Special When Lit: A Pinball Documentary

“Once you get the lure of the silver ball in you, you can’t stop.”  FAN/user

“It was like hanging out with your friends doing bad things, developing skills that were relatively useless.” Fan/User

“You’re trying to create a carnival game, easy to learn, has hooks that keep you playing, but it’s hard to beat.” Creator/Engineer

“There’s more man hours to building a pinball machine than a Ford Taurus, which are built not far from here.” Creator/Engineer

“Flippers changed it from a game of luck to a game of skill.” Creator/Engineer

I stumbled upon this 2010 film the other day. It’s directed by Brett Sullivan, and as someone with many arcade memories, I settled in to watch it, eager and interested. First are interviews with a few people that are still currently in the world of pinball; Tim Arnold -the owner of the Pinball Hall Of Fame in Las Vegas, and several collectors who have collections at home or housed for public consumption. I always loved pinball and never really thought much about how it came to be, and it’s decline, and am happy to visit the SilverBall in Asbury Park and have visited the aforementioned Pinball Hall Of Fame. As a teenager, I’d generally eat dinner at home and then go out, often to some of the local pinball joints, get into a little bit of trouble, but the pinball /pool /amusement hall was often our destination before we got to drinking age. I don’t remember my family going out to dinner very much at all growing up. I’d say now the habits of an average family are completely different. More families going out for food (okay Covid, I see you, spoiler), and then come home to their gigundo tvs and home computer systems for movies or automated entertainment, and they stay home. Video games didn’t ever have the same appeal to me as a pinball machine. I was never very good at pinball, but I felt it was a fair expenditure of my time and money. You’d pump in a couple of quarters and maybe you could play for 20 minutes to a couple of hours. Every so often one of my friends would have a lucky evening and keep getting the free ball, the free game; and we all rallied and cheered them on. These recollections sparked by the film bring back great, smoky memories.

This movie touches on those types of scenarios, as well as the actual life and death of the big pinball companies: Williams, Gottlieb, Bally. Most were based in Chicago, a fact I had no idea about. Pinball was always more popular in Europe than in the US, so machines were shipped overseas first when they came out. It showed the origins of the “pin” games, and the advent of the almighty flipper, which was debuted in the Humpty Dumpty game of 1947. I saw a glimpse of so many games in the movie, it was fun to see which ones I recognized. From the Addams Family to Spiderman, Monopoly to Pool Sharks, Charlies Angels to Playboy, Kiss to Elton John to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the lookback was pretty f’n rad. The filmmakers show up at a Pinball Tournament and profiled the some of the most likely and unlikely contenders, and then chronicled their games and finishes for the weekend.

They cover the theory of design, where it was legal and illegal (pinball was considered gambling and was illegal in NYC, Chicago and LA from 1938-1968), a dumping and burning process and finally the advent of arcades. Examples of how it superseded social strata was interesting, there were no VIP areas in arcades, so you could find all different types, including celebrities at arcades; everyone would have their interaction together, and go their separate ways. Champions past and present were interviewed, and many were shown in their “natural habitat,” playing the game – some seemed to be on the ballet floor or ice skating instead of standing before a rigid machine. There were enough social stories to relate to, although they kept on emphasizing how much of a guys’ game it was, I could still relate from my rough and tumble days of the past. The film peeked into the worlds of people who fully embraced American pop culture – one enthusiast had over 10 pinball machines and also owned the original barrels from the chase scene in Jaws among his collection. The distinction of how different pinball and video games were from each other was really hammered home, and had me recall how sometimes you could change the way the game went by physically pushing it harder or rocking the edges, or getting to that point just before tilting. Video games have no such capacity, they don’t respond to humans in any way at all, except through programming. Pinball answered the player, spat balls back out at you and would rival you like a good playoff team. The human element was emphasized, probably the quality I enjoyed most about this documentary. Overall the film hit many interesting areas I never thought of, brought back good memories, taught me a thing or two and was a nice way to spend a couple of hours.