My Conversation With The King of Kong Star Billy Mitchell

If you have not been following this saga so far I will offer this little recap. Last week after seeing the fascinating new documentary The King of Kong, about the quest for the title of world champion in the arcade game Donkey Kong, I wrote a review of my thoughts on this film and in the process lambasted current Donkey Kong world champion Billy Mitchell (pictured) who is played as the villain in this film (to read a real review check out Roger Ebert's review).

After this lambasting I received an email from Billy Mitchell himself:

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)

Over the last few days Mr. Mitchell and I exchanged some emails discussing his family and the film after which he invited me to call him personally. On Monday I did just that and we had about an hour long conversation. Following are the highlights from the email and phone conversation:

Midwesterner: I hope you were not offended by anything I wrote in the 'review' (I use that term lightly, I am not really a seasoned critic obviously). I am smart enough to realize the way the documentary was filmed that it was one sided and played you as the villain but that is what made the movie very compelling.

Billy Mitchell: I am not at all offended by your writing, which is very obvious by the friendly e-mail I sent to you. It is a film... it is Hollywood and I am sure it is not the 1st time nor the am I or my friends in the film the first people to be dooped. Of course, you are only reviewing what was on the screen and some of it would be asdepicted, some far, far from the truth... and then some omitted intentional.

Midwesterner: I also read you recently broke the record again for charity which is fantastic.

Billy: There is actually a much larger charity in the planning in September in Bethesda, Maryland. It is at a Cancer Research Center. I have been asked to attend. It is quite flattering that I was asked to attend and that they canceled the gentleman was the 1st winner of Donald Trump's Contest The Apprentice ( his name?)

Midwesterner: I believe the name you are looking for is Bill Rancic, The Apprentice winner from season one. Actually it was odd because in the reviews I read of the movie before seeing it they all painted you as 'the bad guy' so I was prepared for that. For the first half of the movie you came across as a pretty nice guy (like the scene with the Q*bert machine) then near the end (I am sure due to editing) it did
paint you in a more mischievous light.

Billy: We may actually be giving away a Donkey Kong (record machine) or the Q Bert that I gave to Ms. Doris... We will see no promises yet... The gentleman directing the event is [email redacted] although I don't think he has all his ideas together yet...

Midwesterner: Yeah, I love New York. Case in point the fact that I am one of the few people right now that can see The King of Kong (Though I would also love to see Chasing Ghosts, I hope it is released soon).

Billy: If you would like to see Chasing Ghost I can help you [email redacted] is the producer of the film... he is in NYC... his phone number is [redacted]. If he does not get to you ASAP let me know and I will lean on him to help you.

Midwesterner: Why did you shun Steve (Wiebe) when he said hello in Florida? I am sure there is more to the story.

Billy: Steve and Mark walked into my Restaurant which was a shock to me as I was told he was not in town by the producer... Later to learn that the producer flew in and paid for Mark, Steve his wife and children, the three of which I never did meet, unfortunately. I introduced My Wife and Children to them, my whole family signed their Record Books. My Family also met the 25 other players who where in the Restaurant. Some of these people I have known 25 years and that was the very 1st time anyone met my family...EVER [Ed Note: this was not the scene I was asking about, I was asking about the scene at the Guinness Book of World Records Tournament where Steve says hello to Billy and Billy ignores him. Billy explains later in our phone conversation why there was confusion]

Midwesterner: When your wife was on camera I thought I noticed a slight New York accent.

Billy: You notice my wife had a slight NY accent...? Humm... This is to easy... call me and we will talk about my wife... and I promise you will be surprised [redacted phone number] (Top Secret #). I have a Smoking Gun but that's later...

So on Monday I did just that and placed a call to Billy Mitchell who was in his car and had just dropped his son off for football practice. When I called and used my real name and mentioned we had been emailing he had no clue who I was. Finally after mentioning this blog a very jovial voice greeted me "Ah yes, Mr. Midwesterner".

What might be the most shocking thing to come from the conversation was to learn that Mr. Mitchell had yet to even see The King of Kong. He states press reports have accused him of saying that he has refused to watch the film but states he has requested a screener from the film's producer and has yet to receive one, and of course the film is not playing anywhere near him in a local theater yet so this led to an interesting situation of where I had to describe the scenes in the film to him to ask about them.

Near the end of the film there is the 'infamous' scene where Billy and Steve Weibe meet for the first time at the Guinness Book of World Records tournament (which Billy states was a one time deal put together by the producers of the film just for the sole purpose of getting he and Steve Weibe into the same room). In the film Steve is playing and Billy walks behind him as Steve turns around and says "Hi, Billy". Billy ignores Steve and walks off saying to his wife that "there were certain people he did not want to spend too much time with". In the email exchange I asked him about this scene but he confused it with an incident that happened earlier at his restaurant. Billy states the reason he did not know what I was talking about is because in real life he claims he said "hello" back to Steve but the producers must have cut it to make it look like he completely ignored him. He may be right, I recently saw the film again and sure enough there is a camera change right at the moment Billy is standing behind Steve. Billy said the reason he did not spend too much time watching Steve play is because the group of people that like to "Stir the Sugar" (Billy does not use expletives) would accuse him of "stealing Steve's strategy".

What might be more interesting was this apparently was not the first meeting between Billy and Steve like the movie portrays. Billy claims the two met in 2004 (not to mention earlier in the day at his restaurant which the film does not show) at a tournament, two years before the Guinness tournament, shortly after Steve broke one million points for the first time. At this event they actually even played head to head on a MAME machine (not a true Donkey Kong machine, more of a program that will run the game on a computer) and Billy won the contest. Billy claims he even presented Steve with a poster of the two of them and both of their, unverified at the time, scores and invited Steve on stage with him but Steve refused.

I asked Billy what the "smoking gun" was that he discussed in his email. Billy asked me, if he was so obsessed with a score he set in 1982 then why did he not try to break the record set by Tim Sczerby in 2000. That's right, according to Mitchell he was not even the world record holder when Steve Wiebe was gunning for the record. Tim Sczerby was the title holder but Tim was kind of a guy just like Steve, a nice guy that is not part of this 'video game community'. In other words Steve vs. Tim is not a movie because there is no bad guy. As Billy put it "It would be Mr. Vanilla vs. Mr. Vanilla", you need a Billy Mitchell to make it into a movie and he said he "does not mind playing the bad guy" but wants to set the record straight.

In the reviews Billy has read he makes note the reviewers often refer to his wife as a "trophy wife", to the point Billy asked me if I felt the same way and wanted me to be honest. I did not mention that point in my review and I honestly did not feel that way after seeing the film. I did admit that I too had seen those descriptions before seeing the film but feel that is a bit unfair. He made it clear that his "trophy wife" when they first met was making more money than he was, and she currently has two masters degrees and is currently working on her doctorate.

Look, I still love this film and highly recommend it. It is listed second in this weeks issue of Entertainment Weekly's Must List. My point is sometimes I take it personally when someone just leaves a negative comment after a post, I have no idea how I would react if an entire documentary was made featuring myself in such a negative light. Yes, in speaking to Billy Mitchell it becomes rapidly apparent he is a confidant man and the negativity does not seem to bruise his ego too harshly. To be fair just in conversation Billy mentions several times that Steve is a great player and there is no question about that, a admission from Billy that never appears in the film. Billy Mitchell does not seem like a guy who minds if people want to hate him, but even someone as confident as Billy Mitchell wants to make sure that if someone is going to hate him at least let it be for accurate reasons.