Tag Archives: pool movies

Swamper

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In the moving industry, a swamper is slang for an unskilled laborer who assists in the loading and unloading of packed furniture, boxes, and other objects. Jay Thurlow, the protagonist of Philip Neumann’s 2021 Canadian movie Swamper, is a swamper, and it’s not pretty. 

SwamperFor every occasional generous gratuity he receives, he must also clean out the fecal matter left in the truck by homeless people; double-check his employer which tries to short-change him on his hourly pay; haul sofas up treacherous cliffs; accept verbal abuse from clients; and turn a blind eye to a murderous, ill-tempered partner.

And that’s just the tip of the cue stick when it comes to Jay’s bad luck and difficult life.

He must also deal with a dying mother, an unemployed alcoholic father, a violent landlord, and a demanding girlfriend. He gets fired, dumped, conned, beaten, and repeatedly threatened. On the positive, someone offers to purchase his eyeball for $20,000.

On top of, or perhaps as a result of, these woes and vices, Jay also has a billiards gambling problem. He’s a pool shark, who easily rattles; a hustler who can’t finish the hustle; a talent who can’t get out of his own way. He’s metaphorically running the table and still scratching on the 8-ball.

Apparently, being an indigenous teen from a broken family is hard, which seems to be core to the movie’s muddled message. But, within this miasma, there is optimism. Brandon Moon, who plays Jay, injects his character with an innocent and heartfelt pertinacity. He is repeatedly knocked down, but never knocked out.

This persistence is central to Jay’s pool game. Whether it’s 8-ball or 9-ball, one pocket against Manitoba Fats or straight pool (“Who the fuck plays straight pool anymore?”) against Ronnie the Rooster, billiards is Jay’s lifeline to a possibly better world.

We root for Jay, even if it’s just to get a momentary respite from his hapless existence. But, oddly, Swamper does not reward the audience, which is one of the film’s fundamental problems. The character arcs are horizontal lines with narratives that fade, rather than conclude. Enjoyable scenes are intermittently scattered throughout an otherwise unsatisfying and exhausting viewing experience.

As for the pool, there are some clear nods to The Hustler and The Color of Money, from the black-and-white filming to the fanboy obsession with specific cue sticks, such as a Kevin DeRoo versus a vintage Meucci, to the aforementioned fat man opponent. The pool-playing is authentic, but it lacks dramatic tension, especially during the culminating $10,000 8-Ball Tournament, which unfortunately makes Swamper a far cry from the genre’s giants it so obviously idolizes. 

Sadly, Swamper does have one thing in common with its billiard film predecessors. Just as The Hustler filmed at Ames Pool Hall (which closed five years after the film in 1966), and The Color of Money filmed at St. Paul’s Billiards (now closed), Swamper filmed at Guys & Dolls Billiards in Vancouver…and which is also now closed.

Swamper is not currently available to watch online. A huge thank you to Alex Quinn, actor and producer of Swamper, for sharing a private copy of the film with me to watch.

The Player: Released At Last!

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When Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy in the 1870s, observers were disappointed that the archaeological site’s grandeur did not align with its portrayal in Homer’s Iliad. When Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb in 1922, many were initially underwhelmed by its small size, and later, by its absence of secret chambers. 

Sometimes, reality falls well short of expectation.

The Player - billiards moviesThat’s certainly the truth behind the recent discovery of The Player, a billiards movie released in November 1971 and considered forever lost. For more than 50 years, billiards enthusiasts have talked about the legendary film, starring Minnesota Fats as “the greatest pool hustler in the greatest pool movie.” The film was the El Dorado of the billiards film genre, often discussed but rarely, if ever, seen, except by a select few who may have viewed it during the one week it played at one of a handful of Ogden-Perry Theatres half a century ago.

Like so many others, I had devoted considerable time to tracking down the film. I even discovered a two-minute trailer. It was like staring at a blurred photo of a head emerging from Loch Ness – proof of an existence just beyond grasp, or maybe a hoax about a film that was never finished. But, ultimately, all my sleuthing proved fruitless, all my leads were dead-ends, and I discontinued the search about 10 years ago. It was the opinion of this billiards film historian that The Player was gone for good.

That denouement – that acceptance of truth – was detonated two months ago when the folks at FT Depot, a film restoration community, dropped a billiards bomb by unexpectedly releasing the complete version of The Player, available here.

The story of that release, which is discussed in detail on the YouTube site, is infinitely more engaging and entertaining than the actual movie. An abandoned print, a delinquent drive-in operator, a storage room filled with rain puddles, Vinegar Syndrome, physical distortion – it’s a cinematic billiards miracle, a feat almost as incredible as Willie Mosconi’s 526-ball run or Efren Reyes’ history-making Z-shot at the 1995 Sands Regency 9-Ball Open.

As for The Player, it’s hard to overstate the awfulness of this film. 

The Player - billiards movieCreated as a decade-late response to The Hustler, which starred Jackie Gleason as the fictional, corpulent pool shark Minnesota Fats, Thomas DeMartini’s The Player featured the real Minnesota Fats (aka Rudolf Wanderone) in his film debut. Though Fats was central to the film’s marketing, he only appears in three scenes, all of which basically consist of him, playing himself, sauntering around the table, knocking in balls and making dazzling trick shots.

The rest of the movie focuses on a respected pool player Lou Marchesi, whose life begins to crumble through his association with Sylvia, a beautiful and sophisticated woman who refuses to understand or accept his way of life. 

The movie largely ping pongs between uninterrupted matches of 9-ball, 14.1, and one-pocket, primarily filmed at the former Shopper’s Pool Room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and cringe worthy scenes between Lou and Sylvia. The characters are wooden, the script is soporific, the drama is turgid, the pacing is terrible, the filming is poor, and there are almost two relentless hours of reusing the same musical riffs, with the sole exception being the inclusion of Shorty Rogers’ jazzy tune, “The Player.” 

Fats is, by far, the most entertaining aspect of the movie, which says something given his limited screen time and lack of acting. (He does have one of the film’s best lines, when he expresses concern to Lou about his overbearing girlfriend and deadpans, “you better dust this tomato off.”) 

Throughout the 1960s, producers had allegedly approached Fats about making another great pool movie to follow on the success of The Hustler. He turned down many scripts until he found one that was perfect and realistic with The Player. 

I’m pretty sure that story is bogus, but like so much with Fats, who is famous for claiming that Jackie Gleason’s character (created by Walter Tevis) was modeled after him, sometimes the fiction is more entertaining than the facts.

That’s also the story of The Player, a film whose mythology has proven to be far more interesting than its actual content. As appreciative as I am to the technical wizards at FT Depot, I can’t help but wonder if this film was better left in that storage room, shrouded in mystique and deserving not to see another day.

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The One-Acts – “Third and Oak: Pool Hall”

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Here’s an all-star lineup:

  1. Anthony Quinn, who won Best Supporting Oscars both for Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life and received Best Actor Oscar nominations for Zorba the Greek and Wild is the Wind.
  2. Fielder Cook, a director who won three Emmys and received five additional Emmy nominations.
  3. Marsha Norman, who received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play ‘night, Mother.
  4. James Earl Jones, an actor so accomplished that he won the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) including a Lifetime Achievement Honorary Academy Award.
  5. Mario Van Peebles, the director and star of New Jack City (and son of pioneering director Melvin Van Peebles).

That quintet teamed up in November 1989 for “Third and Oak: Pool Hall,” a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it, one-time only performance. The show was a televised live theater production that was one of four episodes aired as part of the Arts & Entertainment Network’s anthology series American Playwrights Theater: The One-Acts.

Chicago Tribune TV Week 1989While “Third and Oak: Pool Hall” is hardly the masterpiece that such a quintet seems capable of, the episode still makes for a gem in the annals of billiards television and for some powerful viewing, if you can find it. (More on that later.)

“Third and Oak: Pool Hall” is based on Ms. Norman’s one-act play of the same name. The year is 1978, and the setting is a run-down second floor pool room in Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. Jones plays Willie, the pool hall’s proprietor.  Mr. Van Peebles plays “Shooter” Stevens, a radio DJ who is named after his father (Shooter), a nomadic and exceptionally-skilled pool shark until he lost a game and jumped off a bridge to his death. 

The elder Shooter and Willie, along with an unseen man named George, were best friends, “more like triplets” or “three blind mice,” as they were often prone to trouble. The younger Shooter is married to George’s daughter Sandra (another unseen character), but their relationship is strained, due to Shooter’s flirtatious proclivities and Sandra’s spending habits. Shooter complains, “I’m a 100% certified wholly-owned slave boy, courtesy of MasterCard.”

Those tensions and connections create a fraught relationship between Willie, the demanding surrogate father figure, and the young Shooter, who questions Willie’s ongoing commitment to George and the pool hall as well as fears being stranded once Willie moves. 

If that all sounds a bit soap operatic, you’re not off base. The play is rather convoluted and an excessive amount of banter is devoted to secondhand characters the audience never meets. I doubt I would go watch it off-Broadway. 

But, this is James Earl Jones, the O.G. of basso profundos, the voice behind Vader, the man behind Mustafa. He utters his lines with such “gravel and gravitas” that he mesmerizes, even in a semi-forgettable role.1 He is the uber-paterfamilias, even to a child not his own.  Moreover, his presence contrasts well with the uncorked energy of Mario Van Peebles, who is helter-skelter, always in motion, ever circling the pool table and setting up shots, but never finishing them. In short, “Third and Oak: Pool Hall” works not because of the story, which is both overly complicated and prosaic, but because of the actors’ chemistry and their visceral tension, each one step away from snapping.

Mr. Quinn, the on-screen pre- and post-host of all four episodes of American Playwrights Theater: The One-Acts, shares that Ms. Norman always walked by the real pool hall at Third and Oak, but never went in. She “imagined the life inside of the places we don’t go into.”  It’s that imagination that is the root of the problem. 

For starters, there are fundamental racial problems associated with a white woman who is unwilling (or afraid) to go into a black-owned poolroom, but feels comfortable giving voice to its patrons. But aside from that mega hitch, Ms. Norman’s choice never to enter the poolhall means there is no attempt to really understand the mind of the road player, the argot of the pool table, and the impact such a life could have on family and friends. We are left with make-believe, a thin drama that only works because the actors can overcome it.

Billiards enthusiasts, whose hopes may have been raised given the paucity of plays that reference billiards (never mind include “pool” in their title), will undoubtedly feel discontented. With the exception of a brief mention of Ralph Greenleaf and Willie Hoppe, neither the dialogue nor the action reveals any familiarity with the sport. As mentioned earlier, Shooter repeatedly picks up a cue, but he rarely follows through. In fact, there is a scene toward the end in which Shooter attempts to make his father’s famed trick shot, but as he never sets up the shot the same way, it’s an embarrassing attempt at verisimilitude. 

Intrigued? Curious to watch? Unfortunately, unless you live in Los Angeles or New York City, you may be shit outta luck. “Third and Oak: Pool Hall” is not available anywhere to stream or purchase, and I could not find any bootleg versions online. However, if you’re in LA or NYC, the Paley Center for Media has the episode in their archives for public viewing.

  1. “James Earl Jones: A voice for the ages, aging gracefully,” The Washington Post, September 17, 2014.

Inaugural Billiards-Themed Non-Billiards Magazine Awards (Part 1)

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As the popularity of billiards has intermittently waxed and waned over the past century, numerous billiards magazines and journals from around the world have aspired to keep an ear to the baize for its fan base. By my count, almost 100 different publications have reported on the sport. 

billiards magazineThey span a lifetime: from Billiards Magazine, the industry’s pioneer which launched in 1913, to its current incarnations, such as Billiards Digest, Pool & Billiard, SPM Media, and Snooker Scene. They have spanned the globe: from Cue’s (Japan) and d’Billiard (Indonesia) to Billiard World (Russia) and Bubbles (Croatia). And, they have tackled the sport at every angle: from the highly quantitative (Accu-Stats) to the questionably (in)appropriate (Billiards Table Talk). 

For the sports’ professionals, the magazines have provided visibility and exposure to a larger audience, albeit not that large or for that long with many of these publications.  Nonetheless, to paraphrase Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, it “is the thrill that’ll getcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rollin’ Stone a billiards magazine.”

But, the story gets much more interesting when we leap beyond those 100 billiards publications (of which perhaps 10 are in print today). The global print and digital magazine industry was approximately $90B in 2020. There were 7,416 print consumer magazine titles in the US alone in 2020. I have no idea how many there were in the world.

All those different titles create a massive opportunity both for showcasing the sport’s stars to a non-billiards fanbase, and for reminding the world of the visual, emotional, and metaphoric power of the game. Seeing is believing, and the surest way to ensure the long-term survival of the sport is to keep it front and center, however, whenever, and wherever.

Excluding the aforementioned billiards publications, I have found 173 non-billiards magazines that either feature billiards or billiards professionals on their covers.  Once again, they cover 100 years, criss-crossing the globe and infiltrating news, music, culture, and every other magazine genre.  To make sense of such a motley mélange of magazines, I created the Inaugural Billiards-Themed Non-Billiards Magazine Awards. (Part 1 is below. Part 2 will be in the next blog post.) Call it the alt-Ellies, phenolic resin, chalk dust, and all. 

BEST SPORTS PUBLICATION TO RIGHTFULLY RECOGNIZE BILLIARDS AS A SPORT

Winner: Sports Illustrated (2010, China)

Having grown up with Sports Illustrated covers plastering my bedroom walls, I still cannot forgive the US magazine for failing to feature billiards on its cover. It’s not because it’s niche; chess, bowling, and ballooning have all graced the cover.  At least SI ran a story on Jeanette Lee, entitled “The Little Blessings of the Black Widow,” in the October 7, 2021 issue.

Fortunately, the China edition of Sports Illustrated did not make the same mistake. A 2010 cover features Chinese snooker player Ding Juhui, the most successful Asian player in the sport’s history. Having recently won the 2009 Pukka Pies UK SnookerChampionship, Mr. Juhui was ranked fifth in the world at the time of this issue.

Runner-up: Sportstar, the monthly Indian sports magazine, featured national star Pankaj Advani on its cover both in September 2009 and November 2014.

LEAST OBVIOUS COUNTRY TO RAISE ITS BILLIARD FLAG

Winner: наш спорт (2022)

For countries, such as the United States or France, that publish upwards of 7,000+ magazine titles per year, it’s not surprising to see billiards imagery sprinkled across a smattering of titles. But, for less obvious countries, where the number of magazine titles published is under 1,000, seeing billiards imagery is like sinking the 8-ball on the break. 

This award goes to the 2022 issue of наш спорт, a Belarus publication that translates to Our Sport. Not sure who is gracing the cover, but the magazine is dedicated to the “promotion of a healthy lifestyle, the education of a healthy harmonious personality, the priority value of which is an active, healthy and long life.”

Runner-up: The Italian magazine Grazia did its first international spinoff with a Bulgarian edition. A 2022 issue features model Elsa Matiz “playing to win” (assuming she catches that 8-ball).

HOTTEST CELEBRITY TO HOLD A POOL CUE

Co-Winners: Veronica (June 1999, Netherlands) and Vanity Fair (January, 2015)

There are lots of lists of celebrities shooting billiards. I recently wrote about Fred Astaire, a maestro of the sport, who made his own shots across four episodes of Dr. Kildare. 

This award, however, has zero to do with billiards skill; it has everything to do with that feral combination of hot Hollywood bods, suggestive, physical contortions, and all the sexual innuendo packed into stroking shafts and pocketing balls.

There was a lot out there to ogle, but it’s a tie between a leopard print lingerie-clad Neve Campbell gracing the 1999 cover of the Dutch magazine Veronica and Bradley Cooper giving us his baby blue stare on the 2015 cover of Vanity Fair. 

LOUDEST TOAST TO BILLIARDS MOVIES

Winner: Life (November, 1986)

I may have discovered more than 300 billiards movies, TV episodes and short films, but I freely admit most are unlikely to receive more than an ⅛ page vertical of magazine copy. Ever. Never mind a cover.

Of course, The Color of Money was no ordinary film. It was a sequel, directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese 25 years after the Oscar-winning original, that paired two generations of megawatt stars, Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, fresh off of Top Gun.

Not surprisingly, this category’s winner, the November 1986 issue of Life, salutes that film by offering a “private visit with the new hustler and the old pro.” 

Runner-up: While it’s tempting to award the December 1986 issue of US, or the November 1986 issue of American Cinematographer, which both focused on TCOM, the award goes to a 1989 Chicago Tribune – TV Week, which shows James Earl Jones and Mario Van Peebles starring in the little-known billiards episode, “Third and Oak: Pool Hall.”

MOST DESERVING OF A LARGER AUDIENCE

Winner: Flex (March, 1986)

The audience for niche interests is wildly varied, vast, and boundless. Not surprisingly, niche magazines are ready and waiting to satiate these sub-groups’ desires for content. And, there are some really niche mags out there: Emu Today & Tomorrow (emu farming), PRO (portable restroom operators), Girls and Corpses (‘nuff said). 

While billiards has never graced the cover of Elevator World, it has extended its reach into some non-mainstream areas of interest. Flex, an American bodybuilding magazine with a peak estimated circulation of 78,000, wins this award with its March 1986 cover featuring strongman Albert Beckles.  He may be “on the ball,” but I’m afraid he’s going to crush that cue stick into wood chippings.

Runner-up: Apparently, in Greece, haircuts are associated with billiards. At least, that’s my conclusion from the 2020 cover of The B. Mag, a Greek magazine devoted to the barber industry, which gives new meaning to the pool lingo, “a close cut.”

FARTHEST JUMP FROM BILLIARDS TO ANOTHER INDUSTRY

Winner: FWD (2002, Philippines)

Aside from his countless appearances on sports magazines, Michael Jordan appeared on the cover of everything from GQ and Ebony to Time and Cigar Aficionado. It’s a great sign when athletes can raise their profile beyond the pages of their industry’s publications.

Winning this category is the 2002 issue of FWD, a Pinoy men’s magazine, which featured Efren “Bata” Reyes and the “Black Widow” Jeanette Lee sharing the cover. Their joy is evident; it’s equally shared by us billiards fans.

Runner-up: The 2015 Autumn issue of Whiskeria, a British magazine devoted to unlocking the mystery of whisky, is remarkable for featuring Michaela Tabb on its cover. Not only is she a snooker personality in the world’s leading whisky magazine, but she’s a snooker referee!

BEST UNIVERSITY TO ATTEND

Winner: Black Hills State Alumni Magazine (Fall, 2022)

We’re currently exploring universities for my son. There are a myriad of factors to consider when applying: location, tuition, size, culture, Greek life, academic disciplines, etc. But, the prevalence of billiards? That’s a criterion I had not considered.

Whether to appeal to the student body or their alumni, various universities over the years have chosen to highlight billiards in their public relations. But, no university has done it better than our category winner, Black Hills State University, which put Shane Van Boening on the cover of their Fall 2022 Alumni Magazine. Though the “South Dakota Kid” did not attend the Spearfish, South Dakota based university, he’s about as close to a local legend as the school can ask for.

Runner-up: Kudos to the University of Michigan for its cover story on union renovations stripping away 97 years of pool hall history in their January 2018 issue of The Statement. 

MOST UNINSPIRING USE OF BILLIARDS IMAGERY

Winner: Insurance Journal (March, 2006)

Milton Friedman’s 1953 essay ‘The methodology of positive economics,’ with its famous expert pool-player analogy, is one of the most cited and influential pieces of writing in twentieth-century economics. While the essay is controversial, it’s proof-positive of the widespread metaphoric application of billiards. But, just because billiards can be applied, does not mean it should be…

Claiming the win in this category is the March 2006 of Insurance Journal, a magazine devoted to the property and casualty insurance industry. Under the headline, “Rack ‘Em Up,” the cover features an off-camera player aiming at the 14-ball in a story about the “most popular pockets for accountants’ liability claims.” Talk about a crisis in mixed metaphors.

Runner-up: I’m still scratching my head to understand why the January/February 2017 issue of The Smart Manager, India’s first management magazine, shows billiard balls, cue, and chalk in a cover story on the future of management development programs.

MOST LIKELY TO IMPRESS BOB VILLA

Winner: Workbench (November-December, 1966)

Handcrafted America. Incredible Inventions. The Genuine Article. Furniture To Go. All of these television series have dedicated episodes to the craftsmanship and assembly of billiards tables and cues. No wonder a number of magazines in the Home Improvement sub-genre have similarly devoted cover stories to such a topic.

The category winner is the November-December 1966 issue of Workbench, a magazine about the use of tools and working with wood. The magazine’s strapline invites readers to “construct your own professional-type home pool table.” Three cheers for the Cleaver family shooting pool, but the icing for me was the billiard ball-themed masthead (albeit with two 4-balls).

Runner-up: Seven years after the Workbench issue, Popular Mechanics followed suit in January 1973 with a cover story about “how to build a deluxe pool table for $107.” Yet, somehow this DIY solicitation is much less inviting.

That concludes Part 1 of our Inaugural Billiards-Themed Non-Billiards Magazine Awards. I’ll share the remaining winners in my next blog post.  Until then, if you stumble across any billiards imagery gracing the cover of a non-billiards magazine, please send it my way.  Maybe there is a pool-playing potato farmer out there, just waiting to make the cover of Spudman.

Hard Luck Love Song

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Avril Lavigne recently revealed that she is planning to turn her 2002 globe-spanning, Grammy-nominated, pop-punk anthem “Sk8er Boi” into a feature film.1

Hard Luck Love SongI’m no advisor to the stars, but she might want to reconsider that creative gamble. The landscape of ‘songs made into movies’ is largely a cinematic wasteland. Sure, the film Yellow Submarine was genius, Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy did decently, and Arthur Penn earned an Oscar nomination for directing Alice’s Restaurant, even if the film was a box office flop. But, outliers aside, the 80+ films in the genre represent a hodgepodge of ‘never heard of it’ and ‘wished I hadn’t watched it.’

Unfortunately, the 2020 billiards movie Hard Luck Love Song only adds to the genre’s detritus. 

Helmed by first-time director Justin Corsbie, Hard Luck Love Song is based on the 2006 folk song “Just Like Old Times” by American songwriter Todd Snider. Told in the first person, the song is the story of a pool hustler and a hooker, who having not seen one another in years, get reconnected when he sees an ad for her services in the weekly Scene. Little of the hustler’s backstory is revealed, except that he “won a tournament last week in Oklahoma City” and “hustled half of this town tonight.”

In Mr. Corsbie’s film, Jesse (Michael Dorman) is a struggling country music singer/songwriter, who is finally able to put a little cash in his pocket after overtly hustling some California locals in pool. Warned, but feeling confident, he registers for a tournament on the wrong side of town, which pits him against the heavily tattooed neighborhood chieftain Rollo (an unrecognizable Dermot Mulroney). Rather than settling for just the tournament’s pot, Jesse hustles Rollo for an additional $2000 and then narrowly escapes.

Back in his motel room and flush with cash, the movie now picks up where the song starts:

There’s a Coke machine glowin’ through the parking lot

Call it a room with a view

Best night of pool that I ever shot

I made a lot of money too

Enter Carla (Sophia Bush), the aforementioned prostitute. Jesse and Carla have real chemistry, and for a hot moment, the song/movie really works. But, after their rendezvous is interrupted by a police officer, who learns these crazy kids went to high school together in 1982, the song ends, and so does any coherence in the movie. 

Hard Luck Love SongA third act introduces Eric Roberts as an avuncular bar proprietor and Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA as a former boyfriend, but basically it’s a bunch of insipid dialogue that leads to a completely preposterous fight scene, in which Rollo proves pool hustling is no way to make a living.

There is also no further pool-playing, which makes me question the classification of Hard Luck Love Song as a billiards movie, but given the lackluster pool scenes in the film’s first act, it’s probably just as well.  Seriously, I’ve seen Kelly Bundy more convincingly portray pool hustling in Married… with Children than what passes for billiards in this movie.  There are no styled shots, no set-ups, not even the de rigueur trick shot. When Rollo remarks that he’s never seen someone run a table like Jesse has, it makes you wonder what version of Skittle Pool he’s been playing.2

For a better (albeit hardly great) billiards movie originating from a song, check out The Baron and the Kid, based on Johnny Cash’s 1980 song, “The Baron.” While predictable and paper-thin, the film takes its billiards seriously (thanks, in no small part, to the technical advising of Mike Massey).  

Hard Luck Love Song is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

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1. Avril Lavigne Teases ‘Sk8er Boi’ Movie That Will Take Hit Song ‘to the Next Level’

2. According to Dr. Dave Alciatore, the pros break and run in 8-ball between 20-50% of the time. Seems mighty peculiar our friend Rollo had never seen a run.

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