The King of Kong

Well, it's been a slow night for me (re: friends out of town/busy, general social laziness) so I decided to watch The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters.

This is a spectacularly tense, well-made documentary that's enjoyable on a number of levels. Most memorably, the film presents two of the weasliest people I've ever seen: Billy Mitchell and Brian Kuh. The former is an American original -- a manipulative egomaniac. The latter, his disciple, is Mitchell with none of the charisma. I loved hating both of them.

As the seeming polar opposite of those two clowns, the directors present Steve Wiebe, an unassuming family man with a passion for Donkey Kong. He's the affable outsider running against the well-established machine (reading election coverage has begun to poison my vocabulary, it seems). Both Wiebe and Mitchell are all-American men in their own ways: Wiebe is a family man looking to go from rags-to-riches in the Donkey Kong world; Mitchell is a businessman (he owns a restaurant with his own brand of hot sauce) married to a trophy wife (I know, it's unfair. I'm sure they love each other. But seriously, to quote one IMDB user, "This guy is a walking, talking 70's graduation photo come to life.").

I was endlessly fascinated by watching how these very different men aim for the same goal. It's a theme that resonates with a lot more than just video games (from sportsmanship to, yes, elections), and it's pretty powerful to watch events unfold in this film, especially because the filmmakers manage to give equal screentime for each opposing figure.

The film's masterstroke was in how subtly it showed Wiebe transform from just a guy playing for fun to a man on a personal quest for vanity and glory. Wiebe's no saint, and he becomes even less of one once he starts to get sucked into Mitchell's world of competitive gaming. Wiebe's the good guy, there's no doubt, but his unassuming innocence certainly seemed less genuine to me as the film progressed. It takes a lot of talent to pull something like that off in any narrative, let alone a documentary.

As I think about the movie, despite all of its structural strengths, I keep coming back to Mitchell and Kuh. If this were a fiction film, I'd knock them for being caricatures. The real joy of The King of Kong, more than anything, is in watching these unreal examples of human ugliness. Competition -- one of the bedrocks of America -- can breed a lot more than just excellence. It can breed Mitchell and Kuh, two slimy men who'll do anything to get -- and stay -- ahead.