Although videogames have matured a thousand-fold since the early days of charmingly simple arcade coin-ops like Pac-Man, Q-Bert and Donkey Kong, many of the men who grew up playing those games have not. That’s one thing you’ll take away from THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS, an entertaining, even suspenseful documentary about the battle for the Donkey Kong world record.

I was amused to learn that Hollywood has commissioned a screenplay to turn this documentary into a narrative film, since much of what occurs is either unbelievable or clichéd in the style of a 1980s teen movie. It even presents a too-convenient rivalry (how much of it was created though editing, who knows?) between a soft-spoken dweeb of a hero and a Machiavellian villain of great charisma.

Billy Mitchell, oozing arrogance through every hair in his long dark mane, is regarded as the world’s top player of classic arcade games—a legend that began when he achieved the highest Donkey Kong score during a LIFE magazine shoot in 1982. Since then, he’s become a restaurateur, a hot-sauce magnate and a hero to a generation of nerds who appear to literally worship the ground on which he walks.

Suddenly, here comes Steve Wiebe, a regular family man with a run of bad luck that includes getting laid off the day he and his wife signed the papers on their new house. With a lot of time on his hands, he begins playing the Donkey Kong machine stashed in his garage, and discovers that he’s good at it. Really good. Good enough to shatter Mitchell’s record, a feat he captures on videotape and ships off to Twin Galaxies, the self-proclaimed Elias Sports Bureau of classic arcade gaming.

In the interest of suspense (the film really does play like a light thriller at times), I won’t say much more, except that the sycophants that surround Twin Galaxies are so heartbroken to discover their idol’s main claim to fame, which Mitchell appears to have been living off of for 25 years, is in tatters that they appear to work overtime to have Wiebe’s record discounted. Some outside characters, such as super-geek Brian Kuh, who sneaks around with a cell phone updating Billy on Steve’s game-playing (you expect him to call Mitchell “boss”), are alternately fascinating and somewhat pathetic in their devotion to videogames and to Billy Mitchell’s legend. You’ll be amazed at the high-school-clique mentality these guys still live by; one of them calls Billy at home when Wiebe “uninvitingly” comes into Mitchell’s restaurant for lunch.

Unlike me, director Seth Gordon never condescends to his subjects and for good reason. Even though they’re playing videogames regarded by most of us as quaint in the days of the Wii and online gaming, Mitchell and Wiebe and the rest of them are no less than the best in the entire world at what they do. And that deserves some respect.

If I had seen this earlier, I would have put it on my Top Ten of 2007 list (hey, Erik, is it too late? :P )

I hear that a lot from people who are finally getting to watch this on DVD. The darn thing never played within 120 miles of me. I have it coming to me via Netflix.

Starring Will Ferrell, I betcha.

I loved this movie. Like all great documentaries, its fascinating for diehard video gamers and for those that know nothing about the subject. The DVD is fantastic with lots of great bonus scenes and extra interviews that didn't make the feature's final cut.

SPOILERS!!!!

Not much to add to what Marty already said, but I just finished watching this and it's really good stuff. The editing was a bit suspect at times (especially with Brian Kuh's phone calls), but aside from that, I really enjoyed this.

As despicable, childish, and passive-aggressive as Mitchell's actions were (that encounter at the Guinness tournament caused my jaw to hit the floor), did anyone aside from me find themselves more angered at the creepily sycophantic behavior of Brian Kuh? At least Steve Sanders seems to come around by the end and see through Mitchell (that scene in the restaurant booth is another jaw-dropper). I think I disliked Kuh more than Mitchell.

Yeah, Kuh looks like a real weasel in the movie. I compared him to Renfield when chatting with someone about the film. Or a comic gangster sidekick; as I mentioned, I half expected him to call Mitchell "boss."

Unsurprisingly, the Twin Galaxies world has been backpedaling in its support for THE KING OF KONG. Their forums are filling up with protests against the film and how it was edited to make Day, Mitchell, Kuh, etc. look bad. They may be right, up to a point, but when you see Mitchell making a very snide remark behind Wiebe's back--but within Wiebe's hearing--it's hard to believe that Billy's a really nice guy who just comes off looking like a jerk through the magic of editing.

I agree about that scene in the booth. In the commentary, the filmmakers state that's the only time they ever saw Mitchell genuinely angry. They also have kind words for Sanders, who does come off looking bad at times (like in the restaurant when he tattles to Mitchell that Wiebe has "uninvitedly" arrived), but he did eventually come around to appreciating Wiebe as a man and as a player. He may be the only "character" who grows as a person during the film.

My wife nearly refused to watch this as she figured it to be just a movie about "a bunch of losers" and she was ready to bail up to the point schoolteacher Steve arrives. She was solidly into the movie after that.

One aspect of the movie that strongly comes through is how someone "outside" of a fandom can be seen as an invader of the fans' world. Who is this guy to come in and try to take Billy's record away? How dare him? And to not even be Billy's apprentice Brian to do it?

Even with complaints about editing, Billy just comes off badly in the film. The whole thing with his demanding people to "guard this tape with your life" - albeit possibly overly dramatic for effect - just came off as rather sad.

Funniest moment for me in the movie had nothing to do with the main story, however: it was the gamer in the parking lot who takes out his frustrations on his car to ill-effect. Classic geekdom moment!

He's identified in the commentary, but I can't recall who he is. He had been trying to see a world record, but failed.

Looking at the Twin Galaxies forums, it appears as though the effort to exclude Wiebe from the clique continues, even though Walter accepts him at the end of the movie. The petty bickering and high-school-level hero worship is very strange when you see grown men engaging in it.

**SPOILERS**






Hey, I decided to head over to the Twin Galaxies site to check it out, and it appears that Billy is back on top!! He scored 1,050,200 on 6/26 of last year.

Damn, that really puts a damper on the film's conclusion/denoument.

http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=2...2&gi=3852&vi=22

The DVD has some extras that chronicle the events that occurred between the time the film wrapped and the time it was released.

Why isn't that list including the other point totals by Mitchell and Wiebe? Between them, they should be dominating the top ten.

On Twin Galaxies scoreboards, your highest verified score cancels out all your previous achievements. So the TG boards are effectively a ranking of players themselves rather than isolated performances; otherwise the score/ speed run/ marathon listings on each game would be dominated by the two or three most masterful players. Mitchell, for instance, could simply repeat his perfect Pac-Man game (he can achieve the highest possible point total the game allows) ten times, and as he'll always be the first to do it, his top ten scores would never be overthrown, and no other gamer could hope to appear in the listings.

Just finished this one and agree with everything said here. I think Marty M. hit it on the head when he said that Billy's snide remark shows that surely editing wasn't making him out to be the bad guy. Now for the important question, where can one get Mr. Awesome's "How to pick up chicks" video? Only in the 80s man. :lol:

As smug and spectacularly arrogant as Mitchell comes off -- not just in KING OF KONG, but always -- the documentary makes certain choices not to present him in a more conflicted, dimensional light. Given the story they're trying to tell, that's an understandable choice. But Mitchell strives for perfection (and misses, in all things related to personal behavior and taste) because as a visible "superstar" face of classic gaming, he wants to parlay that into being a positive role model spokesman for the hobby and uses his semi-celebrity for charity work that isn't depicted in KING OF KONG. Fascinating as he already is, it's even more interesting to see him working with Make a Wish to present a fully decked out game room to cancer-stricken kid as he did last year.

Add me to the list of people who loved this movie. Aside from the frustrated guy attacking his own car, I think my favorite scene is the interview with Wiebe's students, who don't seem to know how to react to their teacher's Donkey Kong obsession. That totally reminded me of how weird your teachers always seem when you're in school. And I'd be more than happy to see "There's a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up" become this year's overused catchphrase. If you go to the film's official site billyvssteve.com there's a message board (direct link here) where some participants in the film (like Robert Mruczek and a few really hardcore Mitchell friends/defenders) continue the battle. There's also a live chat with the filmmakers coming up on the 10th.

Interesting piece at The Onion's AV Club today:

Billy Mitchell calls the AV Club

I'm sure Billy Mitchell isn't a complete demon. The film notably doesn't show him frolicking with his kids (a teen stepdaughter appears in the extras), and he likely has friends outside the gaming community. However, he does seem to me to be a difficult man to like, and everything about him seems so prepackaged that I wonder whether he participates in philanthropic activities for his sake or for the children's.

Mark, thanks for the link to the fascinating Onion AV Club interview. I don't think Mitchell exactly rehabilitates himself, and it's certainly difficult to believe his constant claims that he hasn't seen the movie, when he is able to describe specific camera angles and edits in it.

It is very interesting that he claims they cut out an entire dialog between himself and Wiebe during that famous scene.

And then this from the filmmakers:

I'm still inclined to think that the encounter at the Guinness tournament happened the way we see it in the film. Mitchell's quote of "Some people I don't wanna spend too much time talking to" could just as easily mean "We aren't staying long, so let's not waste time talking to Steve Wiebe."

Another interesting tidbit from the interview that the movie never mentions:

Twin Galaxies lists Sczerby's score at 879,200, which was indeed higher than Mitchell's score of 874,300. This kinda disturbs me that they filmmakers completely ignored this easy to find fact in order to push their rivalry idea.

KING OF KONG documentarian Seth Gordon claims on the official website's FAQ that first they weren't aware of Sczerby's high score, and then "repeated investigations into the validity of Tim's score, and after finding one dead end after another in our Twin-Galaxies-assisted attempts to reach Mr. Sczerby, we determined that his consistently disputed record was impossible to verify and did not merit inclusion in the film." Make of that what you will, as there don't seem to be other sources indicating Sczerby's record was ever in serious dispute.

Gordon also says that Mitchell sycophant Brian Kuh "always referred to Billy Mitchell as the reigning champion". That's entirely likely, in-character, and hilarious. Equally likely is that Sczerby's score complicates the story unnecessarily and/or he wasn't as compelling a character as Mitchell and Wiebe. Could also be that Kuh and Mitchell were chumpatizing Gordon by downplaying Sczerby to the filmmakers.

That's a very interesting piece, thanks for sharing it. My own impressions are best summed up by *ahem* interviewing myself.

"So, Doug, do you think Billy Mitchell is Satan Incarnate and Wiebe is the reincarnation of Rocky Balboa, assuming Balboa had ever been alive, that is, and then died so he could be reincarnated?"

No, of course not. Film is an inherently fictionalizing medium -- the very fact that you've parked a camera in front of somebody means you've started telling lies. So no, I don't buy the black hat/white hat dynamic of KING OF KONG, as much as I loved that movie. Life is too grey. (I direct you in passing to Charlie Brooker's excellent BBC series "Screenwipe", episodes of which are on Youtube, which had a great bit of how modern technology allows one to impose a narrative on "reality".)

"So, does that mean you think Wiebe is Satan Incarnate and Billy Mitchell should marry your sister?"

No, no, no, you're not paying attention. Nobody's black and white, everyone's grey. Hell, that's life, if anything is, and one of the things I go to the movies to dodge is that muddy truth. So no, I don't think the battlelines in KING OF KONG are in real life that clear; I don't really care, either.

"Why is that?"

Because I thought a bit about it and came to the conclusion that I don't really care what the 'truth' is. I don't doubt 'truth' exists, but I also think it's unreachable/unattainable by us humans. What's important to me in this context is a good story, and KONG certainly delivers that.

The practical result of this for my moviegoing is that if documentaries come out that I don't like, I don't get to complain that they're not "accurate". Anything but that. I've already admitted to myself that I don't care when I like the result; I value consistency and should maintain The Rule.

And yeah, it's always capitalized The Rule.

"God, you do go on, Doug. Anything else before we say goodnight?"

Yeah, the one line in the Onion piece that threw me was that bit where one of the filmmakers says something like "it's just a videogame competition, who cares?" [paraphrasing]

I thought that was odd because the "message" I took from the movie, anyway, was that yeah, it's just videogame competition...but that doesn't make it any less important to *them*. The brilliance of the movie is that we get double-vision: we both get to laugh at the clowns who really care about kill screens in Donkey Kong and, at the same time, care about a guy who's picking this ridiculous venue as a way to make some kind of mark in the world. (And so one thing I am pretty sure of is that Billy Mitchell has seen the movie. Only someone who's seen the movie would go on and on about how it didn't really matter, videogames and all that. That's the only possible narrative response to Wiebe's being so heavily invested in the thing.)

We're all heroes of our own story, after all. It takes a certain degree of maturity, I think, to understand that our passions might seem ridiculous to others. A spot more to realize how little that ridiculousness ultimately weighs in the scheme of things.

doug

How did you reach or attain this truth? :)

Bourbon.

doug