I recently had the chance to sit down with director Seth Gordon while he was promoting his holiday comedy Four Christmases, which is a decent enough film with a few laughs in it, most of them courtesy of Jon Favreau’s UFC fighter wannabe character and his redneck wife, excellently played by Katy Mixon. Growing up in Texas, it’s a great portrait of many holidays past.
However, I couldn’t stop myself from asking him about The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, and the controversy it’s stirred up. In my other article talking about that movie and Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, my point was that Ghosts was a much better film if you’re looking for a documentary about the arcades of yesteryear. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t entertained by The King of Kong –– on the contrary I find it very entertaining, and having met Steve Wiebe several times, he literally is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, just like in the film.
My main problem was the fact that Seth and his producer Ed Cunningham had seemed to play fast and loose with the facts when they edited their movie. Gordon doesn’t deny this, and he tantalizingly drops the fact that Billy Mitchell was actually much worse than they depicted in the movie. Does this mean that there needs to be a The King of Kong 2: Take This Hammer and Shove It sequel to set the record straight? I’d stand in line for that.
Two films about old-school arcade games premiered within a few days of each other in Park City in 2007. One was at Sundance, the other was at Slamdance. Guess which one you’ve never heard of? Ironically, it’s the one from Sundance. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters was the success story when these two films unintentionally butted heads, and the sad thing is that the other movie, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, is a much better film. But chances are you’ll never get to see it.
On this week’s installment of The Media Diet, we talk to Seth Gordon, director of the documentary King of Kong. King tells the story of Steve Weibe, a mild-mannered middle-school teacher/Donkey Kong phenom who attempts to set the Guinness World Record for highest recorded score on the arcade version of the game. Steve has only one obstacle, and that’s charismatic fast food employee/”Gamer of the Century” Billy Mitchell, who held the Donkey Kong record for 20 years until Weibe managed an unprecedented 1,000,000 point game. Mitchell and Weibe spent several months battling for the Guinness record, and Gordon got it all on film.
It may sound totally dorky, but it’s also a full-on crowd pleaser. Last weekend, I went to a screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, where the median audience member age is probably 65, and the King of Kong trailer brought the house down. You can see what all the fuss is about on August 17, when Kong opens in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Austin (it’s set to expand to additional cities in the weeks to follow; to find out when Kong is coming to your town, go here and click on “Theaters and Tickets” at the bottom of the page). And click through to read Gordon’s thoughts on Uwe Boll, Saved By The Bell, his upcoming feature adaptation of King of Kong, and the Roger Ebert vs. Gamers debate.
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We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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