The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters 8/17
Director: Seth Gordon. Writers: Ed Cunningham, Seth Gordon. Cinematography: Seth Gordon. Film editing: Seth Gordon. Music: Craig Richey, Producers: Ed Cunningham, J. Clay Tweel. With: Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, Walter Day, Doris Self, Steve Sanders, Todd Rogers, Nicole Wiebe, Robert Mruczek, Brian Kuh. USA. 79 min. 2007.
The world of video-game geeks has many mansions, and one subculture consists of aficionados who believe that certain retro games provide a more exquisitely attuned challenge to one’s hand-eye coordination than their up-to-the-minute counterparts do. In this documentary the game is Donkey Kong, a 1980s phenomenon that features a damsel in distress and a giant barrel-rolling ape from whom she needs rescuing.
Back in 1982, a devotee named Billy Mitchell became the game’s world champion by racking up a whopping score of more than 874,000 points, earning a place in Guinness World Records for the feat. Mitchell occupied his throne for years and years, but as any prizefighter or gunfighter knows, no title or achievement goes unchallenged forever. Sure enough, in 2006 a Donkey Kong genius named Steve Wiebe came along and scored a cool million, proving it with a stack of video cassettes on which he’d recorded his accomplishment. Controversy arose, however, when the game’s self-designated arbiter and referee, Walter Day, chose not to proclaim Wiebe the new champ because his achievement hadn’t taken place under officially approved circumstances. The stage was set for a final showdown, assuming that everyone concerned was prepared to act fairly, honorably, and in the best interests of the Donkey Kong community. Not everyone was so prepared, alas, and therein lies the drama of Seth Gordon’s absorbing film.
Is a vintage video game too trivial a subject for a feature-length documentary? Of course! What’s not trivial are the emotions unleashed by this highly fraught situation, caught by Gordon on a low-rent video setup that perfectly matches the picture’s subject. Also important is the movie’s implicit commentary on the culture of competition that thrives all too well in American society, especially in the male demographic Gordon focuses on. Within its modest parameters this is nonfiction filmmaking of a high order, and I was pleased to be one of the judges who awarded it the Jury Prize at the Newport International Film Festival a few weeks before its commercial premiere. I have zero interest in video games (aside from a brief obsession with Frogger that inexplicably seized me many moons ago) and I was captivated by the picture from start to finish. – David Sterritt
