I just walked in from The King of Kong, a documentary entry in the AFI Dallas film festival, at the Magnolia in Dallas. It was the last showing of this particular film at the festival, but I enjoyed it so much plus given the subject matter thought it would be worth recommending to the forum.
The film chronicles an episode in the – believe it or not – competitive world of classic arcade gaming. Specifically, it looks at Donkey Kong and the record score set by Billy Mitchell in 1985 that, prior to the film, had not even come close to being surpassed. Then, in 2006, a laid-off teacher in Washington State started killing time with his own Kong machine…and surpasses the record.
All fairly straightforward, except that (spoilers if you click) the organization that recognizes official scores is fairly corrupt in its own pathetic way, and Mr. Mitchell is, to put it mildly, not willing to take the surpassing of his record lying down. The rest of the film chronicles Mr. Wiebe’s attempt to get his record recognized, and the one-upmanship between the two players.
Were the men involved not actual people, you’d think they were drawn from central casting. Mr. Mitchell is a mullet-headed small business owner who talks big but has little to back up the talk – The Office’s Michael Scott without any redeeming charm or humor. Mr. Wiebe is a soft-spoken family man with a supportive (if sometimes annoyed) wife and children. And the Twin Galaxies folks are…well, unable to recognize their own internal contradictions.
The film is both funny and poignant in turn. The filmmakers really know how to wrest an engaging and entertaining set of character studies out of what one would think would be a lousy subject for film.
Here’s another review. Don’t know when or if this nifty feature will find its way to other cities, but keep an eye out – it’s well worth the price of admission.
The movie will be released to theatres August 12th.
I just saw at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Wow. Excellent movie. It’s a documentary, and a very good one at that, but it is also just a fantastic story. They are doing a feature film with actors and some fictionalized events but I don’t think they can really do better than the actual people in the documentary. Go see the documentary.
Damien summarised the plot well. At it’s face, it’s about video games and I think that will make it a better draw for gamers. However, really, it’s a movie that anyone can enjoy. It’s more about the personalities and strange dramas of a nerd subculture than about the game itself. My wife, a complete non-gamer, enjoyed it even more than I did.
I actually did all the programming for a cell phone translation of one the big classics that is mentioned in the movie and that made it all the more fun. There was a long Q&A with the director/producer and I later got to meet Matt Thompson (who is in the movie and is the friend of one of the two main people) and it was very interesting to hear their comments about the people and stories involved. It was nice to hear them talking about it just because the story itself is such a great story that it seems scripted and yet it was clear talking to them that this wasn’t the case. Anyway, I’ll share some of the insights I garnered from that session when this thread gets resurrected in August (or so I would hope as I really think everyone should find a way to go see this).
I just read the Globe magazine article about Lori Baker and Tetris DX. Between that and this other documentary, Chasing Ghosts, there seems to be quite a bit of controversy about these classic gaming records.
Billy Mitchell is portrayed as a cheater and a dick, and I’d bet he sues. Or maybe not because he also seems to be a coward. When they released Pac-man CE he went down early.
More than anything, King of Kong really casts Mitchell as a villain against a nice guy loser named Steve Weibe. (They even use Eye of the Tiger at one point in the soundtrack-- it rocks!)
The other interesting thing is that a good portion of the movie takes place at Funspot. As per our other thread, there is a guy who holds many classic arcade game records as seen in GregB’s pic:
His name is Brian Kuh and he “retired” at age 30, and moved to NH so he could go to Funspot everyday and work on his videogame records. I figured this meant he had made his money in software or something, but when they later go to his “cabin” (that’s how it’s portrayed in the movie) we see that he has a very, very modest lifestyle. I would guess that he eats most of his meals at Funspot (which, when you see their menu, is kind of sad).
In the movie he comes off as a kind of Billy Mitchell sycophant who tries everything to sabotage Steve Weibe’s record attempts at Funspot, while phoning Billy all the time to report on Steve’s progress (because Billy was “too busy” to go to the big championship, but apparently sits on his couch at home waiting for telephone reports on the happenings there).
There is a thread over at Twin Galaxies (the classic arcade game record website) calling the movie “propaganda” and “full of lies.” Then they link to where you can pirate it on the net. Wheee!
Outstanding movie. Forget video games, this is an award-worthy documentary.
And on the update front…
One interesting thing about the Alamo screenings was that they were attended by Brian Kuh and Dwayne Richard. If you see the movie, Kuh is the Billy Mitchell lackey who is at Fun Spot, looking over Wiebe’s shoulder and reporting back to Mitchell on his progress. Richard is also a close friend of Mitchell’s.
After the movie was over, they had to stand up and shout to the audience “The Bad News” that Mitchell has one-upped Wiebe and then spent the rest of time talking to anyone who would listen about the movie being bullsh*t and how amazing Billy Mitchell is.
They bought their tickets, I think. I know they weren’t invited to be a part of the evening… they just decided to show up and shit on Wiebe’s day. It’s okay, they were hissed. And Robert was threatened with expulsion from the theater because he wouldn’t shut the f*ck up during the first early showing. So, yeah… class act.
I thought it was great.
I’m also pretty surprised to find an “expose” at Twin Gamers that basically amounts to “nuh-uh!” If I was the subject of the movie, I may be upset at the editing, but to think that documentaries are “truth” is to ignore the art of documentary.
There’s also an article in this month’s EGM about it that basically says, “Billy Mitchell says Billy Mitchell isn’t that bad.”
Facts like he actually showed up at the restaurant are countered by the filmmakers saying that yeah, he did, but he treated Weibe about the same as he treated him later at the arcade, so showing the restaurant scene was basically the same as showing the arcade scene, and they felt it was more important to show the snub at the arcade.
The geeks are really, well, odd. But it was a great character study, as much about Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchael as the creepy little cult that attached itself to Billy. I love how Billy and co. seem to have their own little language for what they do–it’s like a bizzaro version of mafia or drug lingo, but for gamer geeks.
One of my favourite things about this movie is that is that it only chronicled the start of this whole thing. The fight to become King of Kong is still alive and well.
Earlier this month, Mitchell created another rare collector’s hot sauce bottle that said: “Steve Wiebe Attempts Donkey Kong World Record,” which was handed out to patrons of the TAO Nightclub in Las Vegas,where Steve attempted the world record at an event hosted by Microsoft.
My wife and I watched this movie a month or so ago, and I got to tell you that Billy is a certified ego-maniac. He almost reminded me of some of those cult leaders who surround themselves with people that think that the leader’s shit really doesn’t stink.
I highly recommend this movie to all gamers. This movie shows what happens when you stop realizing it is just a game that you play.
