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

PG-13 and it all comes down to thirty seconds of weirdly vulgar photos of a guy self-named Mr. Awesome with a bunch of naked ladies.  Even though you technically don't see anything, it's still fairly alarming.  The rest of the movie is so incredibly tame.  There's two uses of a mild curse word.  It doesn't matter that these people are all jerks.  Their world is so small and petty that to list the bad behavior among them would almost be giving them validity that is wholly undeserved.  PG-13 for very little controversial footage.

DIRECTOR:  Seth Gordon

If you read my blog from Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which I posted a few minutes ago, I mentioned that I have no time to write blogs.  I stressed that my wife had fallen asleep on the couch behind me and I would write for as long as I could before either falling asleep myself or her wanting to go upstairs.  Well, my son has now sleepwalked downstairs and is on the other part of the couch.  Neither one of them adjusted for the other so now I feel slightly evil for trying to knock out this last blog entry.  Oh my goodness, if I can get this one done, then I will be caught up before I finish The Tale of Zatoichi Continues tomorrow. 

I own this movie for many reasons.  But I was shocked that I only owned it as of late.  This is one of those movies that I've just watched a bunch of times.  For a guy who doesn't really care about competition, this is one of those movies that absolutely knocks me on my butt.  I won't deny that it shares a lot of blood with my favorite fan documentary, Trekkies.  It's one of those movies where you can't help but laugh at how intense these nerds are getting.  Yeah, that may be a little bit mean.  Do you know that whole idea of that the bullied tend to bully the people below them.  I can't deny that I'm punching down more than I should be.  But, my goodness, the subjects of this documentary come across as so unlikable (for the most part) that you can't help but feel justified in your scorn for them.

I forgot my original point.  I got this movie initially to show to my Honors American Literature class.  My nonfiction book that I teach is In Cold Blood.  In Cold Blood was one of the foundational works of true crime out there.  Now, I've absorbed a lot of true crime since getting married.  There's a lot of great true crime out there.  But I also have a lot of hard and fast rules about showing kids anything that might be too controversial.  I am way more cool with reading about horrible stuff than showing movies about gross things.  I could not think of one great true crime doc that was honestly and appropriately PG-13.  There was always something that pushed the line too far.  I then remembered The King of Kong.  I didn't end up showing the class the movie, mainly because I ran out of time coupled with the makeup of the class being bored by such an idea.  But I really think that The King of Kong shares more in common with a true crime doc than a sports doc.

I don't know if Seth Gordon, the director, views this documentary like that.  I bet he wanted to show how intense something as light-hearted as Donkey Kong could be to an audience that had no idea what was going on.  Donkey Kong is really an excuse to pull back the curtain to the world of Twin Galaxies.  I'm trying to be sensitive about these guys because my wife pointed out that everyone in this doc had autism.  Yeah, that's probably true.  But they're also mostly comprised of semi-terrible people.  

One central conceit in the film is that the world of Twin Galaxies is all about obsession.  For these people, being a big fish in a small pond is the most important thing that person could be.  I know that in the last few blogs, I've dropped a Willy Loman comparison.  These guys are all unmarried Willy Lomans.  Okay, maybe they're Hap Lomans.  Each one of these people has devoted lifetimes of diverse experiences for being the best at something that, unfortunately, doesn't matter.  I'm writing this blog at 12:49 AM.  I know what it means to devote time to something that doesn't matter.  

But the reason that I'm writing this so late is because I do devote my life to things that actually matter.  I can squeeze this time in once every-so-often because I spend my entire day in service to others.  I'm going to place an awkward segue here because this is where Steve Wiebe comes in.  Steve Wiebe isn't amazing.  He's the hero of a story that doesn't have much of a bar.  For the most part, Wiebe is a good guy.  He has a family.  He's a real underdog.  He became a teacher and it seems like he's mildly liked for being a real Milhouse of a man.  (Maybe Old Gil.  Probably a combination of both.)  He's obsessive, but he also has his hobby take place of sleep instead of parenting, with the exception of the time that his kid needed to use the toilet while he was filming his record-breaking run.  Every time that Steve Wiebe gets a win, Billy Mitchell and his cronies take that win away from him.

(Also, his wife is tolerant of this guy at best.) 

Anyway, that's what the movie is really about.  Steve Wiebe is the outsider to Twin Galaxies.  He's the guy who just wanted to win at one thing in life.  Ol' Gil needs that sale!  These guys at Twin Galaxies are so insulated in their video game community that they are mortified by someone like Steve Wiebe.  Mainly because Billy Mitchell is the villain of a Disney Channel Original Movie.  Honestly, there's an Instagram account or a TikTok account that I found on Instagram where people try to act like Disney Channel villains in real life.  That is Billy Mitchell.  For those who haven't seen this documentary (You probably should), Billy Mitchell was the Donkey Kong high score reigning champ.  He gained a little bit of fame for being in a magazine because of his score and ever since then has held sway over a bunch of other nerds who can't reach his score.  He spun that incredibly small fame into a chicken wing restaurant and became a Nationalist in a few decades.  (He probably was one in 1982, who are we kidding?) 

And Billy Mitchell's evil ways are so corrupting that it makes you look at everyone in this nerd community with skepticism.  Honestly, these incels look at Billy Mitchell with such desperate need for validation that they treat this regular suburban dad --who happens to be very good at Donkey Kong --as a virus to be purged.  Like, everyone in that community just stares at him and hates him for being better at Donkey Kong than they are.  And Billy borderline sits in his chicken restaurant petting his cat, watching this man from afar.  It's fascinating.

But the insane stuff that happens in the movie is so compelling.  A squad of nerds breaks into Wiebe's house and takes apart his video game cabinet to ensure that he isn't cheating.  There's a secret distribution of video tapes to an old lady who is good at Q*Bert.  (By the way, the only wonderful human being in this movie is Ol' Lady Q*Bert, who just dismisses these nerds and plays her Q*Bert all day.) And you watch and you wonder, "Why is this microcosm of nerdery so terrible?"

As part of that, you want to see Wiebe wedgie these nerds on Mitchell's own turf.  The fact that they play The Karate Kid soundtrack "You're the Best" is because the film becomes competitive.  These nerds commit these small crimes, very much like Johnny Lawrence, and we get Steve Wiebe as Daniel LaRusso entering their worlds and bloodying their faces a little bit.  And it doesn't hurt that, considering that Billy Mitchell is a Disney Channel villain, that the movie ends like a Disney Channel movie.  The nerds look up to Steve Wiebe.  Steve Wiebe gets the high score.  And, if you Wikipedia Billy Mitchell, you find out that he cheated with his secret score and is banned from Twin Galaxies.  It's very Disney Channel, only with nerds who really live their lives like this.

It's insane that I'm about done writing all this blog stuff tonight.  I'm going to wake my wife and walk her up to bed.  But before this happens, I have to remind everyone that this happened in 2006 and 2007.  This movie feels like it was made in 1991.  It's not the filmmakers' fault.  This is just how these guys live.  Watch this movie.  It's an absolute banger of a documentary.