draws on the work of Ned Polsky from his book Hustlers, Beats and Others.