Tag Archives: billiards movies

Top 10 Billiards Brawls

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What is it about a pool hall that seems to instigate unbridled paroxysms of rage, extended periods of bedlam, and brutal bouts of barbarity, at least in the imaginations of filmmakers, screenwriters and producers?

Billiards Brawls

Scene from Gangster High (2006)

In their defense, the linkage is not totally unfounded. In a five-year study done by the Research Institute on Addictions at the State University of New York at Buffalo, the researchers found that “bar characteristics that are related to the occurrence of violence included: smokiness, noise, temperature, dirt, darkness, crowding, poor ventilation, the presence of competitive games (e.g., darts, pool), bouncers, and more male than female employees.”[1] On the other hand, a more recent study from 2012 revealed that among the “hot spots” for barroom aggression, the pool-playing area accounted for just 4% of the incidents of violence, as opposed to on or near the dance floor (31%), at the bar (16%), or at tables (13%).[2]

Yes, there’s a scintilla of veracity underlying the pool hall free-for-all, but it’s hardly significant enough to warrant all the attention it generates on the silver screen. Nonetheless, movies abound with pool hall pandemonium. Perhaps, it’s the butcherly utility embodied in a cue stick, 59 inches of tapered wood, that can be used to whack, jab, puncture, impale, skewer, bonk or bludgeon. Or, maybe it’s the spherical perfection of a billiards ball, hardened with a phenolic resin, that invite the amateur pugilist to wield it for all sorts of sanguinary purposes.

In any event, if there’s a pool table in a movie (especially one that is otherwise not about billiards), it’s likely going to be ground zero for some kind of mayhem and melee. Thus, I present the TOP 10 BILLIARDS BRAWLS of all time. Let the countdown begin:

10. Out for Justice.   In this 1991 thriller, Steven Seagal plays a Brooklyn cop hell-bent on revenge after his best friend is murdered. Part of tracking down the killer involves frequenting a pool hall where the local patrons are not forthcoming with essential information.   This prompts Seagal to unleash the whup-ass, starting with a towel-wrapped cue ball, followed by some (cue) stick fighting and a pool table judo takedown.

9. Velvet Smooth. The blaxploitation era of the 1970s produced many landmark films and iconic characters, including Superfly, Coffy, and Shaft. But, Velvet Smooth (played by Johnnie Hill) would not even crack the top 100. This 1976 low-budget dud has some of the worst choreographed fighting to appear in Technicolor. And while the billiards scene is so (unintentionally) bad, it earns a place on my list as one of the few movies to feature a woman meting out a cue stick drubbing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiADJJKG3zY

8. Ninja Holocaust. This little-known, questionably-named, 1985 Hong Kong martial arts spectacle is likely light on plot, dialogue and other film-making indispensables. Still, the brawl that occurs around a snooker table is notable not only for the rapid-fire dispensing of the combatants, but also for the innovative use of a snooker ball as a temporary gag that is ultimately swallowed (?!) right before the ingestor is impaled on the taxidermied horns of some unfortunate ungulate.

7. Dead Presidents. The Hughes Brothers’ 1995 follow-up to their inaugural landmark film Menace II Society didn’t win favor with critics, but the pool hall scene, backed by James Brown’s “The Payback,” has all the visceral wallop of its predecessor. Anthony (Larenz Tate) and Cowboy (Terrence Howard) play a disquieting game of 8-ball that ends with Anthony becomes uncorked and beats Cowboy bloody with a cue stick all over the floor.

6. Force: Five. This 1981 action flick stars Chuck Norris BFF Richard Norton as a martial artist leading a team of martial artists on a rescue mission to save a senator’s daughter. After defeating an opponent in 8-ball, Norton quickly goes Australian-nutso when it appears his opponent will welch on a bet. Like Johnny Boy in Mean Streets, Norton uses the pool table as his playground for round kicking opponents and even makes smart use of a billiards rack to disarm an attacking cue-sticker. How Norton could shoot stick with that throwing star dangling from his neck I’ll never know.

5. The Krays. In the 1960s, Ronald and Reggie Kray were twin crime lords of London. The story of these underworld kingpins was brought to life in this 1990 biopic, starring real-life twins Gary and Martin Kemp. Known for ruthless acts of violence and intimidation, the Krays turned a snooker hall blood-red with their cutlasses in the graphically memorable “Say Thank You” scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhHWIiSOds

4. Mean Streets.   Martin Scorsese’s iconic 1973 masterpiece about the daily violence of living on the streets of Little Italy should be mandatory viewing, ‘nuff said. That said, the ruckus that ensues when Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro) insults the pool hall proprietor is cinematic, hand-held, perfection, with a single camera darting among the pool tables as they become props in a feral, claustrophobic fight sequence that includes Johnny Boy hopping mad onto a table, waving off his attackers with kicks and cue stick. The full scene, choreographed over the Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman,” is available to watch below.

3. Rush Hour. In 1998, Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan starred as a pair of ill-matched cops, and in the process, launched a film series that collectively grossed about $850 million. In the original installment, Jackie Chan, a stranger to American culture and argot, begins a pool hall conversation with four poorly-chosen words, “What’s up, my nigga?,” thereby igniting a billiards ruction, complete with all the signature Jackie Chan acrobatics audiences love. Hopping over and under tables, parrying with cue sticks, clubbing with cue balls, this scene has it all.

2. Gangster High (original title: Pongryeok-sseokeul). Clocking in at more than seven minutes, the pool hall massacre in this 2006 South Korean film pivots from the hyperkinetic, with cue sticks clashing and feet flying, to the near balletic, with one man avenging his fallen comrade through a gruesome series of pool stick maneuvers. Heightening both the beauty and the tension is the switch to black-and-white, while Mahalia Jackson’s gospel spiritual, “Trouble of the World,” plays over the scene.

1. Carlito’s Way. “It’s magic time. After you see this shot, you’re going to give up your religious beliefs,” says Carlito (Al Pacino) in Brian De Palma’s award-winning 1993 crime drama. Pretending to set up one of his “famous trick shots,” Carlito uses the mirrored sunglasses of his opponent to see the gunman behind him, while he rockets a billiard ball, perched atop a cue chalk, into his opponent’s face. Now that’s a pool hall fight scene and getaway to remember!

So, there’s my Top 10 list of Billiards Brawls. Of course, there are a number of great pool halls skirmishes that didn’t make the list, but are nonetheless worthy of honorable mention, including Hard to Kill (1990), Boondock Saints (1999), Black Dynamite (2009), Trainspotting (1996), Code of Silence (1985), Die Bad (2000, South Korea), and Road House (1989). See a scene that should have made the cut? Let me know what movie would be on your Top 10. Otherwise, stay safe. You never know what might happen to you in a pool hall.

 

[1]       http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/918856-federal-study-bar-fights-tend-happen-darker-dirtier-bars-frequented-heavy

[2]       Graham K, Bernards S, Osgood DW, Wells S. ‘Hotspots’ for aggression in licensed drinking venues. Drug Alcohol Rev 2012;31:377–384

My Living Doll – “Pool Shark”

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When asked how she ever learned to shoot pool so well, Rhoda Miller, the lifelike android played by the ever-sexy Julie Newmar, responds, “By computing the circumference of the spheres and the angles of trajectory plus the coordinates of the points of impact.” It’s a reasonable answer from a prototype robot built by the U.S. Air Force. It also establishes that Rhoda (aka AF 709) not only has the ability to learn new skills, but also that she will be able to play billiards nearly flawlessly (or, at least, until commanded to do otherwise by her caretaker, Dr. Bob McDonald, played by Bob Cummings).

My Living DollThe exchange described above is from the January, 1965, “Pool Shark” episode of the American science fiction sitcom My Living Doll, which aired for only 26 episodes on CBS. In the episode, Rhoda is recruited to hustle a wealthy pool shark in order to erase a debt indirectly owed by Dr. McDonald. Though Rhoda has never played pool, her ability to perfectly apply geometry and physics to the game enables her to shoot without error.

My Living DollThis is established by making a series of obligatory, but nonetheless eye-popping, trick shots, including the classic six ball “butterfly pool shot;” the famous two balls in the same pocket masse shot from The Hustler; a “railroad shot” (using the cue sticks as a railroad track); and a “paper bag shot,” in which the ball is hit with just enough momentum to enter a paper bag, flip it over, and exit the other side into the pocket. The full episode is available to watch on YouTube.

My Living DollMy Living Doll is hardly the only show to reduce billiards supremacy to physics and geometry, though it may have been the first. A quarter century later, the 1990 “Pool Hall Blues” episode of Quantum Leap enabled Dr. Sam Beckett to play masterful pool by relying on Al’s super-computer, which revealed the necessary angle for hitting every shot. Similarly, in the 1999 “Pool” episode of The Pretender, the prodigy Jarod becomes an ace billiards player through his “familiarity [with] the architectural theory of dynamic symmetry, as well as Descartes’ theory of coordinate geometry.”

What was, and remains, truly original about the “Pool Shark” episode of My Living Doll is embodying the geometry and physics aptitude inside a robot. Though it was pure science fiction in 1965, today, the notion of creating a robot that excels at pool, much the same way that IBM’s Deep Blue has become the definitive grandmaster of chess, has captured the imagination of scientists and inventors around the globe.

For starters, there is Deep Green, an industrial robot created by engineers at Queens University. The robot is “equipped with a cue and hung over a standard coin-op table. A digital camera reads the scene below and the robot’s computer brain compares it to 30 pre-stored images of an empty table, using the differences to decide where, and what color, the balls are. From there, the robot can nominate a ball and pocket and slide into action.”[1]

Then the robotic wizards of Willow Garage taught a Personal Robot 2 (PR2) to shoot pool. Created in response to a hackathon, the engineers spent one week teaching their robot hot to identify the pool table, locate a shot, and make it. They built it using their open source hardware platform and the ROS open source software library, which allowed them to adapt the existing FastFiz billiards software.[2]

My Living DollFinally, there is the Munchen Robot, created by scientists from the Technische Universität München in Germany. This dual-armed robot relies on a “camera mounted above the table and advanced physics engines to assess and detect the best way to approach a game of pool and execute the perfect [shot].”[3]

Though these robots all shoot an impressive game, none are indefectible, making them a futuristic far cry from the can’t-miss android Rhoda Miller. In fact, it is only when Dr. McDonald “forces” Rhoda to adjust her shot by two degrees, does she inevitably miss. Julie Newmar clearly appears to have had fun making some of the trick shots, but her slapstick sense of humor really shines when she misses and must “act angry,” resulting in myriad forms of cue stick destruction.

My Living DollThough the short-lived series was cancelled when it didn’t deliver the desired ratings, the show did yield Newmar her second Golden Globe nomination. Moreover and more important, with the abandonment of My Living Doll, Newmar was freed to assume the iconic role of Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, in the 1966 Batman TV series, forever imprinting and arousing the minds of adolescents everywhere.

[1]       “Video: Pool-Playing Robot is Unbeatable,” Wired, 9/21/09

[2]       “Willow Garage teaches robot to play pool in one week,” SingularityHub, 6/16/10

[3]       “Billiard playing robot able to rack up eight balls with precision hustle,” Metro UK, 6/6/11

There Are No Thieves in This Village

When Poolhall Junkies premiered in 2002, I remember thinking, “Damn! That’s an incredible roster of talent for a billiards movie.” The film starred two former Oscar winners – Rod Steiger (In the Heat of the Night) and Christopher Walken (The Deeer Hunter), as well the incredible Oscar-nominated Chazz Palminteri (Bullets Over Broadway). My excitement was understandably a wee more muted about the casting of Ricky Schroder.

There Are No Thieves in This VillageBut, if one really wants to experience the who’s-who, one-two wallop of billiards movie casting, then the film to start with is There Are No Thieves in this Village (original title: En este pueblo no hay ladrones), a 1965 Mexican movie about how an impoverished community responds when three billiards balls are stolen from a local saloon.

Created in response to the Mexican STPC film union’s “First Experimental Film Contest,” a competition designed to rejuvenate the struggling Mexican film industry, There Are No Thieves in this Village was the directorial debut (and second prize winner) of Alberto Isaac. The movie is available to watch in its entirety here, but note it is in Spanish and without subtitles.

Shot in black-and-white with minimal budget in only three weeks in Mexico City and Cuautla, the film features a pantheon of modern-day Mexican art and culture intelligentsia. For starters, the movie is based on the identically-named short story written by the hitherto unknown, future Nobel Prize in Literature winning author Gabriel García Márquez, who subsequently had 30 movies made from his stories and novels, including Love in the Time of Cholera.   Marquez also appears in There Are No Thieves in this Village, making it the first of only two cinematic appearances in his career.

Also appearing in the film as a local priest is the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who the New York Times referred to in his obituary as “a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later.” Six of his films are listed in Sight & Sound’s 2012 critic’s poll of the 250 films of all time, and three of his films (Tristana; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; and That Obscure Object of Desire) have been nominated for Oscars.

Others in the movie include: film director Arturo Ripstein, who won the prestigious National Prize for Arts and Sciences; artist and iconoclast José Luis Cuevas; esteemed author Juan Rulfo; Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington; cartoonists Ernesto García Cabral and Abel Quezada; and critic and journalist Carlos Monsivaís. All of these future cultural leaders were part of a tight circle of friends kept by director Issac and writer (and future film critic) García Riera.

There Are No Thieves in This VillageIt is debatable whether There Are No Thieves in this Village is truly a “billiards movie,” as the only billiards in the film occurs in the opening sequence of three-cushion billiards. (For more on this billiards variant, check out the 2005 film Carambola.) In this sense, it is more akin to the 1991 Swedish film A Paradise Without Billiards, which depicts an immigrant’s life in a community that does not play billiards.

There Are No Thieves in This VillageIn There Are No Thieves in this Village, it is the absence of the balls, resulting from an act of larceny committed by the dim-witted troublemaker Damaso, that causes a community to unravel. Initially, the local denizens find themselves rudderless and without activity. That idleness turns to racist aggression when the community identifies a black man as the culprit of the crime. Damaso, showing no regret or concern for his actions, sits back like a passive spectator, as the black man is first beaten and later sent to sea for his crimes. In fact Damaso, who only took the billiards balls when his felonious efforts turned up no other booty, subsequently even toys with the idea of forming a gang and stealing additional balls as a money-making scheme. It is only when his pregnant wife can no longer contain her guilt by affiliation that Damaso reluctantly attempts to return the billiards balls.1

Watching the movie today, I’d say There Are No Thieves in this Village represents a watershed moment in Mexican film casting (and certainly in billiards movie casting), though the actual film is just of passing interest. I think this one reviewer said it best:

“Every time that I see this movie the result is the same, what were the conditions of the epoch to see such an incredible cast of characters. I haven’t seen another movie with so many artists, at least as important as the artists that appear in this movie… If someone is interested in Mexican culture at that time this film is absolutely a must.”

Thus, as an end to this post, and as a final postscript, let us say R.I.P. to Gabriel García Márquez, who passed away earlier this year in April.

1       My summary may be slightly inaccurate given both the movie and the short story were in Spanish.

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.”

Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – “Banks Shot”

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Banks ShotThe late 1980s and early 1990s experienced a surge of black sitcoms. Two of the leaders in that category were Family Matters, which first aired in September 1989 and had 215 episodes over 11 seasons, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which first aired in September 1990 and had 148 episodes over six seasons. Family Matters, the more successful of the two, was the second-longest running black sitcom (behind The Jeffersons), though Fresh Prince arguably had a bigger impact on popular culture, as the vehicle behind the meteoric rise of its star, Will Smith.

A more practical exercise around comparing the two shows is in the genre of billiards TV, where each series made a contribution: the “Fast Eddie Winslow” episode of Family Matters (November, 1990) and the “Banks Shot” episode of Fresh Prince (February, 1991).

In “Fast Eddie Winslow,” the high-schooler Eddie fancies himself a pool shark after winning a series of games. But, when he agrees to raise the stakes to $25/game, he is quickly hustled, owing his opponent now $250. With violence imminent, Eddie’s father and grandmother show up in the nick of time, and erase the debt with a series of trick shots.

Banks Shot“Banks Shot” aired just four months later, and essentially recycled the storyline, albeit with a few positive twists. (It would not be the last reenactment of this billiards trope. The Steve Harvey Show episode “Pool Sharks Git Bit” copied it six years later.) In “Banks Shot,” high-schooler Will (Will Smith) ignores the admonitions of his Uncle Phil (James Avery) by taking the Mercedes Benz to a seedy pool hall. There, he makes some fast money by besting a few of the locals in eight-ball. (This includes making a shot through the legs, doing a no-look combination, as well as hitting a handful of can’t miss multi-ball shots, all while strutting to Snap!’s 1990 anthem, “The Power.”) But, like the impudent Eddie, Will’s cocksureness blinds himself to the true ability of his forthcoming opponent, Charlie Mack. Boasting “ain’t no thing like a chicken wing, my game is all that,” Will rapidly goes down $300. Suddenly realizing he’s been hustled (or a victim of “creative money management,” as his opponent says), Will must put up his uncle’s car as collateral until he can pay the debt.

In “Banks Shot,” it’s not the father-grandmother coming to the rescue, but rather Uncle Phil. This is an improvement over the “Fast Eddie Winslow” progenitor, since Uncle Phil does not disclose to Will his plan for getting back the money. In fact, he intentionally misleads Will, first by attempting to make a legal argument for restitution with the pool hall proprietor, and then by insisting that billiards “can’t be that difficult – I’ve seen it on TV,” and playing Charlie Mack in a $20/ball game of pool, which Uncle Phil subsequently loses.

Banks ShotNow further in debt, Charlie Mack successfully raises the stakes to $100/ball. [SPOILER ALERT!] It is at this moment that the hustler becomes the hustled, as Uncle Phil asks Geoffrey (his tag-along butler) for his cue stick Lucille, which Geoffrey promptly unsheathes from his pants leg. Armed with Lucille, the usually humorless Uncle Phil becomes a performer, swaggering around the table to the song “Soul Man,” and making consecutive trick shots, including a one-hander (while eating a sandwich), four-rail shots, and four-ball combinations. The pool hall patrons, including Will, can only watch in awe, as Uncle Phil wins back the debt, plus $600. Turns out Uncle Phil frequented a fair number of pool halls in his days, which is also why he tried to shelter his nephew from the dangerous elements that reside within. (“You think I’m trying to spoil your fun? I just want you to come home in one piece.”)

The episode may lack originality, and the moralistic ending is beyond heavy-handed, but it’s a hoot to watch the actor James Avery, who sadly died earlier this year, shed his patriarchal mien and assume the jaunty pool hustler persona.

“Banks Shot” is available to order online through Amazon.

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.

Drake & Josh – “Pool Shark”

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Billiards movies and TV episodes are replete with shrewd, cunning hustlers: “Fast Eddie” Felson (The Hustler), Johnny Doyle (Poolhall Junkies), Nick Casey (The Baltimore Bullet), Kitty Montgomery (Dharma & Greg – “Do the Hustle”), even Mr. Ed (Mr. Ed – “Ed the Pool Player”).

But, the uninitiated, unknowing and unwilling hustler is a far less common trope within the genre. Until a couple of days ago, the only example that came to mind was Chow Siu-Ling, the naïve man-child played by Stephen Chow in the 1991 Hong Kong film Legend of the Dragon. In that movie, Siu-Ling is a snooker prodigy who his cousin Yan stake-horses (without Siu-Ling’s knowledge) to pay off Yan’s gambling debts. Once Siu-Ling catches wind of his cousin’s hustling plot, he becomes quickly traumatized and unable to play the sport.

Drake & Josh - Pool SharkSure enough, no inane plotline stays retired for long in the world of entertainment. Thirteen years after the release of Legend of the Dragon, the dewy-eyed, nescient hustler returns, this time in the form of the socially inept high-school student Josh Nichols. Played by Josh Peck, Nichols was one half of the titular duo in Drake & Josh, the Nickelodeon sitcom that ran for four seasons from 2004 to 2007. His conniving, but immature, stepbrother, Drake Parker (played by Drake Bell), was the other half.

Drake & Josh - Pool SharkIn the 2004, Season 2 “Pool Shark” episode of Drake & Josh, Drake learns that Josh is a pool powerhouse when he is forced to bring him on as a partner in a game of doubles. Josh’s secret: “It’s just basic geometry and physics.” Drake quickly hatches a plan to exploit Josh’s skills and hustle all the local denizens by first duping Josh to publicly throw a game to a “bunch of losers.” Once people start lining up to play, Drake encourages Josh to “show ‘em what he got,” but conceals from Josh he’s swindling the opponents at twenty dollars per game.  (For some reason, even after Josh makes a series of impressive caroms and multi-ball shots, no one wises up to the fact that they may be getting hustled.)

The plan predictably falls apart when Josh inadvertently learns that Drake has been “playing for profit,” rather than to “hang out and have fun.” Even when Drake tries to make amends by buying Josh a cue stick or tantalizing him with a rack of oranges, Josh refuses to resume playing, retorting, “Keep your citrus to yourself.” Josh, however, gets his revenge in the end when [SPOILER ALERT!] he enlists two former counselors to dress up as pool-playing roughnecks (?!) and threaten Drake into promising to disavow his hustling ways.

For a pretty lame billiards TV episode, there are a handful of impressive (but not overly showy) billiards shots. In an interview years later, the actor Josh Peck responding to a question about his pool ability by revealing, “I’m an awful pool player. I’m terrible at table sports – pool, table tennis. I’m pretty amazing at chess, but thank god for TV magic.”

Jan McWorter

Jan McWorter

That “TV magic” was, in fact, the handiwork of Jan McWorter, now best associated with McWorter Cues. She was the billiards consultant for the “Pool Shark” episode. McWorter’s story is an interesting one. First introduced to pool at the age of nine, she began playing competitive billiards in 1985 but quickly got tired of life on the road. Looking to change her life, she met Robin (Dodson) Bell, the world champion pool player and – yes!! – the mother of Drake Bell (from Drake & Josh). McWorter moved in with the Bell family in 1987 and became a born-again Christian. She subsequently returned to billiards two and a half years later, eventually becoming a top ranked WPBA player in 1993 and later becoming active in commercials, movies, television shows, and pool exhibitions.

This all begs the question whether it could have been Drake Bell making the pool shots in “Pool Shark” instead of Josh Peck. After all, there is a Drake Bell cue stick. And that’s no hustle.

The full “Pool Shark” episode of Drake & Josh is available to watch here.

Shotgun Slade – “The Pool Shark”

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The American Western television series Shotgun Slade came out in 1959, widely recognized as the peak year for television westerns, with 26 such shows airing during prime-time. While it only lasted two years, Shotgun Slade differentiated itself from the herd by having the show’s star, Scott Brady, portray a private detective (rather than a gunfighter or sheriff) who carried an intimidating (and unique on TV) customized shotgun that fired a 12-gauge shell out of its upper barrel and a 35-caliber bullet from its lower register. The series also featured a modern jazz score by Stanley Wilson instead of traditional Western-themed music.

Since Shotgun Slade went off the air in 1961, several home entertainment companies have tried to resurrect interest in the show.  Echo Bridge (formerly the Platinum Disc Corporation) released a total of 15 episodes in 2004.  Timeless Media followed in 2007 by releasing 10 episodes on DVD, almost all of them duplicative with the Echo Bridge series.  Finally Alpha Home Entertainment jumped on the bandwagon in 2009, releasing a 3-DVD series of 12 episodes, again almost repetitive.  

Yet, with all of these releases, not one included “The Pool Shark,” a February 1960 billiards episode from the first season of Shotgun Slade.  Fortunately, an avid reader of this blog shared with me his private recording of the episode. 

Lamentably, it’s a pretty unremarkable episode 🙁 . On his way home, Slade visits a local inn, where he is invited by Jim Dooley, a traveling shoe salesman, to play billiards. Dooley is a bit of a hustler, who’s known to have a few enemies. As Dooley is about to make a three ball run against Slade, he shoots the 8-ball, which explodes and kills him. The rest of the episode is dedicated to Slade trying to solve the mystery of Dooley’s murder.

Hardly memorable, “The Pool Shark” may, however, have been historic: to my knowledge, it is the first television Western episode to focus on billiards. But, it was not the last Western to highlight billiards on the TV screen or the silver screen.  

One year later, the television series The Rifleman featured a billiards episode called “Shattered Idol.” The stakes got significantly higher, and the billiards playing got far more innovative, in the 1967 “The Lady is My Wife” episode from Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre. In that episode, a gambler puts up his wife as the stake in a contest with a cowboy who wants to marry her. The contest is a pool game played on horseback inside the cowboy’s baronial mansion.

One year later, both the film Coogan’s Bluff featured cowboy Clint Eastwood in a well-known battle scene with cue sticks and billiard balls, and the Eli Wallach Western Ace High had cowboys playing billiards on horses.  Returning to television, the popular Western series Gunsmoke aired a 1974  billiards episode called “Cowtown Hustler.”  Several years later, James Caan showed his equestrian billiards skills in Another Man, Another Chance. Finally, in 1984, the Mexican film La Muerte cruzó el río Bravo reprised the horseback billiards concept as shown here (starting at 10:51).

Shooting Gallery

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Talk about a monte that is just plain jecka. Like sugar, honey, iced, tea. Are you smelling what I’m stepping in?

Actually, I hope you don’t step in it. I hope you run from it.

Shooting GalleryBecause this sort of exaggerated slang is just one of the many problems with the 2005 straight-to-video billiards movie Shooting Gallery (aka Poolhall Prophets). Aspiring to be some mash-up between The Hustler and The Sting, Shooting Gallery tries to generate credibility by overindulging in the argot of pool hustlers and con artists. But, 30% of the lingo is made-up (according to the special feature), and the remaining 70% is so forced, it feels like the director/writer Keoni Waxman was double-dared to make every fifth word some form of billiards slang. Even worse, Waxman lacks the confidence to let the script breathe meaning into the words, and instead resorts to a cheap bit of opening credit hokum by literally showing translations of the jargon (e.g., “on the lemon” = playing bad on purpose; “shortstop” = local player; “cecil” = $100; etc.).

If the pool patois were the only problem in Shooting Gallery, maybe the monte (= movie) would be passable. Unfortunately, the entire 102 minutes is mos def (= most definitely) jecka ( = terrible). Behind the horrible dialogue is nonsensical story about Jericho Hudson (Freddie Prinze Jr, whose acting in this film makes Keanu Reeves appear Oscar-worthy), a street-smart pool player, who falls in with the Tribe, a New Orleans gaggle of hustlers, led by Cue Ball Carl Bridgers (Ving Rhames), a chicken-foot sucking, 8-ball cane-wielding kingpin. Each Tribe member is tattooed with an 8-ball, which makes beaucoup (= lots of) sense, given they are supposed to be incognito 9-ball hustlers.

Jericho quickly rises through the ranks of the Tribe; his success driven by his gift for hustling 9-ball and his ability to say with a straight face craptacular (= awful) dialogue, such as, “I was a hustler with a goal, which would make either happy or dead.” His one weakness seems to be Jezebel Black (Roselyn Sanchez), who “looked like two scoops of ice cream on a warm summer day.” (So that means what exactly…?)

Shooting Gallery.v2Jericho gets himself into some trouble when he tries to hustle on the side. Jezebel gets herself into some trouble when she can’t pay off her gambling debts to ex-NFL great Bill Romanowksi. People keep getting hustled at the Shooting Gallery, a billiards hall run by Cue Ball Carl and widely and illogically known as a hustler’s paradise. A corrupt cop shows up with a need to set up a 9-ball game against Cue Ball Carl so he can retrieve a video cassette, the maguffin of the film. A coked-up crackshot named Tenderloin Tony appears, but is then killed. Some pool is played, but not that much. More idiotic dialogue is sputtered (“If I’m lying, I’m dying. – Jericho Hudson).

None of this make a lick of sense. Shooting Gallery plays like a string of two-bit hustling clichés strung together by poor acting and middle school dialogue. As I said at the start, this film is sugar, honey, iced, tea (= S.H.I.T.).

Shooting Gallery is widely available to rent or purchase online.

Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet – “Pool Table”

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Billiards has always been about more than shooting balls into pockets. In television dramas, the pool hall is often the milieu, and the pool match a metaphor, for determining one’s future existence and ability to live (e.g., Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”; Twilight Zone – “A Game of Pool”; Monsters – “Pool Sharks”).

In billiards TV sitcoms, one’s life may not quite so much hang in the balance (this is comedy, after all), but the pool match nonetheless remains the arbiter of the future.   Just consider Ralph Kramden’s error in judgment when he upsets Harvey on the pool table (The Honeymooners – “The Bensonhurst Bomber”) or cadet Francis’ grudge match against Commandant Spangler (Malcolm in the Middle – “Waterpark”) or Oscar Madison’s desperate match to save the reputation of his roommate Felix Unger (The Honeymooners – “The Hustler”).

Billiards life was not always so complicated. Billiards matches were not always about losing your car (Dharma & Greg – “Do the Hustle”), or your money (Family Matters – “Fast Eddie Winslow”) or your job (Mr. Belvedere – “Tornado”).

Almost sixty years ago, the most complicated decision one faced when it came to billiards was where to put the pool table. At least, that’s the premise of the utterly domestic billiards TV episode “Pool Table” (November, 1956) from the fifth season of that quintessentially wholesome sitcom, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

ScreenClip2As many will recall, Ozzie and Harriet, which aired from 1952-1966, making it still the longest-running live action American sitcom in television history, focused on the daily living of the real-life Nelson family (Ozzie, Harriet, and their two sons, Ricky and David). The show’s plotlines focused on typical problems around dating, marriage, and careers.

In “Pool Table,” which you can watch here in its entirety, the original problem is not the pool table, but that Ricky has too much clutter in his room, so he doesn’t have space to complete his homework. Ozzie’s initial solution to buy the kids filing cabinets is shelved when he instead buys a pool table from the local department store. “They were all out of filing cabinets, so I got a pool table instead,” explains Ozzie.

http://youtu.be/fIOSKETzyBI

Harriet’s surprise turns to disapproval when Ozzie temporarily sets up the pool table in the family room. Ozzie’s retort, “What are we going to do with it? Well, isn’t that just like a woman,” doesn’t ameliorate the situation. Thus begins the pool table’s peregrination from the dining room to the kitchen to the garage to the outside yard. Everyone is temporarily happy when Ozzie’s neighbor, Thorny, volunteers to keep it his in rumpus room, but that plan is quickly reversed once Ozzie realizes his neighbor is not home enough to let him access it.

ScreenClipRunning out of rooms, Ozzie enlists the support of his kids to jerry-rig a pulley system and haul the pool table up three stories to locate it in the attic via the outdoor window. This solution seems to be perfect, until the weight of the pool table causes its legs to crash through the attic floor and into the kids’ bedroom.

But, this being 1956, and the benefit of household cleanliness far outweighing the morbid likelihood of the rest of the pool table falling from its perch and crushing the kids, the decision is made to use the space between the protruding pool legs as a makeshift shelf, thereby enabling the kids to remove their clutter…which solves the original problem! And, for added giggles, the kids can still play pool upstairs, just now on their knees. As I said, life was much simpler back then.