The King of Kong: A Fist Full Of Quarters
Director: Seth Gordon
Starring: Steve Wiebe & Billy Mitchell
Rated: PG-13
Length: 79 min.
Released: February 28, 2008
Trailer
IMDB.com Synopsis:
In the early 1980s, legendary Billy Mitchell set a Donkey Kong record that stood for almost 25 years. This documentary follows the assault on the record by Steve Wiebe, an earnest teacher from Washington who took up the game while unemployed. The top scores are monitored by a cadre of players and fans associated with Walter Day, an Iowan who runs Funspot, an annual tournament. Wiebe breaks Mitchell’s record in public at Funspot, and Mitchell promptly mails a video tape of himself setting a new record. So Wiebe travels to Florida hoping Mitchell will face him for the 2007 Guinness World Records. Will the mind-game-playing Mitchell engage; who will end up holding the record?
My Thoughts:
A unique idea for a documentary to say the least. I was shocked how much I actually got into this story. The “drama” between these two world champs was so funny to watch. Who would have thought there would be so much drama surrounding this entire underground world of classic gaming? To find out how hard that must be, I tried to play a few rounds after I watched it…and man do I suck.
This would have been an excellent movie to show for an anthropology class, or for a media and society class…or pretty much any humanities class. This whole “sub-culture” of gaming and classic gaming is just crazy to watch and a blast to discuss.
For that amount of tension to exist between grown adults over so trivial a thing as Donkey Kong is fascinating. What compels them to care so much? I mean, from an anthropological, psychological and sociological perspective…it’s just crazy to watch. That’s the reason I find myself watching and loving many documentaries.
It’s not just a level of entertainment value that is present. They often touch on a much deeper issue that’s intriguing to watch and discuss. You could discuss the influence of the media on the situation itself, or the aspect of editing and how that can add or remove things that would change the nature of the message (watch Fahrenheit 911 and Fahrenhype 911 as great examples of that), or the what drives people to become a part of these cultures and/or pursue these ideas. I am a huge fan of documentaries.
This one is getting 3.5 stars out of 5. It was a low budget film that tackles a less than important/controversial issue, but it has a level of intrigue and entertainment that surprised me.
