Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a chat I had with Steve Wiebe last weekend. You should know my opinion on the flick by now, so let’s just jump right into the chat. We cover lots of ground… from the documentary to the reaction to it and what has happened since, including Billy Mitchell’s new score. There’s also talk about the upcoming feature version of THE KING OF KONG and what that could be like and who might even be in it! This interview was conducted in the hallway at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, right in the foot-traffic, so we get a few interruptions. They’re pretty fun, so I left them in. Enjoy!!!
Quint: I was at Sundance and I heard about King of Kong there, but I was already booked up, so I missed it at Slamdance. I didn’t see this until South By Southwest and I really flipped for it.
Steve Wiebe: Were you at that screening that I was at?
Quint: Yeah, I was actually sitting in front of you and I didn’t realize it.
Steve Wiebe: Oh really? (laughs)
Quint: I was sitting there, watching the thing, and I kept leaning over to my friends every time Billy would do something crazy, I’m like “Man, that guy’s such a douche bag” and so afterwards when you stood up and I was like “Ah man, I probably just…”
Steve Wiebe: I didn’t hear any of that.
[Both Laugh]
Quint: So, this has totally taken off since Slamdance and all the festival screenings. It’s becoming kind of a cultural movement almost.
Steve Wiebe: Yeah, like the resurgence of DONKEY KONG. Look at all of this memorabilia out there… people are buying shirts and yeah, it’s pretty cool.
Quint: This must have really upturned your life a little bit, right?
Steve Wiebe: Yeah.
Quint: Must have been kind of a snow ball effect from the competition itself to…
Steve Wiebe: It ended up being…
[A fan walks up]
Fan: Hey, Steve… I’m going to watch the movie now… I was wondering how to learn… I mean, I was playing and I got 100,000…
Steve Wiebe: That’s pretty good.
Fan: I still sometimes will die on the second level, the barrels…
Steve Wiebe: The barrels? Yeah, you just gotta be able to control them. Once you play it so much you’ll be able to control them really well.
Fan: Awesome.
Steve Wiebe: Enjoy the movie. (Back to me) It just came out to be bigger than anything I would have imagined getting into when I started playing in the garage. It’s not just about the video game of course, it’s about the clash of the personalities and struggles and everything that make it appealing to everyone and it happens that people are nostalgic… some of the people my age remember the games and it brings back memories and they are getting into the classics and DONKEY KONG. The newer generation is seeing the genesis of gaming.
Quint: What was your immediate reaction when you were approached to be in the documentary?
Steve Wiebe: I was excited, because at that time everything was at a standstill with trying to get my score recognized and Roy Shildt had been linked to me and I knew that was a death sentence towards any further scores, so when they came and they were interested in doing the doc, I was like “Yeah let’s do it,” because that’s a chance for them to start rolling camera and seeing the events in person and witnessing it all. I was definitely excited when they were interested in doing it, I just never thought it would even, for one, get done… they rolled footage and then once it was done I didn’t anticipate how crazy the story was, because I hadn’t seen what had happened at Fun Spot until I saw it. I was just playing and I didn’t know all of the work that Billy was pulling behind the scenes with Brian Kuh, so when I saw that onscreen for the first time I was amazing that that was what was happening.
Quint: It must be completely mind blowing to have a moment in your life documented like that and seeing how those around you at the time reacted when you weren’t there.
Steve Wiebe: When I go to see it in the movie theater and people are cheering and stuff, it really makes you feel pretty good.
Quint: So what’s happened since then? What has happened since the end of the movie?
Steve Wiebe: Once it got made and released into the festivals… I had heard Billy has said he hasn’t seen it. He was silent for a long time, then he finally spoke out and has been kind of like… the way that I was trying to prove myself or work towards getting my DONKEY KONG score recognized… It’s kind of happening at a big level now. Now people are trying to discredit the film, so there could actually be another documentary about that bigger picture and how that goes. And then Billy has since reportedly got a live score of 1100 more than I had got, but it hasn’t been officially verified yet.
Quint: I knew that he had claimed that, but has Twin Galaxies…
Steve Wiebe: It hasn’t been officially verified and I’m not sure when it will be or if it will be. It probably will be, but the rules are always being tweaked as far as what constitutes a verified score and now Walter [Day] has said that a Twin Galaxy referee has to be there and there has to be videotape as well and you have to send the board in to some person to have it analyzed, so it’s getting crazy with all this controversy over “is someone cheating here?” That’s what’s happening with that.
Quint: Because there’s so much more illumination now on the process and I think Twin Galaxies probably caught a little bit of flack for how they dealt with it early on, so I can imagine how they are now that they are wanting to make sure that everything is verifiable which works against Billy a bit. I think that he’s very much afraid of failing in public…
Steve Wiebe: Yeah, I think that’s a large part (of it), yeah.
Quint: But I heard that when he busted your score he did it in front of a crowd.
Steve Wiebe: Yeah, it was a group of mortgage brokers. It wasn’t a gaming thing, it was mortgage brokers and the theme was 80’s, so he said he would be able to play a game and they had something… I don’t know what the brokers where doing, but it wasn’t like a competition, but still to be able to do it live…
Quint: Do you foresee there being a possible… I know that the remake rights are out there to make into a feature film, but do you foresee there being a sequel to the documentary as well?
Steve Wiebe: I think there could be. I heard the director was talking about the remake being a sequel to the original documentary, so it would be different and fresh. So there’s definitely room for a sequel and Seth Gordon was toying around with the idea of the remake being a sequel showing the documentary as part of the remake, like how the documentary has stirred up even a higher level of controversy and all the games being played at the bigger levels.
Quint: I can only imagine if it were me, that I would of course be picturing people for be playing me, so who would you want to play you?
Steve Wiebe: Nathan Fillion was a name that… and that’d be a good choice. Some people say we resemble each other.
Quint: There’s a resemblance and there’s also a similar feel to the both of you. In the documentary you come across as very humble and likeable. You are definitely the person that the audience connects with.
Steve Wiebe: I don’t think it would be a Brad Pitt or some glamorous guy. I always joke that Mark Hamill… just bring him out of retirement or whatever he’s doing, so yeah it’d be interesting. I know that they have Billy pegged, they want Johnny Depp. He would be able to pull Billy off, I think, if anybody could.
Quint: I’m just trying to imagine him in the American flag neck tie.
[Both Laugh]
Quint: That’d be crazy awesome.
[Another fan walks up.]
Fan 2: Thanks for being so awesome. We love you!
Steve Wiebe: Thank you!
Quint: You’re fighting for the people, see?
Steve Wiebe: This city is incredible. My home town doesn’t even react this well to the thing.
Quint: So what are you doing now? Are you still teaching or have things changed?
Steve Wiebe: Yeah, I’m going back to school in a couple weeks. The students report back on September 4th and the teachers go back August 22nd, so I have this week and then I have to go back. This is all going to wind down and I have to return my normal life.
Quint: Did the movie come out in your home town in this limited release?
Steve Wiebe: Yeah, it’s in Seattle right now. Friday and Saturday night I was there for two evening showings…
Quint: You think the kids are going to be…
Steve Wiebe: There will be some kids that will have seen it and it will be interesting since I’ll be teaching all seventh graders.
Quint: Do you think that will make your job harder or easier?
Steve Wiebe: I’m wondering if they will want to be really good or if they think it’s just going to be a party in the room. I’ll definitely still have to come out and lay down the law on the first day. You’ve got to be really strict. So I don’t know and it will be very interesting to see how they respond, it could be either way.
Quint: So how many times have you seen the movie with an audience now?
Steve Wiebe: I’ve seen it probably like ten and yeah it’s pretty amazing knowing the points where they’re going to hiss or cheer, it’s pretty consistent from audience to audience. It’s fun and when I see them, I’m like “I want to see how they react to this” and it kind of makes it more entertaining. Some are more energetic than others, but at least they all react in the spots that you would expect them to.
Quint: So you’re going to be playing tonight, right?
Steve Wiebe: Yeah, I’ll be playing on that machine I think. Is that wired to go into the theater or is there another screen out…
Quint: They have a MAME machine that is in there for the competition.
[Another fan comes up to Steve.]
Fan 3: Hey, Mr. Wiebe, nice to meet you!
Steve Wiebe: Glad to meet you.
Fan 3: Billy Mitchell’s a little bitch! Congrats on bringing him down! I loved it! It was awesome!!
Steve Wiebe: (laughs) Thank you.
Quint: Have you seen CHASING GHOSTS?
Steve Wiebe: I haven’t, I would love to see it.
Quint: They have Mr. Awesome in it, of course.
Steve Wiebe: He’s crazier in that one wasn’t he?
Quint: The two documentaries work so well together…
Steve Wiebe: They kind of set each other up, don’t they?
Quint: They don’t cover the same stuff, but you see Mr. Awesome’s disdain for Billy Mitchell. He keeps calling him “Silly Bitchell” the whole time.
Steve Wiebe: Yeah, his nickname.
Quint: What they do right now is they have a MAME machine set up in there for the qualifiers for the people to get the raffle tickets and then the top qualifiers, whoever gets the high score gets to take the machine home, so I don’t know what the plan is. I don’t know if they’re just going to have you play and have a bunch of people crowd around or…
Steve Wiebe: That’d work. I got the kill screen in New York and then I almost did it again in LA a couple of days ago, I was there just about, a few boards short, and I died. So I was close. I think I could get to a kill screen.
Quint: Do you feel any more pressure when there are people around you or does that actually help you? Does that give you a drive?
Steve Wiebe: At the beginning of the game I kind of feel like I better not die on a second board or something! But because I hadn’t been playing live for a while the first time I was playing in front of a crowd after the movie, since before the movie I was just in front of gamers where I wasn’t trying to prove myself, so I wasn’t nervous, but after the fact when they’ve seen the movie and know about the records, it seemed like there was more pressure. I was nervous at Comic Con when I was down there, but now since I’ve played out in New York and LA, I’m kind of back into the light and I’m just a little tense at the very beginning because I don’t want to die really early, but once I get to around 300,000 then I relax and get into the flow.
Quint: Well, thank you so much.
Steve Wiebe: Thank you.
That night Wiebe hit 695,000, so he didn’t break the new record, but from the sounds of things Billy’s new record might not even be official. A quick jump over to Twin Galaxies’ website still has Wiebe the top verified champ at Donkey Kong.
One interesting thing about the Alamo screenings was that they were attended by Brian Kuh and Dwayne Richard. If you see the movie, Kuh is the Billy Mitchell lackey who is at Fun Spot, looking over Wiebe’s shoulder and reporting back to Mitchell on his progress. Richard is also a close friend of Mitchell’s.
After the movie was over, they had to stand up and shout to the audience “The Bad News” that Mitchell has one-upped Wiebe and then spent the rest of time talking to anyone who would listen about the movie being bullshit and how amazing Billy Mitchell is.
They bought their tickets, I think. I know they weren’t invited to be a part of the evening… they just decided to show up and shit on Wiebe’s day. It’s okay, they were hissed. And Dwayne Richard was threatened with expulsion from the theater because he wouldn’t shut the fuck up during the first early showing. So, yeah… class act.
Wiebe, on the other hand, was just as humble and nice as he appears in the documentary. I’m sure Billy Mitchell has a lot of arguments about how he was portrayed and I’m sure there’s even some stuff that is taken out of context, but at the end of the day it’s still a story about an average guy, a nice guy trying to achieve a dream and a much less likable person, someone who is much more of an egotist, trying to stop that dream from happening.
Of course the audience roots for Wiebe.
Thanks to Steve Wiebe for taking the time to do this interview and thanks to you good folks for reading it.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Quint: That’d be crazy awesome.
[Another fan walks up.]
