The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

If Werner Herzog speaks of “ecstatic truth”, then let it be said that Chuck Bowen speaks of “inner absurdity”. We all need some of it, or something in general to relieve us of thoughts of taking out the trash, getting our oil changed, or making sure that the Wheat Thins we’re about to eat aren’t stale. We need a bit of inner absurdity to mull over as we drink our first cup of coffee at work, or take our first meeting of the day, or to distract us from the fact that a date the previous night didn’t go too well, or that our marriage may not be what it used to be. We need something really God damn frivolous and stupid to pursue and consume us.

Those people who don’t have something, and there are more than a few, are to be pitied, regardless of financial success or sexual prowess. Or at least that’s what I tell myself, perhaps in an act of self-delusion. Let’s just say that, as someone who spends several hours a week watching movies, discussing them, and writing about a few of them at a time when I probably should be working, I had no trouble accepting that two men could spend hours, and travel thousands of miles, to ensure that they top one another for the highest known score on the iconic arcade machine Donkey Kong.

Billy Mitchell is the first man and reigning champion of the game since 1984, when he effortlessly stomped the supposed master, Steve Sanders, who was revealed to be lying about his ability. Steve’s highest score is something in the 200,000s, Billy tops it to the tune of 850,000 points. The early photos of the event, featured in Life, show Billy to be the personification of the cliche of the typical gawky gamer: pale, underfed, thrilled at the fame that a normally laughed off addiction is affording him. The King of Kong’s opening scenes are succinct and thrilling, and prepare us for an American Splendor style examination of the impassioned geek. But the joy of The King of Kong is how it plays us every bit as confidently as Billy.

Fast forward to a few years ago, and to Billy as an altogether different kind of man. He’s the famed geek made good, the sorta sexy Geek: George Lucas reborn as the lead singer of Journey who sells used cars on the side. Billy’s confidence and style have grown over the years, nurtured by the Kong victory. He’s a successful businessman, running a lucrative Buffalo wings sauce company. He’s married to the sort of amply endowed young lady that I’m sure was just a whiff of fevered imagination in those all night soda and arcade sessions of his teens. But most importantly, he’s still the world record holder in Donkey Kong.

Enter Steve Wiebe, who’s set up in the film as Billy’s polar opposite. Steve was your garden variety acceptable American teen: sharp, decent looking, and capable in sports. We notice immediately though that Steve, like Billy, doesn’t neatly fit our country’s convenient peg of expectation. Billy’s ironic geek vengeance: socially sharper and more conniving than you’d expect. Steve, the one who’s supposed to be all Aw shucks charm and confidence, is sensitive and insecure; broken by one adult disappointment after another. Steve is unemployed when we meet him, and playing Mr. Mom to a house of several kids and a wife who seems to be in a state of perpetual irritation with him. Even Steve’s friends, who speak of him highly, seem to be hiding something: they speak of him almost as you’d speak of someone who’s sick or dying. They mean well, but they, like Steve himself, have written him off. Steve, in his hopelessness, looks up the Donkey Kong record and sets out to beat it.

I’ve described roughly the first twenty minutes of The King of Kong, and if you think I’m projecting pathos for the sake of punching up my own writing, you are mistaken. The film starts out as a lark, but becomes something surprisingly tender and moving. Even Mitchell, who is ultimately cast as the villain, is vulnerable and human, willing to stoop to low, pathetic means to guard his precious score like a bird’s egg. We learn that Mitchell essentially has the score keeper’s association in his pocket and can seemingly bend the standards and rules of the existing record at his will. The Ref means well but comes off as a clueless goat in awe of Billy, and a protege of Mitchell’s, a pasty little toad called Brian Kuh, withholds from Steve crucial evidence of Mitchell’s one-upsmanship, evidence that, I might add, wasn’t deemed acceptable when it could have helped Steve.

I did just write “pasty little toad”, a phrase notably lacking in something I try to imbue in all of my reviews: empathy. And I’ve been looking forward to typing the phrase since finishing the film last night. The King of Kong, which sounds absurd on paper and in theory, whips you into a surprising, anticipatory fever. Steve beats the record early on, and Billy screws him over. Steve beats the record again, and again it’s discounted. Finally, a showdown is scheduled, a showdown that will determine which score is to go into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Steve travels some three thousand miles to play, and we wait as the stubborn, insecure, unreachable Billy remains largely off-screen, with only Steve Sanders (whose since become Billy’s closest friend) to act as spokesperson and preserver of Billy’s image. We wait, and wait, and we laugh when director Seth Gordon plugs the 1980s howler “You’re the Best Around” from The Karate Kid. It’s a testament to Gordon that we aren’t laughing AT these guys, we’re laughing at the fact that this story has truly morphed into a real life Karate Kid, only one in which we’re actively rooting for the more Johnnyish of the competitors. The Geek, for once, is the holder of all the cards.

The showdown? Be prepared. The film has a No Country for Old Men ending, elusive and disappointing. But is it exactly? Regardless of who you’re rooting for, the geeks have undoubtedly inherited the Earth, if for only 80 glorious minutes.

★★★½

Posted on February 8th, 2008 in 2007, Reviews, Documentary |

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