Furniture to Go – “Pool Table” | 1
As portrayed in contemporary pop culture, billiards has become surprisingly lowbrow; a game
primarily associated with smoke-filled pool halls, barroom brawls, garish intimacy, and/or fast
con trick shots. The irony, of course, is that billiards was once entertainment strictly for the
gentry, popularized by royalty, such as King Louis XI of France, who introduced the first
indoor billiards table.
In literature, the cultivated origins are equally evident, certainly
ever since Shakespeare wrote “let’s to billiards” in Antony and
Cleopatra (1606). Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Lewis
Carroll are just some of the canonical authors who appreciated
and fervently played the sport. Rudyard Kipling, author of The
Jungle Book, wrote about billiards in his tale, “My Own True
Ghost Story” (1888). So, too, did Italo Calvino in “Le Joueur de
Billiard,” (1956); Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne in “A
Billiard Lesson,” (1914); and Wallace Stegner in “The Blue
Winged Teale” (1950).
One of the most notable billiards-themed short stories is “The Billiard Ball,” penned in 1966
by Isaac Asimov, the Hugo Award winning science fiction author, who wrote or edited more
than 500 books, including I, Robot, which was made into a movie starring Will Smith. “The
Billiard Ball” appeared in his 1968 collection Asimov’s Mysteries.
In “The Billiard Ball,” a journalist recounts the events leading up to the discovery of an antigravity device in the mid-21st century. The device results from the efforts and rivalry
between billionaire Edward Bloom, who invented the device, and Nobel Prize winning
physicist and Professor James Priss, who discovered the theories underlying the device.
Throughout the story, the two men successfully put their differences on hold by competing in
friendly games of pool. However, as tensions mount regarding the feasibility of achieving
anti-gravity, Bloom opts to prove the success of the device by staging a public challenge on a
billiards table. Specifically, he dares Priss to shoot a ball toward the center of a billiards
table, where it will enter a zero-gravity field, thereby eliminating mass. Priss takes the shot,
sending the ball caroming into the field. But when the ball enters the device’s field, the ball
vanishes and Bloom instantly collapses dead with a mysterious hole drilled through his chest,
begging the question: Did Priss intentionally murder Bloom?
So what does any of this have to do with movies?
As it happens, in 2013, Chelzea Hendrus and Tyler Johnson, two students at the University of
Akron, created a 7-minute claymation adaptation of “The Billiard Ball” for their Extreme
Physics (Physics Theatre) class. The film, aptly titled The Billiard Ball, is available to watch
here.
The characters’ names are changed (e.g., Professor Priss becomes Professor Higgs) and the
film interweaves a lot of physics mumbo-jumbo not covered in the original story, but
otherwise it’s an abridged version of the same famous Asimov tale, right down to the fatal,
head-scratching carom shot. And the use of Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K467
Furniture to Go – “Pool Table” | 2
Andante” gives the film an appropriately foreboding feeling, even for watching two clay
figures interact.
Now, does this signal a cultural shift for pool? A billiards
literature renaissance? Will Leo Tolstoy’s “Recollections of a
Billiard Maker” (1855) make it to the silver screen, just as his
864-page opus Anna Karenina did in 1987? Given The
Billiard Ball only has 310 views, probably not.
But, the notion of sourcing future billiards movies from literature is not as far-fetched as it
may sound. After all, the two most famous billiards movies – The Hustler and The Color of
Money – were both adapted from novels written by Walter Tevis, as was the short billiards
film The Lemon Tree Billiards House, which was based on a shorty story by Cedric
Yamanaka. So, if Hollywood is looking to procure new material, there is a catalog of classic
billiards stories awaiting perusal.
***************
A special thanks to my colleague René G., who first turned me on to Asimov’s story, as well
as many of the other great works referenced in this blog post.