CraveOnline: Do you have two titles because they’re both so awesome you couldn’t decide?
Seth Gordon: Honestly, it’s purely legal. King Kong has gone through a lot of legal disputes with Nintendo over Donkey Kong the title. So in order to distinguish it as far as we could from King Kong, we just gave it a subtitle. That’s something that happened after it was purchased by New Line.
CraveOnline: Isn’t Fistful of Quarters is good enough to be its own title?
Seth Gordon: We tried hard to come up with something that would work on its own and also be something that wouldn’t get in the way of some of the festival exposure we’ve gotten.
CraveOnline: What would you have done for story structure if Billy hadn’t had these Machiavellian techniques to sabotage the hero?
Seth Gordon: It’s a great question. I’d say that is without a doubt what became interesting as we went along. Our original vision for it was like a sports movie where you do a portrait of the two competitors on their way to the contest or the competition. This competition happens to be Kong. That was our original notion for what it would be. Frankly, obviously it got a lot more interesting as we went because of the lengths Billy went to to do the unexpected I guess. Honestly, if he hadn’t done that, it would be a completely different movie and it’s hard to answer that because we ended up just covering what actually went down.
CraveOnline: Would it have ended at Wiebe’s first videotaped session?
Seth Gordon: Possibly. We had heard from some feedback from people that the end of act one is where they thought the movie was going to end as a total. Our guy would get to the kill screen and a record. That’s just what happens at minute 17 or whatever. I think very likely that would have been the structure I guess, but thankfully, a lot more stuff happened than that. And it’s still happening.
CraveOnline: Sequel.
Seth Gordon: There you go. Totally.
CraveOnline: Were you a big video game fan before this? How did you get into this world?
Seth Gordon: Basically a friend of a friend new Wiebe. We met him right after those guys had come and coerced his mother in law to get into the garage to inspect the machine. So that was our point of entry into the story was that. Originally when I’d met Steve, as interesting as he was, I thought who knows? Maybe there are other stories in the video game world that are interesting. And then I realized that the place he would maybe have to go to defend his position was Funspot which is my favorite place on earth. I am a total geek myself and my family would go up to New Hampshire for reunions. But I was too white to go to the beach. But the thought that we might go to Funspot, which is one of the last standing arcades in the country and one of the only that has any classic arcade games of any kind, and it has the most. The thought that we might be going there, that was all I needed to know. Then we get there and that absolutely became about the difference between the two competitors, being a portrait of their personalities and how different they are and their different approaches to being the best in the world at something.
CraveOnline: Do you think Billy is evil?
Seth Gordon: No. I gotta be careful with my word choice because I actually don’t think he’s evil. I think he was the best at a very young age and he got a lot of attention for being perfect, and I think that turned into a certain trap or a curse where he had to live up to these expectations of being the best at something and that exerted a lot of pressure on him. And I think now, a lot of what happens for him in his life is about maintaining that sense and creating and sustaining that persona.
CraveOnline: But hoarding a tape of a high score just in case is pretty devious?
Seth Gordon: Yeah, it’s intense. There’s more where that came from too. As I said, the saga continues. He released his most recent tape today [July 27, 2007] because it’s 20 years to the day after the first time he got to the kill screen. So today he released that tape.
CraveOnline: To me, watching other people play video games is the most boring thing in the world. I’m just waiting for my turn. How do you make watching people play video games exciting?
Seth Gordon: I think by portraying what’s at stake for the player. For Steve in the film, I think his integrity, his honor, so much was at stake within his success at these various tournaments that we portray in the film. If you understand the stakes, I think that makes you vested in the outcome of that performance. I think that was key. I think the other thing is we were very careful when we were shooting it. I always shot the hands, the eyes, the things that were connected to put you in the place of him as he battles and also connected to the avatar on that screen so that you are Mario along with Steve as he goes through those battles.
CraveOnline: Did you have a camera film the entire game so you could match it to him?
Seth Gordon: Yes, there were times we had multiple cameras there and we would shoot with that intention. There were other times we just got lucky that over his shoulder, something important happened. At Funspot, we had five cameras all the time. It was all sort of chaos that we figured out in the end in post.
CraveOnline: What is the status of the Hollywood movie?
Seth Gordon: New Line has hired the writer. I’m going to direct the remake. This guy Richard Brenna who is the president of New Line championed the film from the time he saw it as a doc and eventually orchestrated the purchase of both the doc itself which is distributed through Picturehouse and the remake rights which is going to be New Line. We did a long search for the right writer who could balance the tone and the heart of the comedy and the documentary and get it so that it can work as a narrative feature film. I think we found that guy and he’s been commenced and he’s about four weeks into writing the script.
CraveOnline: What is the advantage of doing it as a feature?
Seth Gordon: I guess mostly, obviously it’s exposure for the story. It’s the way for that narrative to get out to a much broader audience. But I’d say the more exciting creative reason to do it is there’s a lot of stuff we couldn’t be there for which is just talking heads in the movie. I’d love the ability to recreate some of the stuff that we only have a fragment of like when the guys broke into the garage or whatever. There’s a lot of moments that we can only hear about in the doc that we could create in film and some of it would be really funny.
CraveOnline: Have you thought about casting?
Seth Gordon: I have some. I don’t want to get my hopes up too high because the outcome of the script, the way it lives as a document is going to determine our options.
CraveOnline: I was thinking Tom Hanks as Steve.
Seth Gordon: I think that we’re going to be able to get some pretty good names just because the twists and turns of the story are so interesting. The one that Brenner through out that I think is exciting is Johnny Depp for Billy. I think Steve Carell or Nathan Fillion could be a great Wiebe. John C. Reilly needs to be in there somewhere. I feel like Paul Giamatti can be in there somewhere.
CraveOnline: Are there any modern games that could capture this kind of drama? Most don’t even keep score.
Seth Gordon: it’s all about survival and who kill who. I think so in the sense of it’s really about the stakes. It could be anything. It could be ping pong or parchesi or scrabble or Donkey Kong. As long as you got invested in the hero’s stakes. Any platform could work.
CraveOnline: But what would a Grand Theft Auto competition be?
Seth Gordon: I think it’d just be about points. I do think that the sort of dazzle of the graphics would probably distract from the story at hand. You’d be tempted to kind of bring that to life in some way and I’m not sure that’s as interesting as the imagination required on Steve’s part to master that game, Donkey Kong. I feel like that’s more interesting.
CraveOnline: What was your music budget?
Seth Gordon: I don't know which version you saw. The final version still has some of the best stuff you ever had, like Leonard Cohen is in there and You’re the Best Around is in there, The Cure. There are some great tracks and basically we edited- - we cut our dream soundtrack and then we couldn’t afford everything, so we reduced it to the ones we absolutely couldn’t live without. That’s it. We did what’s called a Most Favored Nations where everybody gets the same thing and they know it. That was our only way we could possibly do it and they were honestly very generous considering the prices they usually fetch for those things. They like the film or something.
CraveOnline: It’s the ultimate 80s montage music.
Seth Gordon: I agree. It puts you in that place of we are heroes and we’re the best. I think we’re both tongue in cheek and authentic about wanting to create that feeling.
CraveOnline: How far will you continue this story, back and forth between Billy, Steve and whoever else challenges the record?
Seth Gordon: It’s just a matter of how much time there is to tell it. We had to stop at some point in order to make the film, but I do think we’re going to incorporate some of the new developments in the DVD.
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