So on Tuesday I 'reviewed' a new documentary called The King of Kong about a man named Steve Wiebe who was trying to break the world record in Donkey Kong and his struggle to get his new record recognized by the governing body of video game records and the former (spoiler alert) and again current record holder Billy Mitchell. In the documentary Billy Mitchell (pictured) is painted as the bad guy in the film and when discussing the film my emotions led me to use what may have been harsh words calling Billy Mitchell a "douche" and something else....... what was it........ oh yes I think it was "evil".
I received a few emails asking about the film and a few emails about classic arcade games..... and oh yeah guess who else I got an email from......
Mr.
Midwesterner,
Thanks for the review... and all your thoughts. Hope you take these "Just for fun" moments and have fun with them... That is what I do with my wife and 3 children. When I am not working in our family businesses we are involved in football, cheerleading, baseball, softball, track, gymnastics,.... and so on... I took notice to your blog because my wife was born in NYC and grew up on Long Island. She is quite the success story herself... you may not want to hear about that. Again, a sincere hope for the best to a transplanted midwesterner in NYC. It a great place...Never
Surrender,
Never,
Billy
Mitchell
(It is really is)
After a little research I truly have no reason to doubt that this was in fact from Billy Mitchell (and no disrespect to Mr. Mitchell but I would find it hard to believe people would go around pretending to be him and discussing his family). A couple of points..... First of all the origin of my original post was to try to get people to see what I found to be a very compelling documentary that I am not sure most people would want to see. Yes, of course I used words to describe Billy Mitchell that the director of the documentary wanted me to use because the film takes place from the challenger Steve Wiebe's perspective and I would assume the film is a bit biased in that fact.
But also there are a few questions I have for Mr. Mitchell and in my response to him I did ask him why when he finally met Steve Wiebe for the first time and Steve greeted him by saying "hello" did Billy completely ignore him then mention to his wife that (I am paraphrasing) 'there are some people we do not need to associate with'. Maybe something happened off camera that the viewer was not privy too, maybe it was simply Mr. Mitchell looking at Steve as his competition and like many competitors they do not socialize with said competition. Fair enough either way, but I would like to know.
I mentioned in my original post that it appeared Billy Mitchell who set the original record in 1982 was still living off these feats and I think Mr. Michell's main point in his email was that he has other concerns in his life other than his video game records. I would agree with that, but in the film it is obvious these records still mean a great deal to him. To be fair, if I was the best at something I would not want to give that up for anything no matter what it was. I mean look at Hank Aaron over the last few months, this was not a happy man. Of course he gave up his record to a steroid user (I refuse to say 'alleged', the man admitted to a grand jury that he 'unknowingly' took steroids), and I should point out I am in no way implying that Steve Wiebe took steroids to break Billy Mitchell's record in Donkey Kong.
I should point out that (again spoiler alert) Steve Wiebe did officially break Billy's record. In the last few weeks, after a sizable donation to charity which should be applauded, Billy agreed to play again and reclaimed his title. If Mr. Mitchell writes again (and I hope he would) I will share any updates unless instructed otherwise, also be sure to tune in tomorrow when I respond to the letter I am sure to get now from Barry Bonds (I am in no way insinuating Billy Mitchell took any performance enhancing drugs in constructing his letter).
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