The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters

In 2006, Seth Gordon was a little known commodity with a few short features under his belt. The King of Kong premiered January 22, 2007 at the Slamdance Film Festival and garnered much praise around the film festival circuit, including SXSW and TriBeCa. While the film only had a limited release nationwide on 39 screens, the paltry 675K grossed by this documentary is an indictment of what is wrong with the film promotion arm of American cinema. In a year when Norbit made 95 million domestic, the fact that a sterling example of storytelling such as The King of Kong goes unnoticed is indefensible.


While I concede that this is not a sexy film, it is a film of great emotional substance and resonance. Upon hearing some buzz about Billy Rodgers (the perfect antagonist) and spying a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes, I decided to pull up Seth Gordon’s directorial credentials. I was emboldened to see episodes of The Office, Community, Parks and Recreation and Modern Family under his belt. However, the presence of Four Christmases on the resume was worrisome as I felt it was a clunky, paint-by-numbers holiday comedy with a misused cast. He also had lukewarm reviews for his contributions to a 2010 doc Freakanomics, but I can look past that as great toilet reads so rarely become successful motion pictures. I decided to dive into this video game realm and 82 minutes later I emerged elated. The King of Kong had become my second favorite documentary of the past two years (saving the first for next week).

I’m not apologizing for just discovering this movie now, but I would like to lament the collective process by which movies are disseminated in this country (to which we all play a part). The film studios and distributors approach all projects as investments which makes perfect sense, however that also places the power of perception in their hands alone. They determine what the current moviegoing population wants based on cold hard numbers. We vote with our dollars and they adjust accordingly. That’s why we have an impacted assful of vampire movies - the turnstiles have justified this glut of pasty teenagers with bloodlust and awkwardly worded monologues about purity. I blame myself for not seeking out quality at the multiplex. I blame the studios for not taking more chances on the intellect of the American public. At the end of the day, we all need to have a little more gamble in our film choices.


Some documentaries fascinate with stylistic editing, while others grip us with heart-wrenching truths about our fractured society just below the surface. With The King of Kong, we are treated to the lighter fare of documentary work, but the elemental heart and soul of this picture still seems to capture our imagination. Steve Wiebe is a likable main character who shares an eerie resemblance with Bill Simmons. The aforementioned Billy Mitchell is an alpha-nerd in the mold of Barry Bonds - smug, entitled, oddly terrified of his legacy. Brian Kuh is Billy’s obnoxious lapdog with absolutely no redemptive qualities. Head Referee Robert Mruczek provides the most unintentionally depressing scene in the film when he outliners the depth of his responsibilities in reviewing classic video game world records (“When I have to watch that pile of eight tapes over there for Dwayne Richards' two-day Nibbler performance, that's 48 straight hours of paying attention and making sure he's doing everything correctly.”) When you bundle all these characters and chronicle their divisions on something as simple as Donkey Kong, it makes for a truly special film. You can play this immediately on Netflix, I recommend you do just that. Go of the highest order. Seth Gordon, keep ‘em coming.