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.

Chasing Wincardona

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Billy Incardona - Chasing Wincardona

William “9-Ball Billy” Incardona

In Moby Dick, Herman Melville tells the canonical story of Captain Ahab and his maniacal, obsessive pursuit of the great, white sperm whale.  Had Melville been writing today, rather than 150 years ago, he might have told a similar story about an emerging billiards talent Ronnie “Wiseguy” Wiseman and his 25-year pursuit of a re-match with William “9-Ball Billy” Incardona. [1]

The billiards community doesn’t have a Melville, but it does have documentary filmmaker Angel Levine, who interviewed Incardona and Wiseman the day after his quarter-century chase culminated with a game of one-pocket at the 1st (inaugural) Annual Southern Classic Tournament in Tunica, Mississippi.  The interview, along with a few snippets of the match, are presented in Levine’s nine-and-a-half minute 2013 film, Chasing Wincardona, available to watch below in its entirety.

http://youtu.be/eQwAB0kKrNs

Levine describes Incardona as a “former nine-ball champion and ex-hustler [who] through his expert negotiations and handicapping of the games he enters into, has played and beaten the world’s best, both in the tournament arena and in private one-on-one matches after hours since 1970.” Today, he’s also a member of the One-Pocket Hall of Fame, the “voice of Accu-Stats,” and a commentator for ESPN.

As the story goes, future Pro player Wiseman first met Incardona at Bogart’s Billiards on April Fool’s Day, 1987.  Incardona convinced Wiseman he didn’t know how to play nine-ball, and subsequently proceed to hustle him.  Says Wiseman: “I paid a couple thousand for my lessons [on that day].”

Wiseman spent the next 25 years following Incardona around the country, trying to win back his money and regain his honor.  As Incardona says, “Every time I see [Wiseman], he plays the same record…It’s in his craw.” The film doesn’t broach why Incardona didn’t give Wiseman a second chance all those years, or why this particular tournament broke the spell.  But, the two ultimately do play in a $2500 one-pocket game of two-against-one, with “Downtown” Eddie Brown as Wiseman’s partner against Incardona.

Given the 25-year desire to “revenge that loss,” it’s amazing to listen to the jocular spirit between these two.  Moby Dick fans will recall that when Ahab finally encountered his nemesis, he said, “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”  There’s no such enmity here.  The two laugh, joke, trade barbs, and remind us all that the competitive spirit that governs play on the pool table doesn’t have to remain off the table.

Raising the HustlerThe Chasing Wincardona footage is just a tiny sample of the 600 hours of film that Levine has collected over the past seven years as part of her forthcoming documentary Raising the Hustler.  To anyone who hopes to see that opus on the large screen, I encourage you to support Levine through her current fundraiser, in which she is selling t-shirts to fund the film’s final editing and post-production. You can show your support at the Booster-Raising the Hustler website.

Also, as a final postscript, Chasing Wincardona was co-written and co-narrated by George Fels, who passed away on New Year’s Eve.  Fels was one of the most acclaimed and prolific billiards writers, earning the nickname “Pool’s Poet Laureate.”  Thank you for everything you did for the sport, Mr. Fels.

[1]       Melville may never have formally written about billiards, but there are occasional references to billiards in his writing.  For example, in Moby Dick, he likens preparing porpoise meat to making the meat “into balls the size of billiards balls.” And, when Melville first arrived at Oxford, he described the grass as “smooth as the green baize of a billiards table.”

The Hustler of Money

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If you haven’t yet watched Ben Stiller’s 1987 trailer, The Hustler of Money, a parody of Martin Scorsese’s 1986 film The Color of Money, stop whatever you’re doing, watch the video below, and spend the next 5 minutes doubled-over in gut-busting laughter.  It’s that good.

Starring Ben Stiller (as Tom Cruise playing “Wince”) and Frasier’s John Mahoney (as Paul Newman playing “Fast” Eddie Felson), the trailer is for a film in which Tom Cruise plays a cocky but immensely talented bowler, who struts around the bowling lanes in a black “WINCE” t-shirt (itself, a mockery of the “VINCE” t-shirt Cruise wears in the film) with his slicked-black hair and perpetual ear-to-ear grimace, as he palms bowling balls and throws strikes with two balls simultaneously.  As Tom Cruise did in the original film, Wince challenges anyone to a game, including a group of octogenarians on walkers, when he is not otherwise slobbering all over his girlfriend.  Eric Clapton’s “It’s in the Way That You Use It,” a song written for and memorably used in the opening scene of the original The Color of Money, plays in the background.

Eddie, after failing to peddle Newman’s Own salad dressing to the bowling hall’s bartender (played by Ben Stiller’s real-life mother Anne Meara) takes an interest in Wince after seeing the “kid nail a 7-10 split.”  He agrees to teach Wince how to hustle in bowling, prompting a very funny spoof of the original dialogue about having the “flake down cold, but can he turn it on and off.”

With Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” playing in the background (the song famously used in The Color of Money’s “Doom” hustling scene), we watch Wince maneuver through a series of struts, dribbles, juggles, and throws, as he hustles local bowling patrons, including a young boy, mothered by Julie Hagerty (from Airplane).  Meanwhile, Eddie attempts to regain his bowling mojo, but breaks down after losing his bowling shoes, putting on an over-the-top display of sadness, blatantly designed to con the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences into giving Newman an award.  The trailer ends by lampooning the final scene of The Color of Money, but in this case, it’s with Eddie throwing a bowling ball and then screaming “My back!” (rather than “I’m back!”).

Ben Stiller made The Hustler of Money when he was just 22.  At the time, he was working on Broadway.  Having worked with John Mahoney on a satirical mockumentary, he followed it up with The Hustler of Money parody, which was picked up by Saturday Night Live and aired later that year.  Interestingly, SNL offered Stiller a job as a writer and actor two years later, but he quit after appearing on only four episodes.

While The Hustler of Money was the first time Stiller portrayed Cruise, it was not the last.  He portrayed Cruise on The Ben Stiller Show as part of a “Dress Casual” skit.  Then, for the 2000 MTV Video Awards, Stiller and Cruise joined forces in one of the best parodies of all time (shown below), with Stiller playing Tom Crooze, the stunt double for Tom Cruise, in Mission: Impossible.  In 2008, they teamed up in the Stiller-directed comedy Tropic Thunder.  And, they are allegedly working together on the development of The Hardy Men, an updated version of “The Hardy Boys,” suggesting more great laughs could be coming soon.

 

Nine-Ball (2008 billiards short film)

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Nine-ball - billiards short filmThere is a painfully uncomfortable moment in the Swedish billiards short film Nine-Ball in which the main character, David, attempts to show off to his 10-year-old son Markus his “friends” playing nine-ball on the adjacent billiards table.  Markus is clearly reluctant, not because he doesn’t want to play pool or doesn’t want to meet the friends, but because he intuitively knows there is something wrong with the situation.  His fears are verified when the friends dismiss David, saying they would prefer to play by themselves.  The awkwardness then explodes as David confronts them, saying (in Swedish), “ Why do you not want to play with me? I do not know what I am doing wrong.” The response he receives is neither anger nor apology, but a distant and condescending rejoinder that he “should take care of his son instead.”

As you might have guessed, Nine-Ball is not specifically about billiards, though about half the 12 minutes occur in a pool hall.  Rather and never explicitly said, the short film, directed and produced on commission by Nikolina Gillgren in 2008, is about neuropsychiatric disorders, such as ADHD, Asperger’s and Tourette’s Syndrome, and how people who have these disorders, like the lead character David, struggle with social dysfunctional behavior and social exclusion.

Over email, Gillgren told me that she wanted to make a short film about fear, loneliness, and the discomfort that comes from social exclusion.  She said, “Our society has difficulties accepting people with other views and behavior that what is considered as ‘normal,’ and that a lot of people who suffer from disorders endure discrimination and depression.”

The decision to set this story in a pool hall, and use billiards as the centerpiece of that social difficulty, was inspired by an individual Gillgren met at a summer camp as part of her research. “This guy really loved playing nine-ball.  He played more or less every day all by himself.  I thought it was such a good metaphor of the dilemma, since pool is [typically] such a social game.”  Of course, it didn’t hurt that Gillgren herself was once very much into billiards, as well.

In the tender ending of the film, David opens up to his son that he “does not know what to do for them to like [him].” And while Nine-Ball wisely avoids providing any pithy solutions or uplifting reconciliation, the son’s simple embrace of his father suggests that he will not give up on him.

The billiards short film Nine-Ball is not available for public viewing, so I am very grateful to Nikolina Gillgren for enabling me to have private access.  Since completing Nine-Ball, Gillgren has been working on a documentary about the Swedish Black Metal band, Watain, and their religious adherence to Satanism.  She also just released the documentary Six Days about three women who lives thousands of miles apart, but are united in their struggles within their war-torn countries and their quests for a better life.

“Cue Ball Cat” – Tom and Jerry

Today, October 28, is International Animation Day, an event observed in more than 50 countries across every continent to celebrate animation.  What better way to honor this special day than to blog about the Tom and Jerry billiards short film “Cue Ball Cat,” released in November 1950 by MGM Studios.

Tom & Jerry - Cue Ball CatIn this particular one-reel, seven-minute cartoon, shown in its entirety below, Tom is in an after-hours pool hall, practicing his bank shots, and taking some feline liberties to ensure the balls go in the pocket.   He soon discovers that Jerry is sleeping in one of the pockets.  Since a pool hall is no place for a mouse, Tom proceeds to torment Jerry with a variety of shots that leave him spinning, reeling, running, chalked, and even imprinted (temporarily, of course) with an 8-ball on the backside.  Jerry, never one to back down from the big kitty, fights back, batting billiards balls into Tom’s eyes, shooting the bridge like an arrow into Tom’s mouth, sending Tom crashing into a drink machine, fooling Tom into swallowing seven balls, and in general, adhering to the violent formula of sight gags and ensuing mayhem that made Tom and Jerry one of the most successful cartoons ever, including winning seven Academy Awards.

http://youtu.be/eEJycmLk80I

As one reviewer noted in the blog The Acme Factory, “The best Tom and Jerry cartoons are the ones that really stay away from any kind of story and just feature the cat and mouse beating the tar out of each other…Such is the case with “Cue Ball Cat”…Both Tom and Jerry take their knocks in this one, an equally painful competition which is always nice to see.”

“Cue Ball Cat” would not be the last time these two nemeses scuffled in a pool hall.  Fifteen years later, in the 1965 cartoon “Of Feline Bondage,” Tom and Jerry again briefly engaged in a billiards brawl, though that episode exits the pool hall once Jerry’s fairy godmother intervenes.

Interestingly, the pool table has been the setting for farcical violent animation through the history of billiards short animated films.  In the 1915 stop-animation short film Pool Sharks, W.C Fields and his billiards rival get into a fight over a woman that leads to balls flying and goldfish bowls breaking.   At the other end of the timeline, in 2004, Stan Prokopenko created A Game of Pool, a 3D-animated short film about a rack of billiard balls that split into two teams – solids and stripes – and proceed to “battle” by knocking one another into pockets, with the last ball standing facing off against the 8-ball.

Guess it proves that just because one’s not on the gridiron, on the racetrack, or in the ring, it doesn’t mean the sport can’t be bellicose.  Just look at billiards, after all.

The Billiard Room (billiards short film)

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Peter Weir - Billiards Short Film

Director Peter Weir

When I first learned that Peter Weir, the great Australian director behind such indelible movies as Witness (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989) and The Truman Show (1998), had directed a billiards short film early in his career, I was giddy.  After all, Weir was a six-time Oscar nominee.  Granted, I had never seen any of Weir’s films prior to Galipoli (1981), but we’re talking about a highly credible and accomplished director.

Oh, man, was I disappointed.

It turns out The Billiard Room was no ordinary short film.  The seven-minute billiards short film (shown below), commissioned by the Australian Commonwealth Unit in 1972, was part of a longer 47-minute “teaching aid” film created that year for the Commonwealth as it started to invest in “message films” to speak to an evolving and increasingly complex Australian society.  The Billiard Room was also part of a larger “adult learning” series Weir filmed, including Boat Building (a man pursues his dream of building a boat); The Computer Centre (An older staff member struggles with the introduction of new technology);  Field Day (an agricultural field day provides an opportunity to share ideas); and The Country Couldn’t Do Without You.

Perhaps to mitigate confusion or reduce liability, the movie begins with the following prologue: “This film should not be screened by itself as a documentary. It does not provide direct information on the process of adult learning. It is a teaching aid which provides a basis for discussion.”

The billiards short film then focuses on a student at a pool hall who is considering dropping out of the university.  Suddenly, he receives an impromptu lesson in the game of snooker from some scraggly fellow.  Apparently, this lesson was designed as a teaching aid to promote group discussion on the problems of the adult learning process in management – staff relations.

I have no idea how this film is a teaching aid on adult learning processes.  The only thing that is clear is it’s certainly not a teaching aid on snooker.  Not when the guy is doling out advice, such as “You need a good cue. Straight.” Or, “in this game, you don’t move the ball.”  And, “the further away, the harder the play.”  Finally, my favorite piece of lunacy: “The thing to remember is always hit the cue ball dead center. Every time.”

What?????

I assure you that I’m a raving fan of the land Down Under, but between The Billiard Room and Hard Kunckle, the subject of a future blog post, Australia has not been kind to the billiards movie genre.

For an in-depth review of Peter Weir’s filmography, check out Sense of Cinema – Peter Weir.

Fratelli Breaks (billiards short film)

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Uttering a sentiment that could melt the phenolic resin off a billiard ball, Alex Scigliano explained to me the impetus for his 2007 short film Fratelli Breaks. “We made this film because we want to make the greatest pool movie ever made some day.”

Fratelli BreaksScigliano, along with his older brother Marcus, co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in this 17-minute movie, while he was a student in Boston University’s College of Communication.  Shot over 18 days in Boston and parts of New Jersey, the superbly filmed movie ultimately won the Best Film Award at the Sumner Redstone Film Festival and the Best Cinematography Award at the Boston International Film Festival.

The gritty story, which has no dialogue for the first 3 minutes, focuses on Carmine and Guy Bianco, two brothers (played by the Sciglianos) who play each other for $10,000 in nine-ball billiards on the anniversary of their father’s murder.  Jumping in time between the brothers at their current age and the brothers at a much younger age learning the hustler’s trade from their father, it’s a story that feels a bit crammed in the space of 17 minutes, but could make for a fantastic full-length film.  More on that later.

Interestingly, the origin of the story is based on truth.  According to Scigliano, “When my mother went back to school to get her Master’s degree, she could no longer shepherd us to church and left the responsibilities to my father. Little did we know of his disdain for organized religion.  Instead of taking us to church for two years, my father took us to a pool hall and taught us how to dead stroke. The ‘Cue Balls for Christ Ministry’ he called it. He taught us how to hustle. He taught us about life.”

That background is relevant for two reasons.  The first is for the film’s authenticity.  Half the film is shot in the Bunker, a Boston bar with a single pool table.  The place is populated by guys with names like Jimmy Feathers, Mike the Arm, Nicky Sausage and Joey Bananas.  And while those monikers aren’t real, “the Paisanos in the Bunker…they’re not actors,” Scigliano shared. “They’re real people and they really don’t fuck around.” The decision to shoot in black-and-white (a technique that equally benefited the billiards movie Chalk) also adds to the close-quartered realism.

The second reason is for the billiards cinematography (starting around 09:35). Scigliano told me that when he and his brother saw The Color of Money, “it changed our lives.”  That’s no surprise when you watch the pool-playing.  Similar to Martin Scorsese, Scigliano uses a lot of different filming techniques to capture the energy and beauty of billiards.  The brothers are also damn fine players, so it doesn’t hurt to watch Alex make a five ball run in one continuous camera shot.  And, again emulating their muse Scorsese, the pool-playing is anchored by some hard-rock, blues-pounding music from local Boston musicians Ernie and the Automatics, and James Montgomery and Johnny A.

In addition to winning some awards and being “the most fun he’s ever had,” Fratelli Breaks also caused Scigliano to “lose 20 pounds, almost fail out of school, and lose [his] job as a bartender,” according to a 2008 interview in The Phoenix .  On the brighter side, it introduced the brothers to a commercial producer in New York City that landed them some gigs a few years later.  And finally, it remains “the template of for the feature film we want to make.”  More on that now.

Scigliano tells me that he is currently re-writing a feature-length adaptation of Fratelli Breaks.  What will make the movie different than other billiards movies (and, more broadly, other sports movies) is the goal. “Sports movies usually focus on an outward goal of winning that is tied to an internal conflict – redemption.  Ours is different.  Winning is killing.  It’s not simply a sports movie.  It’s a true revenge film, where the goal is murder.”

In the full-length, the brothers will aim to avenge their father’s murder by finding his killer, O’Boy, and hustling him out of everything he has.  Scigliano adds, “It will be set in the ‘60s, during the zeitgeist of the pool renaissance that followed the release of The Hustler. The tournament the boys must find and beat O’Boy at is based off the legendary Johnson City Hustler’s Jamboree in Little Egypt, Illinois.  R.A. Dyer’s literature is a major influence…All the classic hustlers – Wimpy Lasseter, Jersey Red, Knoxville Bear, Cowboy Jimmy Moore, Boston Shorty, Tuscaloosa Squirrel, even the real life Minnesota Fats Rudolf Wanderone – will be present.”

So, watch Fratelli Breaks, and get a taste of what is hopefully to come in the future. In the interim, keep up with the Scigliano Brothers by checking out their YouTube page.

5 Billiards Short Films in 16 Minutes

My “billiard movie” definition is rather simple:  billiards, whether literally or metaphorically, must be the focus of the film, and the film must be for the purpose of entertainment (and possibly education), but not instruction.  There are no requirements around quality, length, distribution, or commercial success.  As such, I share with you 5 Billiards Short Films in 16 Minutes.  Special thanks to Pool & Billiards Online for introducing me to each of these.

A Game of Pool

Created by Stan Prokopenko in 2004 when he was just a junior in high school, A Game of Pool is a 6-minute 3D animated short film about a rack of billiard balls that split into two teams – solids and stripes – and proceed to “battle” by knocking one another into pockets, with the last ball standing facing off against the 8-ball.  It took 4 months for Prokopenko to complete the film, doing everything from teaching himself the Maya animation program to using editing software like Sound Forge and Adobe Premiere. The film is both tongue-and-cheek, yet also clever in its battle scenes, including the 6-ball committing suicide for illegal biting; the 3-ball and the 13-ball squaring off to Ennio Morricone’s instantly recognizable tune “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”; and the 13-ball fighting the 8-ball in a bullet-time effect action sequence to The Propellerheads “Spybreak!” from The Matrix. The film subsequently won some awards at the International Student Media Festival, and was later featured on all American Airlines flights in September through December of 2004.

Boogie Billiards

Another animated billiards short film is Dayle Lange’s 2005 Boogie Billiards, which she submitted for the 2005 Governors School of the Arts scholarship program, and which won best overall film in the 2005 Ocean County Film Festival.  This 2-minute stop-motion animation film features a rack of billiards ball dancing, swinging, and spinning to Duke Ellington’s “Cottontail.” It’s mildly humorous how the balls all freeze when the boxer comes down the stairs to check out the sound (similar to the toys freezing in Toy Story when a human enters the room), but otherwise not that interesting.

Pool Talk

Far more humorous is Max Nicholson’s 2-minute billiard short film Pool Talk from 2009.  This short film centers on a debate between the 9-ball and the 3-ball about whether it’s better to “end all hunger and disease or bring about lasting world peace.”   Using a mix of close-up and long-shots with alternating camera angles, the two balls engage in a discussion that harkens to the movie Clerks, with witty banter, such as “I’m just saying people got to eat.  I’d rather end starvation than war.  You ever skip lunch? It’s horrendous.  I did that once.  Plus, if everyone is stuffing their faces, it’s kind of balances out the whole overpopulation thing.”  Pointedly absurd, the best line is at the end when an observing ball remarks, “It’s round-the-clock with those fuckin’ guys.”   Max Nicholson is currently a writer/reviewer for the entertainment website IGN, and he is also a freelance videographer and video editor.

http://youtu.be/2udVIsk3mZc

Pool and Life

On the serious side is Toby Younis’ Pool and Life from 2011.  This 3-minute short film uses the game of pool as a metaphor for overcoming the obstacles that life places in front of you.  With the cue ball breaking the rack, it starts, “Without warning, something came along and changed my life, transforming it from a neat package into chaos and shambles.”  It then proceeds to show some easy shots (“I took on little things”), harder shots (“Slowly but surely, my confidence returned”), and even carom shots (“Others were willing to help if you let them”).  Younis is the owner of Videotero and an independent producer, director and editor. (For a very different use of pool as a metaphor, check out the short film 8-Ball.)

http://youtu.be/wLb98fG4814

Rack ‘Em Up

Finally, there is the disappointing Rack ‘Em Up, filmed some time in 2008 by Jared Kowalcyzk as his final “Introduction to Film” project at Emerson College.  Shot in B&W on 16mm film on a Bolex and cut and spliced using a Steenbeck and guillotine splicer, this 3-minute short largely consists of a person making basic pool shots while a narrator provides trite voice-overs such as, “Pool is about luck.  The more you play, the luckier you get.”

 

8 Ball (billiards short film)

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In 2007, having graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Inon Shampanier decided to make a short film that could showcase his writing and directing talent, and ultimately, help him get his first feature made.  That billiards short film was called 8 Ball.  Released in 2008 at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, 8 Ball was well-received, and it subsequently played at several other film festivals.  It also helped Shampanier achieve his larger goal:  in 2012, he directed The Millionaire Tour, his first feature film.

8 Ball - billiards short film8 Ball occupies an interesting niche in the “billiards movies” genre in that it uses pool as an “allegory for life,” while the actual game of pool is only featured in the opening credits and first scene.  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.’”  Said differently, a billiards game may make all the sense in the world until one unintended shot completely disrupts everything, creating a new game to play.

In more practical terms, the movie mingles the separate lives of three characters: an ex-con terrified to reunite with his daughter, a hustler who is terrified to breach his moral limits, and a tough orphaned child who is terrified about his exterior cracking and revealing a longing for family.  And, of course, these lives not only eventually intersect, but also have an unexpectedly optimistic conclusion.

Though the film’s pacing is a little erratic, it’s quite impressive the amount of interesting story-telling that Shampanier packs into 24 minutes.  And any billiards short film that gets one thinking about the cerebral nature of pool is a winner by me.

Special thank you to Inon Shampanier for sending me a private copy of his movie and responding to my questions.  8 Ball is not currently available for sale or public viewing.

The Cuemaker (billiards documentary)

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In 2012, Gary Chin, a 20-year-old film student at Ithaca College in upstate New York, directed and produced a 19-minute billiards documentary about Dana Paul, an impressive 64-year-old local artisan, who makes custom pool cues and espresso tampers.   Entitled The Cuemaker, the short film, which won Chin a Best Director award at the 2012 Honey and Buddy Documentary Film Festival, is largely not about the technical aspects of making cue sticks, but more about the passion and commitment Paul brings to his craft.

The Cuemaker - billiards documentaryChin, a rising pool player and the president of Ithaca College’s Billiards Club, starts his documentary with his personal quest to “take [his]game to the next level by building a custom cue,” specifically a 19.5-oz jump break cue.  That quest leads him to Paul, the resident cue repair and cue-building expert.  Along his quest, he also attends the 2012 Super Billiards Expo in Philadelphia, where he observes Shane Van Boening, currently ranked #1 in the US, win the Ten-Ball Players Championship.

But, Chin’s quest is intentionally subsumed under Paul’s larger “quest for [cue-making] perfection.”  It is powerful to hear a craftsman talk with such pride about his trade. Speaking to Chin, Paul says, “I am not attached to [a] particular piece of wood…I’m attached to the idea that it will become, it not treasured, at least respected by you or maybe even your children.  He then later adds, “I am not obsessed but I am determined….I want to love the cue because I want it to be an example of my most prodigious effort to do the best I can do with a cue.”

In the end, Chin, with Paul’s obvious assistance, does make himself the perfect jump break cue.  But, it’s also clear that Paul will forever chase that state of perfection.   If I were currently investing in a cue stick, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The Cuemaker billiards documentary is available to order on DVD only through Gary Chin’s website.  A preview trailer for the documentary is below. You can also show your support for Chin by liking his Facebook page for The Cuemaker.  To see more of Dana Paul’s woodwork, visit his Tamperista website.

[Wanted!] Lemon Tree Billiards House

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[Periodically, I will publish posts on movies that I have been unable to find and watch.  These are part of my “Wanted!” series, and this is my first post in that series. If you know how to find a “Wanted!” movie, please let me know.  I will be most grateful.]

In 1996, director Tim Savage premiered his billiards short film The Lemon Tree Billiards House at the Hawaii International Film Festival.  The film took first place in the short film category. It then aired on local Hawaii TV about 15 years ago in a time slot following the Super Bowl.  But, unfortunately, if, like me, you missed either of those showings, then you missed what was presumably a very entertaining tale that merged billiards with gangsters, and magical realism with local Hawaiian culture.

Lemon Tree Billiards House - Billiards Short FilmsTo learn more about the movie and potentially find a copy, I successfully tracked down Dana Hankins, the President of RedHead Productions and the producer of The Lemon Tree Billiards House. She’s been immensely helpful and our exchanges have only furthered my wish to see this film.

The film is based on a short story of the same name written by Cedric Yamanaka.  It was originally published in Honolulu Magazine 15 years ago for a fiction-writing contest. Now, the story is available in his eight-story collection In Good Company.

The story is about a college freshman, Mitch, who fancies himself somewhat of a pool hustler. After accepting an invitation to play 8-ball against an unknown opponent, he quickly learns that he will play the infamous, 265-pound Locust Cordero, widely believed to be a menacing, local hitman.  The wager: first person to win 6 games wins $500.  And while the pool game forms the “action” of the story, the real story ends up being about the similarities Locust and Mitch discover in one another.

Hankins shared with me that when she first read the story, she “loved the characters, the inclusion of pidgin (dialect), the quirkiness of the cultural beliefs and the element of magical realism.”  Local actors were cast, including a number of well-known Hawaiian comedians. That’s an interesting mix…probably the same way I might describe one of my favorite (non-billiards) movies of all time – Beasts of the Southern Wild — which amazingly and effectively used local actors, language, and cultural beliefs and interwove it with magical realism (particularly through the mind of Hushpuppy).

Hankins couldn’t promise me a date when the movie would become available once more, but she did say that she “intends to get the film cleared for internet streaming in order to share with long-time fans” and that it will likely be “combined with two other short festival films…all made in Hawaii…and all having moments of magical realism.”

If you’re as eager to see the film as I am, let me know or leave a comment.  I promise to share with her the feedback.