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Pinee doco with local angle
Pinball machines have been flipped back into the limelight with Special When Lit, an award winning documentary with an Australian connection.
Gone are the days when going down to the local store to pop a few coins in a pinball machine was the means to whiling the afternoon away. Pinball machines are a thing of the past, a lost icon which has been replaced by the digital era of home-bound video games. However, the epoch of pinball has not been forgotten. A new documentary that has premiered and been nominated for Best Documentary at London's Raindance Film Festival is set to reveal a worldwide community of avid ‘pinheads' that continue their loyal dedication to the art of controlling that little silver ball.
Special When Lit is the definitive story of the rise and fall of pinball as told by the fans, collectors, designers and champion players from across the globe. Shot all over the world, though predominantly in America, by London-based Australian filmmakers Brett O'Sullivan, Clayton Jacobsen and Emily Rickard, and edited in the UK with the final sound mix completed in Australia, the film truly is an international production with worldwide appeal.
The filmmakers began their undertaking with a fictional feature about a washed up pinball champ in mind, and enthusiastically threw themselves into researching the project on the pinball circuit. However, after finding the real characters more compelling, they quickly did away with fiction in favour of documentary and were taken on a journey that saw them travel from London to Sweden, Amsterdam, Italy, France, Australia, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York to Chicago. "Although an American invention and icon," says Rickard, "we soon discovered that pinball transcends culture, and there are hard core fans all around the world."
The American tours brought the filmmaking team into contact with an eclectic mix of characters such as Pingeek, the self-proclaimed ‘Jim Morrison of Pinball', and Sam Harvey who collected pinball schematics, was a pinball spotter with a back history of most machines in America, and who could tell you which pizza parlour, laundromat or bowling alley your machine has lived in.
Their common obsession prompts pinball fans to return continuously to conventions, shows and competitions, and these events became the primary reference from which the filmmakers could explore how alive the pinball subculture actually is by today's standards, and the extent of involvement by participants. "They all know each other on a social level and are all good friends," says Rickard, "but when the world title is at stake, they are fiercely competitive, and will stop at nothing to win." Although these events are essentially celebratory, the film also makes observations from a more melancholy perspective. Rickard notes that for some fans, pinball represents a time gone by, when life was simple "and a dime entertained you for hours."
America has the most notorious pinball history with the machines being banned by the US Government for a period of thirty years up until the 1970s, and yet despite this, their peak was during the ‘50s and ‘60s where they garnered more profit that the entire Hollywood film industry.
On the other hand, Australia has its own colourful, if less controversial, history with pinball and is represented in the film through the tales of Sydney based collector, repairer, vendor and pinball author Michael Shaloub, who regaled the filmmakers with nostalgic tales of his youth and how he was bitten by the bug of the silver ball at the local corner store and pizza shop. "The same places all around the world at one time had youth entranced with the magic of pinball," Rickard emphasises. Now, however, "there are very few places left in Sydney that you can play pinball. We just lost another venue, The Hopetoun that had a couple of machines."
O'Sullivan and Jacobsen were fans beforehand, but the project has had an exponential effect. Amassing nine pinball machines between them - which started while in production of the film - they are now living as true pinheads travelling to the outskirts of London to take part in pinball competitions. The fact that their project has received acclaim through its nomination at Raindance is a tremendous outcome. "Obviously this was a really personal project, especially for director Brett Sullivan," says Rickard. "To get recognition for a film that we think is really cool is great validation. It makes the hours locked away in a dark room watching rushes all worthwhile!"
For Emily Rickard, it has been a life-changing experience. "I had never played a game of pinball before we made the film, and I'm now hooked," she says. "It's a tactile experience that you can't really explain until your hips are thrusting up against the machine, fingers tapping away at the flippers, trying to tame the silver ball. I challenge everyone to find pinballs in their local community and see for themselves how much fun it can be."
Special When Lit will have its premiere screening at The Chauvel Cinema, Paddington on December 22, 2009 at 7pm. Tickets will be on sale soon. For more information, see the website.