Tag Archives: pool

Legend of the Dragon

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Legend of the DragonIf Legend of the Dragon (Long de chuan ren) sounds more like a Bruce Lee movie than a billiards movie, that is very much intentional. The 1991 Hong Kong film, starring comedian Stephen Chow, is in many ways a paean to the martial artist, though it replaces the hand-to-hand combat with a showdown on the snooker table.

For starters, Legend of the Dragon sounds like the natural sequel to two of Bruce Lee’s most famous films, The Way of the Dragon (1972) and Enter the Dragon (1973). Stephen Chow (perhaps today better known as the director and star of the hyperkinetic comedies Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer), plays Chow Siu-Lung, who is named after Bruce Lee Siu-Lung. (Stephen Chow is well-known for his cinematic admiration for Bruce Lee, as evidenced in this great clip comparing Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury (1972) with Chow’s First of Fury (1991)).

Chow Siu-Lung lives in the small fishing village of Tai O, on the western side of Lantau island in Hong Kong. Much of the land is owned by his father Hung (Yuen Wah), a master of the local kung fu school and a former stunt double for Bruce Lee. While Hung wishes his son would become a disciple of martial arts, Chow is uninterested in martial arts, neglecting his studies and preferring to live simply and naively, whether that is flying kites, goofing around with his childhood friend Mao (Teresa Mo), or playing snooker.

Legend of the DragonBut, Chow’s child-like existence is disrupted when his cousin, Yan (Leung Ka-Yan) from the mainland, returns a favor to Chow’s father by agreeing to show Chow Hong Kong. The “fish out of water” scenes that follow (similar to Bruce Lee’s scenes in Return of the Dragon) showcase the dewy-eyed and under-socialized Chow mesmerized by everything from the buildings to the traffic to sight of women’s breasts (Hong Kong sex symbol Amy Yip in a cameo appearance).

Yan, who is seriously in debt to the local yakuza, has alternate intentions, however, aside from showing his cousin Chow a good time. When Yan fortuitously realizes that Chow is an amazing snooker player, he hatches a plan to bet on Chow’s games. The yakuza catch wind that Yan is stake-horsing Chow. They promise to wipe clean Yan’s debts if Yan can arrange for Hung to bet the deed to his land on a game between Chow and the yakuza’s “hired” snooker player.

The big reveal is that yakuza’s player is none other than Jimmy “The Whirlwind” White, the real six-time world snooker finalist. (Billiard movie aficionados should not be surprised at the casting of a professional pool player as the main nemesis. See Keith McCready in The Color of Money (1986) or Marcello Lotti in Io, Chiara e lo Scuro (1983) for earlier examples.)

Legend of the DragonJimmy White may look like a fish out of water in this movie, but regardless, it is billiards-nirvana to watch him on the table, and director Danny Lee gives him plenty of opportunity to show off his incredible masse, spin, and shot-making skills. (His cue-ball manipulation is jaw-dropping.) White quickly trounces Chow, who has been traumatized by the knowledge his cousin has been betting on him.

Fortunately, like many great kung fu films, there is a chance for the hero to redeem himself. In this case, it is a rematch against White in the World Snooker Challenge Cup. The snooker match is initially off to the same ill start, with Chow unable to pocket balls. But, in a deft comedic moment, Chow finds himself with the opportunity to make a truly easy, direct, corner pocket shot. Filmed in slow motion, Chow makes the shot, and his confidence returns. The snooker “combat” then becomes a shot-for-shot slugfest between two evenly matched opponents.   Of course, there must be a winner, and with a final shot that combines billiards and karate-like aerodynamics, Chow pockets the final ball, winning the match and the land back for his father.

Legend of the Dragon is available to rent or purchase on DVD.

Get Smart – “Dead Spy Scrawls”

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Remote-controlled cue ball? Shotgun concealed in a cue stick? Decoding machine hidden inside a billiards table? Leonard Nimoy playing an assassin named Stryker?   Quadruple-check. It’s all part of the hilariously outlandish billiards TV episode “Dead Spy Scrawls” from the first season of Get Smart. The full episode is available to watch here.

http://youtu.be/eUX-dnwtDLc

First aired in 1965, Get Smart was created as a lampoon of earlier spy series, such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and, of course, the James Bond franchise.   The comedy featured Don Adams as bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart (aka Agent 86), who works for the US counter-intelligence agency CONTROL. Many episodes pitted Maxwell Smart and CONTROL against their nemesis KAOS, an “international organization of evil.” Such is the storyline for “Dead Spy Scrawls” in which CONTROL learns that KAOS has a machine that is intercepting US government secret communication.

Get Smart - Dead Spy ScrawlsThe location of the “decoding machine” remains a mystery to CONTROL until the Chief deduces from an informant’s dying words, “Shark…pool…mother,” that “One of the best pool players in town is a man known as The Shark. And he runs a place called Mother’s Family Pool Parlor….Well, if The Shark is a KAOS man, it’s just possible that the decoding machine could be hidden in Mother’s Family Pool Parlor!”

To infiltrate Mother’s and leave time for Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) to find the machine, Smart must play the Shark (Jack Lambert) in pool. Though Smart tells the Chief he knows the game “inside and out,” the Chief, taking no chances, hires pool professional Willie Marconi (an obvious spoof on, and tribute to, pool legend Willie Mosconi) to teach him the game. But Smart, in the comedic tradition of earlier pool players such as W.C. Fields (Six of a Kind) and Peter Sellers (A Shot in the Dark), is a butter-finger with the cue stick, ultimately maiming Marconi in both the face and the hand and tearing the baize through a bungled masse shot.

Get Smart - Dead Spy ScrawlsFortunately, CONTROL is able to outfit Smart with a can’t-miss cue ball that is remotely controlled by Agent 99’s lipstick and a cue stick that conceals a single-barrel shotgun. So, armed with the necessary pool gadgets, Smart and Agent 99 head to Mother’s to challenge Shark. There, Smart plays Shark in a game with physics-defying shots.   In a final shot, Smart finds himself with the 8-, 10-, 5, and 1-balls in a row, next to the side pocket. (As we learned earlier, these four balls pocketed simultaneously serve as the combination to unlock the decoding machine, which is hidden inside the belly of the billiards table.) Smart makes the shot (which, in fact, is one of the most famous trick shots in billiards), unlocking the decoding machine, and apprehending the members of KAOS.

“Dead Spy Scrawls” is refreshing in its absurdity. In subsequent years, the remote-controlled billiards ball concept would be repurposed in a less satisfying manner (e.g., Mission: Impossible – “Break”; Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”). But, in “Dead Spy Scrawls” it works beautifully, perhaps because there is still respect for the game, as evidenced by the cultural reference to Willie Mosconi and the use of several well-made trick shots.

Get Smart - Dead Spy ScrawlsIt’s also worth noting that, unlike Peter Graves (Mission: Impossible) or Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap), Don Adams was an exceptional pool player in his own right. (The episode acknowledges as much when Shark references a famous pool player named “Three Fingers” Yarmy. Yarmy is Don Adams’ real surname.) In fact, Adams appeared as a guest on Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats, played (many years later) in the $20,000 “Sportsworld” Celebrity Billiards Tournament, and of course, merged his billiards ability and comedic genius by starring in the famous 1970 advertisement for Skittle Pool.

One Too Many 8 Balls

I will concede that if I were writing or producing a billiards movie, I might consider throwing “8-Ball” or “eight ball” in the title, such as Up Against the 8-Ball or Behind the Eight Ball or even the whimsical 8 Ball Stud. After all, the eight-ball is laden with symbolism, given its inherent neutrality in the battle of solids and stripes, as well as its association with both good and bad, depending on whether it leads to someone’s victory or defeat on the billiards table.

But, to name the movie just 8-Ball? Where’s the originality in that? This is a crowded market folks, and as difficult to believe as it may be, I uncovered five billiards movies and short films called 8-Ball, as well as a couple of non-billiards movies of the same name. Welcome to a world of confusion.

8-Ball

8 Ball MovieAt the top of my watch list is the forthcoming billiards crime drama 8-Ball, starring and executive produced by David Barroso.   Mr. Barroso promises the movie will borrow elements, narration, and plot elements from Godfather Part II, GoodFellas, The Usual Suspects, and The Silence of the Lambs. According to the movie’s Twitter feed, it’s now expected to hit theaters this fall. Fortunately, this is the only full-length film with the title 8-Ball.

8 Ball

8 Ball MovieLess about billiards as sport, and more about billiards as an allegory for life, is the 2007 short film 8 Ball, directed by Inon Shampanier. As Shampanier shared with me, the larger allegory is that “like balls on a pool table, the lives of strangers collide and change course.  The film poses questions about the accidental nature of these collisions and the sense of ‘order in the chaos.’”

8 Ball

This seven-minute Australian film, shown as part of the 2012 Aurora Short Film Festival, anthropomorphizes the 8-Ball as an enlightened maverick, fleeing the confines of a pool table to explore the outside world. (“There was nothing these suckers could do to stop me.”) While the concept is interesting, the dialogue is terrible, including the encounter with a female tennis ball. A far better movie that brings pool balls to life is Pool Talk, a two-minute 2009 short film.

8 Ball

This four-minute American film, made some time in 2012 or 2013, has no dialogue, no plot, and sadly, no purpose. Directed by George Monard when he was probably 17 or 18, it features a “dangerous” pool player who is unsuccessful in his intimidation of the other players. A match ensues; he loses, so he shoots his opponent. I didn’t get it either.

8 Ball

8 Ball MovieUsing billiards as a backdrop, this four-minute American film, made a few years ago, was directed by Garrett Gutierrez, while a graduate student at the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University. It basically features two friends arguing about religion. The project was intentionally constrained to 3 pages, 2 characters, and 1 location.

OK, at this point, cinematic confusion should be setting in. But, now is when it gets really weird…

8-Ball

8 Ball MovieIn 2012, the short film 8-Ball was released in Argentina. Having nothing to do with billiards, the movie is about a man having a personal crisis who seeks solitude in a park, when a passing stranger named 8-Ball takes an unwelcome interest in him. The movie won a host of awards throughout the UK. Apparently, no one thought to question the inanity of the title.

8-Ball

8 Ball MovieFinally, there is the 2013 full-length Finnish crime film 8-Ball. It is about a single mother who, having just been released from prison, is trying to start her life anew. The return of her former boyfriend stirs up a past she preferred to leave behind. I don’t know why it’s called 8-Ball, but I’ll cut the director Aku Louhimies a little slack, since its original title is 8-Pallo.

 

So, the next time you’re thinking about making a film about billiards (or not about billiards for that matter), heed this advice:  There’s still an opportunity to cash in on the 5-Ball or 13-Ball. Just stay away from (un)lucky number 8.

I Dream of Jeannie – “Help, Help, a Shark”

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My colleague Matthew Sherman, an avid proponent of, and author on, billiards, began his article, “The Most Important Stroke in Pocket Billiards,” by discussing an old tale about a pool genie. In the story, the pool genie offers the lamp-rubber any wish to improve her game. The woman rubbing the lamp responds, “There’s one pool shot that if I made it every time would make me the greatest woman player on Earth!” Perplexed, the genie asks which shot would achieve that. “The next shot!” responds the player proudly.

Help Help a SharkUnfortunately, such simple wisdom is completely lacking in the one billiards television entry that actually features a pool genie. That would be “Help, Help, a Shark” from the fifth and final season of the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. Produced in 1970, “Help, Help, a Shark” continues the romance between astronaut Major Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) and Jeannie (Barbara Eden), the genie desperate to please her master.

“Help, Help, a Shark” begins with a the final shots of a 500-point straight pool match between General Schaeffer and General Fitzhugh (Jim Backus, better known as Gilligan Island castaway Thurston Howell III). Rivals for years, General Schaeffer is about to win and reclaim the trophy, when Major Nelson screams (in reaction to pocket-size Jeannie busting out of his jacket), causing General Schaeffer to miss the shot, lose the trophy…and rip the felt of the table.

Help Help a SharkTo make it up to the General, Major Nelson is able to set-up a 200-point rematch. Unfortunately, in his giddiness, he slams a door on the General Schaeffer’s hand, making the general unable to play and requiring Major Nelson to step in and avenge the General in the rematch. The only catch…Major Nelson can’t play pool. What’s a spaceman to do?

Well, as we know from other billiards television shows that have since recycled this same theme, the only way to turn a bumbling billiards player into a pool professional is through science or the supernatural (i.e., Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”; Mission: Impossible! – “Break”; Pretender – “Pool”).   In “Help, Help, a Shark,” which predates all these other episodes, the secret-power to turn Major Nelson into a hustler is his very own genie from a bottle. Jeannie, simply by seeing the pool table and blinking (cue the boing sound effect), can turn the most heinously-played shots into combinations that sink five, six, seven balls simultaneously.

Help Help a SharkTherein lays the absurdity of this episode, for it’s not that Jeannie makes Major Nelson a better player. It’s that she manipulates the movement of the cue ball, so that it makes impossible trajectories and defies physics by caroming into multiple balls. Yet, none of these players (who regularly play 500-point straight pool games) question the improbability of the game. And given the game is straight pool, there is no possible reason why Jeannie can’t just help Major Nelson make “the next shot,” rather than these inane multi-ball shots.

I know, I know…it’s just a TV show…don’t take it so seriously. But, if a sitcom is going to devote a storyline to pool (and most of the screen time in “Help, Help, a Shark” is, in fact, focused on pool), then at least tell a reasonable story or show some exceptional pool-playing. (For example, “Pool Shark Git Bit” from The Steve Harvey Show is pretty lame television, but at least it has some sweet pool sequences.) This lamentable episode gets it all wrong, with one exception – the title. As the name suggests, this episode really needed some “Help, Help.”

Mr. Ed – “Ed the Pool Player”

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My initial problem wasn’t that the horse talked.   That was always the premise of Mr. Ed, the 1960s CBS television series that featured Mr. Ed, a talking horse, and his amiable, goofy owner Wilbur Post (Alan Young), the only person with whom Mr. Ed conversed.

Ed the Pool PlayerNo, my initial problem was the horse played pool, as he does in the 1964 fifth-season episode of Mr. Ed called “Ed the Pool Player.” Talk about preposterous. As I’ve ranted in previous blog posts, billiards is not about simply knowing the angles. It can take years to master one’s stance, grip and bridge, all essential elements of the game. Even for an equine as intelligent and apparently well-schooled as Mr. Ed, it’s absurd – and physically impossible – that a horse could shoot billiards, simply by holding a cue stick in its mouth.

Who am I kidding? This is Hollywood, which has brought to the silver screen far more outlandish feats of animal athleticism than a pool-playing palomino. There have been basketball-playing dogs (Air Bud, 1997), football-playing mules (Gus, 1976), baseball-playing chimpanzees (Ed, 1996), horse-racing zebras (Racing Stripes, 2005), and even boxing kangaroos (Matilda, 1978).

That’s the fictional stuff. But, reality can be stranger than fiction. YouTube is littered with videos of animals excelling at sports, such as bears playing hockey, chimps ice-skating and squirrels water-skiing. Billiards is no exception. In 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported on a real dog named Halo that “not only sinks billiard balls into the pockets, but does so with a technical expertise we never would have thought possible.”

Watching the video of Halo the dog sinking some shots (sans cue stick, of course) pushed me beyond my initial resistance to “Ed the Pool Player” and freed me to evaluate the episode on the merit of its writing and acting. The full episode is available to watch here.

The basic storyline is that Alan’s neighbor Gordon (Leon Ames) needs to get out of the house, so his wife can cook without interruption. Alan suggests they play some billiards at the local men’s club. There, Gordon befriends Mr. Vernon, who turns out to be the pool shark Chicago Cubby (Thomas Gomez, the accomplished actor and Oscar-nominated thespian for his supporting role in Ride the Pink Horse). After a couple of convivial days shooting pool, Chicago Cubby ultimately hustles Gordon out of $430 (about $3200 in today’s dollars).

Ed the Pool PlayerThe ever-ignorant Gordon feels he just had a run of bad luck and proposes trying to win it back from his “friend,” but the ever-wise equine knows Gordon has been hustled and comes up with a different plan. Mr. Ed suggests they invite Mr. Vernon back to Alan’s place to play pool against an unnamed opponent. Mr. Vernon accepts the challenge and returns with Alan, at which time he finds out his opponent will be Mr. Ed. Feeling exceedingly confident that he can beat the horse, Mr. Vernon wagers the full $430. But, Mr. Ed, who earlier in the episode revealed he was an expert croquet player, “picks up” a cue stick and proceeds to demonstrate he is equally competent in billiards, running the tables on Mr. Vernon.

The match culminates with Mr. Ed making the over-used, never-fail, audience-pleasing six-balls-in-six-pockets trick shot. It’s kind of a shame. Up until that point, I was finally starting to believe a horse could play pool. But, the six-ball-six-pocket formation occurring naturally in billiards? Now that truly is preposterous.

Second Chance (in production)

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Editor’s Note:  Since my original posting, this movie has been released on DVD.  For a complete review of Second Chance, please visit my blog post here.

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More than two million Taiwanese, nearly 10% of the population, play billiards. Pool is now the second-most-popular sport in Taiwan next to baseball. Today, in the World Pool-Billiard Association rankings, four of the top 10 women, and one of the top 10 men, are Taiwanese. This all begs a fundamental question: When will we see a full-length billiards movie from Taiwan? [See Note 1]

Second ChanceIt turns out such a movie exists, although the details about the film are still rather fuzzy. Produced by Double Edge Entertainment, [UPDATE: the movie is called Second Chance.] This title replaces the earlier reported title, Nine Ball, by the publication Taiwan Cinema 2014, as well as the former working title, A Girl Got Her Cue, which appeared on the Double Edge Entertainment website. The 100-minute film is directed by Wen-Yen Kung.

The movie may still be in production, as the Double Edge website suggests, or may have been completed this year, as the Taiwan Cinema guide suggests. IMDB unfortunately is no help. It has no mention of Nine Ball or A Girl Got Her Cue. [UPDATE:  under the name Second Chance, the movie is now expected to premiere in Taiwan theaters on November 7, 2014.]

Fortunately, there does seem to be some consensus around the plot of the movie. The story focuses on Shine, a beautiful girl, who recently lost her parents in a car accident. Faced with the likelihood that she will be sent to a foster home, Shine is adopted by her uncle, Feng, a former billiards player who she does not know and who has a taste for gambling, drinking, and smoking. Billiards becomes the unlikely, yet critical, connection point for Shine and Feng, who ultimately forge a family bond through pool-playing.

Second ChanceThese scant details are all I’ve been able to uncover about the film, so readers, please share anything you hear about the movie. Given Double Edge Entertainment is a recognized distributor of films (e.g., Killing Them Softly; The Grey; Killer Elite) in Taiwan, I’m hopeful this film will become available for viewing soon. [Update:  the accompanying “9-Ball” music video shows some footage from the film.]

[Note 1: Nine Ball may be the first full-length billiards movie from Taiwan, but it is not Taiwan’s first show about billiards. That award goes to Taiwanese billiards television series Nine-Ball from 2005. Confused yet?]

Family Matters – “Fast Eddie Winslow”

Family Matters - Fast Eddie WinslowIn billiards sitcoms (yet, ironically, not in billiards movies), the high-school student who thinks s/he can play pool only to subsequently get hustled has become a trope as stale as last week’s bread.   Consider:   Steve Harvey Show – “Pool Sharks Git Bit” (1996); Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – “Bank Shots” (1991).  But, it turns out this particular trope may have a relatively recent genesis, starting with the 1990 episode of Family Matters called “Fast Eddie Winslow.” 

Family Matters was a CBS sitcom about the Winslows, a middle-class African-American family living in Chicago.  Among the show’s claims-to-fame was that it featured one of the most annoying characters ever to appear in television – the nerdy, flood-pants and suspender-wearing, nasal-voiced neighbor Steve Urkel (Jaleel White).

In the second-season episode “Fast Eddie Winslow” (a reference, of course, to Paul Newman’s character Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler), the oldest Winslow son Eddie (Darius McCrary) believes that he is a pool shark when he beats his friend Rodney in ten straight games.  Mistaking cockiness for ability, Eddie goes to the Corner Pocket, an adult pool hall, where he challenges a seemingly friendly and innocent Texan named Boyd Higgins to a game of eight-ball.  While he initially wins when the stakes are $5/game, he quickly loses ten games when the stakes are raised to $25/game.  Moreover, it turns out that with $250 now owed, Boyd is neither friendly nor Texan, but a local hustler, who frightens with menacing ultimatums, such as “When I play, it’s cash or carry.  Give me the cash or get carried out,” or “show up with the money tomorrow or stay home for a month and watch your body heal.”

Now, Eddie needs a savior, or at least someone to loan him the $250.  Initially, that savior appears to be Urkel, who after lecturing Eddie for getting “hustled, taken, fleeced, and conned,” not only loans him the money, but also steps in for Eddie, challenging Boyd to a one-game, double-or-nothing bet.   Turns out Urkel “plays a plethora of pool when [he has] time to [himself], which for some reason is quite often.”   Urkel then geeks out, pulling out tape measures, and proclaiming, “Pool is a game of angles.  One must cue at an angle to the object ball so that it travels in the same angle to the impact point.  An 82 degree angle intersected by a 42 degree vector, cue ball velocity, Jupiter in retrograde, Harvest Moon…”

(No one really know what Urkel is talking about, but then again, did anyone understand the similar pseudo-babble from the billiards scene in the 1990 movie Lambada when the main character pulled out a protractor and started waxing about the rectangular coordinate system while he shot pool?)

Family Matters - Fast Eddie WinslowUrkel’s rescue effort fails, however, when Boyd crushes his thick-rimmed glasses beneath his boot.  Fortunately, new saviors step in, this time in the form of Eddie’s father, Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson) and his grandmother Estelle (Rosetta LeNoire).  Reliving his youth, Carl makes a shot on Eddie’s behalf, and then hands over the cue to Estelle, who sinks the eight-ball on a quadruple bank shot (of course!).

So, what’s the lesson here?  If you’re a dumb enough chump to get fleeced in billiards by a guy with a terrible fake accent, then there better be a bad-ass grandma in the family, otherwise you’re going to be staying home for a month and “watching your body heal.”

“Fast Eddie Winslow” is available to rent or purchase as part of Season 2 of Family Matters.

Boy Meets World – “City Slackers”

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City SlackersThis past Tuesday, Samuel L. Jackson paid tribute to the 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World by performing a slam poem on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.  Even if you’ve never seen the sitcom, it’s hysterical.  Watch the slam poem here.  Unfortunately, the actual sitcom was never this funny, at least not the billiards episode “City Slackers” (1996) from the third season.

For the uninitiated, Boy Meets World is the ABC sitcom kid brother to The Wonder Years.  That show, which ran from 1988-1993, starred Fred Savage navigating adolescence, high school tribulations, dating and love (to Winnie, played by future heartthrob Danica McKellar).  Boy Meets World ran from 1993-2000, with Cory (Ben Savage — literally Fred Savage’s younger brother) navigating adolescence, high school tribulations, dating and love (to Topanga, played by future heartthrob Danielle Fishel).

In “City Slackers,” most of the episode concerns Cory (Fred Savage) and his unsupervised weekend to trip to the mountains.  But, it’s the second story line, featuring Cory’s suave and popular brother Eric (Will Friedle) that is relevant to this blog.

Eric has the hots for Bianca (Julie Benz) who is known to only like jocks.  To woo her, he claims that his sport of choice is pool, in which he is a “grandmaster.”  His charade, however, hits a wrinkle, when he is challenged to play by a fellow high school student.  Bianca indicates that she would love to see that grandmaster play, cooing that “it would make [her] very happy.”

City SlackersThe use of pool to ‘charm/win the girl’ is a familiar trope in billiards movie and television (cf. Kiss Shot), so this is not inherently a bad set-up.  Unfortunately, it is badly executed.  Both Eric and his opponent are unable to make a single shot, causing onlookers to eventually clap (??) when the same game has hit the three-hour mark without any balls going in the pockets.

Bianca, of course, leaves, but Eric and his opponent continue to play pool.  It’s at that point the billiards table appears to become possessed, spitting balls out of pockets, causing balls to swerve impossibly, having balls sit on top of one another, and even, causing balls to explode.  This generates a couple raised eyebrows, and a more than generous amount of forced laughs.

City SlackersIn the episode’s final scene, after “15 straight hours of someone yet sinking a ball,” after all the high school patrons have abandoned the pool table, and even after Eric’s opponent has had to leave for choir practice, Eric has the table to himself.  He walks over and makes a variation (using 12 balls) of Robert Byrne’s famous 15-balls-in-one-shot trick shot.  It’s a great ending to the episode.  Too bad the rest of the episode wasn’t similarly enjoyable.

“City Slackers” is available to rent or own via various online channels.

Donald in Mathmagic Land

In October 1957, the Soviet Union kicked off the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik.  In the United States, instant humiliation was immediately followed by a wave of national panic, and then a wide range of federal initiatives, ranging from investments in defense to investments in science, technology, and mathematics education.

Donald in Mathmagic LandOne new piece of legislation, The National Defense Education Act, provided (among other things) a windfall for producers of educational films.  And according to historian Martin F. Norden, no company was better prepared to benefit from that windfall than Disney Studios, which had “already positioned itself as a significant educational force in the fields of education, science, nature and technology years before the Sputnik launch.”[1]  Less than two years later, Disney Studios, with support from the US government, released its 27-minute educational featurette Donald in Mathmagic Land.  This film, subsequently nominated for an Academy Award (Best Documentary – Short Subjects), was widely made available to schools and became one of the most popular educational films ever made.  It can be watched here.

As Walt Disney once explained, Donald in Mathmagic Land was created to “excite public interest in this very important subject [of mathematics].” The film features Donald Duck roaming a Wonderland-esque world of mathematics.  During his journey, in which he follows the voice of the faceless Spirit, he is told that he’ll find “mathematics in the darnedest places.”  This peregrination takes Donald from ancient Greece and a meeting with Pythagoras to the Notre Dame Cathedral, where he learns about the golden rectangle.

But, it is when the Spirit tells him that “practically all games are played on geometric areas,” that Donald sees the application of mathematics to baseball, basketball, hopscotch, and ultimately, to a game that involves “two perfect squares, three perfect spheres, and a lot of diamonds…in other words, billiards” — three-cushion billiards, to be precise. (The billiards sequence runs from 16:49 – 22:15 in the clip above.)

Though Donald initially believe billiards to be a game of luck, he learns quickly from the Spirit that it is a game of skill in which “you have to know all the angles…it’s a game that takes precise calculation.” As the Spirit talks, a real (as opposed to animated), unidentified billiards player makes one gorgeous three-cushion shot after another.  (The unidentified player, in fact, is Roman Yanez, the owner of a Los Angeles billiards hall in the 1950s and a periodic tournament player, who got 10th place in the 1964 U.S. National 3-Cushion Championship.)

The Spirit explains that the player is using “the diamond system as a mathematical guide.”  He then elaborates on the “simple” math used in which the player subtracts the “cue position” from the “natural angle for the hit” to determine the appropriate numbered diamond at which to aim.  It’s interesting to hear the Spirit attempt to simplify the diamond system, and wildly humorous to watch Donald Duck attempt to internalize it.

The particular version he is describing – the five-corner system – is far less common now, except perhaps in three-cushion billiards.  Ironically, the diamonds have become an ongoing source of debate.  Some world-class players don’t use the diamonds at all, some use them to check their instinct and some swear by the diamonds for special situations.  For example, WPBA professional (and star of the movie 9-Ball) Jennifer Baretta says, “For people who play three-cushion billiards these systems are absolutely essential, but they also apply on any table where the width (short rail) is half the length (long rail).”[2]

While Donald in Mathmagic Land may not have had a lasting impact on the adoption of the diamond system in billiards, it clearly has had a lasting impact on billiards players, many of whom remember it fondly from growing up.  There are an endless number of tender-hearted comments about the film online, but I particularly love the tribute below from John Sciatta’s blog:

The part that I loved, the part I looked forward to each year was when Donald would use math to explain three-cushion billiards. This part was brilliant. This part was fascinating. This part made total and absolute and perfect sense. I would watch this scene each year and be like, “Yes! You’re right, Donald! The diamond system…But then a strange phenomenon would happen; the movie would end, and with the diamond system dancing in your head, it would all start to get jumbled. And no matter HOW MANY times I watched it, I could never keep the diamond system straight. I felt like the guy from Memento… I rented it prior to going out and actually playing pool and it still didn’t stick. I swear, watching the DD in MM Land billiards scenes is like trying to solve one of the great mysteries of our day.

[1]       “A Journey Through the Wonderland of Mathematics: Donald in Mathmagic Land,” by Martin F. Norden.  Printed in Learning from Mickey, Donald, and Walt: Essays on Disneys’ Edutainment Films, ed. A. Bowdoin Van Riper.

[2]      http://www.pooldawg.com/article/pooldawg-library/diamonds-are-a-girl-s-best-friend

The Dukes of Hazzard – “A Little Game of Pool”

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Thank god for Daisy Duke.  Because without Daisy (Catherine Bach), there would be nothing eye-worthy or redeemable in “A Little Game of Pool,” a billiards episode from the fateful fifth season of the television series The Dukes of Hazzard.

little game of poolFor the ill-informed, The Dukes of Hazzard was about the Duke family, and in particular, Bo and Luke Duke, who raced around the unpaved roads of fictional Hazzard County, Georgia in their 1969 Dodge Charger stock car (the General Lee), jubilantly toying with and escaping from the county’s porcine commissioner Boss Hogg and his inept sheriff and deputies.  Much of every episode was devoted to the Dukes successfully jumping their car over every conceivable type of hazard and obstacle.  Hardly the best TV, the General Lee, along with Daisy Duke and her eponymous short shorts, have long become pop culture icons.

The fifth season (1982-1983), as Hazzard fans know too well, was the one when the original Good Ol’ Boys (Tom Wopat as Luke Duke and John Schneider as Bo Duke) had a contract dispute with CBS and left the set in protest.  The producers resolved the problem by hiring two lookalikes to literally take their place.  Enter cousin Coy Duke (Byron Cherry) and Vance Duke (Christopher Mayer) as the Bo and Luke Duke doppelgangers.  Cardboard cutouts, these Dukes (especially Coy) are painful to watch. It’s no wonder they were let go one season later.

little game of poolAll of which is to say “A Little Game of Pool” already was facing a bad break.  The rather illogical narrative focuses on Boss Hogg’s (Sorrell Booke) ill-begotten attempts first to buy, then to steal, and finally to win in a game of eight-ball, the General Lee, so that he can sell it to some “road pirates.”  When his efforts to buy and steal the car fail, Boss Hogg challenges Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle) to a game of staked pool with “ridge runner rules.”  Uncle Jesse, fancying himself a local pool shark, considers Boss Hogg to be a “little warm-up” before the upcoming 37th Annual Tri-County Pool Championship and readily accepts the wager.

To the best of my knowledge, “ridge runner rules” is some Hazzard County malarkey that requires a spit-shake and allows the challenger to define the stakes.  Boss Hogg gleefully announces that he will bet his convertible against the Duke’s General Lee.  Apparently the rules also entitle a player to select someone to play in his place in the event he is physically unable.  So, feigning an arm injury, Boss Hogg reveals his sub-in to be Chickasaw Thins (great name!), a local pool hustler.

little game of pool

What? No cue ball?!

Like so many other billiards TV episodes (e.g., Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”),   “A Little Game of Pool” is absurdly bad when it comes to its billiards authenticity.  Never mind the common problems that rile pool enthusiasts, such as there’s no way Uncle Jesse ever played pool based on his stroke and grip, or overusing page-one  trick shots to prove Chickasaw Thins is a pool shark. The errors in “A Little Game of Pool” are far more egregious, such as sinking the eight-ball on the break and saying “that’s not bad for starters” or failing to use the cue ball and shooting directly at the five-ball.  Unfortunately, the title of this episode says it all.  It’s treated like a “little game” rather than a sport worthy of at least a smidgeon of on-screen accuracy.  Oh well, at least there’s Daisy Duke.

“A Little Game of Pool” is available to watch on Amazon Instant Video.