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Billiards Short Films Around the World (Part 2)

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Two Sundays ago, I spent a wonderful afternoon celebrating Father’s Day with my dad and my two children. Not having seen my father since COVID-19 unleashed hell on earth, the day got me thinking about this uniquely special filial relationship.

In my previous blog post, I committed to taking readers around the world with billiards short films. I started with Biljar (Croatia), Biljardkundgen (Sweden), and Penance (Canada). In this post, I continue that global odyssey, with the added nuance of featuring films that address that father-child relationship. Those three films are Maltempo (Argentina), Breakin Balls (USA) and Break (Czech Republic).

Interestingly, fathers do not physically appear in Maltempo or Breakin Balls, yet they are still central characters, reflecting the ongoing and treasured influence of the paterfamilias. In this way, these films are a welcome departure from better known billiards movies, such as the recent Walkaway Joe or The Baron and the Kid, where deadbeat dads feature so prominently.

Maltempo

Without question, the 21-minute Maltempo, released in October of 2016, is the best among this trinity of billiards short films.  The setting is Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1942. Two poor Italian immigrant brothers, Cecilio and Paolo Maltempo, have sold their deceased father’s pocket watch, their last remaining physical memory of him, in order to prevent starvation. Cecilio is hot-headed and irascible. Paolo is thoughtful and even-keeled, his temperament and sensibility more closely aligned with their father’s, as we learn through a backstory told by Paolo to illustrate his father’s kindness (and the watch’s origin).

One evening, the Maltempos are provoked by a pair of rich, insolent Frenchmen, who are now in possession of the prized pocket watch. For a chance to win back the watch, the Frenchmen challenge the brothers to a 30-point match of three-cushion billiards. When the match is 28-25, Paolo is dared to make a game-winning six-cushion shot.  Knowing he can make the shot, Paolo anticipates that his success will result in the Frenchmen’s humiliation. While the Maltempos will win the match, violence will ensue, blood will be shed, and they will lose in the long run. [SPOILER ALERT!] Instead, Paolo invokes his father’s spirit, intentionally just missing the shot so that his opponents can save face. His opponent ultimately understands and repays him by returning the watch.

Directed by Alan Borodvsky, Maltempo is wonderfully filmed and saturated with a gorgeous mix of yellows and browns that evoke the era and the beauty of the locale. Unsurprisingly, Maltempo racked up an impressive dozen awards from the festival circuit.  The full film is available to watch on Sofy TV.

Breakin Balls

To be clear, Breakin Balls is not a good film by any conventional measure. Created in 2016 by first-time writer, producer and leading actress Natalie Pagano, the film focuses on a struggling South Philadelphia couple who enter the St. Patty’s Pool Tournament at J.W Hothead’s, a (real-life) hair salon with a pool table. The stakes are a $2000 prize, which is just enough to save their trailer and feed the future Little Frankie, assuming they can beat their foes, the Sharkey Twins.

Between the amateur acting and the wooden dialogue, Breakin Balls feels like an inside joke that mistakenly escaped the room.  And yet, there is something rather heartfelt about the film. Ms. Pagano is upfront that Breakin Balls is a tribute to her father, Anthony Pagano Sr. (aka Mr. P). She says he was an “avid billiards player who was studied by many…had his hustling moments but good heart and kind mannerisms…I was very fortunate to grow up watching my father run balls, he taught me everything I know…this film is in your honor.”

He was also the creator of the “famous” jump rod, Mr. P’s Jumpstick, which features prominently in the film. When Natalie is down in her match, a sultry courier suddenly arrives, bearing the famed stick. This gives Natalie all the power she needs to turn around the match and win the prize, thus also honoring her father.

The final scene, in which all players, opponents, and Hothead’s patrons, convene at the Trailer Park Community Center to dance, giggle, jiggle, and eat billiards-themed cupcakes, shows just how much fun the cast had in making the movie, even if that sentiment can’t be shared by the viewing audience.

Break

Unlike the previous two films, Break is a much more traditional father-child movie. This eight-minute documentary, released in 2012 and directed by Tom Weir, follows 11-year-old Calvin Washburn, and his father, Geoff, who spend alternating weekends together shooting billiards. The movie is available to watch here.

As Geoff only has his son on weekends, and “the pool tournaments are on weekends, so that’s we do.” For the film, that means traveling to a 9-ball competition in Ostrava, Czech Republic, to compete for 4000 Euro (approximately $4500 USD).

The premise has potential. Calvin started shooting pool when he was five, and he comes across as a typical awkward tween who is super comfortable on the table.  But, as a film, Break flounders because there is no tension, suspense or drama. In eight minutes, we don’t get to know Calvin or Geoff or learn much of their relationship.  And, the pool-playing is a bust because after winning his first match, Calvin loses, and then loses again. He may have “pocketed quite a bit of money” over the years, but there’s no joy or interest watching a kid get mopped.

 

To my father, and to all the fathers out there, Happy (belated) Father’s Day.

Billiards Short Films Around the World (Part 1)

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I’ll be honest. As my comprehensive list of billiards movies, TV episodes and short films surpassed 250, I thought I had probably hit a ceiling.  But recently, late one evening, I had a head-slap, do’h! moment research idea that had not occurred to me in six years. Rather than searching IMDB by keyword (e.g., “billiards,” “8-ball”), I would search by plot summary.

Plot summary search results from IMDB.com

Wow. That one change shattered the roof, surfacing no less than 35 new entries. The majority of these new discoveries are billiards short films from around the world that were made in the last 15 years.  Talk about rolling double sixes!

Having unearthed so many new short films, I am going to devote several upcoming blog posts to reviewing trios of these local movies. Today’s threesome: Biljar (Croatia), Biljardkundgen (Sweden), and Penance (Canada).

Biljar

Purists may deride my decision to call Biljar a billiards film, but I think the 7-minute Croatian film is worthy of inclusion. Released in 2018 by writer/director Dina Cvek, the movie occurs in a nondescript bar.  Asking “are you open?,” a couple enters and proceed to order beers and play billiards. Though the bar is otherwise empty, the billiards scene injects levity, especially because it’s powered by the high-energy sounds and whimsical lyrics of “The Accident of 1993” by Austin, Texas rockers Poly Action.

But, when the bartender temporarily steps out, everything gets topsy-turvy. Playfulness is replaced with dread thanks to the sudden music shift to the heavy metal of Regular Gonzales. The couple mysteriously disappears and reappears, and the bartender winds up on the wrong side of a gun. The film concludes by the bartender seemingly waking up, only to have the same opening scene and inquiry repeat. (This motif about the fleetingness of time is reinforced by a question asked in the film, “Why is the rabbit always running in Alice in Wonderland?” As Lewis Carroll readers know, the White Rabbit represents the pressure of time and the fear of missing a deadline.)

The film is available to watch here. Billiards fans: please don’t lose sleep over the cringey 30-second billiards montage. Biljar is not intended to be about pool.

https://youtu.be/7_m5MLUGzaA

Biljardkundgen

Translating in Swedish to “The Billiards King,” this 12-minute film from 2011 is about a youth center worker whose talent for billiards does not live up to his boasts about the sport.  Handsome and muscular (but oddly sporting a good bit of armpit sweat), Matte fancies himself a billiards hotshot. He likes to quote the opening lines of The Color of Money, he has a poster of The Hustler over the pool table, and he is fixated on shaping his cue tip while he giving creepy glances at the underage girls who frequent the center.

Trying to impress a new girl, he promises to defeat Ali, who is currently on the table, so he can teach the girl how to play. After losing the first game, he demands a rematch on a technicality. He then loses the second game, which prompts him, temper rising, to wager 100 krona (about $107 USD) on a final match. This too he loses after botching a gimme-shot on the 8-ball.

Aside from the novel location (I haven’t discovered any other billiards films that use a youth center as the battle arena of choice), Biljardkundgen is pretty unmemorable, and the pool playing is terrible.  The movie is available to watch here with English subtitles.

Penance

Certainly, of these three films, Penance is the closest to a traditional billiards film.  Directed by Ivet Koleva, this 12-minute film, shot in entirety at the beautiful Top Shots Billiards in Alberta, Canada, is about two seemingly unrelated characters, Lydia and Jimmy, reconciling their history over a 9-ball race to 15. Penance is available to watch on FilmFreeway.

Lydia, a mysterious young woman with a mounting reputation for running tables, seems to know a lot about her opponent. “You’re the famous Jimmy O, pool hall owner, tournament player, money game player, pool ambassador.” Jimmy does not recognize her, but gets his first wind that they have a connection when he recognizes her pool cue as one he used to own. Unable to undermine her confidence, the tête-à-tête leads to a 9-ball competition with Jimmy’s pool hall as the grand prize. I won’t spoil the story, though it’s neither hard to predict the outcome of the match nor the relationship between Jimmy and Lydia.

Given the centrality of billiards to the movie, I was surprised to learn that Ms. Koleva is not a player herself. In an email interview, she explained to me that she likes to “go out of her comfort zone to portray various subjects” and that she was inspired by the “love and lifelong dedication to billiards” from some people she knew.

Penance has received a mixed reaction from the billiards community. Some veteran players have been quick to categorize it as another movie that gets the details wrong when it comes to billiards.  It’s clear from their bridges and ways they jump after shooting that the actors don’t know how to play pool. It’s ridiculous that Jimmy would constrict his mobility by wearing a heavy leather jacket or that he would make such a high wager against a complete unknown.

But others, and I would lump myself into this latter category, believe that the movie tried to get it right and succeeded, especially through Greg Waggoner’s beautiful cinematography, in showing a respect for the sport.  As Ms. Koleva told me:

I have tried to come up with new scenes, colors and shots so that Penance can have different elements to it. Some of the shots within the match scene were unique and had to be planned out with billiard players. The specific scene where the final ball hits the corner rather than going in took quite a few shots to get right, which is part of the reason why we framed the shot so tightly (that, and it turned out more impactful when the camera is so close).

Ultimately, I think Geoff Bradshaw at Bradshaw Billiard Service, said it best, “If you want a movie that is about pool, with perfect attention to every detail of the game, watch an instructional DVD. I believe that this short film was beautifully produced. Nice story, nice lighting, nice camera work, decent acting, and a gorgeous pool hall. [They] did a great job.”[1]

[1]      https://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=489623&page=2

Walkaway Joe

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It’s not just Joe who should walk away.  It’s anyone who had reasonable hopes that the pairing of estimable actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan and David Strathairn in Tom Wright’s directorial debut Walkaway Joe would make for decent, sheltered-in-place entertainment.  Unfortunately, the movie, which released on Amazon Prime earlier this month, is pretty insipid viewing. And that’s without even mentioning the billiards (more on that later).

The movie focuses on 14-year-old Dallas McCarthy (Julian Feder) who leaves home to go looking for his deadbeat, pool-hustling father Cal (Mr. Morgan).  In the search to find dad, he befriends Joe Haley (Mr. Strathairn), a loner who wanders the Louisiana highways in his Fleetwood Flair RV with his own estranged family issues haunting him.

The potential was all there: New Orleans, nine-ball, and Negan (the murderous leader of the Saviors most famously portrayed by Mr. Morgan on The Walking Dead).  With those kind of ingredients, why did Walkaway Joe stumble so badly? Let me count the ways.

First, it’s always a gamble when a movie centers on a child because you damn sure better cast the right actor. Alas, the 16-year old Mr. Feder is too inexperienced and unconvincing. He lacks the heft necessary to carry the film and portray the emotionally-wounded runaway.

Second, Michael Milillo’s script is banal and familiar, treading like a worn-out tire. I rarely quote other reviewers, but I fully agree with Christy Lemire, who writes for RogerEbert.com.  She said, “This is an overly familiar story of fathers and sons, of cycles of abandonment and years of pent-up resentments, without any fresh insight.”

Third, as someone who has spent many years living in New Orleans, I was hopeful the movie would have more of a local flavor, something akin to billiards films like The Baltimore Bullet or the still-in-production Ride the 9. But, aside from the occasional Purple Haze Abita beer sign, there is nothing about the setting that feels unique or interesting.

What’s worse is that for those familiar with the geography, Walkaway Joe introduces some ridiculous plot holes. For example, Julian and Joe appear to spend an entire day driving on the road, traveling from Fatty’s in Baton Rouge to Lacy’s Cue Sports Bar in New Orleans.  But that stretch on I-10 East is all of 80 miles.  They could have walked the distance faster.

Finally, there is the billiards, which from the movie’s poster to the opening scene to the final nine-ball tournament features prominently enough that I definitely qualify Walkaway Joe as a “billiards movie.” But, three minutes into the opening scene, my billiards queasiness was already setting in.  Julian provides an off-screen voice-over in which he describes the game, “There are all sorts of ways to hit a cue ball…but it’s where you send the cue ball next that separates you from the others.”  Really? That’s the sort of insight I expect from a Saturday morning special.

Mr. Morgan’s follow-up, narrated while he hustles someone out of a few dollars, is equally cringe worthy, “Nine-ball is succession pool…you knock them down in order.  It takes skill. More important, it takes foresight.  9-ball: the sport of kings.”

There is some playing that occurs early on, with a few nice shots, but largely the story is leading up to the 12th Annual 9-ball Open at Lacy’s. Father and son, having failed to reconcile their differences, now compete for the winner-takes-all $10,000 pot.

Mr. Morgan seems comfortable with a cue stick.  We know from a season seven Walking Dead episode, it’s not his first time at the table. (In fact, he tweeted in April that his pool skills on display were attributable to “some misspent youth finally pay[ing] off.”)  Mr. Feder, maybe less so, but credit to his coach, Louisiana local Joey Aguzin, for getting him to a reasonable level.  As Mr. Feder shared recently:

After I got the part I started training with a coach in LA and purchased a pool table so I could practice. I would play multiple hours at a time. When I went to Louisiana for preproduction, I started coaching with Joey Aguzin the pool consultant for the movie. People don’t realize how much physical and mentally demanding pool is. It’s really an incredible sport. The cool thing about all the training is I was able to do all my own shots for the film.[1]

The tournament play includes the usual montage of some movie-friendly trick shots coupled with the rapid-fire pocketing of balls, and of course, a shooting the 9-ball on the break for an instant win.  But, the final dad-versus-son game bordered on the ridiculous. The cue ball control, so lauded in the opening scene, was severely lacking, as what should have been a simple run culminated with a much higher risk bank shot for the win.

Lest my criticism be completely one-sided, I will add that Mr. Strathairn, an Oscar-nominated (Good Night, and Good Luck) and Emmy-winning (Temple Grandin) actor, can breathe life into any character and is a general joy to watch on screen.

And, the billiards scenes in Walkaway Joe, while lacking realism, did highlight the sport’s appeal and the crowd’s admiration for a well-played game.  As JB Cases posted on the AZ Billiards Forum:

I am happy for any showcasing of pool that has any small potential for causing anyone to want to start playing. Yes this shows the seedier aspects, badly, but it does also show the tournament side and admiration of a crowd for well played pool. It shows that a person can make good money playing in a tournament vs. hustling in dangerous situations. Even if that lesson was not explicit I still liked redemption through excellence message.

[1]      “Interview with Walkaway Joe star Julian Feder,” Fansided, May 19, 2020.

Klassik

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Six years ago, when I first started compiling my list of every billiards-themed movie, TV episode, and short film with the goal of reviewing each one, I knew I had a problem when I came across the 1998 Russian movie, Klassik. Unlike many foreign films which are released with English subtitles, this film was entirely in Russian. There was no translation, no cheap dubbing, and I had no bilingual compatriot to paraphrase the movie as I watched.  As they say in Russian, I was povezlo.

What’s worse, but no surprise, is that as my list grew, so too did the number of unwatchable movies. For every Io, Chiara e lo scuro that I could locate with subtitles (The Pool Hustlers in Italian), I was thwarted by a copy of Pakners in its native Filipino, or O Jogo Da Vida in Portuguese.

Fortunately, the past decade has experienced numerous improvements in speech-to-text recognition, the interdisciplinary field combining computer science and linguistics.  And, these improvements are at our fingertips within YouTube, where 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute and now available in more than 50 languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu.  As my technically savvier brother shared with me, the process is as easy as:

  1. Find the video on YouTube
  2. Turn on subtitles/closed captions
  3. Go to Settings, select auto-translate, and select your preferred language.

Voila!  (That’s really it?? Yes.) Suddenly, the once inaccessible Klassik, the crown jewel of Russian billiards films, can now be watched. The full movie is available here.

https://youtu.be/4nCGOohV9Gc

Or so I thought.

Alas, the speech translation leaves much to the imagination, as it seems to be entirely literal, unable to make sense of phrases, colloquialisms, and grammatical variance. What’s worse, the translation does not differentiate among speakers, so a typical conversation (at 03:20) reads like, “Is it worth it? Wait for rich answer. For such grandmothers of all the old goats with my own hands peremushu mind no need to be finish yourself someday.”

As such, my ability to review Klassik was severely hamstrung, and I suspect I followed less than 20% of the movie. The lack of online reviews didn’t help. My best guess is that the film starts with the decision of Savitsky, a regional authority, who backs out of an agreement to financially honor the old guard of Russian billiards. This decision must be punished, so certain Russian mafia set up an elaborate hustle in which Savitsky ends up wagering a large sum of money to compete against Gorsky, a writer, who also happens to be an excellent billiards player. Gorsky get injured, preventing him from competing, so his ally Yura takes his place. There is something going on where the billiards table is illegally wired to allow Gorsky to manipulate the balls remotely, but in the final match, that proves unnecessary, I guess.

Klassik took me three sittings to complete, and that’s only partially attributable to the translation issues. The 101-minute film moved at a glacial pace, culminating in an uninteresting billiards battle that lasted all of 60 seconds. The final scene, in which a member of the Russian billiards old guard steadies his arthritic hand in front of a crowd of onlookers just long enough to make a highly technical three ball trick shot, is far more satisfying.

While the movie proved to be a bust, Klassik is noteworthy for advancing my billiards education by focusing on the billiards variant known as Russian pyramid, a form of pocket billiards played on a modified snooker table with narrower pockets. According to Wikipedia, “All games begin with fifteen numbered white balls racked in a pyramid pack. Players may pocket any object balls on the table regardless of number. The first player to pocket eight or more balls wins the frame. In addition, shots do not have to be called.”  The challenge is that the corner pockets are only 3 mm (approx. ​3⁄16 in) wider than the diameter of the ball, so tremendous precision is required.  In Klassik, I believe they are playing free pyramid rules, in which “any ball may be used as the cue ball. Players can pocket the ball they struck if it hits another ball first, with the goal being to carom the struck ball off of one or more other balls into a pocket.”

So, what movie should I attempt next with speech-to-text translation?  Perhaps, Karambolage (German)? Or maybe, El Embustero (Spanish)?  Oh, who am I kidding…Walkaway Joe just dropped on Amazon yesterday.  Time to see how Jeffrey Dean Morgan does with a pool cue.

Animated about Billiards Short Films

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Ralph Bakshi, the great American animator of movies such as Fritz the Cat and American Pop, said, “What’s most important in animation is the emotions and the ideas being portrayed. I’m a great believer of energy and emotion.”[1]

I think Mr. Baskshi would then be pleased with the three short animated billiards films I recently discovered – Fresh Green, Inglourious Billiards, and New York Billiards – as each bubbles with energy and emotion.

Fresh Green

It’s not just the green that is “fresh” in Ida Greenberg’s 4+ minute billiards stop-motion animation Fresh Green. The whole film is wonderfully fresh and original, and very consistent with Ms. Greenberg’s self-described visual style of “erring on the side of quirky…often humorous, dark, or strange.”

A student at Maryland Institute College of Art, Ms. Greenberg created Fresh Green as her senior thesis project.  Her original project idea had nothing to do with pool, but when that idea wasn’t working and with deadlines quickly approaching, she turned to billiards.  As she shared with me in an email interview, “My apartment building at the time had a pool table, so I would occasionally play by myself. I’m a complete novice when it comes to billiards, but I find playing to be very meditative and strategic. So the idea of billiards was bound to make its way into my work, and Fresh Green is that project.”

The film starts out simply with a lone patron playing pool. By accident, he unhinges a floor board, which reveals a wide-eyed, solid blue, human-like being laying supine beneath the floor. Initially shocked, the patron recognizes the being is the same color as the 2-ball, so he feeds him the ball. This sustenance energizes the being to emerge from the floor and exit the bar.

In the film’s eeriest moment, the patron then slowly looks to see what else is beneath the floor. He discovers an entire colony of similar beings, sardined together, as if hidden in a bunker, or quarantined, or locked away for future experimentation like something out of The X-Files. Each being matches the color and pattern of a different billiards ball. As they are literally fed their respective billiard balls, they each emerge and gaily leave free. But, when the patron starts a new game, they return (or are summoned?) to their original hermitage.

Fresh Grass took an estimated 2600 hours to complete, so the film was not finished until late 2018, after Ms. Greenberg had already graduated.  Since that time, it has shown at numerous festivals and garnered multiple awards. To watch the film, you must contact the director through her website.

Inglourious Billiards

Talk about a labor of love.  As part of a final project for a 2D animation course, Brazilian animator João Cardoletto spent three years creating his 4-minute film Inglourious Billiards, which was inspired by the classic Twilight Zone billiards episode, “A Game of Pool.”

Released in the United States in late-2016 at Animation Nights New York, the film focuses on a game of pool between two men that turns into a fierce battle to win the attention of a beautiful patron who has just arrived at the bar. Geniality and sportsmanship succumb to jealousy and rage as the two players demonstrate increasingly daring, imaginative and outlandish billiard shots to woo the woman.  Two of my favorites include pouring the woman’s martini on the ball and lighting it on fire to make a triple bank, and cracking open the 7-ball to release a bird that then hatches (!!) the 7-ball into the corner pocket.

While the notion of a pool game going wildly off the rails is not original to billiards animation (e.g., Dirty Pool; Kikioriki – “The Game Must Go On”), Mr. Cardoletto’s bold, lively visual style and exaggerated characters are highly enjoyable. A teaser for his film is available here, and additional information is on Mr. Cardoletto’s website.

New York Billiards

Released in Germany in 2013 and nominated for an award at the Regensburg Short Film Festival in 2014, New York Billiards is 3+ minutes of emotionally poignant and evocative billiards animation.  The movie is available to watch here.

Created by Thyra Thorn, a multimedia artist whose oeuvre extends into movies, crime novels, poems, and comics, New York Billiards traces the continuous path of a billiards ball as it is shot across the New York City skyline.  Set to intensely escalating music, the crude charcoal-drawn ball contrasts with the black-and-white photographed Manhattan architecture.

As ominous as the first half of the film is, the second half is far grimmer. An unidentified player, perhaps an investment shark or real estate tycoon, shoots the ball back in motion. The ball retraces its course, but this time unleashing destruction on the city, with fires, tidal waves, and electric storms flattening buildings and uprooting landmarks.

As the Empire State Building topples over, the final scene is the ball falling off the skyline’s precipice. With nothing left to raze, we hear someone nasally remark, “Oh no,” the only two words of the film. The diabolical game, played by faceless and untouchable overlords and gamemasters, has ended, at least for now.

[1]      Ralph Bakshi was also no stranger to billiards, as evidenced by this memorable scene from Fritz the Cat.

Supernatural – “The Gamblers”

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I’m frequently troubled by the lack of respect for billiards in pop culture.  I’m not talking about the cheap fascination with pool hustlers, the overuse of ridiculous trick shots, or the inevitable pool hall brawl.  All of these tropes reveal a certain lack of imagination or wanton trafficking in caricatures, but not inherently disrespect.  No, my lament has to do with the regular disregard for, and misrepresentation, of the rules of the game and the skill it involves, as if accuracy and verisimilitude have no role in a billiards movie or television episode.  The latest malefactor: “The Gamblers” episode of Supernatural.

Supernatural - "The Gamblers"Maybe if this were some third-rate, bargain basement series on late-night cable, I might be more forgiving.  But, Supernatural, a dark fantasy television series that launched in 2005, is now the longest-running American live-action fantasy TV series. Supernatural follows two brothers as they hunt demons, ghosts, monsters, and other supernatural beings. Currently airing its fifteenth and final season, the series averages more than one million weekly viewers; has spawned 17 novels, several comic book series, and multiple TV and anime spinoffs; and has received 45 awards and 151 nominations.  To put it bluntly, this is a show that can afford to get it right.

Supernatural - "The Gamblers"“The Gamblers” episode, which aired on January 30, 2020, finds Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) and his brother Dean (Jensen Ackles) at an Alaskan bar named Lurlene’s, where people bet their luck in games of pool.[1] As one cashier describes it, “If you win, you come back lucky. But, no one ever does…it’s a pool hall that makes you lucky or might kill you.” As it turns out, the pool hall is run by Atrox Fortuna, aka the Roman goddess of luck, who explains that her kind were created by God to take the blame from mankind when things go wrong, so this bar is her form of payback.

The plot didn’t make much sense to me, but it’s the billiards, not the storyline, which is my gripe.  Let’s start with the first match of 8-ball between Dean and Fortuna, who responds favorably to Dean’s cringe-inducing hustler strategy, “If the fish aren’t biting, throw them a little chum.” The match is hardly nail-biting, with Dean clearing the table quickly.  His game-winning 8-ball shot involves banking the cue off the rail to sink the eight in the corner pocket closest to him. And while he does sink the ball, it’s only after an uncalled double-kiss that by standard bar pool rules would constitute a foul and therefore a loss of game.[2] But, in “The Gamblers” there is no acknowledgement of this faux pas.  It’s as if the rules didn’t matter.

The second transgression is far more egregious. Dean, having decided that the brothers “have to minimize risk, maximize profit…it’s like a Fast Eddie…from Dad’s favorite…Paul Newman, The Hustler,” decides that he will play one more match to up his luck and sets out to find his “Jackie Gleason.”[3] A cowboy named Joey 6 agrees to play Dean.  As the game gets down to the final balls, it appears Joey 6 has immobilized Dean behind an opposing ball such that he can’t pocket the 8-ball.  Making it double-or-nothing, Dean beats Joey 6 by performing a jump shot to win the game.  EXCEPT, it’s an illegal scoop jump shot, a blatant billiards violation that is ignored by the players, actors, script-writers and director. It’s the equivalent of scoring a touchdown and disregarding the pass interference, or overlooking goaltending, or allowing a batted puck to count as goal.  The net effect of this blind eye to official rules is that Joey 6 runs out of luck and effectively dies from lung cancer.  Imagine if the rules had been followed.

There is an early moment in “The Gamblers” when Dean says to Sam, “Pool…the game of champions, kings, my game, hell, our game…how many great memories do we have hustling pool?”  That prompted me to search the Supernatural archives, and sure enough, this was the third episode to feature the brothers playing billiards.  The first was in Season 4 (“I Know What You Did Last Sumer”) and the more recent was in Season 10 (“Inside Man”).

Supernatural - "The Gamblers"And, lest you think “The Gamblers” was a fluke, this disregard for the actual rules of pool was on display in the earlier seasons, too.  In this clip from “Inside Man,” Dean is again in full-hustle mode, this time to teach a lesson to some overconfident college kids.  But, as he prepares the table for 8-ball, he racks the balls incorrectly, putting two stripes in the corners.

While I may not be the target demographic for this series, my review comes down to a few superlatives: Supernatural is super disappointing and super inauthentic.

[1]      Fun fact: Lurlene is derived from Lurlei, and altered to Lorelei. In Germanic legend, Lorelei was a beautiful siren who sat upon a rock in the Rhine River and lured sailors to shipwreck and death.

[2]      I understand if they are playing APA rules then Dean’s shot would be permitted.  But, who’s kidding who? This is Lulerne’s in Alaska, not the 8-Ball World Championship.

[3]      This horribly forced reference to The Hustler makes no sense, given Fast Eddie loses to Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) in their initial matchup.

8

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Preparing for his New York Film Academy thesis in 2017, Gabriele Fabbro had narrowed down his options to two ideas.  The first film concept was about an immigrant family escaping. The second was about billiards, based on a memory from when he was a child in Italy.   Most people suggested he make the first film, given the relevance of the subject matter in today’s political climate.  Moreover, aside from the challenge of making billiards interesting on-screen, the second film concept also would have minimal dialogue, another cinematic red flag.

But, Mr. Fabbro bucked the popular opinion and chose the second concept, turning it into the short film 8. Well, the rest of us can thank him, for he has blessed us with an original, mesmerizing and visually stylish film that not only deserves the many awards and nominations it has since garnered, but also breathes new life into the billiards movies canon.

Filmed over eight days in March 2018 (at the First Street Pool and Billiards Parlor in Los Angeles), 8 is a story of love and redemption told over the course of two pool matches played at Lucky Lizard Billares, a few miles away from the New Mexico border.

The film opens with Jack (Esteban de la Isla), a selfish, sexist, pool hustler cheating a local rube by making what appears to be near impossible shot pocketing two balls, but is, in fact, an illegal double-hit stroke with the cue tip hitting the cue ball and then a second object ball.

Shortly after, Jessie (Jordan Knapp) enters to a chorus of muted whispers and furtive glances. Jack makes her for an easy mark and challenges her to three games of 8-ball, confident his pomp, swagger, and faster-than-the-eye (illegal) shots will empty her pockets. But, Jessie is unflappable, and Jack quickly realizes that his cheap bag of tricks is no match for her flawless and silent game.  Before leaving with his money, she breaks her silence only to reproach him by saying, “Cheating doesn’t make you a player.”

Jack may have been humiliated, but he is also love-stricken as well as enlightened, believing there is a path to being a worthy and honest opponent, should they play again.  We watch him endure a relentless training routine, in effect learning the game honestly for the first time.

When that magical rematch does occur, the tension is palatable.  The pool playing is quickly intercut with a mix of eye glances and close-ups of the players and the table from all sorts of different camera angles. Undergirding the tête-à-tête is the powerful score by composer Sean Goldman, with different musical compositions capturing the ever-changing emotional dynamics of the game. In a match with no dialogue, the “music becomes the script,” according to Mr. Fabbro.

Tipping the hat to Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money, Mr. Fabbro interweaves some highly original billiards montages. But, his cinematic influences run far deeper.  As Mr. Fabbro shared with me in an interview, his movie’s style was much more affected by some of Italy’s greatest directors, such as Sergio Leone, whose landmark films brilliantly used subtle actions and gestures rather than words to tell a story; Federico Fellini, who used exaggerated gestures to breathe life into characters; and especially, Bernardo Bertolucci, whose “unmotivated camera movements” created visual contrast and thus excitement.

For billiards movies fans, 8 should be 18 minutes of absolute pleasure. However, purists may get turned off by the bizarre rules of eight-ball that govern the two matches. In these games, players alternate after each shot, regardless if they sink a ball.

When I pressed Mr. Fabbro about why he chose to invent rules for an otherwise straightforward game, he shared that in Jessie’s perfection, she would not miss a shot, and therefore there would be no tension. Breaking the rules was a necessity to create excitement and intimacy within the games. Given the monotonous and humdrum billiards sequence that plague too many films and television episodes, I give my full approval to such creative license. I hope the billiards community will, too.

8 premiered at the Beverly Hills Film Festival in April 2019. The film is now available to watch on Amazon in the US.

Love, American Style – “Love and the Hustler”

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Since the Golden Age of Television in the 1950s, anthology series, which presents a different story and a different set of characters in each episode, segment and/or season, have been a mainstay. Wikipedia lists more than 200 such series. Some of these (e.g., Masterpiece Theater; Tales from the Crypt) have had a memorable impact on popular culture; most have not, disappearing after only a couple of seasons.

In my pursuit to discover every billiards television episode, it’s not surprising that I’ve uncovered more than a few episodes from anthology series. Those episodes have ranged from the spectacular (e.g., Twilight Zone – “Game of Pool”) to the craptacular (e.g., Friday the 13th – “Wedding Bell Blues”).

Love and the HustlerRecently, I learned of Love, American Style, a romantically-tinged comedy series that aired between 1969 and 1974.  Today, the series is probably best known for having a segment titled “Love and the Television Set” that ultimately led to the creation of the popular ABC show Happy Days.  But, for this reviewer, the only episode that matters is “Love and the Hustler,” which was the series premiere on September 29, 1969.

“Love and the Hustler,” which was one of three segments in the series premiere, focuses on Big Red (Flip Wilson), a boisterous yet charming pool player who is ultimately hustled by his romantic interest Mercy (Gail Fisher), a new player with more than beginner’s luck.

Love and the HustlerSpecifically, Big Red has been stakehorsed to play against a mystery opponent as part of a $500 wager.  While Big Red waits for his opponent, he entertains himself by showing off to Mercy, such as making the classic six ball “butterfly trick shot” in exchange for six kisses.  Big Red (and presumably, the viewers) believes the opponent is a no-show, but as is slowly revealed, his opponent is Mercy, who goes on to win fifty straight points.  Though he loses the match, he walks away with Mercy, still intent on claiming his six kisses.

From a technical billiards perspective, “Love and the Hustler” is pretty unimaginative. There are a couple of difficult shots shown from a birds-eye view, but most of the point-scoring is on fast cuts of easy shots and balls slamming into pockets.

However, from a cultural billiards perspective, there is more of interest.  Big Red does not lose to just any opponent. He loses to a woman – in fact, the reason the hustle works is because no one would suspect a woman of playing pool well.  Though there is little historical mention of female pool hustlers until Lori Shampo in the 1970s, “Love and the Hustler” aired in late 1969, right when the women’s liberation movement is emerging, so this idea would have had real cultural resonance.[1]

Love and the HustlerThe other aspect that is highly noteworthy is “Love and the Hustler” features an all-black cast.  Only a few years earlier, there were barely any shows on the air that could make this claim, aside from the immensely popular I Spy that ran from 1965-1968. But, with the Black Power (“Black is Beautiful”) movement impacting music, art, film, and dance, it of course started to permeate television, and by the “second half of the 1960s, there were more than two dozen programs featuring black actors as leading characters, or in prominent, regular supporting roles”…though many of those shows were quickly cancelled.[2]

I don’t know if Love, American Style regularly featured all-black casts.  But, “Love and the Hustler” certainly deserves honorable mention for launching the career of Flip Wilson (Big Red), who subsequently hosted his own weekly variety show, The Flip Wilson Show, which earned Wilson a Golden Globe and two Emmy Awards, and at one point was the second highest rated show on network television.

For Gail Fisher (Mercy), “Love and the Hustler” was another opportunity to increase her visibility. She was already on the path to breaking cultural milestones as the secretary Peggy Fair on the television detective series Mannix, a role for which she won two Golden Globes and an Emmy, thereby making her the first black woman to win either award.

“Love and the Hustler” is currently viewable on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/-PS7vH_6HUI

[1]      “Love and the Hustler” was not the first billiards episode to feature a female pool hustler.  That honor goes to the 1966 “Charley, the Pigeon” episode of My Three Sons.

[2]    “The Golden Age of Blacks in Television: The Late 1960s,” by J. Fred MacDonald

Top 7 Billiards Tables Not For Sale

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Since 2013, I’ve been blogging about the portrayal of billiards in film and television. In total, I’ve discovered 313 movies, television episodes, short films and web series in which billiards features prominently – and that’s to say nothing about all the scenes with only a passing reference to the sport.

So when the opportunity arose to share my passion with the BCA Insider readership, I jumped at the chance. After all, the more billiards permeates our popular culture, the more people are inclined to play and love and invest in the game.  And, in the hands of creative directors and screenwriters, the sport can become entertaining, metaphoric, a medium for deeper conversations, and a palette to imagine the unexpected.

Take billiards tables, for example.  While there are hundreds of models, they adhere to a shared composition of legs, pockets, bed, cloth, cabinet, apron, rails, and cushions. But, within film and television, the rules are more lenient; tables exist, for better or worse, that we would (or could) never use.  Therefore, in no particular order, I present the Top 7 Billiards Tables from Movies and TV.

7. Get Smart – “Dead Spy Scrawls” (1966). If you were evil international organization KAOS, intent on intercepting US government secret communication, where might you hide your latest “decoding machine”?  As Agent 86 Maxwell Smart deduces, the answer is the belly of a billiards table. Knowing the location, Smart then only needs to pocket four balls simultaneously to serve as the combination to unlock the decoding machine. Can your table do that?

6.  Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1987). Not only does this billiards musical reinterpret the showdown between legends Jimmy White and Ray Reardon as a grudge match between an aging vampire and a Cockney named Billy, but it also converts a gorgeous black marble snooker table into a transparent bedtime coffin for the snaggletoothed snooker sensation’s dead father.

5.  Silent Running (1972). In a post-apocalyptic world in which all plant life on Earth is becoming extinct, a group of scientists whittle away the day playing a variation of billiards that includes a computer arm player and a futuristic circular pool table. While the film’s shelf life was limited, its imaginings about circular pool have spawned mathematical debates within online message forums.

4. Goldfinger (1964). Maxwell Smart is not the only agent to encounter an unusual pool table. In Goldfinger, Auric Goldfinger, the arch-nemesis of James Bond, need only flip a switch and the reversible pool table reveals a miniature replica of Fort Knox, his future heist target. Fortunately, this is a different table than the one Goldfinger later straps Bond to, with the intent to laser his nether regions.

3. Hard Knuckle (1982). Imagine a dystopian world where one botched billiards shot means having to sever the top third of one’s finger. That’s the practical purpose of the “Knuckle Table,” a blood-crusted set of pincers hinged to each pool table in this Australian made-for-TV movie. Surprisingly, the threat of phalangectomy did not diminish the sport’s popularity.

2. Death Parade – “Death March” (2015). Created as a sequel to the short film Death Billiards, this Japanese anime television series has dead people participate in “Death Games” to choose their final fate. This galactic billiards table makes its debut in the fifth episode during a game of Solar System 9-Ball. Fortunately, no planets were harmed in the playing of this grudge match.

1. Beverly Hillbillies (1960s). Though I’m not sure in which episode the “fancy eatin’ table” first premiered, it is impossible to forget the Clampett family’s dining room table, which viewers all recognized as a billiards table. It was “built solid” enough to support “half dozen turkey gobblers and never sag a bit.” Best of all, the table came with “pot passers” and “meat stabbers” (aka cue sticks notched or sharpened for various culinary purposes).

So, the next time you’re discussing billiards table options, consider finding inspiration in these cinematic counterparts. Just steer clear of the Knuckle Table.  We’ll leave that one on the silver screen.

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This article first appeared in BCA Insider – BCA Holiday Issue (November 1, 2019).

The Lucy Show – “Lucy and the Pool Hustler”

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December, 1967.  Jean Balukas, who would become known as one of the greatest billiards players in the world, was just eight year old.  “The Duchess of Doom” Allison Fisher was still in her mama’s belly. The Women’s Professional Billiards Association (WPBA) would not be conceived for another nine years. Similarly, the inaugural World Ladies Snooker Championship would also have to wait almost a decade.

Though billiards was not yet a women’s professional sport, and most of today’s female legends were too young to play or not yet born, the game’s demographics were changing. The late ‘60s were a period of cultural tumult and women’s liberation, and as billiards expanded beyond the pool parlors, more and more women started to pick up their cues.

This is the chronological backdrop for The Lucy Show episode “Lucy and the Pool Hustler” which aired in December 1967 as part of the series’ sixth season. The Lucy Show, starring Lucile Ball as Lucy Carmichael, was the follow-up to the immensely enjoyable sitcom I Love Lucy.

“Lucy and the Pool Hustler” acknowledges this gender shift right from the episode’s get-go. Harry Norton (Stanley Adams), a customer of the bank where Lucy works, is the proprietor of Norton’s Ball and Cue Salon. Formerly known as Norton’s Pool Room, with its “sexy calendars,” the rebranded salon has been cleaned up to entice women to frequent his establishment.  In fact, “since the dames took over, business has been terrific… [The women] aren’t here to play pool…now they play pocket billiards.” As for the red-felted tables?  “So what, now that I got green in the cash register,” exclaims Mr. Norton.

While Lucy learned how to play pool as a child, she’s not a fan of the game, until she learns that there is a Ladies Pocket Billiard Tournament, sponsored by the (fictitious) Pacific Billiard Supply Co., with a $1,000 cash first prize. Remarking that with $1000, she could “buy a new car, and a new color TV, and a new wardrobe, and redo [her] apartment…a $1000 makes a lot of down payments,” she enrolls in the tournament.

Lucy’s main competition is Laura Winthrop, who the audience knows is really the cigar-smoking, fast-talking, pool-hustling army veteran Ace Winthrop (Dick Shawn) in drag.  Behind in his payments to Mr. Norton, Ace agrees to enter the tournament, masquerading as a woman, as the fastest path to paying off his debt.

The little billiards that occurs in the episode is pretty uninspiring. Most of the comedy is devoted to lagging for the break, with Ace doing a behind-the-back lag matched by Lucy lagging with the bumper of her cue.  When Lucy makes even the most basic shot, the onlookers go wild, presumably awed by her ability to pocket any ball, which may be a cultural indicator that the mainstream still found it hard to believe a woman could shoot pool.

(Ironically, Lucille Ball was allegedly an avid pool player.  In 1972, she even loaned her name and image to a table top pool game by Milton Bradley called Pivot Pool, which was a tiny, plastic version of billiards for families.[1])

Winthrop, in turn, quickly starts running the table. When he’s one shot away from winning the purse, he concedes that Lucy is a “cute trick,” so he will at least make the match interesting by calling his final shot, “2-ball off the side cushion off the [second] side cushion off the front cushion off [another] side cushion into the side pocket.” His get-the-money/get-the-girl plan falls flat, however, when his wig gets stuck on some of the salon sculpture. With his dame-game scheme exposed, Lucy becomes the winner.

While Ms. Ball was a true pioneer in comedy, it’s hard to argue she did much to advance billiards for women in the “Lucy and the Pool Hustler” episode. Fortunately, help was around the corner, as women like Dorothy “Cool Hand” Wise and Palmer Byrd, put billiards on a national stage, and young prodigies, such as Jean Balukas, Allison Fisher and Loree Jon Hasson began showing the world that the “big lie about billiards being man’s game” was no more.[2]

[1]   Pivot Pool was one of five games in the 1970s that Lucille Ball released with Milton Bradley. The others were Pivot Golf, Solotaire, Cross Up, and Body Language.

[2]   Quote attributed to Dorothy Wise. (Source: “Cool Hand Dorothy is Women’s Champion,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 10/27/71.)