SPECIAL WHEN LIT: A PINBALL DOCUMENTARY (2009)

This is a documentary about an innovation whose birth and death occurred within the same century, so that the same people who enjoyed it as a rising fad can defend its relevancy later in life.  Yes, that means most people they talk to are super old (like old enough to remember putting dimes not quarters into the machines) and yes, unfortunately most of them can't come up with any more complex than "I like pinball, it used to be popular, now it is not, I don't like that."  But there it still a lot of interesting stuff about pinball to learn, and they also interview a charming (and ancient) Frenchman who says "I like girls and pinball... but girls is finis... so pinball."

Back when Americans were square enough to consider playing pool to be a seedy activity (see The Music Man) they also lumped Pinball in their too.  Machines were outright banned in many states because of their association (earned or unearned) with slot machines.  Even once they obtained legality, people still generally associated them with juvenile delinquency and dark corners of bars.  Even the art work on the cases generally depicted, as one interviewee puts it, "violence and cleavage."  Obviously the moral outrage would ultimately pale in comparison to the one aimed at the products largely developed as a result of pinball's popularity: video games.

Obviously this documentary doesn't have any room for people who only sorta kinda like pinball.  This is for the fanatics.  The insurance adjuster with a warehouse full of machines, who dreams of constructing a pinball machine that depicts The Passion, is a featured subject and ideal audience member of this movie.  The former champions interviewed run the gamut from the terrifyingly-calm Rick Stetta, with a thousand yard stare and hushed whisper, to the amiable Roger Sharpe, who helped co-found the tournament system and regularly places in the top ten alongside his two sons Zach and Josh.

The elegiac tone of the film, particularly the last third, is not entirely effective or earned.  Plenty of entertainment options from the 20th century are fading away but that's just life.  Drive-ins, double features, newsreels, roadshows, squashed penny machines, arcade games, video rental stores, the evening newspaper and a bunch of other stupid examples I could think of are not around anymore or won't be around much longer.  What about darts?  People in this country used to throw metal spikes when they drank, and damnit this was a great land!  And whither whist?  We should all start playing whist again.  Or faro.  We need a faro documentary.

~ Somebody in this movie complains that kids today don't care about pinball because they are busy with their "Sega consoles" so I guess that guy knows as little about video games as he thinks kids know about pinball.

~ Chicago is the pinball capital of the world.  Most games were made there, and the last remaining company is based there.

~ If you ever see the Medieval Madness pinball machine, give it a go.  It was made in the 90's, again in Chicago, so they recruited improv actors from the Second City comedy troop to voice the characters.  Which means you can hear Tina Fey in a pinball machine.

~The ostensible villain of this movie, arcade games, didn't even last as long as pinball.