Tag Archives: billiards movies

Raising the Hustler – A Billiards Documentary in Production

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In the United States, there are approximately 11.5 million baseball players of all ages.  How many can name at least one professional player?  75%? Certainly, at least half, with many citing team rosters, wearing the jerseys of favorite players, collecting memorabilia about the pros, and/or talking about the legends of yesterday.

In the United States, approximately 40 million people played pool at least once in the last 3 years.  How many can name a professional billiards player? 1%? Not a chance.  The American Poolplayers Association (APA) has about 265,000 members.  Can even 10% name one of the sport’s legends besides Willie Mosconi or Minnesota Fats (no, not the Jackie Gleason character from The Hustler)?

Raising the Hustler - Billiards DocumentaryIf you’re wondering where I’m going with this jeremiad, I’m channeling the very spot-on sentiments of Angel Levine, the director and producer behind the highly anticipated documentary Raising the Hustler. It has already taken Levine 7 years to film, costing her “every dime [she] ever had and maybe some dimes [she] hadn’t” to collect more than 600 hours of footage about the legends of pool so she can help them tell their story in their own words to a generation that is perilously close to forgetting their existence.

“I got tired of watching my legends die broke and penniless.  They need to be heralded,” Levine told me in an hour-long interview in late August.  “[Pool players] are looked at so poorly in this country.  They’re looked at as gamblers, hustlers…Compare this to the Philippines, parts of Asia. Pool players there have a fan base.”

In a 2003 article in the Asia Times Online, Levine’s point jumped off the page: “Mention the sport of pool or billiards [in the Philippines] and you’ve tapped into something much deeper in the Filipino soul, something that is a part of the very fabric of this society…Filipinos of all persuasions will be able to tell everything you need to know about a kick shot, the break, a billiard shot and a safety shot… If a Filipino emerges victorious [at the World Professional Pool Championship], expect a ticker-tape parade in Manila.”

In fact, Levine’s lament goes beyond recognizing just the great old-timers.  “Pool is dying in the US. ESPN won’t work with the men anymore…Women have to pay ESPN to be on TV.  Nobody watches, nobody cares.  The amateurs don’t even know who Johnny Archer is.  They only know the Asian Woman [Jeanette “Black Widow” Lee].

Raising the Hustler - Chris's BilliardsSo, Levine set out to make her documentary not only to honor her idols, but to honor her sport.  And, fortunately, she is the perfect person to do it. “I grew up playing with legends of the sport in Chicago.  All of the greatest players have come through or lived here, and I know most of them and could go where most couldn’t with a camera, which is why I have carte blanche access to the industry…Initially I decided to focus my documentary only on the stars around my room at Chris’s Billiards (where The Color of Money was partially filmed).  It was on a smaller scale.  Only after I started peeling the onion did I realize I had to start traveling.  And the more I did, the more I fucking cried.”

The more stories Levine told me about the pool greats, the more self-aware I became of my own pathetic lack of knowledge about them.  Leonard “Bugs” Rucker.  Santos Sambajon.  Riley “Jet” Johnson.  Sang Lee.  Freddy “the Beard” Bentivegna. The interview became a history lesson and my own personal wake-up call.

Raising the Hustler - Billy Incardona

“Pittsburgh Billy” Incardona

Unfortunately, we will all have to wait a little longer to view the complete fruits of Levine’s efforts, as she recently announced that she has postponed the release of Raising the Hustler until 2015. On the positive, she just submitted a 10-minute documentary to Sundance entitled Chasing Wincardona, which is all about the great one-pocket player “Pittsburgh Billy” Incardona.  (I look forward to reviewing that film in a subsequent post.)

If there is a tragic irony to Levine’s story, it is that since she started filming, 31 of her interview subjects have passed away.  When she told me that, I nearly collapsed, incredulous that so many greats could fade from the annals of billiards history.  But, then I also smiled, grateful that someone like Angel Levine could be so passionate and committed to make sure their stories were documented and their tales will have the chance to inspire and educate future generations of pool players.

To stay informed about Raising the Hustler, like the movie on Facebook.

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.”

 

Poolhall Junkies

“Poolhall Junkies is a porno movie for billiards fiends.”

Alas, I can’t take credit for authoring that beautiful sentiment (it belongs to the staff writer Purple for Movie Magazine), but it’s a zinger of truth.  From the opening scene, as the camera methodically, seductively explores the baize of the billiards table, the interior of the pocket, the smoothness of the rail cushion, the length of the cue, and even the symmetry of the rack, one feels they’ve entered a world of pool fetishism.  It’s no wonder that this is the mise-en-scene of the 2003 billiards movie Poolhall Junkies and the home of its star, Johnny “Sidepocket Kid” Doyle, a pool player so good that “the cue was part of his arms, the balls had eyes, and the thing that made him so good was that he thought he could never miss.”

Poolhall JunkiesIt’s also then no surprise that Doyle is played by Mars Callahan, the movie’s director and writer, and an incredible pool player in his own right.  In making the film, Callahan clearly wanted to make a billiards movie.  He used his own life growing up fatherless in Los Angeles, hustling and playing pool starting at the age of 12, to form the basis of the movie, though it would take him 10 years to get it to the silver screen.

The storyline for Poolhall Junkies is pretty simple (and often criticized for being a retread of better movies such as Rounders).  Johnny is a teen billiards prodigy who aspires to be a pool professional.  But, his “mentor” uncle Joe (the excellent Chazz Palminteri) has bigger plans to “educate” him and turn him into a pool hustler.  Fifteen years later, when Johnny breaks from his mentor, he tries to start a new life away from pool-sharking.  But, Joe, hell-bent on revenge, won’t let him leave, and sics his new protégé Brad (the head-scratchingly cast Rick Schroeder) on Johnny’s friends and family, creating for Johnny a world of debt and problems that can only be resolved in a – wait for it…you guessed it – 9-ball showdown.

Okay, so the plot is beyond predictable.  Can we move on now?  Let’s talk about the pool!  The movie is a billiards bonanza of rapid-fire strokes, rail assist jumps, table-length draws, absurd masse shots, double-bank carom shots, with some of the most eye-popping shots performed by billiards legend Robert “Cotton” LeBlanc, who not only was a technical pool advisor for the film, but also makes a cameo in the film at the Olhausen $100,000 9-ball Shootout, along with trick-shot maestro Mike Massey (as St. Louis Louis).

But, Poolhall Junkies does not just rely on professionals to dazzle.  To the contrary, the movie is notable for creating an aura of authenticity through its use of continuous wide-angle pool shots, taken not just by Callahan, but also by the other players in the movie.  Perhaps, the most famous shot in the movie is the frozen cue-ball carom kick shot shown below that Johnny uses to hustle his girlfriend’s boss at a party.

In Poolhall Junkies, this shot, which immediately inspired thousands of audience members to try to recreate it at their local pool halls, is done – on the first take, no less – by Johnny’s partner and bank-roller Mike (the scene-stealing Christopher Walken).  The shot is then repeated by Callahan…with one hand! (For a full explanation of the physics of this shot and others in the film, check out the article from Dr. David Alciatore in his series, “Billiards on the Big Screen.”)

Billiard movie aficionados will also note Callahan’s clear homage to The Color of Money in everything from the use of pool shot montages and the selection of recognizable pop songs to power the pool scenes (e.g., “Werewolves of London” in The Color of Money;  “The Payback” and “Use Me” in Poolhall Junkies) to the overt Color of Money poster in the local pool hall. More subtle tributes include the use of a deafening crack of the break to signal a one-of-a-kind pool player, as well as Johnny’s pompadour and white-on-black HUSTLER t-shirt that are reminiscent of Vince’s (Tom Cruise) bouffant hairdo and white-on-black VINCE t-shirt.

And yet, as an ode to billiards, Poolhall Junkies carries with it a negative underbelly, namely the close equation of pool with hustling.  While the movie opens with the line, “I don’t want to be a hustler. I want to be a professional,” it so romanticizes the pool-shark, with its short cons, sang-froid and hyper-masculine lifestyle, that it comes dangerously close to tainting the sport in the process.

As skilled as all the pool players are in the movie, they ultimately rely on deceit and even an old-fashioned ass-stomping to succeed.  Johnny lands a mobile-home sales job by tricking the company owner into making a bet he can’t win.  Another character wins a fast $200 by duping two guys in a drinking game.  Johnny’s brother attempts to beat Brad by only playing him on a pool-table he rigged with a crooked leg.  Brad, allegedly the 13th ranked player in the US, must resort to a cheap “four balls off the table” hustle to win money in 8-ball.  And, the most egregious example of all, in the final $100,000 showdown between Johnny and Brad, Johnny only wins because he cons his opponent into letting him take the otherwise “impossible” shot.

In this respect, it’s interesting to compare Poolhall Junkies to Anthony Palma’s 2012 movie 9-Ball.  Both movies start with a pool prodigy who wants to pursue the professional path, but is held back by a manipulative uncle intent on exploiting their skills for financial gain. In 9-Ball, league play is the path to nirvana, and the billiards professionals are portrayed as angelic messengers to aid in that pursuit.  On the contrary, in Poolhall Junkies, the professionals lie, intimidate, and even physically attack, and hustling, as evil as it may be, is the ultimate magnet and the only way to win over the girl, free the brother, and take the $100,000 pot.

Poolhall Junkies is widely available to rent or watch online or on DVD.

Poolhall Junkies

Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”

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Remember the NBC series Quantum Leap that featured the time-travelling Dr. Sam Beckett (played by Scott Bakula), forever body-hopping into history to “put right what once went wrong?” Well, whatever you thought of the show’s five-season run, make sure to steer clear of the 1990 Season 2 billiards TV episode, “Pool Hall Blues – September 4, 1954.” It is both an insult to billiards and a squandered opportunity to provide some real history on the game’s overlooked African-American greats.

The storyline is that Sam leaps into the body of Charlie “Black Magic” Walters, an African-American pool player and one of the greatest pool hustlers in America, who must try to help his granddaughter save her Chicago nightclub before it is seized by Eddie Davis, a criminal loan shark.  Unable to help his granddaughter get a loan, he acquiesces to playing the loan shark in a first-to-seven game of 9-ball, with the nightclub as the winner-takes-all stake.  The full Pool Hall Blues episode is available to purchase on YouTube.

Let’s start with the basics…if you’re going to make a billiards TV episode, get your facts chronically accurate.  It is impossible in 1954 for one of the patrons to liken Charlie to Minnesota Fats, when Walter Nevis didn’t create the fictional character until 1959, the movie The Hustler (with Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats) didn’t come out until 1961, and Rudolf Wanderone, Jr. didn’t adopt the name until sometime after the movie debuted.

Also, there are a frightening number of pool playing errors.  There is a scene when Eddie Davis breaks a 9-ball rack and we watch the 5-ball sink.   He then calls the 3-ball, a script gaffe, both because one doesn’t call shots in 9-ball, and unless he’s caroming the 1-ball into the 3-ball, this would be an illegal shot.  But then it gets preposterous.  Eddie next makes a shot in which he sinks the 5-ball (yep, the same one he already sunk) before the cue caroms into the 9-ball.   Apparently, this 5-ball has more lives than a cat, as it then re-appears on the table seconds later.  Let’s just say I’m aghast Pool Hall Blues won the 1990 Primetime Emmy Award for “Outstanding Cinematography for a Series.”

Mistakes aside, the real insult in this episode is the assumption that the mechanics of billiards – the grip, the stance, the stroke, the bridge – can be mastered overnight.  That’s the necessity since Dr. Beckett can’t shoot pool.  Fortunately, he is ludicrously assisted by Al (played by Dean Stockwell) and his Handheld, a super-computer that can show Dr. Beckett the precise angle to hit every shot.   And there you have it!  Apparently, billiards is nothing more than geometry, and that with a little help from a magic blue guide-line, one can ignore all the other mechanics and become a world-class billiards player in a day.  [SPOILER ALERT!] Even better, when the Handheld goes on the fritz, Dr. Beckett is still able to make a four-cushion rail shot to win the series.

My other disappointment with Pool Hall Blues is the squandered opportunity to educate viewers around African-American billiards players.  First, there is the character Charlie “Black Magic” Walters, who is personified (when Dr. Beckett sees his reflection in the mirror) by the very real Los Angeles pool hustler Robert “Rags” Woods.  Too bad we only see Rags in the mirror and never on the table.  Blown opportunity.

But if Charlie Walters is one of the greatest pool players ever, is he based on a real person?  We’re told he has played the greats and “beat (Willie) Mosconi in Detroit.”   But, to the best of my knowledge, Charlie Walters is both imaginary and not based on a real person.

History has not been kind to African-American billiards players.  Too few are well-known and so there are only a couple of notable candidates to contemplate.  Cisero Murphy is perhaps the most famous, as he was the first black player inducted into the Billiards Congress of America Hall of Fame.  Mosconi, in fact, played Murphy, but he would have been 17 in 1954…a little young for a granddaughter.   Another well-known player was Leonard “Chicago Bugs” Rucker, who was in fact from Chicago, where Pool Hall Blues is set.  But, he also would have been a teenager in 1954, and his game was one-pocket, not 9-ball.  Then there is James Evans, who Minnesota Fats deemed the “greatest Negro pool players who ever lived” in his book The Bank Shot and Other Great Robberies.  While Evans certainly played in the 1950s, there is a lamentable dearth of information available about his life. There are a few others from that era that get occasionally mentioned, but their stories are poorly documented.

So, if Charlie Walters is based on a real player, it’s not clear to me who it was, making it certainly a missed educational opportunity.  But, then again, maybe that person wouldn’t want to be associated with this terrible episode anyway.

Sanford and Son – “A House is not a Poolroom”

There are no amazing billiards shots. There are no dark, musty barrooms.  There are no cameos from billiards professionals.  There is no mention of Brunswick or Olhausen or Viking, just a nameless fold-up pool table and four cues protruding from a milk crate.  But, “A House is not a Poolroom,” the November 1973 episode of Season 3 of the sitcom Sanford and Son is great billiards TV all the same.

Sanford and Son - Billiards TVThe premise of the episode is that after Lamont (Demond Wilson) gets his father Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) a pool table for his birthday, he neither can get his father away from the table to attend to his family responsibilities, nor can he get any peace and privacy in house, since his father’s gaggle of friends have now ‘moved in’ to use the table.

Of course, what makes this individual episode hilarious (available below in its entirety) is the same ingredient that worked so well for Sanford and Son during most of its 6-year run: the brilliant comedian Redd Foxx, who helped turn racial prejudices on their head through Fred Sanford’s in-your-face antics, quick-witted tongue, conniving personality, and over-the-top selfishness.

http://youtu.be/eHs_KJnOAF8

Billiards, a sport requiring incredible mental stamina, has always provided a great stage for taunts, boasts, jests, and, in general, any kind of oral one-upmanship. (For a refresher, check out how Jonathan Winters rattles Jack Klugman in the seminal billiards TV Twilight Zone episode “A Game of Pool.”)

In “A House is not a Poolroom,” Redd Foxx unleashes his acerbic wit on his friend Grady with one-liners such as, “I’ll whip you like I was your daddy”; “I can roll you big fat guys up into one big round ball, and use you for a cue stick and beat both of you”; and “Grady, I could beat you blind-folded, one arm tied behind me, and the other one in a cast wearing armored shoes in the hospital having an emergency appendectomy.”

The other wonderfully humorous thing about the episode is how it captures the lure of pool.  Once the table is in the house, Fred ignores all his other responsibilities, as well as his romantic interest Donna, to keep playing.  The table becomes Mecca for his friends.  In fact, the cruel irony is that Fred must ultimately get rid of the table, lest he have to keep putting out money to feed his friends.

Finally, it’s worth noting that “A House is not a Poolroom” was likely the first in a history of black sitcom episodes to prominently feature billiards.  Three years later, there was another Sanford and Son TV episode indirectly about billiards called “Carol.”  And then in the ‘90s, billiards was prominently featured both on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (“Bank Shots” (1991)) and twice on The Steve Harvey Show (“Pool Sharks Git Bit” (1996) and “What You Won’t Cue For Love” (1998)).  Were there others?  Let me know.

9-Ball (billiards movie)

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Though 12 different billiards movies have been released since Poolhall Junkies in 2003 (Don’t believe me?  Check my list.), the only one that really catalyzed the billiards community with anticipation and passion was the most recent one, the 2012 billiards movie 9-Ball, written and directed by Tony Palma.

9-Ball with Jennifer Barretta - Billiards MovieIt wasn’t just that the film starred Women’s Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) pool professional Jennifer “9mm” Barretta as the lead, or that Allison “The Dutchess of Doom” Fisher and Jeanette “Black Widow” Lee, perhaps the two most famous women in billiards, were going to appear in the movie.  It wasn’t even that the American Poolplayers Association (APA), the world’s largest pool league, was a sponsor of the movie (though it significantly helped that the APA marketed the movie to its 265,000 members).   It was that the movie sought to show pool as a professional sport.  As Palma told me, “I wanted to take the essence of pool out of the smoky backroom bar scene and shine a bright spotlight on it…I wanted to focus on one woman’s dream of becoming a professional pool player.”

This proven, well-worn theme of an aspiring athlete overcoming obstacles to pursue a dream is so recognizable in cinema, from Rocky to Rudy, from Hoosiers to Hoop Dreams, yet it had never been done in billiards, a sport that is too often derided as a barroom game with professional players too often caricatured as hustlers.  (Yes, the movie The Hustler likely contributed more to the popularity of pool than any other single event, but it also did reinforce the stereotype.)

Under this lens, it’s clear why the APA sponsored the film, why the Billiard Congress of America (BCA) endorsed the film, and why interest and enthusiasm abounded from all across the globe, years before the film even began shooting.  Similarly, it’s why individuals like Allison Fisher and Jeanette Lee lent their name.  According to Palma, “[Jeanette] felt the movie would be beneficial to pool…She felt it would get people interested in playing in an organized league…she felt it told a very positive story about pool and about women in pool.”

For those not familiar with the movie, it follows the life of a young Gail (played by Barretta), who is left in the care of her creepy uncle Joey (played by Kurt Hanover), after her father is murdered.  The uncle, sensing great pool skills in his niece, turns her onto the life of hustling and uses her as a way to make money for himself.  But, as Gail gets older, she aspires to break out of that lifestyle and join the APA to become a professional 9-ball champion.

(Interestingly, Poolhall Junkies also is about a skilled billiards player who dreams of becoming a professional, but has his plans sabotaged by his mentor/trainer, also named Joe.  Of course, that’s where the similarities between the two movies stop, and as we all know, Poolhall Junkies ultimately presented a far less positive portrayal of league play/players.)

9-Ball took Palma almost 5 years and a budget just under $1 million to make, such was the challenge of “independently writing, casting, directing and producing a dramatic, contemporary, character-driven feature film.” Financing was a big issue.  Fortunately, Palma produced a trailer from some of the original scenes that generated excitement and ultimately landed him an angel investor.

With all the anticipating mounting for so long, it is not a surprise that when the movie was finally released in November, 2012, reviews ran the gamut (as you can clearly see on IMDB or Amazon).  Regardless of whether the movie is a little too “feel-good,” my primary criticism of 9-Ball is the sheer lack of pool.  In my interviews with both Palma and Barretta, they dismissed this criticism.  “It’s really a character-driven story more than it’s a story about pool,” said Palma.  Barretta also said, “It’s not a movie about pool, it’s a movie with pool in it.  I don’t think a montage of fancy shots will help tell the story.  Nobody is impressed by them.”  But, given the movie’s noble purpose, I wish the movie had emphasized and shown in much greater detail the beauty, skill and art of an exceptional game of billiards.  Of course, Martin Scorsese did this exceptionally in The Color of Money, as did Mars Callahan in Poolhall Junkies.  But, even a little known film like Carambola (2005) figured out how to weave in incredible examples of three-cushion shots.  In 9-Ball, Barretta’s final rail shot is a stunner, but it’s a rare treat.

On the other hand, I think too many of the movie’s harshest critics did not understand Palma’s underlying objective to “shine a bright spotlight on pool…and to talk about a sport that is deserving of being in the Olympics.” Measured against this goal, I give the movie high marks, and I join the thousands of others around the world who, according to Palma, have sent emails and Facebook messages saying how much they appreciated the portrayal of billiards in 9-Ball and its obvious respect and love for the sport.

To conclude, I want to share the sentiments expressed by Michael J’s Cues in Toledo, Ohio. “Overall in my opinion this movie promotes the game and that is great for the business of billiards…An honest reflection of the game as it stands today!! The game of billiards needs to be shown more as a game the whole family can enjoy.”.

To watch or purchase 9-Ball, go to Tubi or Roku.  You can also join the 9-Ball community on its Facebook page or follow 9-Ball on Twitter (@9Ballthemovie).

Special congratulations to Jeanette Lee, who appeared in 9-Ball, for her induction just days ago into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame.

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.

Pat & Mat – “Billiard” (billiards TV)

Ever since the stop-motion animated sequences of billiard balls jumping off the table and re-racking themselves in the 1915 short film Pool Sharks, billiards and animation have been recurrent bedfellows.  From the traditional animation of the Tom & Jerry episode “Cue Ball Cat” in 1950 to the anime of Death Billiards in 2013, billiards and animation have supported one another in their pursuit of motion.  After all, without movement, there is neither billiards nor animation.

Pat & MatSo, it’s a not a surprise that the highly popular Czech stop-motion animated television series, Pat & Mat includes a memorable and award-winning episode “Billiard” (or “Kulečník” in Czech). Created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladmír Jiránek in 1976, Pat & Mat features two handymen who encounter self-made problems and then hatch Rube Goldbergian solutions that then spiral into more problems.  Throughout a 7-9 minute episode, the two handymen never get discouraged and often their imaginative solutions are far more interesting than the original problem.

In the case of the 1994 episode “Billiard” (shown in its entirety below), the predicament begins when one of the legs on Pat and Mat’s new billiards table falls off.  Unable to reconnect it, they attempt to level the table with books under one corner.  When it’s still uneven, they proceed to elevate all sides with books, then elevate themselves with a crate, which then has the unintended effect of causing them to puncture holes in the ceiling, break the television, lose a ball down the toilet, and even explode a ball in the fireplace (apparently verifying the old urban legend about flammable cue balls). Unfazed by the self-imposed destruction to both their new table and their house, the episode culminates with them cheerily using the one remaining billiard ball to play a crude form of bowling outdoors.

 

Aside from an immensely humorous way to spend 8 minutes (note: the show was initially conceived for adults), the “Billiard” episode also provides a great lesson in billiards education.  In July, I guest wrote an article for About.com entitled “A Billiards Education in Movies.” The article’s main premise is that people could learn a lot about alternate forms of billiards, as opposed to the common pocket billiards games (e.g., 8-ball, 9-ball, straight pool) from watching specific billiards movies and TV episodes (e.g., the Italian carom billiards game goriziani from the movie The Pool Hustlers).

In “Billiard,” Pat and Mat purchase a pocketless table that includes only 4 balls (2 white, 1 red, and 1 blue).  As it turns out, they are preparing to play destíkový carambol, which is Czech for “tenfold carom,” a variation of the carom billiards game four-ball.  According to Wikipedia, in four-ball, “each player is assigned one of the white balls as his own cue ball. A point is scored when a shooter caroms on any two other balls. Two points are scored when the player caroms on each of the three other balls.”  But in the Czech version, “a hit off all three balls, however, scores 10 points, one point shot and 10 points shot is doubled by hitting a cushion before hitting any of the other balls for a total of 2 or 20 points in one shot.”

So, the next time you consider disapproving of a cartoon, just remember…there might be a billiards education waiting for you.

[Wanted!] The Player

Author’s Note: With the discovery and April 2024 release of “The Player,” 53 years after it’s initial limited showing, please also read my follow-up post to the post below.

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Among the world’s greatest unresolved mysteries is the identity of the Zodiac serial killer, the location of the Bermuda Triangle, and the translation of the Voynich Manuscript.  But, equally high up on that list is another perplexing mystery:  Whatever happened to the 1971 billiards movie The Player?

The Player - billiards movieFor a while, the pursuit of this movie was a periodic topic of discussion within the most popular billiards forums, such as AZ Billiards and Inside Pool Magazine.  Often, the initial thread began with the question, “Has anyone heard of this movie The Player? I’d really love to see it.”  This was then followed by a bandwagon of “Me too!” or “I’m also interested” responses, before someone dropped the hammer and shared that he’s already been searching for this movie for some time and has run into nothing but dead ends.

What is the fascination with The Player?  Why does this long-lost billiards movie produce such passion, craving and rumors, whereas other “missing” billiards movies, such as Lemon Tree Billiards House (1996) or Running Out (2001) evoke nary a whisper?  Finally, does it still exist?

Here’s what we know: The Player, was directed and written by Thomas DeMartini, a man with no prior or posterior film credits.  The main cast included Jerry Como, Rae Phillips, and Carey Wilmot, all people who again had no previous or subsequent acting experience.

But, the remaining two cast members, who played themselves in the film, were a completely different story.  First, there was “Gentleman Jack” Colavita, a Tri-State straight pool champion.  And then there was Rudolf Wanderone Jr., aka “Minnesota Fats,” one of the most famous pocket billiards players of that era.  Though he never won a major tournament, he gained great fame in the early ‘60s by claiming the Minnesota Fats character in The Hustler was based on him.  And he then parlayed that fame into a series of book deals and television appearances, including the Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats game show and a guest spot on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

While there have been many billiards movies that star pool professionals (e.g., Jennifer Barretta in 9-Ball; Jimmy White in The Legend of the Dragon; Efren Reyes in Pakners; Marcello Lotti in The Pool Hustlers) The Player is the only movie that starred Minnesota Fats.  Even juicier, it billed him as “The greatest pool hustler in the greatest pool movie.”

According to the Temple of Schlock’s “Endangered List,”  the movie was about a down-and-out professional pool player who, struggling with his relationship, hits the road, resorts to hustling, and makes a series of bad decisions (including challenging Minnesota Fats) that only worsen his situation.

Beyond the appeal of Fats and the hustler storyline, the excitement about this billiards movie has grown because of the confusion around its release.  For example, the Turner Classics Movie website mistakenly says it was released in 1972.  And, within online forums, some people incorrectly argue the movie was never actually released.  But, from the various first-hand testimonies I’ve read, it’s clear the movie showed at a few private screenings in 1971 and 1972 in the Southeast at theaters owned by the family of the movie’s producer, George Ogden, though it never had a mainstream release.

The Player - billiards movieBut here is where the story turns tragic, as it appears this billiards movie will never become viewable again, based on the investigatory work done by Craig Rittel, owner of Full Splice Billiards in Lakewood, Washington.  He has done considerable research, talking to industry professionals and tracking down people involved with the film.  According to his online posts (and some of my own research), we know:

  • There were management problems, presumably within International Cinema, the movie’s production company, that led to the film getting shelved. International Cinema no longer exists.  It was merged with RSL Entertainment in 1985 to form Alliance Entertainment, now the largest wholesale distributor of home entertainment audio and video software in the United States.
  • Producer George Ogden was believed to have the original film. He passed away years ago, and the only thing found among his estate related to The Player was a framed poster.
  • The Ogden Theater in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which privately screened The Player, closed in 1985.
  • There is no information that can be learned from the main cast and crew members. The director Thomas DeMartini is deceased (date unknown), Minnesota Fats died in 1996, and “Gentleman Jack” Colavita died in 2005.  In fact, Colavita’s son, Jack, has also unsuccessfully tried to find the film.
  • Even the Jackson Mall Cinema, another of the few venues that did a private screening of the film, is no longer around. It is now a medical center.

So, that’s where the story ends…or does it?  If there is a lesson to be learned from the 2012 smash documentary Searching for Sugarman about the hunt to find the singer Rodriguez, or the 2002 documentary Stone Reader, which details one person’s quest to find the author of a well-received novel from 30 years ago, it’s that maybe, just maybe, with a lot of sleuthing and a lot of luck, something seemingly gone forever will show up again one day.  We can only hope.

[Periodically, I will publish posts on movies that I have been unable to find and watch.  These are part of my “Wanted!” series. If you have any information about a “Wanted!” movie, please contact me.  I will be most grateful.]

Jennifer Barretta: A League of Her Own

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Here’s a pop quiz.  Name a professional athlete who appeared in a movie.

There have been a considerable number over the years, ranging from the highly indelible (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as co-pilot Roger Murdock in Airplane) to the highly forgettable (Shaquille O’Neal as the title genie in Kazaam).  And the list goes on… Jim Brown, Carl Weathers, Ray Allen, OJ Simpson, Michael Irvin, Jason Lee, Howie Long, Michael Jordan…

OK, now name a professional female athlete who appeared in a movie.

Wow.  That’s much tougher.  Well, there’s the former mixed martial artist Gina Carano from Haywire.  And, there’s Esther Williams, the competitive swimmer who starred in films in the ‘40s and ‘50s.  Umm…

Fortunately, also at the top of that short list belongs Women’s Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) tour professional Jennifer Barretta, the star of last year’s highly anticipated movie 9-Ball. She not only appeared in the movie, but headlined it.  And, she did it while continuing to play professional pool, rather than the more common path of retiring to pursue an acting career. This puts her in a very small pantheon of athletes, male or female.  (Interestingly, she is joined by one other professional billiards player, Efren Reyes, who starred in Pakners, a 2003 movie from the Philippines.)

The irony is that Barretta’s starring role almost never happened.

A week ago, right before she departed for the 9 Ball Women’s World Championships in Shenyang, China as one of only 4 Americans representing the USA, I had the distinct pleasure to interview  Barretta about her experience filming and starring as Gail in 9-Ball.

“[Director] Tony [Palma] had asked [professional billiards player] Karen Corr to do a walk-on. He then asked her if she knew other players.  She thought of me.  So I came expecting to do a walk-on.  But, when I got there, Tony said he wanted me to read for the role of Gail.  Like now…And the next thing I knew, I had gotten the lead role as Gail.”

As excited as Barretta was to have been chosen, she was also skeptical. “Not everyone can get a pool movie made,” she said.  In fact, that skepticism was initially well-placed, as it was years between the audition and the actual filming.  “I had actually given up on the role.”

It was to Barretta’s great surprise then when she got a call from Palma years later saying he was proceeding with the movie.  “I thought I was going to show up in Maryland and he would maybe have a handy-cam.  But, I got there, and there was set design, grips, gaffers…it was a real movie.”

9-Ball with Jennifer Barretta - Billiards MovieFor those not familiar with the movie, it follows the life of a young Gail, who is left in the care of her creepy uncle, after her father is murdered.  The uncle, sensing great pool skills in his niece, turns her onto the life of hustling and uses her as a way to make money for himself.  But, as Gail gets older, she aspires to break out of that lifestyle and join the American Poolplayers Association (APA) to become a professional 9-ball champion.

For Barretta, playing a pool-player was not the challenge.  In fact, as someone who had started in the APA, Gail’s quest was familiar.  “The real challenge was playing someone who had been so emotionally abused…It was exciting to act and be somebody so different.  I got to test the limits of what I was capable of.”

The real challenge in playing Gail (or simply committing to star in the film) was the potential disruption to her own practice and tournament schedule.  In 2012, Barretta was the 7th-highest ranked player on the WPBA tour.  As one would imagine, that level of excellence requires constant practice.  For Barretta, it’s typically 5-8 hours a day, including honing particular self-defined weaknesses each year.  “I study pool like an education,” she says.  “I set goals.  Every year, I pick one thing.  This year, it’s my break. I’ll do just breaks for 2 hours straight.  I have a break trainer.”

Fortunately, when it came time to shoot scenes, director Palma was very sensitive to Barretta’s schedule.  “Before he booked shots, he would make sure I was free.  We would be away for 2 weeks tops over the 2 years.  Otherwise, when I’m home, I practice.”  Of course, that’s not to say the shooting never interfered.  “There was one time when we filmed and then I got home and went to Vegas the very next day [for a tournament].  But, it’s worth it…how many times in a life can you do a movie?”

Critical reaction to the movie was mixed, but for Barretta, the film has had a tremendous personal impact, including among her peers. “I was recently out in Vegas for the biggest amateur and professional pool event.  I could feel the difference.  I was treated like a movie star.  So many people came up to me.  I had professionals come up to me, asking me to sign a copy of their movie.  I think a lot people [in the billiards community] have seen it.”

Jennifer Barretta

Carlos Luna Photography

Whether the movie has had a broader impact on the popularity of billiards, similar to what occurred after The Hustler and The Color of Money were released, is harder to gauge.  “It’s tough to say if it had an impact.  Either way, people are playing, and it’s available in millions of households.  It’s like when Poolhall Junkies came out.  This is a movie available worldwide with a touch of a button.”

For Barretta, it was an incredible experience that has gotten her more interested in acting.  Fans should expect to see her in a couple of small roles in some upcoming films, and she’s more than eager to reprise her role as Gail if Palma films a sequel. But, otherwise, she won’t be trading in her cue stick for the big screen any time soon.  “It’s not like I’m going to run out and get an agent.”

To learn more about Jennifer Barretta, visit her website.  To learn more about the movie 9-Ball, read this blog for my upcoming review in 2 weeks that includes an interview with the director Tony Palma.  You can also like the movie on Facebook.

A version of this article will also appear later this week on About.com in the highly engaging Pool and Billiards section.