Tag Archives: pool hustling

The Dangerous Life of Pool Hustling (Part I)*

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As CJ Wiley, the billiards professional nicknamed the “Greatest Money Player of the 20th Century,” once said, “High-stakes pool hustling is a dangerous game.”

Certainly, the film and television industry thinks so.

Ever since “Fast Eddie” Felson had his thumbs broken in The Hustler, it’s been a dark day for on-screen pool hustlers.  Johnny Doyle had his hand broken in Poolhall Junkies. Tim Patterson almost lost his life in the Ironside episode “Side Pocket.”  Jim Dooley did lose his life, due to an exploding eightball, in the Shotgun Slade episode “The Pool Shark.”  Tenderloin Tony was shot down in Shooting Gallery, and the hustler Calvin Tate took a bullet to the head in the CSI “Dead Rails” episode.

To this growing list of murdered fictional pool hustlers, we can add Patrick “The Rifle” Lennox, the hustler at the center of the “November 22” episode of Cold Case.

Cold Case – “November 22”

Cold Case.2Cold Case was an American police procedural crime drama television series that ran for seven seasons on CBS in the aughts.  It’s a Jerry Bruckheimer production, which is why it feels similar to CSI. “November 22” is from the show’s sixth season and is streaming for free on Roku. The title comes from the day President Kennedy was killed, which is the same day our hustler The Rifle (Eion Bailey) was shot in the back in broad daylight but nobody noticed because their attention was on JFK.

As with each Cold Case episode, a piece of evidence appears that leads the Philadelphia Police Department to reopen a cold homicide investigation. In “November 22,” it’s a .32-caliber snub nose revolver with a spent cartridge, found inside the recently renovated Whitey’s Pool Hall, a venue once famous for “pool, gambling..and being the raid capital of Philly back in the day.” It’s a storied place, where pictures of Minnesota Fats and Wimpy Lassiter used to decorate the walls. 

Cold CaseIt’s also where Lennox may have first tangled with the wrong people. Through flashbacks, we learn that the Rifle would “shoot fast and never miss,” and that while he could beat “all the yutzes in Mayberry,” he really wanted to tangle with the infamous Baltimore Red. According to legend, Red would “run 15 racks in Hoboken and then do it again in Skokie. Nobody knew who he was or where he was from;” only that playing him required $2000 a rack.

For all the Rifle’s bluster, he’s a flawed player who “can’t see his third shot.” But that changes when a stakehorse takes an interest in him, saying the Rifle had “the mortal nuts, a stick with no fear.” 

Complementing this cast of characters is Blondie, the Rifle’s “road agent” who would help hook the patsies. She explains to the police, “We saw life as one big choke on all life’s chickens. Patrick was top dog at the table…[but] the life of the hustle catches up with everyone sooner or later.”

Unfortunately, while all the pieces are present, the billiards never really gels within the episode. Patrick seems more like a cornball than a hustler (maybe that’s because I kept thinking he looked like Steve Guttenberg in Police Academy). The billiards lingo feels a bit forced (“the hustler will think I’m some ham-and-egger”). There are a couple of good pool shot montages, but it’s unforgivable that for the final eightball match against Baltimore Red, the balls are racked incorrectly. At least there is a satisfying trick shot at the end in which the Cold Case Squad Commander hits the cue through two balls, pocketing each into a side pocket, and then in the same shot, the force of the cue hits two additional touching balls, slamming each into a corner pocket.

Castle – “Clear and Present Danger”

Another hustler that meets a nasty demise – specifically, the puncturing of his inferior vena cava with a cue stick – is William Ferwick, the long-haired, air guitaring, MIT-educated, pool wiz, who plays on a table emblazoned with a Circle-A anarchy symbol.  He’s the victim at the center of the 2014 “Clear and Present Danger” episode of Castle.

CastleA quick refresher: Castle was an American crime mystery comedy-drama television series that aired on ABC for eight seasons. It paired Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion), a best-selling mystery novelist, and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), a homicide detective, as they solved unusual crimes in New York City.  “Clear and Present Danger” presents a particularly unusual murder, as it appears the killer is invisible or has paranormal powers. 

There is solid comedic and romantic chemistry between the two main characters, so the episode is enjoyable viewing, even if there’s very little billiards to watch. Aside from the opening scene, with Ferwick running the table as David Rolfe’s song “Payback” blares, billiards is only a backstory, as in “Will mostly hustled Wall Street tools for 10 bills a game,” or “The guy was a pool hustler who made a fortune every night at Chelsea Billiards.” 

But, what the episode lacks in billiards, it more than overcompensates with references to quantum cellular equations based on cephalopods, cloaking, underground gaming dens, Lord of the Rings, the camouflage of cuttlefish, and DARPA-like governmental think tanks. “Clear and Present Danger” is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

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* I have titled this blog post “Part I” to focus on the dangers of pool hustling as fictitiously portrayed on TV. In my next post, I’ll shift my attention to the more somber, non-fictitious examples of the dangers of pool, as captured in various reality shows.

Night To Be Gone

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Tell me if this sounds familiar:

A guy walks into a pool hall, plays some games for money, and promptly loses. With a little luck, he wins on an “impossible” shot and then doubles his earnings by again making the same impossible shot. Feeling cocksure, he seeks out the best known player in town for a much bigger pot.  He goes on a roll, winning multiple games, but then gets psychologically battered and ultimately loses everything. Determined to regain his stature, he tries to make some quick buck hustling. It goes well for a while, until he hustles the wrong person and gets his arms fractured. A woman rehabilitates him, loves him, and helps him regain his confidence. He returns to finally beat the best known player, but his victory comes with a very painful price.

Night to be GoneOf course, I’m summarizing The Hustler.  Except I’m not. (Perhaps, the fractured arms rather than broken thumbs was the giveaway). I’m actually describing Night To Be Gone, an English-language billiards movie from Loren David Marsh that first released in Germany in January 2024, and is now available to watch on Amazon Prime.

Night To Be Gone is the story of Omer (Alpha Omer Cissé), a young West African refugee with a difficult family history, and Carine (Sylvaine Faligant), a recovering heroin addict from Marseille. They are itinerant grifters who both bring a lot of metaphoric baggage to the baize. Pool hustling is a path to fast cash. They arrive in Berlin so they can ultimately challenge The Sultan, a notorious and mysterious pool hustler to an all-night showdown of 10-ball with a minimum pot of 10,000 Euros. Each game is 1,000 Euros, and the match is not over until the money runs out or both players decide to quit.  Not surprisingly, they get hustled by The Sultan, who preys on their egos and erodes their cool veneer with racist and suggestive taunts. They lose all their money, forcing them to re-evaluate their get-rich-quick plans and ultimately their relationship with one another. 

Let me start with the favorable, as there are a handful of elements in Night To be Gone that are impressive – and distinct from The Hustler. The boldest and most interesting decision is that Omer is a dark-skinned, outsider from West Africa. He is an alien, a cypher to everyone he meets. But, this allows Omer to engage in some very intentional social engineering. Pool hustling is already a form of psychological manipulation. Omer compounds it by assuming racial identities that further this psychological influence. (This is both ironic and interesting, given the Sultan’s “African Prince” jeers contributed to Omer’s initial unraveling.) Among the conservative Bavarian businessmen, Omer is a welfare recipient. Playing against the liberals, he is a poor African whose village burned down. He is a drug dealer in one game, a bebopping hipster in another. Ever the racial chameleon, Omer engages people in underestimating him, which becomes their weakness, at least until it backfires on Omer when two Bauerntrampel don’t appreciate being hustled. 

Night to Be Gone.1Night To Be Gone is also a beautifully shot film. With its atmospheric black-and-white photography by Vlad Margulis and Florian Wurzer, and its eerie electronic scoring by Paul Brody, the film evokes a noirish 1940s aesthetic. Further contributing to this style is the movie’s pacing, selection of settings, and unsettling camera techniques. It works especially well for the filming of the billiards shots. Nothing feels rushed or manic; the shots are not contrived. It’s a game played for an audience of no one.

Unfortunately, these positives get overshadowed by billiards movie déjà vu, that gnawing sense we’ve seen this exact movie before. Night To Be Gone doesn’t feel like a tribute to The Hustler, certainly not the way the recently-reviewed Mr Doom felt like an ode to The Color of Money.  Rather, Night To be Gone feels like it’s trying to be The Hustler. As such, there is no suspense, no uncertainty, no question what will happen or how it will end. 

Arguably, Night To Be Gone is better classified as a remake of The Hustler. The British director Mark Murphy says, “a successful remake requires a delicate balance. It must simultaneously respect the original, bring something new to the table and feature effective casting. When these elements coalesce, the end product is a film that pays tribute to its predecessor while confidently standing on its own.” 

In this case, the “something new” is race – not just the casting of Omer, but the use of race as it pertains to hustling. Such terrain has been covered in other con artist/hustling movies – e.g., White Men Can’t Jump; Six Degrees of Separation; The Distinguished Gentleman – but never in billiards.

This feels like an accurate take on Night To Be Gone, except the director Marsh disputed it, claiming The Hustler is “an inspiration,” nothing more. If it’s not a remake, why does it feel like one? If it is a remake, why not lean into it?

Ultimately, it probably doesn’t matter. This cinematic conjecture is the milieu of film critics who can work themselves into a tizzy parsing meaning and pontificating to an audience of no one, when the real question is whether the film is entertaining. And, on that topic, Night To Be Gone holds its own. 

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[Wanted!] Running Out

Before IMDB removed their message boards, there was only one comment associated with the billiards movie Running Out.  “IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND!!!” wrote thejollillama. Similar messages have popped up on the AZBilliards Forum, such as Cuebacca’s post, “What’s the deal with that pool movie, Running Out? I keep checking the internet periodically, but it never seems to become available.”

Running OutFancying myself somewhat of a Sherlock Holmes of billiards-themed cinema, I typically love these laments, as I’ve been able to track down quite a few hard-to-find films and television episodes (e.g., Genuine Article – “Puzzles and Pool Cues”; the Swedish short film Nine Ball; A Paradise Without Billiards).  However, after much research and numerous dead-end explorations, all detailed below, Running Out, like the near-mythical treasure chest of Forest Fenn or the golden owl La Chouette d’Or, remains out of reach, a billiards Bigfoot.  So I beseech my readers:  If you have any information about this movie or the whereabouts of the people involved in its creation, please contact me directly.

Let’s start with what we know.  In October 2001, the billiards movie Running Out released at the Riverside Film Festival, followed shortly after at the Inland Empire Film Festival, and then at the High Desert Film Festival.  Directed by Byron Cepek for an estimated budget of $50,000, the film focuses on three pool hustlers:  Cindy (an upcoming Hollywood starlet), Tanya (a strung-out addict who makes money as a dominatrix), and Rex (a sex addict).  The players interact and compete, living with the consequences of their actions, and the playing culminates with an ending that online reviewers described as “incredible,” “intense” and “hard to watch.”

As expected, the film is not available to buy or rent through any standard retail channels or file-sharing sites.  Sometimes festival organizers have access to old releases, but not in this case.  The High Desert Film Festival no longer exists, nor does the original Inland Empire Film Festival.  And the Riverside Film Festival, which recognized Running Out with its Best of Show award, only had files dating back to 2003, according to the event’s Film Programmer Nancy Douglas.

Having exhausted the festivals, I pivoted to the director. Unfortunately, Mr. Cepek only made this one film.  No other info is available on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.  While I found a Yahoo email for him in a response he made to a Google Group posting, the email bounced back immediately.

Eric James Niemi wrote the film and played the lead (Rex), though curiously, he has been removed from the IMDB Cast & Crew listing.   Apparently, Mr. Niemi studied film at California State University, Fullerton, with Professor Diane Ambruso. According to an article in The Daily Titan, Mr. Niemi had sold a script he had written in Professor Ambruso’s class to an Australian producer.[1]  When that deal fell through, Mr. Niemi revealed that he “started drinking and returned to playing pool for a living…and quickly fell into debt [from gambling].”[2] This confession seems to coincide with when he wrote and starred in Running Out.   Mr. Niemi’s story then takes an odd twist, in which he started selling bootleg copies of Adobe software to make money and protect his family from the loan sharks.  He was indicted in November, 2001.[3] No more information is available.

The other two film leads, Suzy and Tanya, were played by acting unknowns Sarah Davis and Vanessa Davis, respectively.  Sarah Davis never made another movie.  Vanessa Davis, on the other hand, stopped starring in films, and instead, turned to doing makeup and hair for movies.  Nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 2005 for her hairstyling work on Warm Springs, Vanessa may be able to shed light on the film’s mysterious history.  Unfortunately, she has been unresponsive to my attempts to reach her at the Atlanta phone number she lists at the top of her online resume.

Most of the remaining actors in Running Out were unknowns who never appeared in another film or who had very limited film careers.  There is some speculation that the Tony Watson who played Fat Tony may have been the North Carolina billiards player “Little” Tony Watson, though I’ve been unable to get confirmation.

As for the production companies associated with Running Out, both Reaction Machine LLC and Knight Pictures are no longer in business.   Mr. Niemi, who used the alias Eric Knight, was the likely owner of Knight Pictures.  Reaction Machine lists Erin Niemi, presumably a relative of Mr. Niemi’s, as the Managing Partner.  But, those companies’ dissolution coincides well with Mr. Niemi’s U-turn from screenwriting to software pirating.

I also hit an impasse when I started to sift through the technical and production team.  There is no available information after 2003 on the producer Katherine Shattuck, the composer Cody Tyler, or the film editor Jason Blackwell.  At the other end of the spectrum, David Eichhorn, the film’s dialogue editor, who has a filmography with 150 credits including three primetime Emmys and numerous Emmy nominations, told me via email that he couldn’t even remember working on Running Out.

The second unit director, Diego Martien, now goes by Diego Porqueras and is the President and CTO of Deezmaker, a California-based manufacturer of 3D printer kits. Mr. Porequeras promptly responded to my inquiry, but only to share that he “lost touch with the person that did [Running Out] and never really saw a cut on it. (It got a bit messy with production).” However, he did share with me a music video he made at that time to test certain concepts from the film.

Having run out of people associated with the film to contact, I considered tracking down the three user reviewers who graciously shared their thoughts on IMDB.  But, whiningfilmcritic has not posted since 2002, and hollyhills and rocker247 were one-and-done film critics.

Running Out may lack the recognition of The Player, a better-known “missing” billiards movie that has confounded billiards enthusiasts for more than 40 years.  But, if the recent discoveries of the Franklin Expedition Ship or the remains of the U-26 are proof that mysteries can take at least a century to solve, then there is a smidgeon of hope that time has not “run out” for finding this missing movie.

[1]      

[2]       http://misc.writing.screenplays.narkive.com/0ojQQtRC/eric-james-niemi-on-his-felony-conviction-please-read-this[Note: this link is no longer active]

[3]       https://www.justice.gov/archive/criminal/cybercrime/press-releases/2001/niemi_indict.htm