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Fear Factor – “Billiards for Gross Eats”

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Tomorrow, many of us will participate in the Thanksgiving Day holiday, filled with family, festivity, football, and of course, food.  Lots of food.  In fact, the average American will consume more than 4,500 calories and 229 grams of fat on Thanksgiving Day alone, according to the Caloric Control Council.  Thus, in the spirit of gluttonous gorging, it seems only appropriate to focus my billiards TV review on the “Billiards for Gross Eats” segment of NBC’s sports/stunt/dare reality show, Fear Factor.

Fear Factor - Billiards for Gross EatsTo the uninitiated or ill-informed, Fear Factor aired from 2001 to 2006 (and had a brief revival in 2011). The show pit contestants against each other in a series of three stunts for a grand prize, usually of $50,000.  The first stunt often tested the players physically. And the third stunt often resembled a scene from an action movie, such as traversing moving 18-wheelers or jumping a race car off a ramp.  But, it was the second stunt, which was meant to mentally challenge contestants, that became the stuff of television lore. For these stunts often involved ingesting vile animal parts (e.g., raw ostrich eggs, sheep eyeballs, horse rectum) or eating live animals (such as the favorite Madagascar hissing cockroach); interacting with animals (e.g., getting covered with snakes); or occasionally enduring physical pain (e.g., walking on broken glass, outlasting competitors in a tear gas chamber).

In the “Billiards for Gross Eats” segment, which aired in April 2002 as part of the Season 2 episode, “Twins: Sky Surfing/Billiards for Gross Eats/Container Ship,” teams of twins were asked to “play pool Fear Factor style.”  As producer Rick Brown explained, “we set up a four-ball diamond formation at one end of the table. Each ball had one of four custom-made Fear Factor patterns: a chili pepper, a squid, an ant, and an egg. The contestants were given a cueball and five shots to sink the four balls into the pockets. Any balls left on the table would represent the food they would have to eat.”

In actuality, those four Fear Factor patterns depicted a far worse gastronomic fate. The “chili pepper” was a Habanero pepper, the hottest known pepper at the time.  The “squid” was shikoara, a very salty Japanese dish of fermented squid guts.  The “egg” was putrid duck eggs, or what is commonly known in some Asian communities as 100-year-old eggs.  And the “ant” was just that…a vial full of live ants.  Producer Rick Brown referred to this as the “Combo Meal from Hell.”

Though I was unable to find the full segment online, an excerpt of “Billiards for Gross Eats” segment is below.  But, I remember seeing the episode when it first aired and thinking to myself, ‘Five shots to make four balls?  That’s pretty damn easy.’  Let’s just say for these contestants, billiards is probably not their God-given talent.

But, if the contestants sucked at pool, one person on the show most assuredly did not:  Fear Factor host Joe Rogan.  For as many readers well know, Rogan is not only a martial artist, stand-up comedian, actor, and UFC commentator, but also a billiards enthusiast and crackerjack pool player.  (Check out Rogan running a 9-ball rack in this YouTube clip.)  Rogan’s appreciation of pool has been well-documented, and he has been lauded for appearing at and/or commenting on tournaments, whether it was the Efren Reyes IPT 8-Ball Challenge in April 2009 or, more recently, CSI’s “Swanee 17” where Jayson Shaw played Dennis Orcollo in the Hot Seat Match.

In fact, just a few months ago, Rogan created a mini-buzz on the AZ Billiards Forum by responding to an online thread, saying “I’ve entertained several billiards ideas for TV shows [including one like the Late Show with Johnny Carson adding a pool table to the set and guests gather around the table and talk pool.]  The problem with that idea, is that most celebrities SUCK at pool. The numbers that can get out at all are pretty small.  I think there may be 6 celebrities all told that are capable of breaking and running a rack of 9 ball.  My favorite idea was one involving me traveling around to pool halls playing local shortstops and local pros in a sort of impromptu game show type scenario where I just show up and play the best guy/girl in the house.”

Given how much personality, passion and humor Rogan brings to everything he does, let me add myself to the choir and say, “Joe, if you can make any of these billiards television or internet series happen, I’ll be watching from the front row.”

The Story of One Billiard-Room

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The Story of One Billiard-Room

Years ago, I stumbled across posters for the 1988 Russian billiards movie The Story of One Billiard-Room (original title: Istoriya odnoy bilyardnoy komandi). The posters, available through Pop Culture Graphics, were unusual and memorable, striking in comparison to the more typical movie posters seen across the billiards movie landscape.  But, aside from the posters, my research uncovered very little about the film.

The script is by Alexsandr Adabashyan, who has written, acted in, directed, or helped produce well over 40 movies and television shows.  It also features an all-Russian cast, including Sergei Gazarov and Semyon Farada, both of whom are stage and film veterans. But, for all three of these gentlemen, this particular movie seems to have been largely ignored.

The only path that was not a dead-end was researching the movie’s director, Sebastián Alarcón.  Mr. Alarcón is a native of Chile, who left his homeland after graduating college to attend VGIK, a film school in Moscow.  Though he planned to return to Chile to make movies, his efforts were thwarted by a political coup and he was forced to remain in Moscow living in exile. Thus, he then began making movies for Mosfilm, the largest and oldest film studio in Russia.

One of the first films Mr. Alarcón made was a 1977 documentary Night Over Chile, which became immensely popular.  Its success spurred the director to continue making films about Chile, often about dictatorships and political struggle.  It was not until the late ‘80s when Mr. Alarcón turned to lighter subjects.  This is the time when he made the black humor comedy The Story of One Billiard-Room. The only reference I could then find to the movie was from a 100-year retrospective on Chilean cinema that described the movie as follows:

A sports team faces its toughest match: the danger of the degradation and dissolution, to lose the sense of their existence by the transformation of the town in which they live. The arrival of consumerism causes loss of consciousness and competition team that for years has called and given the identity. It is a metaphor both what happened in those years in the Soviet Union, but also to Chile molded in the ’80s.

The Story of One Billiard-RoomHaving otherwise struck out on learning more, I marked the film as “Wanted,” and moved on to other billiards movies. Luckily, in September 2021, a reader of this blog, Leonardo O, learned about my search and shared that he had gotten an .avi file of the film, without subtitles, from a Russian site two years ago. He then extracted the sound and used a service to generate an automatic transcription in Cyrillic. This allowed Google Translate to generate an automatic translation to English. He shared the file with me, while admitting the English subtitles had mistakes in translation and synchronicity. 

I am so thankful to Leonardo for reaching out and sharing the film. Unfortunately, the auto-translation was too butchered to make much sense, so my understanding of the movie remains only nominally better than the aforementioned description.

That’s too bad, as there’s some unusual imagery in the movie. For starters, the billiards team all wear numbered red jerseys and bicycle helmets. They also congregate around the billiards table, which is – wait for it – round with four pockets along the perimeter and a pocket in the middle.  When a ball falls into the middle pocket, smoke shoots up from the center, and the team’s captain uses a small handheld fishing net to retrieve the ball. 

There’s no actual playing in the movie, though the captain takes the team through some dexterity drills and mathematics practice. It seems he had grand ambitions for how the game could raise the global profile of his village and his athletes, but those plans fall apart as his team is lured to the surrounding material attractions of Coca Cola, music, television, and hot rods. By the end of the movie, the billiards table sits unused beneath a dusty cover, and the team is garbed in punk clothing, lollygagging with local ladies, and acting reckless. From the broken translation:

We together created a new game that demanded wild efforts of energy with self-sacrifice, energy, discipline… my friends and what kind of people, who they are, what they want,  what I personally do not know. But in general it seems that they are not interested in our game at all.

Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats

It’s been almost 18 years since his passing, and an incredible 45 years since his television show Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats first aired.  But, watching the three episodes just released last month on DVD by VCI Entertainment, one instantly recalls his larger-than-life presence, both in his physical girth (at times as much as 300 pounds) and in his verbal swagger and elocution, to say nothing of his pool-playing bravado.

Celebrity BilliardsRunning for four seasons, from 1967-1971, Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats was, quite literally, celebrities playing billiards (for charity) with Minnesota Fats.  Until VCI released the DVD, I had never seen a full episode, though partial clips existed online.  The low-budget set, even by late ‘60s standards, featured a single pool table surrounded by a horseshoe of audience members a few rows deep.  Each episode featured Minnesota Fats, the “world’s most accomplished billiards player” (or some variation of such hyperbole), playing a form of billiards against one of the popular comedians or actors of that era.  The celebrity was given an agreed-upon handicap, and if the celebrity won, s/he got $1000 (about $6700 in today’s dollars) toward the charity of her/his choice; if s/he lost, then $500. At the end of the game, which was shown in its entirety, “Mr. Fats” then demonstrated a series of trick shots, sometimes successfully, other times not. Most of these shots felt impromptu and intimate between him and his celebrity guest, and in all the episodes I watched, the credits rolled even as he was continuing to share shots.

Before delving into the three specific matches on the VCI DVD, it’s worth providing some context around this show, and its master impresario.  To start, in 1961, the movie The Hustler was released, which had two notable effects.  First, participation in billiards skyrocketed. “Sales of equipment soared. The number of pool halls doubled. Organized billiards boomed. Even television sports began to cover straight pool matches,” according to one Chicago Tribune article.

Bank Shot and Other Great RobberiesSecond, in introducing the world to the fictional Minnesota Fats (played by Jackie Gleason), it enabled Rudolf Wanderone Jr., a traveling pool hustler from New York City, to claim the name as his own, forever mixing fact and fiction.   And with the Minnesota Fats moniker, the former Wanderone, a decent but largely unknown billiards player, became a household name, parlaying his fame into every facet of media, from magazine articles (Sport Illustrated) to autobiographies (The Bank Shot, and Other Great Robberies) to instructional books (Minnesota Fats Plays Pool) to television (The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson) and later, even to movies (The Player).

Also, it had been more than a decade since Ten-Twenty, the last billiards game show.  And with the popularity of bowling shows, such as Jackpot Bowling, on the air, it was the perfect time to try the billiards game show format again, this time with its own superstar, who used to pass out stamped autographed trading cards proclaiming himself “the greatest pool player ever.” Pairing the portly propagandist with celebrities equally made sense, given the success of game shows prominently featuring celebrities, like Hollywood Squares, which debuted in 1966. On top of it all, pool had emerged at this time as the “number one sport in Hollywood, according to some news media.

In the four seasons of Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats, a who’s-who of the era’s A-listers came on the show, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Bill Cosby, Mickey Rooney, and Phyllis Diller.  Apparently, in the show’s pilot episode, James “Maverick” Garner came on, allegedly a reputable pool hustler in his own right, and actually beat Fats, winning the $1000 charity prize.

The newly-released VCI DVD features three episodes from 1971.  In the first episode, Fats plays the comedian Groucho Mark (sans cigar) in 9-ball, giving him the break plus three subsequent shots.  Marx’s game is okay, but his one-liners, such as “It wouldn’t hurt you to practice once in a while,” are classic.  After Fats wins, he reveals to Marx a number of trick shots, though he misses a handful, prompting Marx to reply, “You want to apologize?”  Some of this episode is available to watch below on YouTube.

http://youtu.be/tZFqhx0Aymo

In the next episode, Fats plays the folk-singing comedians, the Smother Brothers, in a game of “Last Ball,” in which players take turns pocketing balls, but the winner is the one who sinks the last ball.  The Smother Brothers played as a team, effectively getting two turns for every one turn Fats got.  Though the games were presided over by commentator Tim Travers, it’s Fats who provides the real play-by-play, such as describing Dick Smothers’ narrow miss as a “good boy who got in some bad company.” Fats also showcases some beautiful trick shots, including a “kiss, bank, kiss three-cushion” shot.

In the final episode, Fats plays “Mr. Television” Milton Berle in a game of three-cushion billiards, in which Berle is given a three point head-start.  Berle admits to picking this lesser-known variation of billiards because he thought Fats lack of familiarity with the game would give Berle an advantage. This episode tends to lag, as both players struggle to earn points.  Though it is rather amusing when Fats attempts to explain the diamond system to Berle in what comes across as near-dizzying calculus.

The DVD with these three episodes is available to buy on Amazon.

A Billiards Education in the Movies

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When many people think about billiards, they are really thinking about pool (also known as pool billiards or pocket billiards), specifically one of the numerous variations of pool, such as eight-ball, nine-ball, straight pool, or one pocket, that are played on a 6-pocket table of 7-, 8-, or 9-foot length.

billiards moviesA simple Google search verifies this billiards bias.  A search for “8-ball” and “9-ball” yields 909 million and 870 million results, whereas a search for “snooker” yields 44 million results, and a search for “carom” (as in carom billiards) yields less than 3 million results.  And, if we start narrowing our search to some of the more regional variations of carom billiards, such as Balkline or Goriziana, there are less than a few hundred thousand search results.

Certainly, in North America, one reason people commonly equate billiards with pool is because pool is the only game they’ve played.  According to research done 10 years ago by the Billiards Congress of America, about 90% of billiards players in the US primarily play pool; the rest play snooker or carom billiards.

But, another reason for the global association between billiards and pool is because of popular culture.  Conduct any informal survey in which you ask people to name “billiards movies” and the most common responses are The Hustler (1961) and The Color of Money (1986). Ask billiards players and other common responses are Poolhall Junkies (2002), Shooting Gallery (2005), Turn the River (2007) and maybe Stickmen (2001).  Each of these films has its own merits, and some are much better movies than others, but a common link is they all feature variations of pool:  The Hustler (straight pool), The Color of Money (9-ball), Poolhall Junkies (9-ball), Shooting Gallery (9-ball), Turn the River (one-pocket), Stickmen (8-ball).

Fortunately, there have been a handful of billiards movies that don’t focus on pool.  So, if you’re looking to expand your familiarity with some of the other cue sports, get your Netflix or Amazon Instant Video queue ready and read on.

Snooker

Snooker is a billiards game played on a 12’x6’ table using a cue and 22 snooker balls (one white cue ball, 15 red balls, and 6 balls of different colors and point values).   The object of the game is to score more points than one’s opponent by potting the object balls in a predefined order.  Red balls must be potted in order to attempt to pot one of the colored balls.

Billy Kid and Green Baize Vampire - billiards moviesOne of the most interesting movies to feature snooker is Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, a 1987 film from the UK that revolves around a snooker showdown between a cockney named Billy Kid and a seven-time world snooker champion who wears clip-on fangs and relaxes in a coffin named Maxwell Reardon, aka the Green Baize Vampire.  The two main protagonists are modeled on real-world legends Ray Reardon (whose nickname was “Dracula”) and Jimmy White, who battled it out in snooker championships in the early 1980s.

The movie is actually a musical, composed by George Fenton, a 5-time Oscar-nominated composer, and includes the song “Snooker (So Much More Than Just a Game).”  If you liked The Rocky Horror Picture Show, you’ll enjoy this film based on its camp/cult value alone.  But, even if musicals are not your thing, you’ll get a thrill out of watching the exceptional snooker playing, particularly in the final showdown.

Other snooker movies you might wish to check out include Legend of the Dragon (1991, Hong Kong), which actually features snooker champ Jimmy White, and Number One (1985, UK), a made-for-TV movie starring Bob Geldof and Alfred Molina.

Three-Cushion Billiards

Three-cushion billiards, one of the most popular and challenging cue sports in the world, consists of three balls and a pocketless pool table.  The object of the game is to carom the cue ball off both object balls, but to make sure the cue ball hits the rail cushion at least three times before hitting the second object ball.  A point is scored for each successful carom.

Carambola - billiards movieA humorous, tongue-and-cheek film that prominently features three-cushion billiards is Carambola (2003, Mexico).  In this low-budget drama, shot entirely in one location, the character “El Vago,” having won a carom-billiards saloon from the character “El Mexicano,” must now figure out how to restore honor and popularity to the game of three-cushion billiards.  A lot of mishaps occur, especially in his decision to recruit “El Perro” (the fabulous Diego Luna) as the manager, who feels three cushion billiards is an old man’s game.  Amazing three-cushions shot are scattered throughout the movie, and there is a comedic skit in the beginning, in which El Vago attempts to make an instructional video about the rules and nuance of the sport.

Another movie you might wish to check out is Wandering Ginza Butterfly (1972, Japan), a “pinky violence” film in which an outlaw heroine tries to save a bar through a three-cushion billiards competition.

Goriziana

Goriziana (or 9-pins) is a form of carom billiards especially popular in Italy. Nine pins sit in the center of a pocketless table. Two cue balls and a red ball are used. Each player attempts to hit the opponent’s ball and, from there, scores points by striking the red ball, or by making the opponent’s balls or the red ball knock over the pins. Play continues until someone reaches or surpasses a pre-set number of points.

Pool Hustlers - billiards movieThe best way to visualize Goriziana is to watch the romantic comedy The Pool Hustlers (1983, Italy), also known by its Italian name Io, Chiara e lo scuro.  The story focuses on Francesco, a skilled Goriziana player, who never plays for money.  He challenges Scuro, the reigning Goriziana champion (played by real 9-pin billiard legend Marcello Lotti), for a “spiked cup of coffee” wager.  When Francesco wins, his newfound confidence leads him to break his own no-betting rule, and he quickly falls into significant debt, losing his rematches to Scuro.   This debt leads him to steal money, and ultimately, to compete in the International Single Set Goriziana Championship as way to pay off his financial obligations, preserve his relationship with his girlfriend Chiara and avoid jail.

The Pool Hustlers was followed by a sequel Casablanca, Casablanca (1985, Italy), which continues Francesco’s love of Chiara and of Goriziana, and then much later by Il signor Quindicipalle (1998, Italy), which is also about 9-pins but with different characters.

So the next time you’re asked to think about billiards, consider the larger universe of exciting cue sports that exist.  And, if we’re lucky, maybe there will be some billiards movies about Russian Pyramid or Balkline in the near future.  We could all use some more educating.

“The Hustler” – The Brady Bunch

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In The Color of Money, “Fast” Eddie Felson, the original Hustler, says, “Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.”  Well, for Bobby Brady, youngest son of the famously surnamed TV sextet, it wasn’t money he won with his billiards skills, but 256 packs of chewing gum, a sweet feat that proves one’s never too young to successfully start hustling.  Since this is The Brady Bunch, a series that ran from 1969 to 1974, we can expect a healthy dosage of well-mannered high jinks, inoffensive banter, and squeaky-clean resolutions.  “The Hustler,” one of the last episodes to air in the final season of The Brady Bunch, does not disappoint.

Brady Bunch - The HustlerThis billiards television episode’s set-up is that Harry Matthews, the president of Mike Brady’s architectural firm, gives Mike an (unassembled!) pool table as a thank-you gift.  Bobby, who “always” plays pool at his friend’s house, demonstrates his prowess to his two older brothers, who dismiss his playing as dumb luck.  He later wagers he can beat them in nine-ball, with the loser having to shine the winner’s shoes for a whole month.  Of course, he wins, and soon he is playing all the time and retorting to his siblings, “Who cares about school?  I’m going to be the pool champ of the whole world.”

His constant play ultimately gets him into trouble with his dad, who gently reprimands him for staying up so late practicing when he has school work. But, he is redeemed when he is given a chance to play Mr. Matthews, who has come over for a dinner party.  Mr. Matthews, having beaten everyone else at the party and fancying himself a pool shark, agrees to play Bobby for a pack of chewing gum on every shot.  Bobby promptly thrashes Mr. Matthews, causing one of the other dinner guests to whisper to Mike, “If that was my son, I’d break his arm.”  Fortunately, this does not get Mike fired, but it (unfortunately) does somehow prove that the Brady household is no home for a pool table.  Well, at least Bobby won those 256 packs of chewing gum.

Brady Bunch - The HustlerThough “The Hustler” episode lacks any iconic one-liners such as, “Mom always said don’t play ball in the house” or “Pork chops and apple sauce,” it does have one of the more memorable and billiards television worthy dream sequences (shown below).  Dressed in a tuxedo and wearing a “Champ” sash across his chest, Bobby enters a symphony hall  with a single billiards table on stage to a standing ovation.  Taking his cue and chalk from his sister Cindy and cousin Oliver, he proceeds to make a series of multi-ball trick shots, including the well-known, six-ball “Butterfly” shot, before finishing with a shot made while blindfolded.  (Of course, Mike Lookinland, the actor who played Bobby, did not make these shots, and there is disturbingly no mention of a billiards technical advisor in the credits.)

The dream concludes with dollar bills raining onto Bobby like roses being thrown onstage at an opera, and Bobby repeating the phrase, “I’m rich, I’m rich.”  Now there’s an ironic ending…what’s the real dream here?  The fact that Bobby could make all these trick shots or the fact that someone could, in fact, get “rich” playing pool?

“The Hustler” billiards television episode of The Brady Bunch is available to watch in entirety on Paramount+.

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.

Carambola (billiards movie)

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Within the billiards movie genre, one of the best and least-known is Carambola, a 2005 low-budget, highly stylized film that took more than two years to reach the big screen after its premier at the Guadalajara Film Festival, and then, sadly, disappeared almost as quickly.  Directed and written by Kurt Hollander, an accomplished writer and photographer, who unfortunately for us, did not continue to make movies, Carambola is the story of El Vago (Daniel Martinez), an aging three-cushion billiards hustler, who has the chance for reinvention when he wins a billiards hall in a bet.

Carambola - billiards movieThe billiards hall is not only the sole setting of Carambola, but it is also a central character in this tale of reinvention.  Foremost, there is the tension between El Vago’s wish to preserve the “real tradition in this pool hall,” which means keeping the billiards tables intact, and that of his more business-minded ambitious assistant, El Perro (the wonderful Diego Luna), who believes that only old geezers plays billiards, and that to turn the hall into a successful business requires pool tables, discos, and strobe lights.  Even El Vago must concede that “pool is the flavor of the new generation.”

(For those that may already be confused, “pool” is not synonymous with “billiards.”  Pool is akin to pocket billiards, shot with a cue ball and 15 balls on a six-pocket table between seven and nine feet long.  In Carambola, “billiards” refers to three-cushion billiards, also called carombole, which is generally played on a pocketless five-by-ten foot table with just three balls.  The object is to score points by caroming the cue ball off both object balls, but making sure the cue ball hits the rail cushion at least three times before hitting the second object ball.   Fortunately, if you were watching the movie, you would not be confused, as the rules of three-cushion billiards are explained by El Vago in the opening scene as part of an instructional video he’s shooting to earn some extra cash.  Not only does he explain the objective, but he gives pointers such as, “knives longer than five inches and guns carried in one’s belt…interfere with a clean shot,” or “gold chains, shiny rings, and flashy tattoos on one’s hands disrupt concentration.”)

El Vago ultimately acquiesces to the vision of El Perro, thereby ushering in dramatic and costly changes that pack the pool hall with young supple bodies, but leave the elders disgusted and El Vago with a permanent ulcer that is exacerbated when all the “little shits…put their feet on [his] tables.” In great and uncomfortable juxtaposition, El Vago even kills the music in one early scene to stage a billiards demonstration by El Campeon, aka “The Champ,” who shows off some wonderfully gorgeous masse and rail shots to a rather apathetic and benumbed audience.

Carambola - billiards movieTrouble mounts as quickly as the bills.  El Perro is determined to take control of the billiards hall, or at least rob El Vago blind while doing lines of cocaine in the bathroom.  The sexy La Pájara (Laura Hildalgo) is a constant distraction, particularly once El Vago peeps her straddling his table to make a pornographic video with a cue stick. El Mexicano (Jesús Ochoa), a businessman with a bad temper who sells “cues made from rare woods with exotic and erotic images,” always appears to be one step away from reclaiming the bar he lost or using his “death cue” on the the kneecaps of anyone ogling his daughter, La Pájara.  And none of this bodes well for a billiards tournament El Vago is trying to organize to raise funds to keep the billiards hall solvent.

Amidst this offbeat soap opera, there is, as I suggested in the beginning, a battle not only to define the future of the billiards hall, but to re-examine the very purpose of billiards, for every character has his own dogmatic definition.  For “Gums,” billiards is all about “style, flair…winning is not so important.”  For El Judas, billiards is a distraction: “who gives a fuck about billiards…if you want to do something in this world, you got to play with bigger balls.” For La Medusa, “billiards is a mirror of the heavens…when someone stands in front of table and shoots, they’re playing on three levels: universe, earth and inner world.”  El Chiquilin is less philosophical in his world view of billiards: It is a “game of kings… unfortunately it’s been adopted by a group of lowlifes, murderers, rapists, prostitutes and pimps.” And all of this contrasts with the beliefs of El Vago, who not only is set on teaching his audience to play the game through his video, but also on cementing his conviction that “any second rate player can make a shot, but to miss believably, only the best.”

Carambola - billiards movieIt’s that philosophy that ultimately cues the audience that maybe the down-and-out El Vago, with the ghastly ulcer and pitiful business sense, is, in fact, “missing believably.”  I won’t spoil the movie, but let’s just say, to use another El Vago quote, “to win, you have to know how to lose.”

Carambola is widely available to rent or buy on DVD or instant video.  It should not be confused with the similarly named Mexican billiards movie Operacion Carambola (1968), the Italian billiards movie Carambola (1974) or that film’s sequel, Carambola, Filotto…Tutti en Boco (1975).

“Pool Sharks” – Monsters (billiards TV episode)

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It’s Halloween!  So, once the little ghouls and ghosts are safely tucked in, once the party is over and the Walking Dead costume is back on the hanger, once the jack-o-lantern candles are blown out and the sugar-high has faded, why not cap off the evening with some horror-themed billiards TV, specifically the “Pool Sharks” episode of the cable show Monsters?

Pool Sharks - Billiards TVMonsters was a three-season horror anthology show that ran from 1988-1991 on the Sci-Fi Channel.   Similar to Tales of the Crypt, each 30-minute Monsters episode focused on a monster, ranging from animated mannequins to weapon-wielding lab rats, and often included elements of black comedy, twist endings, and a variety of special effects, some more convincing than others.

[SPOILER ALERT] The aptly-named Monsters episode “Pool Sharks” aired in December 1988 as part of the show’s first season.  The full episode is available below to watch. The episode focuses on  two bar patrons, who face off in a pool game.  Both have secrets; the fact they are both pool hustlers is but the least of those secrets.  One of the patrons is Gabe, an everyman, who enters the bar with his pool cue case in tow and an eye on the vamp at the billiards table.  That vamp is the buxom, pale-skinned, black-clad Natasha, who clearly has a taste for men, as evidenced when she later sucks Gabe’s bleeding finger wound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy2yIXdOAmU

After some brief flirtations and a lot of hustler subtext, Natasha and Gabe agree to a game of 50-point straight pool, in which the bet is the winner gets to do whatever s/he wants to the other person’s body. Now, the secrets start getting exposed, as Natasha reveals (to the camera) her fangs, and Gabe starts to probe Natasha’s awareness of a man (Gabe’s brother) who disappeared, having last been seen with a beautiful woman in a pool hall.

Pool Sharks - Billiards TVThe game continues, as each person makes a series of successful (albeit, somewhat easy) trick shots (including a four-balls-in-one-shot beauty), while also gradually pulling back their veils and revealing their true intentions.  (Gabe’s is to avenge his brother.  Natasha’s is to feast on Gabe before the sun rises.)  When the game gets tied 49-49, Natasha appears to win on the next shot, but is thwarted by Gabe (and the usual holy cross vampire trope), who goes on to sink the winning shot and then impales Natasha with his special, hidden-blade cue stick.

While the stakes are totally different, it’s clear “Pool Sharks” is borrowing liberally from the 1961 Twilight Zone episode, “A Game of Pool.”  In that billiards TV show, a local pool player bets his life against a famous, dead pool hustler.  (“Life or death.  You beat me, you live; you lose, you die.”)  The two episodes are also similarly shot in a black-and-white, dimly-lit noir style, with single-table bars in empty pool rooms, mood jazz playing in the background.

By the way, if you really want to make it a billiards Halloween, then I suggest that after watching “Pool Sharks,” you turn to Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, a 1987 British vampire musical that revolves around a snooker showdown.  One billiards horror movie I would skip, however, is The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II.  This low-budget 1988 film is about a macho vampire named Baisez, who slowly seduces the cast and crew of Blood Lover, a movie about a vampire pool hustler, is painfully hard-to-watch.

For a full plot synopsis of “Pool Sharks,” check out: http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2009/07/monsters-pool-sharks-review-tv-episode.html

“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.

Virgin Pockets

In 1997, the nominees for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture were Speed 2: Cruise Control, Fire Down Below, Batman & Robin, The Postman, and Anaconda.  (The Postman won the award.)  But, let me tell you, compared to the straight-to-video billiards movie Virgin Pockets, which came out that same year, these other lemons are downright Oscar-worthy.

Virgin PocketsVirgin Pockets is the inane story of pool professional Lizzie Monroe, who years ago removed herself from the tournament circuit because of the pressure and control of sponsors, and turned to hustling pool locally.  In a dive bar, she meets Jordan “J.J.” Jamison, a young, scantily-clad, dyed-blond, pool hustler, who first flaunts her talent by challenging the locals to games of pool. [Reviewer’s note:   Jordan’s physique may be real, but the money she was betting was most certainly not. It was labeled “toy money.”]

One by one, the lambs line up to play Jordan, only to get mesmerized by her cleavage and miss their shots.  Eventually, Lizzie plays Jordan and schools her in the game of pool.  After, Jordan attempts to befriend her, but is told by Lizzie she has “virgin pockets,” meaning she “has no idea how to play.  Straight pool is pool.  When you play 9-ball, that’s not a game.”  [Reviewer’s note:  they were playing 8-ball, not 9-ball.]

But, ultimately Lizzie is convinced they could make quite a hustling team (like Billie Jo Robbins and Nick Casey in The Baltimore Bullet). So, she takes on Jordan as a protégé and educates her in the art of hustling.  [Reviewer’s note:  for women, the art of hustling apparently includes repeated blowing on cue tips, stroking cue shafts, hiking up skirts to reveal lace garters, and of course, conspicuously removing money from inside one’s bra.]

As Lizzie says, “the best players in the world aren’t found on ESPN.  They’re found in pool halls, in the worst parts of town. If you really know how to play this game, that’s where the real money is.”  [Reviewer’s note:  all the “hustling” takes place in the one town of Erie, Pennsylvania, with its population of 100,000, and not exactly the ghetto of America.]

Virgin PocketsSoon, they’re racking up big dollars, playing the real sharks in “games that no one talks about.” [Reviewer’s note: the most they ever win appears to be $500.] Sometimes, they even hustle on coin-operated tables (!!).  But, their lucrative lifestyle falls apart when Jordan abandons her mentor to compete in the Erie Brewing Company 9-Ball International.

Ripping off of The Color of Money, Lizzie makes the decision to return to the tournament world, where she hopes to get Jordan’s best game.  I dare not spoil the ending, but in the final teacher-student showdown, it was “never about the money, always about the game.”

Virgin Pockets was produced on a shoestring budget of about $3000, so expectations shouldn’t start too high.  And, in fact, the story might have been bearable if other aspects of Virgin Pockets were entertaining. But, the acting is abysmal, the camera shakes constantly, and then there is the ungodly pool.  I never thought I would say this about a billiards movie, but there is way too much pool in this movie.  Every other scene consists of our leggy ladies making the same 5-6 shots (including one three-rail shot, which is unfortunately overused), while the incessant music plays in the foreground.  It was like watching a bad music video…on repeat.

One minute into the movie, Lizzie asks the question, “Why am I here?”  Trust me, if you sit down to watch Virgin Pockets, you’re going to be asking yourself that same question.

Virgin Pockets is available to order on DVD on Amazon.  The full movie is also available to watch online on YouTube.

Virgin Pockets