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Ep 97: The Man Who Saved The Game with Roger Sharpe
96 Plays3 years ago
Roger is back and we talk about his recent movie, Pinball! Keep up to date with the movie at pinballfilm.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Episode
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We are on episode 97.
00:00:10
Speaker
I am Josh Roop.
00:00:13
Speaker
With me, my co-captain as always.
00:00:15
Speaker
Scott Larson.
Scott's Christmas Plans
00:00:16
Speaker
And Scott, it's getting Christmas time, and I know you've been eyeballing some of those sweet pinball machines.
00:00:20
Speaker
You thinking about getting anything?
00:00:23
Speaker
You know what?
Flippin' Out Pinball for Christmas Gifts
00:00:24
Speaker
We're doing a major renovation on the house, and I still have my Guardians of the Galaxy in a box in the garage because I haven't been able to open it up.
00:00:33
Speaker
Um, if I had space and I weren't doing a renovation on the house, the, you know, get in the, in the waiting queue for the Mandalorian topper.
00:00:42
Speaker
If you're a big fan of that game, it's a, a,
00:00:45
Speaker
a great accessory to put on there.
00:00:47
Speaker
Yes.
00:00:48
Speaker
And they're, and flipping out pinball, Zach and Nicole, many, they just got back from vacation and, uh, they got quite the stack of emails they're going through, but they have quite the stock in right now.
00:00:58
Speaker
So, you know, you want that Christmas present.
00:01:00
Speaker
They, their shipping is insanely fast.
00:01:03
Speaker
Uh, I noticed one of their customers had posted last week that they'd ordered on a Monday and had it by, it was like Wednesday afternoon.
00:01:10
Speaker
It was insane.
00:01:11
Speaker
So, uh,
00:01:13
Speaker
If you want that pinball machine, if you want those accessories, go check Flippin' out.
00:01:17
Speaker
They are great.
00:01:19
Speaker
I'm going to move on to our
Introduction of Guest Roger Sharpe
00:01:20
Speaker
guest.
00:01:20
Speaker
Well, okay, but did you bring up Zach's epic mustache?
00:01:25
Speaker
Zach's – oh, my goodness.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:27
Speaker
You know what?
00:01:28
Speaker
There's only one man in pinball that can pull off a sweet mustache, and it's not Zach because he looks like an 80s porn star when he tried to do it.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:38
Speaker
Okay, I was thinking it was channeling Magnum PI because I'm keeping it family friendly.
00:01:42
Speaker
But if there's anybody in pinball that I would grow a mustache to emulate, it is our guest today.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:51
Speaker
And he needs no introduction.
00:01:53
Speaker
If you are, unless you have, unless you're new to pinball in the last two minutes, I hope you have at least heard the story about Roger Sharp and the infamous shot.
00:02:07
Speaker
We interviewed you, Roger, about two years ago, I think, during the pandemic.
00:02:12
Speaker
And you led us through the whole process of actually getting up to that, which was fascinating.
00:02:19
Speaker
But first off, welcome to the show.
00:02:21
Speaker
Thank you so
Who Would Win a Pinball Match?
00:02:22
Speaker
much for coming.
00:02:23
Speaker
And you're always great to come on the show and we really appreciate you slumming it with us.
00:02:30
Speaker
So...
00:02:31
Speaker
No, thank you.
00:02:33
Speaker
I continue to joke that, you know, for those who are listening, if they're disappointed, it's not Josh or Zach, it's their dad.
00:02:39
Speaker
You know, what can I do?
00:02:40
Speaker
What can I say?
00:02:42
Speaker
Okay, but I do have a question, though.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:46
Speaker
Who would win in a three-way match between a 25-year-old Roger, a 25-year-old Josh, and a 25-year-old Zach?
00:02:57
Speaker
Wow.
00:02:58
Speaker
Great question.
00:03:00
Speaker
What era games?
00:03:02
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:03:03
Speaker
No, because, you know, the big thing, and I don't want to get too sidetracked or too long-winded.
00:03:10
Speaker
I'm trying to get better with that.
00:03:11
Speaker
But I think the problem that I've had recently as I've gotten back into competition, and I know I did fairly well some months back, my first tournament where I actually finished fourth and knocked out both Josh and Zach in the process.
00:03:28
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:03:30
Speaker
I don't know the rules of the new games, but if what we're talking about, just the physicality and the ability to still have the kind of reflexes and concentration that I had at 25 without the ruptured discs, I will say humbly, there's no freaking way that either of my sons could match me.
00:03:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:51
Speaker
Love it.
00:03:52
Speaker
And that's the correct answer.
00:03:55
Speaker
That's what I wanted to hear.
The Movie About Roger Sharpe
00:03:57
Speaker
That is awesome.
00:03:57
Speaker
I've had situations where
00:03:59
Speaker
You know, I've been on a morning news show in Indianapolis where they had a Mandalorian.
00:04:07
Speaker
And I remember talking to Zach saying, do I just go up the middle?
00:04:11
Speaker
What am I supposed to do here?
00:04:12
Speaker
Should have the middle on camera.
00:04:14
Speaker
And I wound up putting up the high score while we were waiting for a commercial break.
00:04:19
Speaker
And I just turned to him.
00:04:20
Speaker
I said,
00:04:20
Speaker
Just imagine how I was 50 years ago.
00:04:24
Speaker
If I can still do this kind of stuff infrequently.
00:04:27
Speaker
So that's my answer.
00:04:29
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:30
Speaker
All right.
00:04:30
Speaker
That is the correct answer.
00:04:32
Speaker
That is great.
00:04:33
Speaker
Well, speaking of 50 years ago, you kind of had a little project come out this last couple months.
00:04:40
Speaker
And it's kind of – I think it's taken the pinball industry and hobby by storm.
00:04:45
Speaker
It's really been a wonderful movie.
00:04:48
Speaker
How did this even happen?
00:04:50
Speaker
Did you get approached?
00:04:50
Speaker
Did you approach someone?
00:04:51
Speaker
First, tell our listeners, if they haven't heard of the movie, what is this movie we're talking about?
00:04:57
Speaker
Okay, sorry.
00:04:58
Speaker
The movie we're talking about is Pinball, the man who saved the game.
00:05:02
Speaker
It's a biopic based upon Roger Sharpe's life and his influence on pinball and the infamous...
00:05:10
Speaker
court hearing i'm not going to say the shot because it's really not the shot it's more about the court hearing and uh it's wonderful i've i've watched this movie i watched it watched it a couple times while i had the opportunity and i i can't wait to own this movie it is i think everyone should have if you're in the hobby you're going to love this movie well thank you i think the part that surprised
00:05:34
Speaker
everybody just all say this as a preface is that it's not a documentary.
00:05:39
Speaker
It's actually a movie with, you know, with actors and people portraying me or portraying Ellen and our son, Seth.
00:05:49
Speaker
So, you know, I think that that's first and foremost.
00:05:52
Speaker
And to answer the question, really back in February of 2020, I was approached in a rather left field email and
00:06:04
Speaker
from Meredith and Austin Bragg, who were filmmakers.
00:06:09
Speaker
They had just done an award-winning short called The Piece of Cake, which I highly recommend.
00:06:15
Speaker
If anybody has, I think it's like 10 minutes or eight minutes, watch it because it is marvelous and wonderful and funny.
00:06:22
Speaker
But they reached out to ask if anybody had ever done a movie about me.
00:06:28
Speaker
And it was like, well, yeah, I mean, I've been in a lot of documentaries and
00:06:32
Speaker
new stuff.
00:06:34
Speaker
And it was, no, no, no, actually about you.
00:06:38
Speaker
And it was just like, huh?
00:06:39
Speaker
Who cares?
00:06:40
Speaker
No.
00:06:40
Speaker
And Josh, you just mentioned that you've seen the movie.
00:06:43
Speaker
So you kind of know that the setup for the beginning of the movie effectively is that
00:06:50
Speaker
condensation or consolidation of that conversation that we had initially, which was, okay, fine.
00:06:58
Speaker
And that's how we went.
00:06:59
Speaker
They had this idea.
00:07:00
Speaker
They had done some digging, looking at a project.
00:07:03
Speaker
Thought maybe it'd be a short, maybe it'd be a documentary.
00:07:07
Speaker
Did not think of it initially as being a feature.
00:07:10
Speaker
And lo and behold, after some period of time, we were talking.
00:07:16
Speaker
MPI, the Moving Picture Institute, that was backing this project, believed enough in Meredith and Austin Bragg.
00:07:25
Speaker
to say, sure.
00:07:27
Speaker
And we reached, they reached out to me and we communicated and reached an agreement.
00:07:32
Speaker
And I was still of the mindset that, yeah, this is never going to happen.
00:07:37
Speaker
This is kind of like a flight of fancy, but I'll play along with it.
00:07:41
Speaker
I mean, we're in the midst of COVID.
00:07:44
Speaker
What am I doing here?
00:07:46
Speaker
Other than just kind of waiting things out as, you know, spring became summer of 20 and going through a couple of script,
00:07:54
Speaker
treatments and story and plot lines and what we wanted to do and what I was comfortable with versus not comfortable with and on and on and on.
00:08:03
Speaker
So that's really how the process started.
00:08:06
Speaker
It was kind of like something totally from left field that I had never envisioned or expected and truthfully was somewhat humbled by the audacity of Meredith and Austin to think that there was really a story to be told.
00:08:24
Speaker
In terms
Roger and Ellen's Love Story
00:08:25
Speaker
of my life and then my willingness to kind of allow some things to kind of be dealt with in a way that made the movie wonderful.
00:08:34
Speaker
But I think of it truly as being a testament to Ellen.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:43
Speaker
back in the early 70s who knew what she wanted, was her mindset, the whole idea of not just Me Too movements that we're dealing with more recently, but just the strength and fortitude of this woman.
00:08:59
Speaker
And I think that that's really the part that I stand back and I admire the most.
00:09:04
Speaker
And it puts a smile on my face
00:09:06
Speaker
because Ellie and I have just celebrated our 44th anniversary, 49 years together.
00:09:13
Speaker
Wow.
00:09:14
Speaker
She still remains somewhat understanding of the person that she has as being, I won't call her better half, but at least somebody that's here with her.
00:09:25
Speaker
Partner in crime.
00:09:26
Speaker
Partner in crime is probably good, although she has been complaining today.
00:09:31
Speaker
The house is just a shambles.
00:09:33
Speaker
We've got to do something.
00:09:34
Speaker
It's like, what?
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:35
Speaker
There's pinball in every room.
00:09:36
Speaker
What's wrong with that?
00:09:37
Speaker
Hey, can I have you talk to my wife?
00:09:42
Speaker
Because there's a lot of rooms upstairs.
00:09:45
Speaker
Right now, I have six games in the garage, and she thinks I need to par it down.
00:09:49
Speaker
I think I need to expand.
00:09:52
Speaker
We don't need kids' bedrooms.
00:09:54
Speaker
They're unnecessary.
00:09:56
Speaker
I understand.
00:09:57
Speaker
In fact, it's funny, Scott, when you say that, when finally both boys wound up leaving,
00:10:05
Speaker
Ellen's comment was, there has to be one room in this house that is for me.
00:10:10
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:11
Speaker
And it wound up being Josh's old bedroom that became her sanctuary.
00:10:17
Speaker
No, there can't be any games in here.
00:10:19
Speaker
There can't be anything.
00:10:20
Speaker
I have my special lighting.
00:10:21
Speaker
She had somebody come in, redid the entire room.
00:10:25
Speaker
And that is her sanctuary.
00:10:27
Speaker
So one room out of our house and garage and basement, the rest of it is all mine.
00:10:34
Speaker
Any pinball machines in the bathrooms?
00:10:37
Speaker
Not yet.
00:10:37
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:10:38
Speaker
Not yet.
00:10:38
Speaker
Other than some toy ones.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:40
Speaker
You could get a Varkon.
00:10:41
Speaker
That's a straight up and down.
00:10:43
Speaker
Well, you could.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yes, you're right.
00:10:45
Speaker
Versus my Azrak Hamway kind of little toy ones and my Papa pinballs.
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:52
Speaker
Well, I got to say, I think that's the part I loved most about the movie was the relationship between you and Ellen and coupling that so well.
00:11:02
Speaker
I don't know you guys personally.
00:11:03
Speaker
I haven't spent a bunch of time with you.
00:11:05
Speaker
But after watching this movie, I felt like I got to know you guys personally.
00:11:10
Speaker
And I even sat down with Zach and Josh after Expo.
00:11:14
Speaker
And we talked about it.
00:11:15
Speaker
And they said it was pretty spot on.
00:11:17
Speaker
They felt like they did a couple liberties.
00:11:19
Speaker
They felt like... But for the most part, what you're seeing on the screen was a fairly accurate assessment of the relationship.
00:11:30
Speaker
And so it's something I think... Speaking to your 49 years, I think a lot of people aspire to that.
00:11:35
Speaker
And it's amazing.
00:11:36
Speaker
And it's something to look forward to.
00:11:40
Speaker
As a man that's been married for 15, it's like...
00:11:44
Speaker
it gives me hope and it's just awesome.
00:11:46
Speaker
I just, I love this movie.
00:11:48
Speaker
I have so many questions about it, but I'm like, I don't want to ruin it, ruin anything for Scott.
00:11:51
Speaker
Like how he made the shot at the end.
00:11:53
Speaker
Well, there you go.
00:11:56
Speaker
I do know the end at least.
00:11:58
Speaker
Um,
00:11:59
Speaker
Now, when your approach was something like this, I mean, it would be easier, I guess, to do a procedural or do like a documentary style thing.
00:12:10
Speaker
But they actually, the approach was this is a love story and...
00:12:17
Speaker
The thing that you're working through together is this journey into pinball, like starting down the rabbit hole.
00:12:24
Speaker
So when did that transition start?
00:12:26
Speaker
You're like, well, we want to do it this way, more of like an actual story.
00:12:31
Speaker
I think it was early on.
00:12:33
Speaker
The focus, I mean, truthfully, and for those, I'll do a plug for Jeff Teolis, because I know that he interviewed both Meredith and Austin on one of his podcasts some time back.
00:12:48
Speaker
And they really kind of gave the story from their perspective.
00:12:51
Speaker
But
00:12:53
Speaker
Truthfully, it was kind of like, does anybody really care about me as a young boy?
00:12:59
Speaker
I mean, they really were viewing it from the standpoint of my life's journey and the fact that somehow pinball became this integral part of my growing up.
00:13:11
Speaker
And we kind of fast forwarded to college.
00:13:15
Speaker
Nobody needed.
00:13:16
Speaker
I mean, it was like nobody needs to know my relationship with my mother, my parents, my
00:13:22
Speaker
My sister was supposed to be a part of the movie as well.
00:13:25
Speaker
I mean, we got into the weeds a little bit more in terms of it being much more, I guess, autobiographical, if you will, where I thought that that was somewhat, you know, unnecessary.
00:13:43
Speaker
Look, I am incredibly grateful for what I have achieved in my life.
00:13:51
Speaker
Just let me put it that way.
00:13:54
Speaker
I never, ever thought that it would be the legacy that it has become.
00:14:01
Speaker
So looking back and, in quotes, reliving my life with them, I'm somewhat self-effacing, I guess, in some ways.
00:14:11
Speaker
It was kind of like being this person looking at the menu and saying, well, no, no.
00:14:18
Speaker
Not that.
00:14:19
Speaker
I mean, that's not really important.
00:14:22
Speaker
You know, nobody really cares about, and it's like, yes, they do.
00:14:26
Speaker
And I think that the intention always was after we started talking and it's been joked about, you guys know this, you've dealt with me before, you're enduring it now.
00:14:39
Speaker
I talk a lot.
00:14:40
Speaker
You know, I've joked that, you know, when I was in advertising years ago,
00:14:44
Speaker
I spoke in headlines and sentences.
00:14:48
Speaker
When I moved over in the magazine, suddenly I started talking in paragraphs.
00:14:53
Speaker
And that becomes the problem for me is that I am long-winded.
00:14:59
Speaker
And the conversations that we had, these Zoom calls to start with, you know, lasted for hours upon hours.
00:15:09
Speaker
You know, I think that somebody made a joke that during my seminar at Pinball Expo.
00:15:16
Speaker
So they asked you one question and it became a 14 hour movie.
00:15:20
Speaker
And then they had to kind of call back because you kept on talking.
00:15:24
Speaker
And it was like, you know, it was somewhat comparable to that of going through my life with them asking questions.
00:15:33
Speaker
And, okay, let me fill in the blanks.
00:15:35
Speaker
And this is kind of where it started and so on and so forth.
00:15:39
Speaker
And then consolidating and condensing it down into something that made sense in the scheme of things.
00:15:48
Speaker
I think that one of the concerns that we expressed, myself, Meredith, and Austin, and just looking at everything was, well, people think that this is a pinball movie.
00:16:02
Speaker
And oh, my God, they're not doing an overhead with a rig and people are not streaming pinball nonstop for an hour and a half.
00:16:12
Speaker
Will people from the outside world be curious and interested if they think it's a pinball movie?
00:16:20
Speaker
And understand that it's not.
00:16:21
Speaker
And Josh, thank you for pointing out.
00:16:24
Speaker
It is, you know, it's a love story.
00:16:26
Speaker
And it's, you know, with Ellen as one of the principles, obviously, in all of this.
00:16:31
Speaker
But it is that kind of like coming together of two people and a young man kind of finding himself through pinball.
00:16:39
Speaker
I mean, in essence.
00:16:41
Speaker
And would people in the outside world be turned off because they think it's only pinball?
00:16:45
Speaker
And will the pinball community be turned off because it's like, oh,
00:16:49
Speaker
well, there wasn't a lot of pinball playing in here.
00:16:52
Speaker
We thought it was going to be.
00:16:53
Speaker
So there was that balance of wanting to have a story that hopefully could capture people's attention, involve them where they actually cared about the characters.
00:17:05
Speaker
And I speak about that almost in a third person, but I really mean it that way to kind of be involved, but yet disassociated.
00:17:14
Speaker
Does that make sense at all?
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:15
Speaker
In terms of,
00:17:17
Speaker
I didn't want to be heavy handed.
00:17:20
Speaker
in how I was treated.
00:17:22
Speaker
And there's a lot of things.
00:17:23
Speaker
And Josh, you mentioned that you had a chance to talk to Zach and to Josh, you know, after Expo.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
I mean, there's a lot of things that are pretty much spot on and there's other things where there are a heck of a lot of liberties.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:36
Speaker
And I didn't mind that about myself.
00:17:40
Speaker
You know, I can handle that at this point in my life.
00:17:43
Speaker
So again, Scott, to kind of follow up on it, I think that,
00:17:48
Speaker
There was an understanding that it was going to be like this.
00:17:53
Speaker
And then when it became much more voluminous, there was a question of, all right, how do we bring this in so that there is a reasonably solid story arc where we're taking people along to this journey and then ultimately this crescendo.
00:18:10
Speaker
And the crescendo, if you really think about it without spoiling it for those who haven't seen the movie, isn't just the courtroom.
00:18:17
Speaker
as Josh knows, because he's seen it.
00:18:20
Speaker
It's really like the final, the final scenes with, with Dennis who portrays me into a T he is just an incredible actor.
00:18:29
Speaker
So I think that there is all of that, that coalesces.
00:18:33
Speaker
Does that make sense at all?
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:18:36
Speaker
And you actually, you pointed on casting Dennis as you, uh,
00:18:42
Speaker
which is, is so important because for, uh, for all of us who are at least familiar with you and have talked with you, there's a, an authenticity that he brings that I, I watch him on, on the screen.
00:18:57
Speaker
And I think that is, he's channeling Roger Sharp.
00:19:01
Speaker
It's not, you know, I don't want to disparage the film, but Daniel Radcliffe dressing up like weird Al Yankovec, it still just looks like Harry Potter in a frizzy wig.
00:19:11
Speaker
Um,
00:19:13
Speaker
But with Dennis, you watch him on the screen and you're like, that's that's basically a good facsimile of who Roger is.
00:19:23
Speaker
So I was so impressed with the way you were able to integrate the personalities in the casting.
00:19:30
Speaker
It didn't it felt genuine.
00:19:33
Speaker
Well, thanks.
00:19:33
Speaker
And truthfully, I'll share a couple of anecdotes.
00:19:39
Speaker
And Dennis was magnificent.
00:19:41
Speaker
When we first connected, Dennis was literally one of my top picks.
00:19:46
Speaker
And we were fortunate enough to be able to cast him, that he was available.
00:19:50
Speaker
And when we first connected, and again, this is all during COVID, and we're doing a Zoom call.
00:19:55
Speaker
His first comment when we were on the computer face-to-face, he said,
00:20:00
Speaker
you know, some of the questions that are asked of you, my God, because he had watched, I guess, some of my talks at some of the pinball shows, but that was his, that was his learning curve, if you will.
00:20:14
Speaker
And what was amazing on a couple of occasions, and one in particular was at, I guess it's Sag Harbor.
00:20:24
Speaker
I'm trying to remember.
00:20:25
Speaker
And on Long Island, the second year,
00:20:30
Speaker
The second screening that we had for the Hamptons Film Festival, and I'm standing outside the theater after the Q&A and whatever else, and just kind of talking with Meredith and Austin.
00:20:44
Speaker
And this woman comes out, comes over to me, and she just says, you were just incredible in the movie.
00:20:50
Speaker
I just had to say something.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:54
Speaker
It was Meredith who said, if you thought he was good in this, you should see him in Better Call Saul.
00:21:00
Speaker
And we all kind of smiled and laughed because truthfully, Dennis really kind of nails it.
00:21:07
Speaker
I think all of it.
00:21:09
Speaker
And even the way that we did the capture, look, initially the voiceover was going to be a voiceover that potentially was going to be me.
00:21:20
Speaker
And I thought, no.
00:21:22
Speaker
And then it kind of evolved into, well, there's this device we can have, you know, it being this interview and it will be an actor portraying you.
00:21:33
Speaker
And then we kind of went from there with Mike.
00:21:36
Speaker
It was a little bit different.
00:21:38
Speaker
Mike actually came out and visited with us for a couple of days.
00:21:43
Speaker
which I thought was great.
00:21:44
Speaker
He had just wrapped with West Side Story, the remake that Spielberg had done and came out.
00:21:55
Speaker
We were talking and I'm sitting in the room where he was.
00:21:58
Speaker
And it was like, do you mind if I set up a video camera?
00:22:02
Speaker
And just asking questions and getting into, you know, and to me, as well as looking back on some of the older stuff,
00:22:10
Speaker
that I've done that's been on YouTube or God knows wherever else that people have found where obviously I sound differently, talk differently.
00:22:20
Speaker
My mannerisms, the way I play pinball now with a bad back versus the way I was before.
00:22:26
Speaker
We kind of joked about it before as a 25 year old.
00:22:30
Speaker
as we played pinball here to just see.
00:22:32
Speaker
So let me see how you play, Mike, because we want this to be somewhat authentic.
00:22:38
Speaker
Just, you know, I want you to be comfortable, you know, kind of like, okay with this.
00:22:42
Speaker
And I think that that was, you know, that was one of the key ingredients as well in terms of Mike really capturing a lot of what I would call the nuance of me as a younger person and trying to, again,
00:22:57
Speaker
distance myself from it needing to be something that was dead on with either of them.
00:23:03
Speaker
And even the same with Crystal,
Roger's Pinball History Contribution
00:23:05
Speaker
who portrays Ellen.
00:23:07
Speaker
You know, whatever those liberties are, you want to get to the core and the essence of the character.
00:23:13
Speaker
But you want it to be somewhat true.
00:23:16
Speaker
although you want there to be enough latitude so that the actors themselves are not confined into a box because it wasn't as if anybody was putting on, in quotes, makeup to look like me other than, you know, the mustache.
00:23:32
Speaker
And in the case of Dennis, when he came in, I mean, for those who have followed Dennis's career most recently, he tends to have a goatee as well.
00:23:41
Speaker
And, you know, we were on air and I said, God, you know,
00:23:45
Speaker
I'm really sorry.
00:23:46
Speaker
I guess you're going to have to, Oh no, don't worry about it.
00:23:49
Speaker
It's okay.
00:23:49
Speaker
I'm fine with it.
00:23:50
Speaker
I said, okay, just want, just want to let you know.
00:23:53
Speaker
I mean, I've had them in the past, but not back then necessarily.
00:23:57
Speaker
So anyway, sorry, I digressed a little bit, but.
00:24:02
Speaker
Well, and going back to a statement you made earlier about how you were trying to find that happy medium of
00:24:08
Speaker
where casual audiences care about pinball and are pinball people gonna care about the general story?
00:24:16
Speaker
And I think they found that perfect balance because there's a bunch of moments.
00:24:20
Speaker
The one that really stood out to me is when you guys are trying to explain the Guardia.
00:24:25
Speaker
And it just simply is, I'm flying into the airport named after the mayor, and it was literally built on the ruins of an amusement park.
00:24:34
Speaker
That's how much this guy hated fun.
00:24:37
Speaker
And something just so simple and short, just an eight-second clip, right?
00:24:43
Speaker
But it explained exactly what this man...
00:24:46
Speaker
hated against pinball.
00:24:48
Speaker
And it was perfect.
00:24:50
Speaker
Just little things like that.
00:24:51
Speaker
And I love that the movie also, there's a couple of times it kind of makes fun of the autobiography of it.
00:24:58
Speaker
Or like, you know, how movies take liberties.
00:25:01
Speaker
And the current version of you, it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:25:07
Speaker
It didn't happen that way.
00:25:08
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
00:25:10
Speaker
I loved that.
00:25:11
Speaker
I loved that they were like...
00:25:12
Speaker
brought it back to reality.
00:25:14
Speaker
It went movie-ish and then it came back to reality.
00:25:17
Speaker
It found a really... I don't feel like I've ever seen that in a movie yet.
00:25:23
Speaker
Unless if you're talking... I don't know.
00:25:25
Speaker
I felt like it did such a good justice of keeping the content true, but fun, not boring.
00:25:35
Speaker
And the other thing too is you started releasing...
00:25:38
Speaker
the pinball tapes with Nate's shivers on coast to coast.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:44
Speaker
Only a couple of those came out.
00:25:46
Speaker
How much we obviously, well, I've seen the movie, so I know that they play a part in the movie.
00:25:52
Speaker
I mean, they play a good chunk of the movie.
00:25:55
Speaker
Did they have to listen?
00:25:55
Speaker
Because Zach has all of the tapes on computer.
00:26:00
Speaker
He showed us.
00:26:00
Speaker
I was like, holy cow, there's a lot of recording here.
00:26:03
Speaker
There's a lot of time here.
00:26:05
Speaker
There is.
00:26:05
Speaker
Did that play a lot into the movie?
00:26:07
Speaker
Like, did they go through all that too to kind of get an idea of what to do with that?
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, they schooled themselves pretty well in regard to the first conversations when I guess they got over the hump of, I won't say breaking down the barrier, but getting me to think, sure, I'll go along with this for now because it's never going to happen.
00:26:30
Speaker
And, you know, and the conversations were great.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:34
Speaker
I didn't really take it seriously early on, but they had started to do their homework and I wound up providing to them the tapes.
00:26:43
Speaker
Here's all the people.
00:26:45
Speaker
Obviously, they had my pinball book, so they had the pictures and wanted to get them other stuff that I have in my own archives here to get them a little bit more familiar with the
00:26:59
Speaker
that part of my world and my life.
00:27:02
Speaker
So, so yeah, I think that there was enough and understand something.
00:27:07
Speaker
I'm taking nothing away.
00:27:09
Speaker
from the creativity of both Meredith and Austin, who are brilliant.
00:27:13
Speaker
I mean, they really, really are.
00:27:15
Speaker
When I initially looked to see what their background was, I was somewhat flabbergasted.
00:27:19
Speaker
It was like, oh my God.
00:27:21
Speaker
I mean, these guys are like for real.
00:27:23
Speaker
This is not like a little, you know, independent kind of self-funded, you know, we're going to start to do some kind of a Kickstarter.
00:27:33
Speaker
I mean, these are legitimate filmmakers and so is the Moving Picture Institute.
00:27:39
Speaker
Because they sold themselves on me as well as part of the introduction.
00:27:44
Speaker
Hi, we'd like you to watch Miss Virginia, which had won awards and it was based on this mother, this woman in the South who was fighting for educational rights, specifically for her son, but for others.
00:28:00
Speaker
And I looked at, you know, the litany of all of the stuff that they had been producing as this, you know, incredible force, but also as a kind of laboratory, if you will, for filmmakers.
00:28:20
Speaker
Hi, this is something that we are doing to support filmmakers funding and whatever nonprofit they've been
00:28:28
Speaker
in business for, you know, well over a decade.
00:28:30
Speaker
And here they are, you know, doing these incredible things and they're buying in on what Meredith and Austin, you know, want to do.
00:28:39
Speaker
So I think to the extent that we kind of worked hand in hand, there's a process.
00:28:45
Speaker
I wasn't familiar with movie making per se on this level.
00:28:49
Speaker
They did, I think there was five look books, which are short synopses of
00:28:56
Speaker
where they wanted the story to go.
00:28:58
Speaker
And they shared that with me, probably like we were a couple of months in.
00:29:03
Speaker
They were making notes and whatever, and I was like, here.
00:29:06
Speaker
And yeah, no, we don't have to go back.
00:29:08
Speaker
I mentioned before, we don't have to go back to when I was young, like a little person.
00:29:13
Speaker
No, we don't have to go back to here or we don't have to do this and so on.
00:29:17
Speaker
And really kind of condense it down into something that was, I thought, better.
00:29:25
Speaker
And then looking at dialogue.
00:29:27
Speaker
You know, when you start getting into scripts, there's a lot of stuff.
00:29:30
Speaker
And Josh, you've seen the movie.
00:29:33
Speaker
there's a lot of stuff that is literally word for word from me.
00:29:37
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:29:37
Speaker
You know, either Mike is saying and or Dennis is saying in the context of whatever the scene is.
00:29:46
Speaker
And there's other little things, a little embellishments and other things that I was very, very specific about.
00:29:52
Speaker
So your point, Josh, with Dennis and some of the asides of like, no, no, no, no.
00:29:57
Speaker
Hey, stop.
00:29:58
Speaker
Before you do anything,
00:30:00
Speaker
We had those kinds of discussions where it'd be, you know, on the Zoom call.
00:30:04
Speaker
No, God darn it.
00:30:06
Speaker
It's not going to be that.
00:30:07
Speaker
It cannot be that.
00:30:08
Speaker
And all right, we can do it this way.
00:30:11
Speaker
But people have to understand that I would never do this or this.
00:30:16
Speaker
I mean, I don't want to give away a lot of stuff, but much of that that is in there is my insistence of being somewhat heavy handed in how we were treating various scenes and subject matter.
00:30:29
Speaker
So, you know, in a lot of ways, I tend to view it as and I know that I'm listed as an executive producer, but I'd like to think that I was also somewhat of a collaborator as well in terms of the script.
00:30:44
Speaker
and how we kind of weaved everything together.
00:30:47
Speaker
So, you know, from casting on through to everything, to wardrobe, you name it, all of that, I was very much deeply involved in.
00:30:58
Speaker
And, you know, I wanted it to be right and wanted it to be authentic.
00:31:02
Speaker
And, you know, we haven't gotten into it, but, you know, even to the extent of the pinball machines, that was really critical for me.
00:31:11
Speaker
Every machine that is in that movie,
00:31:14
Speaker
are machines that were handpicked by me to be in the movie specifically.
00:31:19
Speaker
And yes, El Dorado and Bankshot, people know the legend of that.
00:31:23
Speaker
That's fine.
00:31:24
Speaker
But there are other things that are in there where I can tell you why those were important and critical and why it was appropriate for them to be where they were.
00:31:34
Speaker
So I think that, yeah, I mean, I'd like to believe that at some point in time, and I know that Nate has gone on to do more things professionally in his life, in his world.
00:31:47
Speaker
It was all because of son Josh that he said, you know, yeah, the tapes of the interviews from the book.
00:31:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:56
Speaker
I got them in downstairs there in one of the file cabinets.
00:31:59
Speaker
I have six.
00:32:02
Speaker
Six, six foot high file cabinets of stuff.
00:32:05
Speaker
All right.
00:32:05
Speaker
So that when I die, the boys are just going to have this wonderful, glorious thing of like, oh, my God, what has he left?
00:32:12
Speaker
And I'll let people pick through the bones.
00:32:15
Speaker
But I said, yeah, he said, you know, you should transfer those from tape.
00:32:20
Speaker
You know, I mean, we're looking, what, at 40 some odd years later.
00:32:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:24
Speaker
Do they even still work?
00:32:26
Speaker
And it's like, I don't know.
00:32:28
Speaker
I guess it's not like it's in a humidor for cigars or a wine cellar kind of thing.
00:32:35
Speaker
And he said you should transfer that into new media.
00:32:39
Speaker
So I want to, number one, testing it here on literally the cassette recorder that I did the interviews on years ago, putting in new batteries in my little Sony cassette recorder.
00:32:52
Speaker
That worked.
00:32:53
Speaker
Thank God.
00:32:53
Speaker
Played it and it was like, oh, OK, so it still works good.
00:32:56
Speaker
And there was a place near here where I took everything in and said, here, just need you to take care of all of these.
00:33:03
Speaker
So that's what everything is living in now, which are all of these CDs of everything.
00:33:10
Speaker
And, you know, I had hoped.
00:33:13
Speaker
after Josh broke it down and said, you got to really share this and do this, that at some point in time, maybe all of them will become available.
00:33:23
Speaker
So the people who never heard Harry Williams voice before,
00:33:27
Speaker
never heard what Alvin Gottlieb sounded like or Sam Stern or Sam Ginsberg, I mean, or any of these people will have a chance to actually hear those interviews.
00:33:37
Speaker
And even to the point, because there is a point that I'm going to make here, even to the court case before the city council, I have that on tape.
00:33:50
Speaker
So the things that I've always told my sons about, yeah, right.
00:33:54
Speaker
It's just dad.
00:33:54
Speaker
He's embellishing.
00:33:55
Speaker
No, God darn it.
00:33:57
Speaker
It really did happen the way that I'm saying.
00:33:59
Speaker
And here it is.
00:34:00
Speaker
And it's a little bit muffled because of ambient sound.
00:34:03
Speaker
I guess at some point, Nate was working on that to separate out the background sound.
00:34:08
Speaker
And I'm not really good technically, but I guess he was getting it cleaner.
00:34:14
Speaker
And because I didn't realize that I actually had my cassette recorder there on the chair next to me when I was doing everything.
00:34:22
Speaker
So I'm hoping that at some point in time, all of that will kind of come to light just as a historical document.
00:34:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:31
Speaker
How did you select which games you wanted to place?
00:34:37
Speaker
And this does speak to your commitment to authenticity because a lazy person would say, oh, we just need some pinball machines.
00:34:46
Speaker
So you go in there in a 70s thing and there's an Addams Family and there's a medieval madness.
00:34:52
Speaker
So you actually...
00:34:54
Speaker
found all these things.
00:34:55
Speaker
And I remember Josh reached out and he said, does anybody have a video of the tilt for Eldorado?
00:35:04
Speaker
And I actually have a friend who has an Eldorado.
00:35:07
Speaker
And so I texted him and I'm like, hey, can you record that?
00:35:10
Speaker
tilting out to see what it is.
00:35:13
Speaker
And then I sent it to Josh, but that's like a level of detail that is not common in these types of projects.
00:35:20
Speaker
So how did you micromanage that to figure out which games you want to place where?
00:35:27
Speaker
It was a gift from Meredith and Austin to understand and agree with me.
00:35:35
Speaker
More importantly, from MPI to understand
00:35:39
Speaker
I'm really serious about this.
00:35:41
Speaker
I tend to be much more of a control freak.
00:35:44
Speaker
I am somewhat anal to the point of it probably being uncomfortable for some people in some situations.
00:35:50
Speaker
But I said, this is going to have to be.
00:35:54
Speaker
And thank God the community is the way that it is.
00:35:58
Speaker
The machines that were really specific, obviously El Dorado, Bankshot, Planets,
00:36:06
Speaker
was a critical one because in 1972, it was one of the types of machines that New York City allowed in based on what the ruling had been with Eleanor Guggenheim.
00:36:19
Speaker
Sorry, Bess Meyerson is the commissioner of consumer affairs.
00:36:23
Speaker
And it has a short, we kind of condensed a lot of things that in retrospect, I would like to have had them be a little bit longer, but it's okay.
00:36:35
Speaker
But
00:36:37
Speaker
I needed to find a planets, which was a Williams game.
00:36:41
Speaker
I'm not really a big pin side person or anything else, but Josh and Zach said, you should go on pin side.
00:36:49
Speaker
And you post something.
00:36:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:52
Speaker
Insert Shub.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yes.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:53
Speaker
And it's like, okay, I don't know how to do this.
00:36:56
Speaker
Fine.
00:36:56
Speaker
And I went on Pinside.
00:36:58
Speaker
I could not do anything unless I paid money.
00:37:02
Speaker
So I paid whatever it was, $10 or $5.
00:37:04
Speaker
$10.15 for verification.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah, something to join so I could post something.
00:37:11
Speaker
And a guy by the name of Davin wound up answering.
00:37:17
Speaker
And I sent back and I guess...
00:37:21
Speaker
He wound up reaching out to Zachary to find out if this was really Roger Sharp.
00:37:26
Speaker
That's hilarious.
00:37:27
Speaker
So it was like, hi, I really need a planets.
00:37:30
Speaker
There's a movie that's coming and blah.
00:37:32
Speaker
So it was people like that.
00:37:33
Speaker
Kevin McCune.
00:37:36
Speaker
from classic pinball out of New Jersey.
00:37:39
Speaker
Just incredible.
00:37:40
Speaker
And all the people in that community of reaching out and saying, all right, I need a subway.
00:37:46
Speaker
I need a cowpoke.
00:37:48
Speaker
I need games from the mid-60s because we're going to focus here on that.
00:37:52
Speaker
I need games from the early to mid-70s.
00:37:55
Speaker
Nope, can't be older than that.
00:37:56
Speaker
Can't be this.
00:37:57
Speaker
Can't be this.
00:37:58
Speaker
And literally hand-selected from the collections.
00:38:03
Speaker
So this is what Kevin has access to.
00:38:08
Speaker
Awesome.
00:38:08
Speaker
All right.
00:38:09
Speaker
From these, I want these, these, these, and these.
00:38:12
Speaker
And one of the things, in all honesty, is that Bally doesn't exist anymore.
00:38:18
Speaker
Williams doesn't exist anymore.
00:38:20
Speaker
The old Stern is the old Stern and Chicago coin, D. Gottlieb.
00:38:27
Speaker
So it was going back through all the appropriate rights holders, right?
00:38:32
Speaker
to ask permission, I'd like to feature these games from Williams from this era.
00:38:39
Speaker
What, what is the cost?
00:38:41
Speaker
Because there was a budget involved as well.
00:38:44
Speaker
And I stood up because I didn't know what the costs were going to be.
00:38:49
Speaker
I kind of had an idea because I used to be involved with it at Williams Valley Midway, when we had games that were being put into movies or TV shows or commercials, um,
00:39:01
Speaker
where I just told MPI, look, this has to be right.
00:39:04
Speaker
If there's a budget and it goes over, I will make up the difference.
00:39:08
Speaker
But I will not allow anything to be in there that is not time appropriate, era appropriate, and more importantly, games that have meaning for me.
00:39:21
Speaker
So I'll share one particular game without giving away anything.
00:39:27
Speaker
It is in the movie.
00:39:29
Speaker
It's Big Ben from Williams, 1975 game.
00:39:33
Speaker
It is the game that I wound up seeing at Al Simon, which is the distributorship on 43rd and 10th Avenue in New York City.
00:39:45
Speaker
when Aldi and Zillow introduced me to a fellow who had just come in from Chicago by the name of Gary Stern, who had just started at Williams working for his dad.
00:39:55
Speaker
And I remember asking him, so...
00:39:59
Speaker
when you guys sit down and go through and design games like Big Ben, is there a reason that it looks like Starpool over here?
00:40:07
Speaker
And I rattled off like four other games just in terms of what the layout was.
00:40:13
Speaker
And what wound up happening a few months after that, and this is 1975, was being at the MOA show in Chicago and Conner and Gary, and Gary may not remember any of this or disavow it, but it is true.
00:40:28
Speaker
Seeing him at the show,
00:40:30
Speaker
And his thing was, oh, this is Roger Sharp.
00:40:32
Speaker
He's doing a book or whatever.
00:40:35
Speaker
Ask him anything about pinball and he'll tell you all this incredible stuff.
00:40:39
Speaker
Because my approach to doing my research was, number one, back then, and I was much better with it, photographic memory.
00:40:47
Speaker
But I thought that everybody viewed their profession as,
00:40:52
Speaker
In such a way that I needed to know everything inside and out so that they knew that I was an authentic person, if you will, maybe the best way to describe it.
00:41:02
Speaker
So in that particular context, that was a critical game when I saw that it was part of somebody's collection.
00:41:08
Speaker
Oh, yes, I want that one.
00:41:09
Speaker
I need that one.
00:41:10
Speaker
I need that one.
00:41:11
Speaker
We saw like a five to 10 minute preview of it at Expo when you, when you gave your talk.
00:41:17
Speaker
And there's a point where I believe, you know, Seth's asking, he looks down, he's like, what's so great about Chicago?
00:41:23
Speaker
And so you talk about all the things in Chicago and he says, cause all these things say Chicago on them.
00:41:30
Speaker
Were you even familiar that Chicago was the place where all these things were made?
00:41:34
Speaker
No way.
00:41:35
Speaker
You had no clue.
00:41:36
Speaker
No.
00:41:37
Speaker
I mean, that came through in our conversations.
00:41:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:40
Speaker
And as I told them, I mean, the best way that I've always described now as an adult over these past few decades, I grew up pinball ignorant.
00:41:52
Speaker
I went to Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin, and became entrenched in pinball.
00:42:00
Speaker
And then I moved to New York and I'm in a wasteland.
00:42:04
Speaker
So I go from ignorance to just this, you know, incredible amount of a symbiotic relationship with pinball.
00:42:14
Speaker
And then I go to New York and it's all gone, you know, and I have to travel to New Jersey or other places.
00:42:21
Speaker
And, you know,
00:42:23
Speaker
No, I had no context at all.
00:42:25
Speaker
You know, I've said I may have mentioned this before and we were going to do it more so in the movie, but it didn't make sense that when I used to visit my older sister with my parents at the University of Illinois for Mom's Day weekend or whatever else, my sister's older than I am.
00:42:43
Speaker
In college, they'd have pinball machines there.
00:42:46
Speaker
And I play pinball.
00:42:46
Speaker
I mean, I didn't need to know what was happening at the sorority.
00:42:50
Speaker
I could care less.
00:42:51
Speaker
I mean, there's a somewhat of vast age difference.
00:42:55
Speaker
Well, it comes out in the movie.
00:42:56
Speaker
But yes, it's a difference in age where I don't know.
00:43:00
Speaker
You know, I'm just a baby brother.
00:43:02
Speaker
I don't know any of this.
00:43:03
Speaker
I don't really care who she's seeing or what's happening at the next big, you know, whatever.
00:43:09
Speaker
The opening part of my pinball book where I talk about standing on an orange crate.
00:43:15
Speaker
I mean, that's all true and real.
00:43:18
Speaker
The only thing that's not true is it wasn't a pinball machine.
00:43:21
Speaker
It was a baseball man run unit.
00:43:24
Speaker
Pitching back.
00:43:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:27
Speaker
I mean, my God, I still remember.
00:43:30
Speaker
So, so yeah, you know, that was something that we wound up doing to really kind of emphasize the fact that number one, I was ignorant about pinball.
00:43:42
Speaker
And totally so in terms of it being in Chicago.
00:43:48
Speaker
There's another part of it in terms of Harry Williams.
00:43:51
Speaker
I didn't know any of these people.
00:43:53
Speaker
There were no books.
00:43:55
Speaker
I did everything on the fly to start with.
00:43:58
Speaker
And it was from one meeting at a trade show or in an office to do interviews that you wound up piecing things together.
00:44:06
Speaker
There was this vast jigsaw puzzle of an entire industry.
00:44:11
Speaker
So how do I find the edges?
00:44:14
Speaker
And then how do I work in the middle parts so that I have an entire puzzle that's completed?
00:44:20
Speaker
And that was my quest.
00:44:22
Speaker
It took me three years of my life to do.
00:44:25
Speaker
So it was actually back then because there was no internet.
00:44:28
Speaker
You had to really kind of go in to microfiche and other files and
00:44:35
Speaker
You know, I've said it on a couple of occasions, you know, looking for research for the article for GQ magazine going to the New York Public Library and the stacks.
00:44:47
Speaker
looking up pinball and there was nothing.
00:44:49
Speaker
And let's see, flipper, tilt, pinball.
00:44:54
Speaker
I mean, I tried to think of any words that were pinball words to see is there anything.
00:45:00
Speaker
And the only thing that existed was an article in 1972 by Tony Lucas that I think was either in Esquire or in Playboy where it was on pinball and the game that was featured was Fireball.
00:45:14
Speaker
And I mean, it was all these crumbs that
00:45:18
Speaker
you find you know on the path and you pick them up along the way to kind of create the story and so again sorry to to be long-winded in answering the question but uh yeah i mean that scene captured my my understanding and my discovery of chicago so the other thought process i had too it's it's a very different environment now in the pinball industry i mean we've got almost
00:45:47
Speaker
I'm going to say rock star designers, right?
00:45:49
Speaker
There's people we put on pedestals and stuff like that.
00:45:52
Speaker
And it's very interesting to juxtapose with the time period of the seventies when you're doing these interviews, because it's almost these people are standoffish because the only people that come snooping around their offices, it seems are officials that want to shut them down.
00:46:04
Speaker
Right.
00:46:05
Speaker
And so I guess my question is, I assume that's pretty historically accurate too, right?
00:46:10
Speaker
They were pretty standoffish with you when you started trying to do these interviews and whatnot.
00:46:15
Speaker
Oh, big time.
00:46:16
Speaker
You know, the door opened a little bit more readily at Williams because of Gary and that entree that I had in New York City.
00:46:24
Speaker
And my spouting about seeing this game and thinking, well, it resembles all these other games and not in a negative way, in a positive way.
00:46:33
Speaker
Hi, that must be the way that games are designed.
00:46:37
Speaker
And it was like, so who else are you going to see?
00:46:39
Speaker
And I had started reaching out and through again, through distributors that I encountered and found not only in 8th or 10th Avenue,
00:46:48
Speaker
in New York City, but outside in New Jersey as well.
00:46:53
Speaker
And meeting some people who were like second, some first generation, but second generation going back to the 30s.
00:47:00
Speaker
So getting all of that as a starting point
00:47:04
Speaker
And then, yes, I remember meeting Sam Ginsberg at the trade show and said, hi, I'm Roger Sharp.
00:47:13
Speaker
I'm doing a book, writing a book, and I'll be contacting you to do...
00:47:18
Speaker
To interview you.
00:47:20
Speaker
Yeah, I don't do interviews.
00:47:23
Speaker
Thanks.
00:47:23
Speaker
Goodbye.
00:47:24
Speaker
So long.
00:47:25
Speaker
I mean, everybody at that point in time, we didn't get into the weeds.
00:47:30
Speaker
I didn't think it was necessary for the movie.
00:47:33
Speaker
But from Williams and Bally, who were wonderful and great, and Billy O'Donnell and Tom Neiman at Bally, along with Bill O'Donnell and Ross Shear, Paul Calamari, Bob Hartling.
00:47:43
Speaker
I mean,
00:47:46
Speaker
All of these folks, Jack Middle, Joe Dillon.
00:47:48
Speaker
I mean, the list kind of goes on and on in terms of all the people and all the music.
00:47:53
Speaker
So we're giving you access to all of this.
00:47:56
Speaker
But Alvin Gottlieb, you're never going to get in to see them.
00:48:01
Speaker
Really?
00:48:02
Speaker
So everybody had this whole thing.
00:48:04
Speaker
Our doors are open for you, kind of, you know, up to a point.
00:48:08
Speaker
But Gottlieb never.
00:48:10
Speaker
And I remember sitting down and getting in to meet with Alvin Gottlieb.
00:48:14
Speaker
And one of the first things he did was he opened up a drawer, his desk drawer, and just...
00:48:22
Speaker
took out a whole slew of like envelopes and dropped them down on the desk.
00:48:26
Speaker
And I'm just sitting there and it's like, okay.
00:48:30
Speaker
And I know that James is there as well.
00:48:33
Speaker
I think for the first meeting to take pictures, but,
00:48:37
Speaker
Opened up one letter and I was like, hi, because I told him I'm doing research for a pinball book.
00:48:42
Speaker
I'd like to interview you.
00:48:44
Speaker
And it was somebody writing, saying, hi, I want to do a pinball book and I just need you to do blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:48:48
Speaker
And I remember standing back and saying, look, I don't want you to do anything.
00:48:53
Speaker
You don't have to write anything or do.
00:48:55
Speaker
I want to ask you questions and I will share questions.
00:48:59
Speaker
the interview with you afterwards so that you can have final say and approval.
00:49:04
Speaker
And I did that with everybody.
00:49:05
Speaker
If there's anything in here that you don't want anybody to know, I will, you know, absolutely respect that.
00:49:13
Speaker
Not a problem.
00:49:15
Speaker
And I remember with Alvin after being led to,
00:49:18
Speaker
to like the edge of the ocean from everybody saying, you'll never get in to actually being there and thinking, oh my God, I've accomplished something incredible.
00:49:26
Speaker
I remember after a couple of hours of talking, I knew more about Alvin and his personal life and his marriages and his children than I did about anybody.
00:49:35
Speaker
He was just such...
00:49:37
Speaker
such an incredibly warm and open person.
00:49:41
Speaker
And I just kind of ate it up.
00:49:43
Speaker
So to answer your question, it was pretty authentic of trying to get through to people.
00:49:49
Speaker
break down that barrier, have them believe that I'm doing a pinball book.
00:49:55
Speaker
Who wants a pinball book?
00:49:57
Speaker
And I know there's a comment made by a character in the movie that is pretty much dead on.
00:50:03
Speaker
You know, nobody wants a book about my wife.
00:50:06
Speaker
But I think that really what I wanted to do and I needed to do and hopefully not,
00:50:15
Speaker
It has stood the test of time, although not to the way that I ever wanted it.
00:50:20
Speaker
I wanted to pay tribute to these incredible human beings.
00:50:24
Speaker
You know, I've joked a lot, maybe not joking, maybe just making it as a statement, especially now that I'm as old as I am.
00:50:33
Speaker
I encountered men who are old enough to be my grandfather or my father.
00:50:38
Speaker
And we were able to talk about pinball.
00:50:41
Speaker
And we were able to talk about things far in advance of my being born.
00:50:46
Speaker
You know, being able to sit down with Harry Williams and say, wasn't that 1933, Harry, and not 1932?
00:50:51
Speaker
And, you know, because I'm resurrecting their memories, their accomplishments, you know, with Herb Jones, I was devastated.
00:51:02
Speaker
I got to Bali at a time when they were recovering from a massive fire that wiped out the majority of their historical records and files.
00:51:13
Speaker
It was like, oh, my God.
00:51:15
Speaker
And going around to visit the distributorships and trying to piece and parse things together.
00:51:21
Speaker
Nope.
00:51:22
Speaker
I remember asking Alvin, and maybe this sums it up the best, for everybody, and even now today, superstar designers or not.
00:51:32
Speaker
So, Alvin, what's your favorite game?
00:51:35
Speaker
Favorite game?
00:51:36
Speaker
Well, it's going to be that one, Spirit of 76.
00:51:40
Speaker
That's coming out next year.
00:51:42
Speaker
No, that's like the new game.
00:51:44
Speaker
What is your favorite game?
00:51:46
Speaker
And it was difficult to get him to give me a real answer because the history for them back then, and I think even now, was disposable.
00:52:00
Speaker
You know, when I was talking to Gary about the design of Big Ben and being similar to Starpool, when I started talking to the designers at the time, Gordon Horlick, Steve Kordak, Norm Clark, Wayne, and all the others, and asking those kinds of questions, it was like whatever the new game was that they were working on, that was their favorite.
00:52:25
Speaker
The other stuff just didn't exist.
00:52:28
Speaker
Subconsciously,
00:52:30
Speaker
they probably were picking up certain geometric parts, just the overall layout and design, but not thinking other than saying, well, that was really successful here.
00:52:42
Speaker
We see that in signature elements from designers in the last era.
00:52:48
Speaker
I mean, you can see what a Keith Elwin game looks like.
00:52:51
Speaker
You have a sense of the flow and the rhythm of what he does and some of the little nuances in terms of the overall geometry and ball flow.
00:53:00
Speaker
You know, the whole idea of Pat Lawler being a stop and start type of pinball designer, the better fluidity of somebody like George Gomez, who's always somewhat emulated way back when, Steve Ritchie, in terms of just flow.
00:53:15
Speaker
And you wind up seeing particular things where it's like, oh, it's an adaptation or he flipped it.
00:53:21
Speaker
Not in a negative way.
00:53:22
Speaker
It's just a comfort zone.
00:53:25
Speaker
And I think that, you know, what I discovered back then was,
00:53:29
Speaker
was that there was no keeper of history.
00:53:33
Speaker
Maybe that's the best way to describe it.
00:53:35
Speaker
And I really felt... There was no historian.
00:53:37
Speaker
You became the historian.
00:53:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:41
Speaker
I mean, I will say that, yes, I did in a way that I had never thought of.
00:53:47
Speaker
I just wanted to pay tribute to these fellows for all the joy that they gave me.
00:53:55
Speaker
It's why it ripped out my heart, and I know we get into it and touch upon it in the movie, that the book that eventually came out was not the book that I originally wrote.
00:54:05
Speaker
So, you know, it's just the nature of the beast.
00:54:09
Speaker
And now here I am, this in quotes elder statesman.
00:54:13
Speaker
who have now reached the same status as some of the other icons.
00:54:17
Speaker
And hopefully I have a few more years left in me.
00:54:20
Speaker
But, you know, you hope to carry on the legacy of this industry and all the joy that it has provided so many millions of people.
00:54:31
Speaker
And at a time when I started in all of this, that wasn't the case.
00:54:35
Speaker
It was still an outlier.
00:54:37
Speaker
I mean, forgetting about the New York case or anything, it was like pinball.
00:54:41
Speaker
You know, most of these people did not necessarily jump up and down that this is what they were doing with their careers.
00:54:47
Speaker
You know, nobody really paid attention to the fact that David Gottlieb, on the success of D. Gottlieb and Company, funded Gottlieb Memorial Hospital just outside of Chicago, which is one of the leading hospitals in the country.
00:55:02
Speaker
That was done on the basis of selling pinball machines, for God's sake.
00:55:07
Speaker
So, I mean, there's all of this that I think all of us as a community should take so much pride in for number one, keeping it alive and what you guys do and everybody else and just helping bring that community together and understand that each of us are a small piece of history.
00:55:25
Speaker
It is us.
00:55:27
Speaker
And Scott, at least justify with your wife, honey, it's why we need an extra game in the house.
00:55:33
Speaker
Somebody has to shepherd these.
00:55:35
Speaker
Exactly.
00:55:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:55:36
Speaker
We need to be the gatekeepers and we need to be the archivists.
00:55:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:55:41
Speaker
I've got to ask one more question about the movie.
00:55:44
Speaker
I don't know if this is a spoiler or not.
00:55:47
Speaker
If you want to skip ahead, Scott, if you need to plug your ears, I've got to ask Roger, is it true you took your wife...
Pinball Adventures in NYC
00:55:55
Speaker
to an adult entertainment store to play pinball while you were dating.
00:56:02
Speaker
It seems in the movie you hadn't been dating very long either.
00:56:05
Speaker
No, we hadn't been.
00:56:06
Speaker
Yes, that is true.
00:56:08
Speaker
Yep.
00:56:09
Speaker
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
00:56:11
Speaker
There's a wonderful moment in the movie.
00:56:13
Speaker
I just got to say that.
00:56:14
Speaker
Well, I just think it's hilarious that someone's going to an adult entertainment section for the very risky thing of playing a pinball machine.
00:56:23
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:24
Speaker
Well, and, you know, again, it is part of the story, and I think a lot of people know it, but it's the one place where I found pinball in New York City just by happenchance.
00:56:36
Speaker
There was another place that I wound up finding down in the village.
00:56:42
Speaker
which was a record store head shop.
00:56:46
Speaker
And behind all the stacks of records and things, they had a couple of pinball machines.
00:56:50
Speaker
And in fact, one of the games that I played there a lot was Freefall, which became the basis of Sharpshooter as a design, because I really just loved that game, playing it.
00:57:04
Speaker
But there was no games.
00:57:07
Speaker
I mean, fortunately, as a Midwesterner, I kept my car
00:57:10
Speaker
Which everybody thought I was crazy, but it allowed me to drive out to New Jersey or Connecticut or other places, not just to play pinball, but primarily to get out of the city.
00:57:21
Speaker
And, of course, to find places where I could play pinball.
00:57:26
Speaker
What in the movie will that one...
00:57:30
Speaker
you're most proud of like a little known fact and two, what is your favorite part of the movie?
00:57:38
Speaker
There's a lot of little Easter eggs in the movie.
00:57:42
Speaker
I will say that the one that comes closest to me and I still get emotional about it was the ability to at least pay some tribute to my dear departed Steve Epstein.
00:57:57
Speaker
That was really important to me.
00:58:01
Speaker
to be able to do that.
00:58:05
Speaker
So that
00:58:07
Speaker
that stands out as something and they understood and knew, and there was actually supposed to be a longer scene with an actor portraying him.
00:58:17
Speaker
There is a character that is called Epstein, but it became much more just because of logistics and locations and timing and whatever.
00:58:27
Speaker
But, uh, that to me was, uh, incredibly special.
00:58:32
Speaker
Um, and I think, um,
00:58:36
Speaker
Probably the culmination of the movie without giving too much away and Josh, I know this, just the finality of it.
00:58:45
Speaker
The credits, which I didn't know at the time were going to be the way that they were done with the visuals that were there is really also very special to me.
00:58:58
Speaker
So some of the Easter eggs, I mean, there's pictures that are on the wall that are of my parents.
00:59:03
Speaker
I mean, little things that we put in, things that were part of Ellen and what she did and had.
00:59:10
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, I guess, personalization within the movie that, you know, people won't necessarily pick up on.
00:59:20
Speaker
But for me, it is very much heartfelt.
00:59:25
Speaker
And for me, it is truly, I mean, it's
00:59:27
Speaker
incredibly grateful and thankful that they were able to do what they did to accommodate.
00:59:33
Speaker
I must admit,
The Movie's Release and Reception
00:59:34
Speaker
Roger, this, it seems like you have lived your fullest life and right now you're just doing the side quests and you are, your life is, is awesome right now.
00:59:42
Speaker
And I expect when this thing release releases there, there's not a director's cut.
00:59:47
Speaker
There is a Roger Sharp cut and it's gotta be at least what?
00:59:52
Speaker
Three, four hours long.
00:59:53
Speaker
What do you say, Scott?
00:59:54
Speaker
That's the first episode.
00:59:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:57
Speaker
Oh,
00:59:58
Speaker
Well, and the plan, just so that people know, more festivals coming up, waiting to be officially announced, looking at signing up a distributor.
01:00:16
Speaker
There is one that's somewhat on board, but I'm not at liberty to reveal anything at this point.
01:00:23
Speaker
Looking at international as well.
01:00:26
Speaker
The plan is
01:00:27
Speaker
Right now, with the way that films are being as fragmented as they are, is a theatrical release sometime in the spring, maybe March or April.
01:00:37
Speaker
I don't know what that means.
01:00:38
Speaker
I don't know if it's an AMC, a Regal, multiple cities, multiple days, weeks.
01:00:44
Speaker
Don't have a clue.
01:00:46
Speaker
Streaming after that, maybe summer, fall of next year.
01:00:51
Speaker
Don't know exactly, you know, whether it's going to be a Netflix or Amazon or Hulu or an HBO Max or God only knows what.
01:01:00
Speaker
So that's the plan going forward.
01:01:02
Speaker
And then after that...
01:01:04
Speaker
I don't know.
01:01:04
Speaker
I mean, I guess people still probably buy videos or something or whatever.
01:01:09
Speaker
Beats me.
01:01:10
Speaker
Betamax.
01:01:11
Speaker
They're going to want to buy them and bring them to Pinball Expo next year for you to sign them.
01:01:16
Speaker
That's what's going to happen.
01:01:17
Speaker
I actually did bring my pinball book to Pinball Expo, but I didn't bring it down when we were doing flipping the script.
01:01:25
Speaker
So I'll have to...
01:01:27
Speaker
I know I'll, I'll, I'll have to bring it again next year.
01:01:30
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:30
Speaker
All right.
01:01:31
Speaker
Please do.
01:01:32
Speaker
It'll be my sincere pleasure.
01:01:34
Speaker
But again, there is a hardcover available on Amazon that is listed for $10,000, 431 and 63 cents.
01:01:45
Speaker
Don't do it.
01:01:49
Speaker
Don't do it.
01:01:50
Speaker
Just sell off your Godzilla LE and you'll be fine.
01:01:53
Speaker
You got some money to spare.
01:01:55
Speaker
That is crazy.
01:01:58
Speaker
And we have talked about with MPI and some people that have been at the festivals.
01:02:05
Speaker
there may be some interest to re-release the book.
01:02:08
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
01:02:09
Speaker
We'll see.
01:02:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:12
Speaker
If you can, now I, last time we talked to you, you said that may be challenging because you don't have the, the original, I guess, printer's copy or what you use to create the book.
01:02:26
Speaker
Cause I have the films.
01:02:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:28
Speaker
Right.
01:02:29
Speaker
But I gather that,
01:02:32
Speaker
that things have gotten to the point in the world.
01:02:35
Speaker
You can probably digitally scan it and retouch it up.
01:02:39
Speaker
Yep.
01:02:40
Speaker
And more importantly, depending, hopefully I can actually add in more pictures that didn't make the cut because he ran out of pages.
01:02:52
Speaker
Maybe take more of the interviews that were not in the final book.
01:02:59
Speaker
and put those in well as well.
01:03:02
Speaker
So if it can be another 24 page folio added in, uh, I would be, I would love to be able to do that.
01:03:11
Speaker
And maybe this time actually read the book because I have never ever read the book.
01:03:18
Speaker
You've never read your own book.
01:03:20
Speaker
No, it was too painful.
01:03:22
Speaker
I don't blame you after watching the movie.
01:03:25
Speaker
It gives a glimpse and, uh,
01:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that is very much, yeah, it's very much on target.
01:03:32
Speaker
And yeah, almost didn't happen.
01:03:35
Speaker
Okay, I do have a follow up question, though.
01:03:38
Speaker
There is another book that I know you want to re-release.
01:03:46
Speaker
I'm going to show you a picture of it right now.
01:03:49
Speaker
Oh, you got it.
01:03:50
Speaker
Oh, my goodness.
01:03:50
Speaker
I knew it.
01:03:54
Speaker
For those in the listening audience, it is Roger Sharpe's How to Get a Good Tan book.
01:04:00
Speaker
How to Get a Great Tan.
01:04:01
Speaker
Oh, Great Tan.
01:04:02
Speaker
By Roger Sharpe.
01:04:02
Speaker
But not really frying.
01:04:04
Speaker
Without frying.
01:04:05
Speaker
Only $1.99.
01:04:05
Speaker
So I have my very own copy of How to Get a Tan Without Being Fried by Roger Sharpe.
01:04:14
Speaker
I'll have to autograph that at some point.
01:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, I probably should have brought this one because this is the more collectible.
01:04:20
Speaker
And it's actually, this is in mint condition.
01:04:24
Speaker
Like even if you look at the spine, it's- Look at that.
01:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, this looks like it came right off the printer.
01:04:30
Speaker
There's a story about that.
01:04:32
Speaker
We'll have to talk about that at some point in time without blowing people.
01:04:36
Speaker
But yeah.
01:04:38
Speaker
So the best way for them to keep up with this process, is it the website?
01:04:44
Speaker
Because I pulled it up.
01:04:44
Speaker
It's pinballfilm.com.
01:04:47
Speaker
Does that seem to be the best way?
01:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, it really is.
01:04:51
Speaker
And there's a lot of wonderful information on there too.
01:04:53
Speaker
If you want to go check it out and just to see the actors in...
01:04:59
Speaker
in their outfits and stuff like that for the movie.
01:05:02
Speaker
It's great.
01:05:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:04
Speaker
I know that they've actually released a lot of stills from the last time I visited, which I thought that that was great.
01:05:11
Speaker
And if you click on the various producers and people, the pictures that are there, it will give you a little write-ups about them.
01:05:19
Speaker
So, you know, if anybody's interested in knowing more about Mike Feist or Crystal Reed,
01:05:25
Speaker
or Dennis Bustakianis.
01:05:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:29
Speaker
Well, and I was going to say really quickly too, you've already got loaded up here.
01:05:33
Speaker
How many film festivals it's been at?
01:05:34
Speaker
12 so far.
01:05:36
Speaker
You've won two awards.
01:05:37
Speaker
This is on IMBD and the two were from the Heartland.
01:05:41
Speaker
One was for Audience Choice Award.
01:05:45
Speaker
So...
01:05:46
Speaker
audience loved the movie and gave you an award for it and then the other one was the ifja directorial debut award so obviously this movie has been well done it's not just i i i can't stress this enough it's it feels like an actual movie you know a lot of times sometimes we think of like the hallmark specials right like the
01:06:09
Speaker
Well, it doesn't feel like a special interest movie.
01:06:12
Speaker
So a movie about like playing video games or a movie like that.
01:06:15
Speaker
It actually, this is a movie that you can take your family to who may or may not share your weird obsession with pinball and everybody will still have a good time.
01:06:26
Speaker
And Savannah, the SCAD, I think we won an award there that may or may not be on the IMDB website.
01:06:35
Speaker
But I'll share something that one of the day actors mentioned to me.
01:06:42
Speaker
We were sitting down before he was going to go on for his part.
01:06:46
Speaker
And it's somebody that I've seen in various films over the years.
01:06:51
Speaker
I mean, it was when you look at some of the other actors that are in the movie, there are going to be depending on the number of movies you've watched in your life that are not necessarily big special effects over the top superhero movies, but, you know, other things.
01:07:09
Speaker
And I remember we were sitting there and he was asking about this particular character because he was getting ready and he knew his lines and we were talking.
01:07:17
Speaker
And as he got up to go because he was getting called on set, he said, I just got to tell you something.
01:07:26
Speaker
this is a movie that people don't realize they're going to go need to see.
01:07:31
Speaker
And he went on and I was like, and I sat there because I had to digest what he said.
01:07:37
Speaker
And I was like, this is a movie that people don't know that they're going to need to see.
01:07:43
Speaker
Oh, wow.
01:07:44
Speaker
Oh, that was really good.
01:07:45
Speaker
I mean, as I looked over as he's walking away, where it finally sunk in.
01:07:51
Speaker
And I think the point that you guys have made, and I really am appreciative of it,
01:07:55
Speaker
is the fact that it really is, I think, a very heartfelt film where hopefully, whether you know who the characters are or the story, that you're willing to kind of let yourself go and become entrenched in the experience.
01:08:16
Speaker
And I have to say, number one, Ellen and I have not been in a movie theater completely.
01:08:22
Speaker
going back to probably early 20, maybe 19, 2019 with pandemic and the way that we've been.
01:08:32
Speaker
And my concern when we went to the Hamptons, which was the premiere.
01:08:37
Speaker
So the setup was going to be the premiere at the Hamptons for the Hampton Film Festival.
01:08:44
Speaker
And then I knew about Rain Dance.
01:08:47
Speaker
in London.
01:08:47
Speaker
And it was a great excuse for me to take Ellen to see my sister, who I hadn't seen in a number of years, and to see my nephew and niece.
01:08:56
Speaker
So those are the two.
01:08:58
Speaker
And it was like, you know, and wherever else.
01:09:00
Speaker
And Heartland actually wound up happening in Indianapolis was the festival asked if I would be available.
01:09:11
Speaker
And MPI reached out to me saying, hi, I'm
01:09:14
Speaker
would you be available to travel to that film festival?
01:09:16
Speaker
And it's like, well, yeah, I guess it's Indianapolis.
01:09:19
Speaker
It's only, you know, three hour drive for me.
01:09:21
Speaker
Sure.
01:09:22
Speaker
I'll do it and whatever.
01:09:23
Speaker
But anyway, going out to New York for the first time.
01:09:29
Speaker
Okay.
01:09:30
Speaker
We're going to be in a movie theater.
01:09:32
Speaker
All right.
01:09:33
Speaker
I can try to deal with that.
01:09:34
Speaker
Still hadn't eaten in restaurants or anything else, but
01:09:38
Speaker
My big concern, other than my neurotic obsession in terms of wanting not to get infected or anything, was will an outside regular people audience like this?
01:09:52
Speaker
You know, for those who are familiar with the movie The Producers or the play, you know, was I Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder standing in the back?
01:10:02
Speaker
waiting for Dick Shawn to come out and do springtime for Hitler and thinking, oh, my God, we have a hit, which is a flop.
01:10:08
Speaker
Let's go have a drink and watching everything unfold.
01:10:12
Speaker
And, you know, I'm sitting in the audience with Ellen, and it's like, wow.
01:10:18
Speaker
And it's a packed audience.
01:10:22
Speaker
They are laughing at the right times.
01:10:25
Speaker
They are engaged.
01:10:27
Speaker
And it's like, wow.
01:10:29
Speaker
I mean, from what my insides were doing, which was not knowing if they were going to like it, are people going to leave in the middle?
01:10:37
Speaker
I mean, because you don't know, you know, at that point in time, I'm very, very close to, to the movie.
01:10:43
Speaker
I mean, it is me, but just the whole processes I've talked about with you, you know, will, will it be well received and getting through the movie and,
01:10:57
Speaker
was fantastic.
01:10:58
Speaker
The Q&A where suddenly I was like, here, come with us.
01:11:01
Speaker
And it's like, huh, you're coming up on stage too.
01:11:05
Speaker
And the questions that were asked, how they were engaged and picking up on things, and not just questions directed at me, but directing at the producers from MPI and Crystal was there, as well as a couple of the other actors from the movie and Meredith and Austin.
01:11:22
Speaker
And it was like, wow, this is great.
01:11:27
Speaker
So that was the kickoff for me was getting over the hurdle as to whether or not they would like it.
01:11:33
Speaker
And then the affirmation from from you, at least, Josh, as well as others that I've heard from people in the pinball community have also expressed a an appreciation for the movie.
01:11:45
Speaker
whether they know me personally or not.
01:11:47
Speaker
You know what?
01:11:47
Speaker
I went with my wife, to Scott's point.
01:11:49
Speaker
I went with my wife, and we really kind of liked it.
01:11:52
Speaker
It wasn't what we thought it was going to be, or it was.
01:11:55
Speaker
I mean, whatever it was, there hasn't been anything other than the feedback.
01:12:00
Speaker
God, his mustache is so bad.
01:12:02
Speaker
Jesus, couldn't you have done something with it?
01:12:04
Speaker
It was like, no.
01:12:05
Speaker
No, the mustache is fantastic.
01:12:07
Speaker
It needs to be that.
01:12:09
Speaker
Yes.
01:12:10
Speaker
So, I mean, that was one of the key things.
01:12:13
Speaker
I mean, you know...
01:12:15
Speaker
Number one, Mike
Support for Autism Awareness
01:12:16
Speaker
wasn't able to grow his own.
01:12:17
Speaker
And even if he had 12 years, I don't think that he could have done it justice.
01:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, probably not.
01:12:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:22
Speaker
But, you know, that was the only thing people's, well, it was a little bit off-putting to see it that way.
01:12:28
Speaker
And it's like, no, no, no, no.
01:12:29
Speaker
That's, you know.
01:12:30
Speaker
That was a mustache.
01:12:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:33
Speaker
Well, that actually just shows how...
01:12:36
Speaker
attentive to detail you are in that I was born in 1974 so I lived through this era and when I see pictures with the lighting with the clothes with everything I'm like that takes me back in time to that era like you were so meticulous on that and if you changed up the mustache that would distract because I know that that's not what it was
01:13:05
Speaker
Well, and Annie Simon, who was the fashion person.
01:13:08
Speaker
Nailed it.
01:13:10
Speaker
I would hate to show you all the pictures that Ellen and I pulled out from the closet, put on the floor and took.
01:13:16
Speaker
All right.
01:13:17
Speaker
Here's some of the clothes and stuff and things that Mike is much taller than I am now.
01:13:23
Speaker
And even before I lost the two inches because of my back, there's nothing that I should or could have given him to say, here, I brought this out of the closet.
01:13:32
Speaker
Right.
01:13:34
Speaker
do this, but Annie kind of nailed everything.
01:13:37
Speaker
So, you know, all of the support people and everything else.
01:13:39
Speaker
And thank you for pointing it out, Scott, because they really did do a fabulous job on getting things as authentic as they could.
01:13:48
Speaker
So thanks guys.
01:13:51
Speaker
Definitely.
01:13:51
Speaker
Well, we appreciate you coming on.
01:13:53
Speaker
I also want to thank you again for joining us on flipping the script on autism.
01:13:58
Speaker
Um, you know, it was amazing to have you on.
01:14:02
Speaker
I know Jen loved talking with you for that hour and a half and playing pinball.
01:14:07
Speaker
And, uh, I mean, just everyone that tuned in just enjoyed the casual conversation and, uh,
01:14:13
Speaker
It all went for a great cause.
01:14:15
Speaker
It still blows my mind that we were able to raise $27,000 for helping kids with autism.
01:14:21
Speaker
Well, sign me up for the next one that you do because for these kinds of causes, I'm there in a heartbeat.
01:14:28
Speaker
It was so fun for me to, even though I didn't play the game with you, I don't know if you recognized I was like a gargoyle on your shoulder.
01:14:36
Speaker
I kept watching you from behind to see how you were playing the game and it was just so much fun.
01:14:41
Speaker
to see that, you know, in person, uh, how, how you actually approach playing a game because it is, it's an art form.
01:14:49
Speaker
Yes.
01:14:50
Speaker
Well, a little bit more frenetic than my son's.
01:14:53
Speaker
Uh, I did make the comment to Jen.
01:14:55
Speaker
I said, don't let anybody know that I actually just cradled the ball because that's so totally out of character, but yes, it was fun.
01:15:04
Speaker
It really was.
01:15:05
Speaker
I enjoyed it.
01:15:05
Speaker
Okay.
01:15:07
Speaker
We'll put you back on the list.
01:15:08
Speaker
If we, if we ever do it again, yeah.
01:15:13
Speaker
Well, again, thanks so much, Roger.
01:15:15
Speaker
We really appreciate you for being on.
01:15:17
Speaker
No, my pleasure.
01:15:18
Speaker
You guys take care.
01:15:19
Speaker
And again, happy holidays to everybody whenever this airs.
01:15:25
Speaker
Hopefully the next year is a good, healthy and happy year for one and all.
01:15:30
Speaker
And you guys are the best.
01:15:32
Speaker
Thank you.
01:15:33
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:15:33
Speaker
Thank you, Roger.
01:15:34
Speaker
We really appreciate it.
01:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, it means a lot.
Contact and Social Media Information
01:15:37
Speaker
If you want to get ahold of us, we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.
01:15:42
Speaker
You can also get ahold of us on all the socials, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, all at loser kid pinball.
01:15:48
Speaker
Uh, we were coming up to the end of the year.
01:15:52
Speaker
So we've got some fun stuff planned and, uh, can't wait to share it all with you.
01:15:56
Speaker
You got anything else for Scott?
01:15:58
Speaker
Um, I'll just say boom.
01:16:00
Speaker
Shaka-laka.
01:16:02
Speaker
Oh yeah.
01:16:04
Speaker
Well, I guess we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
01:16:06
Speaker
Okay, thanks.
01:16:39
Speaker
Shut up and sit down.