Early last week, a familiar debate raged within the AZ Billiards forum: Who is the greatest living cue maker? The question received 2,771 views and 59 responses in three days. Many names were suggested – Dennis Searing, Danny Tibbitts, Thomas Wayne, Ernie Gutierrez, Bill Schick, etc – though there was nothing close to consensus.

In December 2005, a variant of this same question was presented by the television series The Genuine Article in the episode “Puzzles and Pool Cues.” Their answer was Richard Black, the “finest craftsman of pool cues” who has dedicated his life to making “the most beautiful cue sticks in the world.”

The Genuine Article was a 30-minute television series that aired on the Fine Living Network from June 2004 through May 2007. Each episode featured British-born host Gordon Elliott taking an in-depth look at the quality behind two of the finest products and/or services in the world. Mr. Elliott would introduce these master craftsmen, who on different episodes included makers of everything from Turkish rugs and Venetian glass to belt buckles and barbecue grills, and then follow with his signature refrain that what they are creating is “nothing less than the genuine article.”

Richard Black

It is hardly a surprise that Mr. Black was the subject focus of “Puzzles and Pool Cues.“ (His name was also mentioned repeatedly in response to the aforementioned AZ Billiards Forum question.) A former successful stockbroker, Mr. Black began making cues as an avocation. But, starting in 1974, when he got to “express [himself] through artistic designs, it got to be so much fun…Once I found a canvas I could work on, it just flowed.”

For 40 years, he has treated cues as his “canvas” and drawn on sources as “eclectic” as Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Fabergé eggs, and Parker pens to inspire his craftsmanship and to win fans and accolades across the world. His cue, the Chantilly, earned a permanent home at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution in 1998. His cue, the Rhapsody, was featured in the 1999 “Pool” episode of the Pretender television series. BCA Hall of Famer Steve “the Miz” Mizerak dedicated his Complete Book of Pool to Mr. Black, thanking him for “renewing [his] interest in pool.” And, not surprisingly, several years after the airing of The Genuine Article episode, he was inducted into the American Cuemaker’s Hall of Fame.

In “Puzzles and Pool Cues,” Mr. Elliott introduces Mr. Black by saying his custom cues can cost as much as $50,000 (though the traditional ones range from $1700-$5400). One cue described at length in the episode is the Antipodes, which is made from 16 different types of wood from 16 different countries around the world. Though it has 600 inlays, the cue stick took only three weeks to create. At $30,000, it is “moderately priced.”

Also included in “Puzzles and Pool Cues” are interviews with Victor Stein, author of The Billiard Encyclopedia, and Jack “Gentleman Jack” Colavita (who once starred alongside Minnesota Fats in the long-lost billiards movie The Player.) Mr. Colavita said, “Without no doubt in my mind, [Richard Black] is the best cue maker…I don’t play with no other cue than Richard Black…there is no doubt about it.” (Sadly, Mr. Colavita passed away in September 2005, three months before the “Puzzles and Pool Cues” episode actually aired.)

Though The Genuine Article long ago stopped broadcasting, Mr. Black, now in his seventies, continues to make a little less than 20 cues per year. His shop, Richard Black Custom Cues, is in Humble, Texas, and his cues are viewable on his website.

On a final note, this blog post could not have been written without the individual help of Mr. Black. There is only a handful of The Genuine Article episodes available on the web, and “Puzzles and Pool Cues” is not one of them. Most fortunately, Mr. Black responded to my last-ditch effort to obtain the episode by personally mailing me a copy of the DVD for my viewing pleasure. Mr. Black, you are indeed the genuine article.

Lee Majors, the former Six Million Dollar Man, delivers a six cent performance in the mind-achingly awful “Eight Ball” episode of The Fall Guy. This 1983 episode from the second season offers a 45-minute checklist of everything that is wrong with the typical use and portrayal of billiards in the majority of television shows.

For those who missed this action/adventures series when it aired for five seasons on ABC from 1981 to 1986, The Fall Guy starred Majors as Colt Seavers, a Las Vegas stuntman who moonlights as a bounty hunter. He is regularly joined by his cousin and stuntman-in-training Howie Munson (Douglas Barr) and, for some ‘80s eye candy, stunt performer Jody Banks (Heather Thomas). In “Eight Ball,” Colt must protect his long-time friend, “Joltin” Joe O’Hara (Tony Curtis), a world-class pool player and recovering alcoholic, so that he can enter a tournament in Reno, Nevada. A local kingpin, who has a lot of money riding on the tournament, wants to make sure Joltin’ Joe does not compete. The full episode is available to watch here.

http://youtu.be/e1MTMRxUNpc

Now for the checklist. Here’s five things this episode gets so embarrassingly wrong it makes you want to scratch on the eight:

1. 

   A wasted use of “Machine Gun Lou” Butera

   “Machine Gun Lou” Butera, the great straight pool player known for his rocket-fast billiards skills, stars at “Machine Gun” Louie Kramer, the chief rival to Joltin’ Joe. But, rather than let Butera show off his pool chops , his one significantl scene features him making a distressed phone call to Joltin’ Joe’s wife. Butera should be there to shoot, not act. After all, he was inducted into the Billiards Congress of America three years later. (Fortunately, Butera was able to leverage his role by acting as a technical advisor and making brief appearances as a pool player in future movies, such as Racing with the Moon and Police Academy 6: City Under Siege.)

2. Tony Curtis, ever a gifted actor (Some Like It Hot; The Defiant Ones; Spartacus), is woefully unconvincing as a denim-clad pool shark who curiously keeps a pair of plumber gloves in his back pocket. Trying to show he’s a speedster, his actions, from chalking to shooting, come across as rushed and fake, with Curtis acting far too giddy, considering the relative simplicity of the shots he’s taking. It’s an unfortunate irony that Butera, once referred to as the “fastest pool player the game has ever known,”[1] gets little camera time to show his speed, while Curtis must fumble his way through fast-action billiards sequences.
3. Every billiards shot is a two ball, two pocket carom. These shots are so orchestrated that any verisimilitude a real pool game is completely abandoned. Even worse, there is no imagination behind these shots. They are the trick shots of Billiards 101, notwithstanding an onlooker’s comment that “This guy [Joe] makes the ball do everything but folk dance.” (In contrast, for a show that nails the billiards sequences, check out my post from last week on Murphy’s Law – “Manic Munday.”)
4. To earn some cash, Joltin’ Joe and Colt hustle some pool (of course!) in one of the least convincing scenes to occur in billiards television. The inert set-up is that Colt compliments a local pool-player, who says he is the “second-best in town.” Colt responds, “You’re the third best now. My pal [Joe] thinks he is the greatest.” When the local pool-player scoffs and insults Joe, Colt adds, “I wouldn’t let him hear you…he’ll want to play you. That’s how he got down to his last $20.” Cue the cash register.
5. Finally, there is the clichéd Minnesota Fats reference. In this case, a local sees Joltin’ Joe and says, “You played Minnesota Fats, you played all the greats. My father watched you win the world championship in Baltimore.” Yes, Fats was great and remains the sport’s most famous personality, but he was hardly the best. Now, if the line had been, “You played Willie Mosconi” or “You played “Wimpy” Lassiter,” then some real billiards history would have been documented.

[1]       The Snap Magazine, May/June 1991.

There is not perfect agreement around the best way to learn to play pool. Some argue one needs just to pick up a cue and start practicing. Others counter that practicing without also reading some books or watching some videos or enlisting the aid of an instructor is time poorly spent.

But, there is probably consensus around what not to do, and that includes learning pool solely by studying its history or by watching its hustlers. These two competing methodologies are part of the humorous storyline of the “Car Pool” episode of Hiccups, a Canadian television series that aired for two seasons on CTV and The Comedy Network.

This August 2011 episode, viewable here, opens with Millie Upton (Nancy Robertson), a successful children’s book author with anger management issues (referred to as “hiccups,” hence the name of the series), shooting the “white asteroid [into] planet 5, [where] it’s heading for the black hole!” She asks herself, “Now, who will die next? Ah, stripey planet 13.”

When her on-screen nemesis, Lewis (Paul Herbert), comes over to mock her ability, she challenges him to a game of 8-ball, or what she refers to as, “Death Space 2000! First one to sink all the stripey or solid planets into the black holes wins, but you can’t kill the evil black planet till the last.”

Lewis beats her badly, prompting Millie to enlist the tutelage of one her co-workers, Taylor (David Ingram), who has “studied billiards for years,” playing everything from 9-ball to the awesomely named Manitoba hobo, as it’s “a good way to show off to chicks without lifting heavy stuff.”

The first bit of wisdom Taylor imparts is that “In billiards, like many other things in life, you’re only as good as your equipment. That’s why you need your own cue [but] you don’t pick the cue, the cue picks you. Like in Harry Potter.” Millie ends up picking an Athena, which she christens Delores, named after a friend who was “skinny as a stick, and bigger on one end.”

But, it becomes frustratingly clear to Millie that even armed with her cue Delores, it will be some time before she gets to use it, as she must first understand billiards’ origins, starting with the fall of the Eastern Roman empire.

Fed up with learning about the “history of chalk,” or that “Mary, Queen of Scots, was buried in her billiard table cover,” Millie stumbles upon a new instructor, Anna (Paula Rivera), who learned the sport at a young age when her father took her to a pool hall, handed her a cue, and said, “start swinging.”

Unfortunately, Anna proves no better than Taylor, as her style of instruction involves going to pool halls, duping local bikers by over-chalking her cue stick, and then bilking them of their money, while Millie observes her hustling techniques from the sideline.

Millie’s exasperation reaches its apex when the two coaches clash for the attention of their pupil. Begging them to stop, she says, “The only reason I wanted to learn pool was to have a little wholesome fun demoralizing and humiliating another human being, but so far, Delores hasn’t even touched one single ball, so you can take your history and your hustling and stuff-o! School’s out!”

The historian and the hustler ultimately reconcile and acknowledge their errant forms of instruction. But, by that time, Millie has picked up a few tips from her original opponent Lewis. In a fitting end to the episode, Millie and Lewis challenge the ex-instructors to a game, which Millie wins by “banking the asteroid off of the far edge of the galaxy and obliterating evil planet eight in the corner.”

Though there’s not a lot of pool shown in “Car Pool,” the Hiccups episode has one of the better and more original billiards storylines I have encountered. It is also one of precious few Canadian entries into the billiard television-movie universe, along with Three-Card Monte (1978), The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II (1988), Behind the Eight Ball (2010), the aquatic billiards “Pool Pool” spoof from Unreel Sports (2008), and the anticipated documentary Manitoba Sharks: We Came to Play.

[NOTE: A special thanks to my Canadian colleague, Bo Peng, whose questioning about Canadian billiard movies led me to review this episode.]