I can’t remember the last time I cried in a movie. It used to be a regular thing. You invest in the characters, then some tragedy happens and—you can’t help it—suddenly you’re in fits, tears streaming down your face. Sometimes it happens in public, in the cinema, or at home with your family, and you do your best to suppress the emotion. But you can’t. The tears are still there, welling up, and you find yourself surreptitiously dabbing the corner of your eye, hoping that no one will notice.
Casablanca used to have that effect on me, especially the song, As Time Goes By. I’ve just played it while searching for the link, and it still makes me sob. I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Also It’s a Wonderful Life, when James Stewart’s character returns after his time in limbo, and he finds that everything has returned to what it should be. That used to make me burst into tears as a child.
I think the last time I cried in a cinema was during Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s vivid evocation of his childhood in the city of his birth. I’d never liked Branagh before. I thought of him as one of the London luvvies, the self-congratulatory Thespians who never tire of reminding you just how artistic they are. What Belfast does is to remind us of his background, where he comes from, and it sheds new light on his art and how he pursues it. I’ve had a grudging respect for him ever since.
Generally, though, I dislike it when I cry at some cliché in a movie. I dislike that the writer has triggered an autonomic response merely by knowing how human psychology works. I’m annoyed for being so predictable. The exception to this was watching Pinball: The Man Who Saved The Game, starring Mike Faist and Crystal Reed. That made me cry and it was entirely unpredictable. I’ve seen it three times now, and it had me in tears every time.
It’s an unlikely vehicle for a tearjerker. It’s a nerd movie about pinball. Based upon the true story of Roger Sharpe, who in 1976 overturned New York’s 35-year ban on the game, it is functional not flashy: well-written, well-structured, well-acted, it nevertheless keeps its feet firmly on the ground. Like all the best movies, it relies on the characterization, on the relationships and the twists and turns of the plot. There’s not a special effect in sight. No explosions, no CGI, no superheroes, the only flashes and bells come from the machines themselves, which are the real stars of the film.
In this sense, it’s nostalgic. You don’t see pinball machines anymore. Watching the movie is to be reminded what glorious, gaudy works of art they were. It’s to bring back your youth and the lure and romance of the silver ball in its erratic, noisy journey through the maze of the table. I think that’s what made me cry. It brought up reminiscences from the distant past: thoughts and feelings that were locked tight in my muscle memory, that the sight of those machines released.
Very specifically, it brought up one long lost love affair which I’d almost forgotten. It was after the affair was over that I began to play pinball in earnest. This was at a club I used to go to. It was nearly moribund at the time, losing money and fast going downhill. A bunch of friends and I moved in and took over. We began volunteering behind the bar. We put on gigs and benefits. We redecorated the back room.
I’d always wanted to own a bar. One thing I realized was that a good jukebox was the key to success. We were put in touch with a couple of guys, Alan and Des, who repaired and fitted old-fashioned jukeboxes, and had one installed. They’d also reconditioned classic pinball machines available. They asked us if we’d like one. We agreed and the machine was put into position.
I wasn’t a young man then. I was already in my 30s, with a failed marriage behind me and no idea what the future might bring. Playing that machine brought back the feelings of my youth. It brought back focus and concentration and a sense of control. That’s what the film emphasizes. Like me at the time, the lead character is jobless, divorced, and without any prospects. He’s living in New York, in a furniture-less apartment. Then he discovers a pinball machine in an adult bookstore, meets a woman in an elevator and gets a job writing for GQ magazine.
It’s the tie-in between all these elements that shifts the movie from a nerd-fest into a romantic drama. He soon discovers that the reason he can only find pinball machines in an adult bookstore is that they’re illegal within the city limits. He’s approaching the store one day when confronted by a police raid, the pinball machines dragged out and smashed on the sidewalk. The pornography in the store is acceptable. The pinball machines aren’t.
One of the tricks of the film is the metanarrative. An older actor, Dennis Boutsikaris, plays the present-day Roger Sharpe as he intervenes in the script, correcting it every now and then. He steps in on the action and points out that even in movies about real life much will be made up. But this scene isn’t. New York City really did ban pinball machines, from the 1930s to 1976, when the ban was finally lifted. The reason was that they were viewed as games of chance, as a way for the mob to get children addicted to gambling. Sharpe’s task is to show that they’re games of skill not chance, and nothing to do with the mob.
Alan and Des used to change the machines in the Labour Club every few weeks, bringing in new tables whenever the profits began to dip. They started off with older, electro-mechanical contraptions, with lots of clicking and whirring, and then started introducing more modern electronic devices. My favorite was Black Knight. It was a multi-level, multi-ball machine. You could have several balls crashing around the play deck at the same time. I got so good at it that I was always getting free games. I could put one 50 pence piece in the slot and play the game for the rest of the night.
Watching the movie reminded me how physical the game is. It’s not like a video game, which is mainly dependent upon the relationship between hands and eyes. In pinball your whole body is engaged: legs, arms, back, shoulders and hips. Particularly hips. You use your hips to aim. That’s what provides the sexual element. It was mainly young men and teenage boys who liked to play. The machine’s positioned about groin height, your hands either side, as if clutching someone’s backside. There are often garish images of well-endowed young women pouting at you. You twist your hips to get control. You roll your body, shift, lift your leg, kick, jerk and thrust. It’s this coordination between the sensual body and the eye that makes the game so seductive.
As a supplement to the movie, I also watched a documentary about pinball. Called Special When Lit, it features the real Roger Sharpe, plus his two sons, Josh and Zak, who are also pinball aficionados. That’s much more of a nerdy film, with no tears, but still enjoyable. It’s full of odd characters and collectors, with more than a touch of Asperger’s thrown in. You see collectors who own hundreds of machines, and one who keeps logs of where each machine had been in its life before it ended up in his basement, whose whole house is filled with spare parts so he can keep his machines in tip top condition.
Watching both movies made me yearn to play again, to be fully engaged in the pinball moment, immersed in this product of human imagination and ingenuity, with all the lights and bells and bright art work. It made me miss my youth, and that younger adult self, who’d stood in the Labour Club playing Black Knight, with a pint or two, shrugging off the remnants of a painful love affair, beginning to look to the future again. In control of the machine. In control of my life.
—You can find Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game on Amazon Prime here.