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The Day Lufberry Won It All

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In 2010, Roy C. Booth, a prolific writer of fiction, fantasy and horror, as well as a poet, journalist, and playwright with 57 published stage plays, turned his attention to movie directing and made the 20-minute short billiards film The Day Lufberry Won It All. 

Created on an estimated budget of $300, the movie feels like an amateur, inferior mash-up of the Australian dystopian billiards movie Hard Knuckle and the classic The Twilight Zone episode “A Game of Pool.” Hard Knuckle was pretty bad, and this is much worse; it’s not in the same universe as The Twilight Zone, but few billiards episodes are.

Yet, for all the terrible acting, stilted dialogue, and crude special effects, the film also feels wonderfully indifferent to its audience, as if it were not made to be watched by anyone but an exclusive group of scientifictionists and comic buffs (as well as local friends from Bemidji, Minnesota) who appreciate its literary code and are privy to its inside joke.

The Day Lufberry Won It All takes place ten years after an unspecified event “scorched the earth beyond recognition,” leaving the strong to inherit the planet and those without tradeable skills to perish.  Books are the new currency, reflecting a forgotten time. Across this bleak landscape walks Lufberry, a hippyish cross between Donald Sutherland and The Fonz. He can outrun a helmeted hooligan, negotiate with a lacrosse-stick wielding bandit, and refuse the seductions of the local streetwalkers. But, most important, he brandishes a cue stick. 

Lufberry’s peregrination takes him to a nameless basement bar, where he can trade two of his books for a chance to hustle pool. But, this is no Book of Eli. The unfamiliar books he offers include The Plea of Apollisian (about a child who “will be born to the fallen mistress of mercy”) by Shane Walker; Feminine Wiles (a 16-tale anthology of “ladies of darkness, women of horror, sisters of the night”) by John Grover; a book imprinted with a Heuer Publishing logo; and most important, The Monster Within Idea (a collection of stories about “monsters born of the human mind”) by R. Thomas Riley.

Here is where the encoded back slaps and head nods abound. For starters, one of the stories from The Monster Within Idea is “The Day Lufberry Won It All.” Mr. Riley also co-authored the novel Diaphanous with Mr. Booth.  And who better to leave a review of Diaphanous than Feminine Wiles author John Grover? Shane Walker writes the Abyss Walker series, which was expected to feature a forthcoming short story from Mr. Booth called “Privateer: The Maiden Voyage.” As for Heuer Publishing? They are a century-old publishing house serving the educational and community theater markets. Oh yeah, they also have published seven of Mr. Booth’s plays.

Moving beyond the choice book sampling, Mr. Riley also plays the aforementioned “helmeted hooligan,” who should not be confused with the “lacrosse bandit,” played by the director Mr. Booth. And if that’s not sufficiently familial, then keep an eye open for Mr. Booth’s wife and three children, all who also appear as part of the supporting cast!

Now, back at the bar, things get very weird as a nattily dressed patron named Garth Deon initially challenges Lufberry to a “race to five, alternate breaks on shots, no time limits, foul on all balls, one timeout per rack, with a one game sudden death tiebreaker.” But, Garth then suggests they spice it up by having the winner get the other’s “chi, neshamah, soul.” Garth talks in outdated slang, using phrases like “ain’t that groovy,” “joshing,” “easy peasy,” and “fair and square.” Lufberry seems unfazed by both the colloquialisms and the life-or-death wager, but awestruck by Garth’s “uncanny, uncommonly good” playing. I found that hard to swallow. The only thing uncanny is how bad is the pool-playing as well as the multiple unimaginative pool-pocketing montages.  

I won’t spoil the ending, but it involves the revelation that Garth Deon is an anagram of “THE DRAGON,” and there is a guy named Saint Michael who has a vested interest in the outcome of the match. 

Finally, I want to extend a huge thank you to Mitch Berntson, the producer and cinematographer of The Day Lufberry Won It All. After my attempts to locate the movie online failed, I reached out to Mr. Booth, who put me in touch with Mr. Berntson. He graciously offered to go through old drives to locate the film and burn a copy for me. 

Billiards, Korean Style

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Almost 7000 miles away, the billiards market is booming in Korea, as recently reported by the Seoul Daily News.  About 16 percent of the population enjoys playing the sport, especially various versions of carom billiards, such as three-cushion, pocketball and sagu.1

Sang Lee, who moved from Korea to New York at the age of 33, was dubbed the “Michael Jordan of three-cushion billiards” in the ‘90s, winning 12  consecutive United States Billiard Association National Three-Cushion Championships as well as the Three-Cushion World Cup-Champion in 1993.

Other Korean players, while not yet household names, have ascended in the ranks, including “Little Devil Girl” Kim Ga-young, Kim Haeng-jik,  Jae-Ho Cho, Cha Yu-ram, and Cambodian-born Sruong Pheavy.2 Kim Kyung-roul was another up-and-coming master, until he tragically died falling out of his apartment window at the age of 34.

Given the sport’s increasing popularity and rising young stars, it’s not surprising to see a wide array of Korean movies and television shows, ranging from cartoons to reality shows to dramas, featuring billiards. Most I’ve watched; one continues to elude my grasp; all present a panoply of billiards viewing, both good and bad.

Cue

The earliest example I’ve discovered of billiards on celluloid in Korea is the 1996 drama Cue.  Incredibly little is known about the film, except that it focused on “personal and professional jealousies in the high-stakes world of competitive pool, in which a female player seeks to become champion after the long-reigning champ is defeated.” Cue is not even listed on the IMDB filmography for the movie’s lead actor Lee Deok-Hwa. If you have any information on this movie, please share with me.

Bernard – “Billiards”

Known as Backkom in its native South Korea, the South Korean-Spanish-France computer animated television Bernard series centers on a curious polar bear named Bernard, whose bumbling slapstick antics typically result in the bear being knocked unconscious or being severely injured by the end of an episode.

In the “Billiards” episode, which aired sometime between 2006 and 2012, Bernard competes in a game of nine-ball against his lizard pal Zack.  Bernard has a strong break and some modicum of talent, but he’s no match for his lacertilian opponent. His attempts to sabotage Zack’s game appear to work until Bernard slips on a discarded ball, banging his head on the side table, and falling unconscious. The episode is available to watch here.

High Kick 3: Revenge of the Short Legged – “Episode 40”

The South Korean sitcom, High Kick 3, aired from September 2011 to March 2012. In those seven months, there were 123 episodes, including “Episode 40,” in which Kang Seung Yun declares himself an unbeatable “pool genius,” a “pool god…born with a pool stick in his hand.” Unconvinced, Dr. Yoon Gye Sang, a “master of studying,” challenges Seung Yun, proffering that anyone can play pool based on understanding the science and reading the books. He avers, “A smart person who understands the equation can possibly do better with less practice.”

Their classmates choose sides and place bets, with the loser owing the winner a chicken dinner. As it turns out, Seung Yun shoots a mean game of three-cushion billiards.  Dr. Yoon, not so much.  After blabbering calculations about the average number of shots required and commenting on the “tripod grip” for maximum effect, he scratches on the first shot, and it’s all downhill from there. Episode 40 is available to watch here.

Long Inside Angle Shot

In 2014, the New York Asian Film Festival, widely revered for its showings of many first-and-only screenings of Eastern Asian and Southeast Asian cinema, premiered Long Inside Angle Shot from Korea’s Mise-en-scène Short Film Festival.

Released in 2012, the film focuses on a middle-aged woman who seemingly does nothing but watch sagu, a variant of four-ball billiards, on the television. Initially believing she does not even understand the sport, her son Tae-bong realizes this is more than a passive hobby of hers when she reveals to him she has drained his bank account to purchase a new billiards hall.  The impetus for the idea was a dream she had in which a Buddhist monk played billiards with a wooden cane.

Unfortunately, the dream didn’t include customers, and tensions mount with the pair’s increasing poverty. But, Tae-bong’s disbelief and rage is put in check after his mother challenges him to a game of sagu, and he appreciates that her TV-watching intensity is matched by her incredible billiards acumen. She not only makes a beautiful masse shot, but also the titular long inside angle shot.

The movie is available to watch below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eTJCQr_NaQ

 

Drama Stage – “Not Played”

Lasting four seasons, Drama Stage was a South Korean weekly television program that featured ten one-act dramas per season. The first season included the 2018 episode “Not Played” about a woman in her 60s (Won Mi Kyung) who, having spent her life caring for children and housekeeping, accidentally stumbles across a part-time job at a billiard hall and discovers her talent for the sport. 

Initially apprehensive, she begins to secretly practice three-cushion billiards in the after hours, and watches tournament footage to improve her fundamentals.  When the hall’s proprietor learns of her innate skills, he trains her and encourages her to go all-in. Soon, she is competing against local sharks and, to the dismay of her husband, considering entering a tournament. 

I give a lot of originality points to the premise of this episode. Not a lot of billiards shows feature women; none star sexagenerians, though ironically the sagu-playing mother of Long Inside Angle Shot was probably pretty close in age. “Not Played” also avoids all the standard tropes of hustling, barrooms, trick shots, down-and-out players, and chooses instead to focus on an individual who discovers a newfound passion late in her life. 

Unfortunately, YouTube’s closed caption auto-translate subtitles were pretty muddled, so most of the dialogue was lost in translation. You can watch the full episode below.

Sixball

My favorite billiards film to come out of South Korea is Sixball, which was released in May 2020. This feature-length film from director Chae Ki-jun focuses on Sung-hoon (Lee Dae-han), a one-time aspiring professional billiards player whose dreams were shattered (and hand was broken) after getting cheated in a game of sixball by the gangster Mr. Yong (Hong Dal-pyo). As Sung-hoon is eventually lured back to billiards by his friend, who promises him the opportunity to make easy money betting in doubles billiards, he also finds himself with the perfect revenge opportunity, if he can survive his ultimate billiards match. 

While the plot is formulaic, Sixball works because it energetically doubles-down on certain high-octane elements, such as elegant straight rail carom billiards matches, a menacing and villainous adversary, layers of voyeurism and fetishism of women, and a riveting climactic match with one jaw-dropper of a shot.  You can read my full review here.

L.O.Λ.E STORY: INSIDE OUT – “Ready, Cue! Pocket Billiard”

Rounding out the septet is L.O.Λ.E STORY: INSIDE OUT, a new variety web series that portrays a more humble side to JR, Aron, Baekho, Minhyun, and Ren, the five members of the South Korean boy band NU’EST. 

The fifth webisode is “Ready, Cue! Pocket Billiard,” which aired in June 2021. It already has 85,000 views and more than 8,000 likes, but I found it beyond painful to watch (though I recognize I’m hardly the target demographic). In Ready, Cue!… the five musicians meet in a billiards hall. Initially they attempt to play carom billiards, but quickly give up and switch tables to play eight-ball.  However, each of the players is worse than the next, so there is an insufferable litany of misses, scratches, miscues, often replayed with sound effects. There is a twist toward the end as Minhyun starts making his shots, making the others question if he was hustling them. But, I was more concerned with how many more minutes of this series I needed to endure. You can watch the full episode here.

  1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049761/south-korea-billiards-participation-rate-by-age/
  2. Of course, the world’s most well-known Korean player is likely “The Black Widow” Jeanette Lee. However, she was born in Brooklyn, New York.

Top of the Heap – “Behind the Eight Ball”

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Top of the Heap is truly the bottom of the barrel.

Granted, I only watched “Behind the Eight Ball,” the series’ third episode that aired in April, 1991.  But, there is a reason this Married… with Children spinoff only lasted seven episodes. It’s comedic dregs, sitcom sludge, the sort of show even a laugh track finds humorless.

Top of the Heap focuses on the attempts of Charlie Verducci (Joseph Bologna) and his son Vinnie (Matt LeBlanc)—to get rich. Charlie’s “master plan” is for Vinnie to marry into a wealthy family; to this end, the father-son duo tries to break into high society, which includes Vinnie getting a job at a country club and Charlie pining for the club’s manager Alixandra Stone (Rita Moreno).

(How Mr. LeBlanc ever rebounded from this dumpster fire to join the cast of Friends three years later and ultimately earn $1 million per episode defies explanation.)

In “Behind the Eight Ball,” Charlie is concerned that Alixandra may have eyes for Warren Prado, a wealthy new club member, so Charlie tries to hustle him in a game of nineball.  However, after witnessing someone call the man “Godfather” and kiss his hand, he quickly starts to backpedal, fearing for his life and “spelling help in [his] underwear.”

The acting is robotic, and the jokes are cringeworthy, but there are few highlights worth mentioning. Joey Lauren Adams plays Vinnie’s high school-aged neighbor (two years before her first major role in Dazed and Confused); Christina Applegate, reprising her Kelly Bundy role, appears for continuity’s sake; and two former Playboy models, Heather Parkhurst and a 24-year-old Pamela Anderson, show up to… show off. There are also two enjoyable trick shots, including one (seen here) that entails hitting five balls into four pockets with one shot.

But it’s hard to muster a smile amidst the egregious billiards inaccuracies, such as when the cue ball is ricocheted into a nearby aquarium and then miraculously appears on the table in the next shot. Or, in a game of nine-ball, when Charlie’s opponent sinks the nine with the cue, while leaving the two on the table (?!).

William Finnegan, The “Godfather of Pool”

It’s hardly a spoiler, but Mr. Prado turns out not to be that kind of godfather, but rather just some bub’s male sponsor. Of course, this got me thinking: what is the relation between billiards and criminal godfathers? Or, even better, between billiards and The Godfather? 

For starters, several players have adopted the nickname “The Godfather,” including Taiwan’s Zhuang Zhiyuan and the Phillipines’ Aristeo “Putch” Puyat. Readers of my blog may also recall Steinway-Café Billiards regular William Finnegan, the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Pool,” who has appeared in multiple billiards reality shows, including The Hustlers, the “Emily” episode of In A Man’s World, and Kiss of Death.

Though none of these individuals appear connected to the mafia, the game of billiards has on occasion been associated with illegal activity, specifically gambling.  So much so that in the 1920s, the Illinois Billiards Association was committed to keeping crime and booze out of billiards halls, as part of their “clean billiards crusade.” And before Johnny Torrio built the Chicago Outfit and turned loose his protégé Al Capone, he got his start in crime by opening a local pool hall in New York, where he ran an illegal gambling operation.  More recently, Gerald Huber recounts many “war stories” of billiards, gambling, and mobsters in his autobiography The Green Felt Jungle.

Unfortunately, Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola chose to ignore the underworld billiards connection in writing and directing The Godfather movies.

Andy Garcia looking bored in “The Godfather III”

While plenty of gangster films have noteworthy billiards scenes (e.g, Mean Streets; The Krays; The Departed), the only billiards scene in Mr. Coppola’s trilogy is an unmemorable dialogue in The Godfather III between Connie Corleone (Talia Shire) and her nephew Vincent (Andy Garcia), while he is playing pool. 

That’s a shame, given the iconic Hearst Estate mansion that was used in The Godfather as the home of movie producer Jack Woltz included a 32-foot-high billiards room. 

It’s not like the Corleones – or at least, the actors who played them – didn’t know how to shoot billiards.

Marlon Brando in “Viva Zapata”

Twenty years before Marlon Brando became the Don, he was playing pool off set with his Viva Zapata co-star Anthony Quinn. So too did Robert DeNiro, the younger Vito of The Godfather II. He was quite happy at the table, as seen in The Deer Hunter. 

Sonny Corleone’s gangster career may have been short-lived, but actor James Caan moved forward, picking up a cue stick one year later in Cinderella Liberty and then again – on horseback! – in Another Man, Another Chance. And, the incoming godfather, Al Pacino, makes one of the best “magic time” shots in eightball a decade later as Carlito Brigante in Carlito’s Way.

As for Fredo…poor Fredo. He wanted to be at the top of heap, but he took sides against the family and truly wound up behind the eight ball.

The “Behind the Eight Ball” episode of Top of the Heap is available to watch on Crackle.

Unknown Life

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In popular culture, billiards is lamentably often narrowly associated with hustling, gambling, seediness and squalor.  From the earliest billiards movie, Bad Boy,  to the genre’s most recent addition, Sixball, these themes run frequent and deep. Yet, the metaphoric application of billiards can be so much broader, as its imagery and language far transcend these limited tropes.

Robert R. Craven, a professor at New Hampshire College, hit on this in his 1980 essay, “Billiards, Pool, and Snooker Terms in Everyday Use.”  He noted the sheer number of colloquialisms – e.g., behind the eightball; call the shots – that are used in general discourse, presumably by an audience that is far larger than the number who play pool. These phrases have become metaphorical, existing beyond the poolroom.

While exceptions to the rule, some movies have sidestepped these historic stereotypes to use billiards as an opportunity for the discussion of larger themes. Martin Lawrence’s exposition from Boomerang on how billiards represents our racist society is a classic and humorous example. “The white ball dominates everything…and the game is over when the white ball drives the black ball completely off the table…it’s the white man’s fear of the sexual potency of the black man’s balls.”

Across the annals of lesser-known billiards movies and short films, there are other exemplifications. The “Game of Pool” episode of The Twilight Zone (1961), as well as the anime short film Death Billiards (2013), both tackles issues of fate and mortality through an individual pool match. Toby Younis’ short film Pool and Life (2011) uses the game of pool as a metaphor for overcoming the obstacles that life places in front of you. Louis-Jack’s short film Petrichor (2020) masterfully leverages snooker to discuss mental health.

To this list, we can add the 2017 Armenian short film Unknown Life. A trailer of the movie is available here.

Directed by Rusanna Danielian, a prolific filmmaker who has directed 48 short movies since 2014 and has not yet even turned 40, Unknown Life focuses on Adam, who has something very strange occur on his 50th birthday. While he is waiting for his computer to reboot, his three strongest personality traits come to life and opt to decide his fate over a game of Russian billiards. Adam’s internal snooker match represents the critical decisions we make in life, in which there is mental arm-wrestling among the rationalist (who lives/works for the future), the worrier (who holds on to the past), and the dreamer (who wants to enjoy the present).

In a Facebook Messenger exchange, Ms. Danielian explained to me why she chose to use a snooker as metaphor.

In the film’s reality, it is only one man playing billiards against himself. But in the fantasy world, the game takes place between three of his dominant character traits…Depending on who has the better argument in their conversation…determines who] gets a ball in. That was the concept around the billiard game I came up with to show which one of his character traits “wins” the game in a metaphorical way and decides about his life on a psychological level.

Also my protagonist stands for a man who has reached a lot of success in his life, but isn’t feeling “happy.” So the pool table stands also for his status as it is something that normally only rich people have in their house. And the fact that he has all of that, but nobody next to him to share it all with, shows that striving for success is probably not the right goal in life.

To capture the intellectual battle among the personalities, Ms. Danielian effectively used a green screen to shoot Adam, played by Aleksandr Khachatryan, in the three different roles and then layered him on so he appears to be engaging with himself. (I believe this is a billiards movie first!)

Unknown Life was filmed in Armenian, though the private copy Ms. Danielian shared with me had English sub-titles. Unfortunately, the translation was a bit stilted, so some of the nuance of the dialogue was lost. Moreover, the actual snooker-playing was pretty terrible.

Nonetheless, Unknown Life is worth the watch for its creative filmmaking and simply for daring to think differently about the application of snooker and how the game can be used to unearth interesting psychological questions.

A Trio of Titans: Mosconi, Hoppe, Van Boeing

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Sports biopics are a staple of Hollywood. They run the gamut from ultra-popular sports, such as football (e.g., Remember the Titans; Invincible), basketball (e.g., Glory Road; Hoosiers), and baseball (e.g., 42; Price of the Yankees) to those far more niche, such as horse racing (e.g., Seabiscuit), surfing (e.g., Soul Surfer), and ski jumping (e.g., Eddie the Eagle).  

You guessed it. There are no billiards biopics. 

Fortunately, over the years, a variety of companies have stepped in to honor some of the greats of the sport with short documentaries.  Though these films vary considerably in production quality and entertainment value, they all deserve some praise for attempting to preserve on-screen the legends of the baize.

Years ago, I wrote about the 2013 Sky Sports Productions documentary, The Strickland Story, focused on Earl Strickland, as well as the Probe Profile on Efren Reyes.  Today, I’ll turn my attention to Willie Mosconi, Willie Hoppe, and Shane Van Boeing, each the subject of a billiard short film. Also, in a future blog post, I’ll jump across the channel and review the documentaries on snooker stars Alex Higgins (Alex Higgins: The People’s Champion) and Ali Carter (Ali Carter: The Unbreakable).

A Pete Smith Specialty: The Mosconi Story

At 1621 Vine Street, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, there is a star honoring Pete Smith, an Oscar-winning  American producer and narrator of short subject films. Between 1931 and 1955, Mr. Smith made more than 150 movies that covered everything from household hints to insect life to military training.  The majority, however, were short comedic documentaries that he narrated.  This includes one of his final films, The Mosconi Story, about the life of perhaps the greatest pool player in history, “Mr. Pocket Billiards” William Joseph Mosconi. It is available to watch here.

Created in 1952, this 10-minute film is a reenactment of Mr. Mosconi’s life, starting when “Little Wille” would skip his violin lessons to practice billiards at Joe Mosconi’s Billiards Parlor using a sawed-off broom handle and potatoes. By age 7, Mr. Mosconi was traveling, doing exhibitions.  His career climbed quickly, eventually taking him to the Worlds Pocket Billiards Championship on six occasions.  But, he did not win any of those matches.

Most of The Mosconi Story takes places In 1941, when Mr. Mosconi opted to give it one more try.  With a child on the way, his billiards career was headed either for the “championship or the want ads.” As billiards historians know well, he made it to the finals to compete against three time world champion Andrew Ponzi, one of the “real greats of the day, the craftiest player in the game.” 

Neck and neck with Mr. Ponzi, Mr. Mosconi’s game is interrupted by a telegram telling him that his baby boy, Willie Jr., had arrived early.  That announcement gives Mr. Mosconi the confidence to attempt a five-cushion rail shot.  He makes the shot, winning 125-124, and becomes the world champion.  It was a feat he would repeat many times.

Columbia Pictures presents the Willie Hoppe Story

Released in 1954, The Willie Hoppe Story is a nine-minute mash-up of documentary and exhibition. The first 60 seconds is biographic, a whirlwind time travel from 1896, when Mr. Hoppe began playing billiards at the age of eight, to the present (1954), when a 66-year-old Mr. Hoppe starts showing off his three-cushion carom billiards skills at the world-renowned New York Athletic Club. It is available to watch here.

First, he dispatches with his opponent, New York professional billiards champion Edward Lee.  Then, he demonstrates the essentials of billiards, such as the proper grip and techniques for creating spin. Finally, he brings the real magic, showing off more than 20 eye-popping, three-cushion (or more) carom billiards shots, including a nine-cushion shot. 

Narrator Bill Stern, who thirty years later would join the inaugural class of the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame, can barely contain his euphoria watching the shots made by the “wizard of the cue, the king of the cushion, Willie Hoppe.”  He proclaims that Mr. Hoppe is “no professor of billiards, he’s a professor of English [spin],” and he describes one shot that navigates 25 bowling pins on the table as a “Sunday driver going to the picnic grounds.”

Shane Van Boeing – The South Dakota Kid

Given the number of billiards titles, championships and accolades accumulated by Rapid City’s Shane Van Boeing, it’s no wonder South Dakota Public Broadcasting produced this eight-minute segment in 2014 for its Dakota Life series focused on “interesting South Dakota people, places, and things.”  You can watch it here.

Mr. Van Boeing was only 31 years old in 2014, but he was already a six-time US Open champion, the 2008 doubles world champion, a two-time all around champion, a seven-time Mosconi Cup member, and the “current #1 pool player in the US.” (His accomplishments have only further proliferated in the past seven years.)

Shane Van Boeing initially takes a fairly standard approach to his life. He grew up in a pool-playing family, sitting in the baby chair watching pool and then getting his first table at age two from his grandfather. Soon he was participating in trick shot exhibitions.

But rather than continuing down memory lane and charting Mr. Van Boeing’s path to turning pro in 2006, Shane Van Boeing instead chooses to narrowly focus on his hearing impairment, with his mother, Timi Bloomberg, describing how she realized when Shane was 16 months old that he was almost totally deaf.  She describes being very careful that her son not get labeled as “handicapped,” insisting that he surrounds himself with “speaking people” to “function normal.” 

Mr. Van Boeing elaborates, saying he was bullied in school for his hearing impairment, but when he played pool, it was a different world where he didn’t have to worry about that. He says he really learned to communicate in the pool room – “this is where I got my better communication.”

Incredulously, Mr. Van Boeing says some opponents have derided his impairment as an “advantage,” indicating it’s “not fair” that he isn’t distracted by external sounds.  His retort: “put in earplugs, you’ll be just like me.”

In a wonderful closing note, he shares how he wants to be a role model for the hearing impaired. Kids can look up to him and think “I don’t have to be handicapped. I can utilize my disability to have ability in other areas.”

Siete mesas de billar francés

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The Goya Awards are Spain’s main national film awards. They are considered by many in Spain, and internationally, to be the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars. So imagine my excitement upon learning that Grace Querejeta’s 2007 film Siete mesas de billar francés (translated as Seven French Billiards Tables) received 10 Goya nominations, including two wins for Best Leading Actress (Maribel Verdú) and Best Supporting Actress (Amparo Baró).

To put that in perspective, there are 53 movies that have earned at least 10 Oscar nominations. That pantheon includes Lawrence of Arabia, The Sting, Network, Star Wars, and Braveheart, to name a handful with exactly 10 nominations. Pretty impressive company.

Among billiards movies, only two have walked the red carpet: The Hustler (nine nominations, including two wins) and twenty-five years later The Color of Money (four nominations, including one win).

This movie should have been cinematic oro. What a disappointment.

Siete mesas de billar francés feels like a telenovela, with a bunch of broken relationships and budding romances fighting for viewer attention. The movie begins with Angela (Verdú) and her son Guille traveling to the big city to see the boy’s grandfather. Upon arriving, they not only learn he has passed, but that his billiard hall, 7 Siete Mesas, with seven French tables (i.e., carom billiards tables) is now in decrepit condition and that the grandfather had a number of outstanding debts. For Angela, the bad news keeps coming, as she subsequently is confronted by the police to learn that her husband has both disappeared and has a secret second family.

Faced with a panorama of bad news, Angela decides to stay in the big city and restore the billiard hall to its former glory. This includes re-assembling the hall’s one-time billiard team — now a bunch of gruff, ornery oldsters – to compete in the upcoming tournament with a chance of winning the prize money.

Tempers flare and tensions rise, but given the movie’s melodramatic predictability, the players are able to put aside old history and reconnect. There’s even a place on team Siete Mesas for the dead father’s crotchety girlfriend. Eventually, it’s Angela who must reconcile her past and truly come to terms with her father’s death (but not before ripping a number of portraits of him off the wall and shattering them on the floor – oh my!).

Billiards enthusiasts will be equally disappointed, as Siete mesas de billar francés talks about the sport much more than it shows it. Certainly, the title sequence left me hopeful, as black-and-white photos of carom billiards players in their prime faded in and out. This was nostalgia for the game of yesteryear. But, aside from some occasional three-cushion shots, which always impress me for their perfect manipulation of the balls, the present-day game never materialized. Even the upcoming tournament never actually starts, though there is a bit of surprise as to who rounds out the team when one of the players steals the winnings and goes on the lam.

Siete mesas de billar francés is mildly entertaining, and Ms. Verdú is powerful in the lead, though not as much fun to watch as she was in Y tu mamá también or Pan’s Labyrinth. But, given its accolades, this film ultimately felt like a table scratch.

Siete mesas de billar francés is available to watch on Amazon Prime.

Pick Pockets

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I was not familiar with the English television presenter and comedian Tom O’Connor, who died from Parkinson’s about two months ago. But, an alert about his passing showed up in my news feed because in addition to hosting such popular British game shows as Crosswits, Name that Tune, and Password, he also hosted a snooker-themed game show called Pick Pockets.

What was this?

Of course, there have been snooker-themed game shows, such as Pot the Question from 1984 or the widely popular Big Break, which ran from 1991-2002, but this one had clearly eluded my research. Wikipedia lists over 500 British game shows, but there’s no mention of Pick Pockets.  Nor does it appear on the British Game Show Wiki, the website UK Game Shows, or searching the BBC. Yet, sure enough, there on YouTube, user gareth11077 had posted the pilot episode from 1988.  You can watch it here.

Fortunately, I was able to contact gareth11077, who I subsequently learned was Gareth McGinley, author of Heart Breaks: The Tony Knowles Story, and a self-described enthusiast and researcher of ‘80s snooker. Through my email exchange with him, as well as a separate email exchange with Trevor Chance, the creator of Pick Pockets (as well as the founder of Legends, Europe’s longest running live tribute show), I learned that the show I had watched was an untransmitted pilot, as the series actually never aired. The hope was to get it onto ITV, but the network’s commissioner at the time, Greg Dyke, allegedly had a particular dislike for snooker that not only left Pick Pockets homeless, but more important, signaled a “death knell of snooker on ITV, as well.”

According to Mr. Chance, Pick Pockets was inspired by a game of snooker he was playing (and was not influenced by its forbearer Pot the Question). Produced by Tyne Tees, the ITV television franchise for Northeast England, the show combined “the knowledge of our teams with the snooker skills of our guest professionals,” as Mr. O’Connor shared in his opening.

Pick Pockets had two competing teams, each pairing a local contestant with a celebrity. In the pilot episode, the celebrities were TV actor George Layton and English women’s cricket captain Rachel Heyhoe Flint. The teams, in turn, were each paired with a professional snooker player.  The episode’s two players were John Parrott, who one year later would lose the World Snooker Championship to Steve Davis, and the “Silver Fox” David Taylor, a familiar face in the ‘80s though after 1980 he never made it past the quarterfinals of the World Championship.  Completing the celebrity lineup was Len Ganley, the show’s “resident referee” and scorekeeper (who refereed four World Championships between 1983 and 1993).

(At the end of the episode, the audience is promised that next week’s episode – which was never made – would star Alex Higgins and Willie Throne, two true giants of the sport.  Oh well.)

Gameplay begins by each snooker player breaking their opponent’s rack. The 15 red balls have no value; they are obstacles to interfere with potting the colored balls and can be removed in the first round by each team correctly answering trivia questions, such as “how many toes does a rhinoceros have? (three) or “what is a jumbuck to an Australian?” (a sheep).

Once a ball is removed for each correct answer, round two begins. In this round, the players seek to pot the colored balls in order, while avoiding the remaining red balls. The pockets have different point values, and points are earned by a combination of answering a trivia question and potting the ball.  The team that has the most points advances to the third round.

In this final round, the non-celebrity contestant must answer six trivia questions. Each right answer earns his snooker-playing teammate 10 seconds to run a table consisting of the six colored balls. The player wants to leave as much time on the clock because once the table is run, the remaining time will be used to pot a single gold ball, which is worth 1000 pounds (or approximately $1700 USD in 1988).

While clearly dated through today’s viewing lens, the show was entertaining and had a certain imbued charm, principally due to Mr. O’Connor’s jovial banter. It’s a shame it never aired. Evidently, the ingredients were right, as Big Break proved only a few years later with a format that is uncannily similar to Pick Pockets.

Kiss of Death

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“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” said PT Barnum, the mega-successful 19th century American showman and circus owner.

One has to wonder if that proverb weighed on the minds of Kiss of Death (KOD), the six-member women’s billiards team, who opted to star in Kiss of Death in 2010. The eponymous web series followed the women in the 12 weeks leading up to the May 2010 BCA Pool League National 8-Ball Championship, where they would compete in the Women’s Masters Team Division for the first time.

Presented by NYCgrind.com, a now defunct New York​-based online pool and billiards magazine, Kiss of Death was a series of weekly five-minute webisodes featuring members of the KOD team:  Alison Fischer (the editor of NYCgrind), “Queen B” Borana Andoni, Olga Gashcova, Michelle Li, Emily “The Billiard Bombshell” Duddy, and team captain Gail “g2” Glazebrook. Having won the Women’s Open Championship in 2009, KOD hoped not only history would repeat, but also that the lead-up to the tournament would make for engaging viewing.

Let’s start with the obvious: this web series was terrible.

I made it through the first four webisodes before I nodded off due to complete boredom. Judging from the number of views on YouTube, I’m probably not alone. (Episode 2 had 8,690 views. Episode 5 had just 1,737 views.) You can watch the first episode here.

Kiss of Death suffered from a fatal mix of lack of script and plot; an over-reliance on a single song for each episode; the in-your-face promotion of Poison Billiards; ridiculous montages of the women being cute for the camera; and an insufficient amount of enjoyable billiards. By episode 4, when half the time is spent watching the women watch themselves on episode 3 (oooh…how meta), I knew I would not make it through the remaining two thirds.

Apparently, the KOD women did not fare much better. The first place Women’s Masters Team prize of $3500 was won by Magoo’s Masters from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Team Tick Tick Boom from Chicago took second, followed by team Logistically Challenge.

But, PT Barnum was onto something. While the web series was a bust, it most certainly sowed the seeds for a future wave of media and self-promotion, primarily focused on some of these same New York based female billiards players.

About 18 months after Kiss of Death, Gail Glazebrook teamed up with Jennifer “9mm” Barretta to launch Rack Starz. In partnership with Amsterdam Billiards, local home court to many of these women, Rack Starz featured a dozen “sexy intelligent women from all over the world brought together to take the game of pool out of the smoke-filled back room and into the mainstream limelight. The Rack Starz are not only athletes, but they are also moms, models, actresses, nutritionists, CEOs, and marketing analysts, with many holding advanced degrees.”[1]

The 12 members of Rack Starz featured the original six KOD members, plus Neslihan Gurel, Supadra Geronimo, Caroline Pao, Jennifer Barretta, Yomalin Feliz, and Liz Ford.

While RackStarz would fizzle out years later, the women successfully leveraged the early excitement and media attention to star in another web series, Sharks, in 2012.  This equally ill-fated series featured a number of the same women (i.e., Jennifer Barretta, Borana Andoni, Caroline Pao) portraying fictional ladies who hang out around Amsterdam Billiards.  Unfortunately, some enjoyable billiards scenes could not compensate for the series’ cheap production value, hackneyed soap opera dialogue, and paper-thin characters.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

The HustlersThree years later, two of the NYC women – Jennifer Barretta and Emily Duddy — skyrocketed past their niche web audience to that of mainstream television by starring in TruTV’s new pseudo-reality show The Hustlers about a group of pool players vying for the top spot on Steinway Billiards’ “The List.” Unfortunately, the show elicited strong reactions, many of them negative, from viewers, who found the premise and the characters preposterous.

TruTV opted not to renew The Hustlers. For a while, that decision appeared to mark the end of the NYC billiards women’s media run.

And yet, it did not.

In 2019, Emily Duddy was back, this time in the new Bravo series In a Man’s World, executive produced by Oscar winner Viola Davis.  Far more serious than any of the previous billiards incarnations, the “Emily” episode focused on exposing the sexism women experience every day through temporary gender transformation and hidden cameras. Ms. Duddy, in makeup and prosthetics, became Alex, a male pool player.  Jennifer Barretta came back on camera as friend and confidante. And the cartoonish Finnegan, most recently seen on The Hustlers, but even popping up way back when on Kiss of Death, was the uber-chauvinist who learns a thing or two about disparaging women.

I guess Kiss of Death wasn’t such a kiss of death after all.

[1]      https://www.newswire.com/news/rack-starz-launch-new-website-93762

Top 7 Billiards Companies Starring in TV and Movies

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It’s hard to overstate the financial impact of effective product placement in television and film. After Tom Cruise wore Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses in Risky Business, sales of the model increased from 18,000 to 4 million. Hershey saw a 65% increase in profits after a famous extraterrestrial took a liking to Reese’s Pieces in E.T. And Toy Story provided a 4500% boost to sales of Etch A Sketch immediately after the film’s release.

Regrettably, billiards manufacturers and artisans cannot point to similar successes. (In fact, probably the most famous billiards product placement was in The Color of Money when Vincent crowed about his Balabushka, but that was actually a Joss cue!)

But if pristine product placement has proved elusive, there are a handful of compelling examples of billiards industry makers who have “broken the first wall,” stepping out of the product shadows to become the star of their own episode, specifically television documentary and science reality series.  Here’s my list, from worst to best, of the Top 7 Billiards Companies Starring in TV and Movies.

  1. Falcon Cue Ltd. Seven slow minutes elapse before viewers of the low-budget How Its Made episode, “Air Filters, Billiard Cues, Ice Sculptures Suits,” learn that the cues getting assembled belong to Falcon, the Canadian cue company launched in the early 1990s. This lifeless 2005 episode plays like a high-school-made how-to video, with 15 separate steps detailed, from step one (use a circular donut-shaped lathe to turn a block of maple into a cylindrical cue butt) to step 15 (buff the cue stick). Fortunately for Falcon, step 12 addresses using a motorized stamping machine to apply the company logo.
  2. Thurston. The oldest snooker table manufacturer in the world, Thurston features in “The Bow, Ferrofluid, The Billiard Table” episode of Incredible Inventions from 2017. Viewers are walked through the step-by-step process of assembling a table, from selecting the timber and cutting the wood to ironing the table cloth and fitting the cushions.
  3. Albany-Hyatt Billiard Ball Company. Don Wildman, host of Mysteries at the Museum, searches museums for relics that “reveal the secrets of our past.” In the 2018 “Lunar Fender Bender, Opera Angels and Billiard Balls” episode, he travels to the Albany Institute of History and Art, which features a 140-year-old box of the Hyatt Company’s 16 balls. Though the company went out of business in 1986, it carries the name of John Wesley Hyatt, whose invention of the celluloid billiard ball to replace the ivory ball revitalized the industry (and saved a lot of elephants). The story of that invention, and the company that followed, is told in the episode through a mix of historian voice-overs and actor dramatizations. Fun fact: Hyatt’s original celluloid billiard ball almost failed when the sound it made hitting another ball was too similar to a gunshot. Saloon owners freaked and canceled purchases, forcing Hyatt to update his formula by adding camphor to the mix. The rest is billiards history.
  4. The Cuemaker - Billiards DocumentaryDana Paul Cues. Paul, a maker of pool cues and espresso tampers in upstate New York, is the star of Gary Chin’s short documentary, The Cuemaker. Mr. Chin, a film student at Ithaca College, is on the hunt for the perfect 19.5-oz jump break cue. His quest leads him to Mr. Paul, who is committed to “cue-making perfection” and shares, “I am not attached to [a] particular piece of wood…I’m attached to the idea that it will become, it not treasured, at least respected by you or maybe even your children.”
  5. Valley-Dynamo, Inc. In the world of coin-operated pool tables, Valley-Dynamo is a household name. Unsurprisingly, when the producers of Machines: How They Work wanted to tackle coin-operated tables, they turned to Valley-Dynamo. Airing on The Science Channel in 2016, the “Pool Tables, Gas Fired Boilers and Shopping Carts” episode combined photo-real CGI with factory footage to highlight the assembly of the dead rail, the mechanics of the coin recognition slot, and the interior “spider web of runways” that transport the balls.
  6. Chuck Jacobi, Best Billiards. In 2016, Jill Wagner, the perky host of Handcrafted America, traveled to New Jersey to learn how Mr. Jacobi, a former military contractor, makes his customized billiards tables. (Viewers may recognize Ms. Wagner as the former host of Wipeout or scantily clad on the pages of lad mags such as Stuff and FHM.) Airing on INSP, the “Woven Rugs, Sunglasses and Billiard Tables” episode from season one featured Mr. Jacobi assembling a frame, “ripping” the rails, creating inlays out of the keys of antique abandoned pianos, and converting a dining room table into a billiards table. His customized tables retail for $3000-$18,000, not including Ms. Wagner’s assistance routing the end piece.
  7. Richard Black Custom Cues. Back in 2005, the television series The Genuine Article answered its question, “Who makes the most beautiful pool cues?” by profiling Hall of Fame cuemaker Richard Black. On the “Puzzles and Pool Cues” episode, Mr. Black discusses his Antipodes cue, with 600 inlays and made from 16 different types of wood from 16 different countries. “Gentleman Jack” Colavita is also interviewed, unequivocally calling Mr. Black the best cue-maker.

So, for billiards companies thinking about how to optimize the return on spend from their marketing budget, it might be time to pursue a starring role on TV or in the movies.

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An abridged version of this article originally appeared in BCA Insider (Spring issue, May 2021)

The Goldbergs – “Bad Companions”

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In 1956, billiards was still relatively novel to most Jewish-Americans.  Consider some of the Jews who have made an indelible contribution on the sport.[i] Barry Berhrman, the founder of the prestigious U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship, had just turned 10. Billiards Congress of America Hall of Famer Mike Sigel, whose mother used to complain that he wouldn’t go to Hebrew school because he was too tired from playing pool, was just starting to walk up stairs unassisted. Pool Wars author Jay Helfert is one of the game’s great chroniclers, but at best, he was still a little ankle-biter at that time.

Then, it’s hardly surprising that the 1956 episode “Bad Companions” of the TV sitcom The Goldbergs might find humor in Uncle David (Eli Mintz), a nebbish who has purchased a pool table at an auction but not knowing how to play, enlists the help of some pool hall locals to teach him the game.[ii]

In fact, the bigger surprise might be that such a Jewish sitcom existed at all.  Sure enough, The Goldbergs, created in 1948 by radio star Gertrude Berg, was not only television’s first family sitcom, but also a show squarely and confidently about a Jewish family. Ms. Berg, the show’s writer, producer, and star actress, played the family matriarch, Molly Goldberg.

According to columnist Matthue Roth, Ms. Berg’s “vision of The Goldbergs, from which the show never deviated, was that of an everyday family with simple interactions, believable plots, and guided by a gentle humor. The episodes followed a predictable pattern–family members encounter problems, land in tight spots, and then turn to their familial matriarch to bail them out.”[1]

In “Bad Companions,” Uncle David’s new pool table, a “fabulous gift for the whole family,” becomes a bit of a headache, since his peers either don’t know how to play or aren’t permitted to play by their spouses. Justifying his unfamiliarity with billiards, the family patriarch, Jake (Robert H. Harris), says, “pool is a game that requires leisure, it’s not something you’re born with.”

Undeterred, David recruits a well-mannered gaggle of locals from the Friendly Nook pool hall, paying them to come to his house and teach him pool and promising to be the “best pupil [they] ever had.” While not exactly Machiavellian hustlers, the “professors” – Stosh, Big Louie, Little Louie, Cockeye Mike, and Snake Hip Nellie– show little interest in letting David practice; instead, they take advantage of his family’s hospitality, playing pool for free and delighting in a never-ending buffet of sandwiches and coffee. More attention is given to the composition of the sandwiches (e.g., “cheese on rye with mustard, not so much lettuce”) than to the mechanics of the billiards game.

Tensions start to run high among Uncle David’s family members who feel their magnanimity is being exploited, especially when some of the teachers start using the Goldberg’s phone to place horse racing bets. When Jake finally ejects Uncle David’s friends from his house, David goes down to the pool hall to make amends, only to unwittingly get ensnared in a raid. The judge releases David, calling him the “dupe of unsavory characters” and the product of a poor upbringing.

To show all is not lost, and to prove that Molly is hardly just a naïve sandwich-maker, the episode ends with Molly and David playing a game of pool. Like a pro, Molly announces her shot will “kiss the four ball off the nine and into the side pocket.” It’s a combination designed to impress, though discerning audiences will wonder why there is no sound of a ball falling in the pocket.

The Goldbergs may have had little impact on the future of billiards, but there is no question that Gertrude Berg was a true trailblazer.  Her inspiring comedic style earned her the first Best Actress Emmy in 1951, and laid the groundwork for future comedians, such as Lucille Ball, as well as the domestic family sitcom genre, creating a blueprint for subsequent shows like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best.

Until very recently, “Bad Companions” was available to watch on Jewish Life Television (JLTV), the network founded in 2007 to promote Jewish-themed programming.

[1]      “Jewish Film: The Goldbergs,” by Matthue Roth.

[i]       While it’s hard to argue that “Boston Shorty” Morton Goldberg had an “indelible” influence on billiards, I’d be remiss if I did not give him a special shoutout. Boston Shorty was 40 years old when “Bad Companions” aired. By that time, he had already defeated legends such as Willie Mosconi, Ralph Greenley, Irving Crane, and Jimmie Caras. And, no, The Goldbergs was not named after Boston Shorty.

[ii]       The Goldbergs should not be confused with the currently-running, identically-named ABC sitcom The Goldbergs.