“The common story is one plus one equals two. We get it. But all the real, genuine stories are really about one and one equaling three. That’s what I’m interested in. We live in a rational world where we’re absolutely certain that one and one equals two, and it does. But the things that matter most to us – some people call it love, some people call it god, some people call it reason – are that other thing, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And that’s the three. Great stories are everywhere. There are millions of them. Abraham Lincoln wins the civil war, and then he decides he’s got enough time to go to the theater. That’s a good story. When Thomas Jefferson said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ he owned a hundred human beings, and never saw the hypocrisy – never saw the contradiction – and, more importantly, never saw fit in his lifetime to free any one of them. That’s a good story. The stories I like to tell are always interesting because the good guys have really serious flaws, and the villains are very compelling. My interest is always in complicating things. Jean-Luc Godard said, ‘The cinema is truth 24 times a second.’ Maybe. It’s lying 24 times a second too. All the time. All story is manipulation. Is there acceptable manipulation? You bet. People say, ‘Oh, boy, I was so moved to tears by your film,’ as if that’s a good thing. I manipulated that. That’s part of storytelling. I didn’t do it disgenuinely. I did it sincerely. I am moved by that too. That’s manipulation. Truth is – we hope – a byproduct of the best of our stories. And yet, there are many many different kinds of truths. And an emotional truth is something that you need to build. I made a film about baseball once, and it seemed to me there was a dilemma among the racists of what to do about Jackie Robinson. If you were a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and you were a racist, what do you do when he arrives? You can quit baseball, altogether. You can change teams. Or, you can … change. And I think the kind of narrative that I subscribe to trusts in the possibility that people can change.”      

“At 318, the geeks … they are the athletes.”

So says Fortunato Rubino, late principal of a popular intermediate school in Brooklyn that has won 26 national chess championships (and counting) over the past 15 years.

Impressive, no? Perhaps even more so once you consider 70-75% of the families that send their kids to 318 live at or below the poverty line … the overwhelming majority of those students also hailing from minority households.

Yet, none of that seems to matter at 318 – a place where up is down, black is white, and the guiding principle is based upon providing underprivileged kids with the same opportunities “whether they can afford those opportunities or not.”

Chief among those opportunities: the chance to excel at a game of depth and skill like chess. Chess is to Intermediate School 318 as football is to Permian High. Yet, unlike football in Odessa, Texas, the intermediate chess program at Intermediate School 318 is in constant danger of extinction. Economic constraints have forced strict budget cuts at the school every year since 2007, and – given the high-cost, low-yield reality of chess programs in general, there are ongoing discussions about whether or not to cut the program.

Most of the students highlighted in Brooklyn Castle are members of 318’s 2009-2010 chess team. Among them: a handful of returning champions, a 12-year old national master, a class president with White House aspirations, and a recent graduate named Rochelle who has an opportunity to become the youngest African-American female master in history.

Believe me when I tell you these kids will break your beating heart. Their story is remarkable, their perseverance is astounding, and their camaraderie …. well, let’s just say the camaraderie these kids share may very well be the most inspiring thing you’re likely to see all year. By the end of this film, audiences will find themselves wishing they could do something – anything, really – half as passionately as these young kids play chess.

Do yourself a favor: Go see this movie. Brooklyn Castle is one of the top 10 films of the year – a rare gem that is just as important as it is entertaining. Highly recommended.

(Brooklyn Castle opens in limited release in New York and Los Angeles today, with a staggered release scheduled for several other major cities throughout the next few months. For a full list of dates and theaters, click here.)

By Bob Hill

Billy Lee would often tell me how much he had hated me when we were in high school. There was little harm in this. After the two of us had graduated, we became fast friends. I emulated Billy. He was much cooler – and smarter – than I was. Billy Lee was a gifted artist, and singer, and musician. He had scored the lead in a high school musical I couldn’t even summon the guts to audition for. Billy had been cast as Jesus, whereas I wound up hawking programs at the door.

During June of 1993, Billy Lee and I began working together on Surfside Pier. The two of us were working for Bill Salerno, the perennial right-hand man to Bill Morey, Jr. Bill Morey, Jr. was the eldest child of Bill Morey, Sr. Bill Morey, Sr. and his brother, Will, had been responsible for revolutionizing the Wildwood boardwalk during the early 1970s. As the story goes, Bill and Will were in Fort Lauderdale during 1969 when they came across a super slide that had been set up inside a parking lot. The Moreys thought this was a cool idea, so upon returning to the Wildwoods, Bill and Will secured enough capital to assemble a similar super slide along a wooden pier they had purchased at 25^th Street and the boardwalk. Bill and Will named their new attraction the Wipe Out. At the time they were charging the tourists a quarter for every ride.

Bill Morey, Jr. was the owner of Bill’s Concessions, a boardwalk enterprise that included one Dime Pitch, one Ring Toss, one softball-style Milk Can Game, and one traditional, stand-alone caramel corn store (named after Bill Morey, Jr.’s grandmother, Anna). All of these outlets were located either at or near the block-long entrance to Surfside Pier.

Billy Lee and I were associated with the gaming side of that business. The two of us were microphone operators, competing night after night to see who could generate the most revenue in a stand. The idea, at least so far as Billy and I were concerned, was not so much to fleece the public as it was to entertain the masses, accumulating a fair and steady profit along the way. By midsummer Billy and I were working 75 hours a week, and we had grown so fatigued that we’d arrive in the morning wearing the same rumpled clothes that we had clocked out in the night before.

Throughout June, Billy Lee ran Bill, Jr.’s Can Game, while I operated a Ring Toss 20 feet across the way. Several times a shift, the two of us would run competing specials geared toward generating as much revenue as possible in an abbreviated period of time. The goal was to attract and keep a counter full of customers, maintaining an extremely high level of intensity – or “tip” – for as long as one could. This proved challenging at the Ring Toss, a carney favorite so predisposed to luck that the only sure winners were those who had either cheated or enlisted the help of some grifting operator. One popular method of cheating at the Ring Toss involved throwing cracked rings. The rings were more prone to rest flat upon the lip of a bottle. Another common fix depended on throwing one ring on top of the other, thereby allowing the lower ring to ricochet, then stand pat upon a bottle. Any operator with good instincts and a well-trained ear could squash these scams outright. Cracked rings make a distinctly hollow sound whenever they clank off of a sheet of glass in much the same way a pair of stacked rings make a racket whenever they bounce off of a bottle. Most Ring Tosses prohibit the use of cracked or multiple rings, while also disqualifying the frontmost row of bottles (i.e., the row most prone to players leaning over to placing rings).

***

Come the final week in July, Billy Lee got called up to run Bill, Jr.’s Dime Pitch – the Mecca of all boardwalk games, frequented by both locals and tourists. Billy’s promotion meant I would, in turn, take over as the emcee of Bill, Jr.’s Can Game. I saw this as an opportunity, a chance to showcase my talents for Bill Morey, Jr. One night in August, I spotted Bill Salerno and Bill Morey, Jr. having a discussion by the Ring Toss. Assuming this could be my moment, I amped the speakers up to 11, then scrambled spry onto the counter. “Whew!” I hollered into the microphone. “Who’s ready to get their game on?”

I took a running leap, eager to jump from one section of the counter to another. Only I measured the distance incorrectly, and, as a result, I wound up skinning my left leg on the way down. I could feel my knee cap splinter. The microphone thundered with a loud boom. Billy Lee appeared above me. He pulled me up and helped me hobble to a bench. Bill Salerno and Bill Morey, Jr. were gone now. I could see them wandering north toward the office. Neither one of them seemed to care.

Day 307

***

(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB)

©Copyright Bob Hill

“The Neutral, as its familiars call it, is a few doors north of Stillman’s gymnasium and is patronized chiefly by fight managers, trainers and boxers who are locked out of Stillman’s between three and five o’clock every afternoon, and by ex-boxers, who favor a place where someone is likely to recognize them. There are two training sessions a day at Stillman’s – from noon to three and from five-thirty to seven. The second one is a concession to the economic difficulties now afflicting the Sweet Science; an increasing number of boxers need to hold daytime jobs to keep going, and can work out only after hours. The boxers in the Neutral, being in training, do not drink. They eat on credit, and occasionally, when their managers endow them with spending money, play Shuffle Alley – a table game in which one slides metal discs in the direction of electrically-controlled tenpins. Because they are temperate and of equable disposition, they seldom raise their voices. The trainers feel constrained to offer an example of sobriety; bottled beer and a cigar are about their speed. The managers are afraid to drink, lest some other manager outwit them, and the ex-boxers are usually too broke to tipple. Any unseemly words that may be heard in the place invariably emanate from some socially insecure sightseer without credentials in any record book.
Otherwise, a Belcherian propriety reigns.”

As Argo hits theaters nationwide today, the cover story – at least from a media perspective – seems to be the unexpected reinvention of Ben Affleck as a compelling, if not wholly Oscar-worthy, actor/director. The only issue being Affleck’s reinvention actually began well over half-a-decade ago – kicking off with 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, before continuing its ascent straight on through The Town, with extremely strong roles in both State of Play and The Company Men along the way.

Argo looks to continue that run by chronicling the real-life exploits of Tony Mendez – a CIA operative who led U.S. diplomats to freedom after their embassy was stormed by Islamic militants back in November of 1979.

The tale is a fascinating one, to be sure; so much so that it may cause audiences to wonder why Chris Terrio’s screenplay feels so horribly contrived. While one might argue that levity is inserted here as a necessary means of keeping the film well-balanced, the reality is the dialogue goes barreling so deep into obscurity it actually winds up detracting from an otherwise engaging film. On top of which, the suspense factor is ratcheted up to an absurd – if not insulting – degree, to the extent it’s almost begging theatergoers to question Argo‘s integrity.

On the upside, Bryan Cranston turns in a worthwhile performance, as do both Alan Arkin and John Goodman. Ben Affleck is OK in the lead role, despite that usual, slack-jawed “I-am-serious-and-don’t-call me-Shirley” thing he does. But in the end, it’s the work Affleck’s doing behind the camera that renders Argo a success – yet another worthwhile moment in Affleck’s recent string of hits; albeit the most marginal of the bunch.

(Argo opens in theaters nationwide today.)

(Good Pictures/Bad Camera is a regular feature on IFB.)

“You know, I force it. And by forcing it, I lose everything that’s interesting about my work. What’s interesting about my work, for me – not for anyone else; God knows I can’t speak for that – what’s interesting in my work is the way that when I’m playing full out, when I am just feeling relaxed and I’m playing, and all my faculties are firing, but only just to play. Not to get a date, not because I want someone to hug me, not because I want
anyone to read it. Just to play.”

(Good Pictures/Bad Camera is a regular feature on IFB.)