A film of skill, chance, and parallels; for over 30 years, pinball was banned in New York City. That was until one man came and saved the game. That in and of itself is a captivating tale. But Roger Sharpe isn’t just an ordinary man who can do extraordinary things with a pinball machine. He’s more than just the person who brought the game out of illegality by showcasing that it’s not a game of chance but a game of skill. What makes Sharpe so enthralling to follow is the human story beneath all that marvel. Of love, risks taken, and the rejections he faced. This is Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, starring Mike Faist, Crystal Reed, and Dennis Boutsikaris.
Austin and Meredith Bragg – the dynamic minds behind Pinball – are self-proclaimed “comedy nerds” who also have a story to tell. One that bears some notable parallels with Sharpe’s struggle in the creative industry in regards to publishing his book. As writers and directors, there are contingencies, things unravelling out of plan, and pieces left on the cutting room floor. The story of how they spotlighted Sharpe’s greatest shot is just as compelling as the film itself. From the singular image that catalyzed it all, the extensive research of pages and pages of pinball facts and trivia, to the hours-long Zoom calls that made it all possible.
This August 1st – Sharpe’s birthday and National Pinball Day – we celebrate not only him but also these two figures who gave Sharpe the wonderful gift of this film. One that gave those interviews and transcripts that never made it into his book a new lease on life. Today, we celebrate the Bragg Brothers; of how taking chances bleeds into their art, resonating with anybody looking to take their shot at life.
Before Pinball, can you provide us with projects and films you have worked on?
Austin: We were comedy nerds growing up so we’ve been doing comedy for a very long time. We had old cassette tapes on our floor and we did improv and sketch comedy in college. Then we started doing silly things with our friends for the internet once we graduated college. We did a lot of stuff with Channel 101 in New York, a lot of 48-hour film projects and found some success there. Then it was 2018/2019 when we decided we should probably work with some professionals to level up our game. Because to that point, we had basically been doing everything.
We went to LA and we shot a short film. A very, very small-budget short film. But it had an actual crew for the first time. That did well enough on the festival circuit that MPI (Moving Pictures Institute) asked us if we had any other shorts that we wanted to do. We had submitted a short to them and they gave us a larger budget to do a short out in LA which became A Piece of Cake. That did very well, so they said, “What do you have in the feature lane? It’s going to be a very low-budget feature so no period films and no biopics”. We gave them a list and tacked on this concept for “pinball” at the end of it. I think they sparked to it just like we did. Apparently enough to get rid of their “no period piece, no biopic” mantra.
You tacked on “pinball” to the bottom of that list. Where did the initial idea come from? What was that little spark that catalyzed the making of the film?
Austin: This is Merideth’s fault.
Meredith: First of all, Austin and I will collect odd ideas or odd things we come across. We put them in a very large Google doc. Sometimes they’re a few sentences of a germ of something that maybe could be a film—we don’t know. Maybe they’re events – true events – that we think, “Oh, maybe there’s something we could dramatize here”. Sometimes they’re just bizarre film titles that have nothing attached to them but we just find them funny. I went back into this doc and I saw this image that we had found of Roger playing pinball in 1976 in the committee hearing. He has this big mustache and he’s literally playing pinball around these scowling council members. I just thought that’s such a great image.
I looked him up and found him online and sent in a cold email saying, “Hey, do you mind—would you jump on the phone with me? I’m curious to hear your story, I have no idea what this could be”. I thought maybe it was a doc, maybe it was a short film—I had no idea. We jumped on the phone and we ended up talking for about three hours. At that point, I had done enough research to know the basic arc of the public story of Pinball. But I didn’t know as much about him, his life or what he was going through. What he told me over the phone was a much more universal story. We’re not pinball people, so this was our in.
It was a much more universal story about taking a chance, relationships, family and when pursuing something you want that doesn’t go exactly the way you planned it. We thought we had something there, and that was our pitch, basically. That yes, this is this biopic, and yes, this is going to be about pinball. About this man who people have said “saved the game” by proving it was skill and not chance. But there was something else there that we could really play with. Those themes excited us and they excited the producers. That’s sort of how it all came about.
Research-wise, what was the process like? Did a lot of it rely on his book and that interview with him, or were there parts of it that you had to look into yourselves?
Austin: We spent cumulatively what must’ve been days with Roger over Zoom talking about this stuff. A lot of it came straight from the man himself. But that book was invaluable. It was great to have in the writing process and on-set. A number of our department heads had a copy of that book because it gave such incredible insight into the time, the people, and the world. We even managed to get a hold of some of the transcripts and some of the tapes that Roger had made when he was interviewing all of the sort of heads of the companies in Chicago. Some of the things in that Chicago montage were pulled right from Roger’s tapes.
It’s great – if you’re going to do a biopic – if your subject is a packrat. It keeps everything. There was plenty for us to pull from just from Roger’s drawers.
Meredith: We had the book and we had other books that we went through. Then there’s a file folder that’s just full of sort of random things that we found on the internet. There’s a 1966 court hearing transcript, and then we have huge worksheets. Because it was COVID, we had a lot of time on our hands, so we were able to really dig and go through stuff. We may only find one thing in a book that we use, but thank god we found it!
Focusing on the structure of the film, what gave you the idea to do a semi-documentary, talking head interview combined with this re-enactment dramatization kind of thing?
Austin: Well, part of it was borne out of our conversation with Roger. These Zoom conversations that we were having with him. Roger is a weirdly sweet and humble guy. He kept saying, “You know, this isn’t worth it, are you sure you guys know what you’re doing? I don’t think this is a good story,” and all of this stuff. At one point I just threatened him and said, “Roger, I’m going to start this movie with you saying, ‘I don’t think you want to make a movie out of this’”.
When we started outlining, we had three or four different outlines that we had come up with. One of them was the Mr. Sharpe version. That one just turned out to be the most fun and most interesting. It let us get a little bit of these characters’ growth in that way. I always kept saying, “You know, when you do low-budget, independent films like this, you have got to make it weird. Right? You’ve got to stand out somehow”.
And how much of that interview section was improv and how much of that was all laid out in the script?
Meredith: All laid out. We didn’t do a single improv.
Austin: The only improv we did have was between Mike and Connor at the adult bookstore.
Meredith: Connor Ratliff is honestly one of the most gifted improvisers working today, and Mike was excited to have him on set. We structured the day so we could give ourselves a little bit of improv time, just to see what happened. You never know when something like that’s going to occur.
Austin: We didn’t have enough.
Meredith: We didn’t have enough time but we got about twenty minutes.
Austin: We got something.
Meredith: We did get something so we got to use it. It was that, “Don’t write that in your thing,” line. That was Connor and Mike just sort of having fun at the end of the day.
Speaking of the actors, tell me about the audition process. How did you cast the characters, what were you aiming for – was it physical accuracy or chemistry – and which actors did you already have in mind when the script was in the process?
Meredith: I don’t think we had a single person in mind when we were writing. We had Roger – the actual Roger Sharpe – in mind, and at that point we had met Ellen, Seth, some other folks, and James as well. We had a wonderful casting director – Lindsey Weissmueller – who kept putting amazing people in front of us. It became a question of how we’re not going to make a bad decision—we just had to make a decision. In some ways it’s really difficult because you know all these people are talented and they can do it. But we were constantly shocked at the people that were getting put in front of us. Like, “We could get him? Really? Really?”
Maybe the closest person I think in my head was we kept saying, “We want someone like Bryan Batt for Harry”. We kept having the hardest time finding a Harry because it’s a strange role and Bryan wasn’t available. Then all of a sudden he became available and we just snatched him up. I think that may be the closest.
Austin: And just barely available! I think he closed out a one man’s show in Louisiana the night before he was on set.
Meredith: We had to two days with him, if I remember correctly. We sort of budgeted our schedule and we just happened to be able to schedule those shoots for when he was available so we could use him. He was perfect and exactly what we needed; someone who was just incredibly out there. Because those are real people too – the people in GQ.
As far as our leads—again, Lindsey Weismueller, and just thank god that Crystal and Mike were available and willing. It was great. We’d get on these Zoom auditions with people—and really, at their level, they’re not really an audition. It’s more just a compatibility thing. They’re not reading for us, we’re giving them offers. It was just immediate. We just sort of knew that Crystal was right. With Mike, that was one of those moments where—I think he was looking for an excuse to say “No” because he was tired after doing West Side Story. He was like, “I just need a break”. But we got on this phone call and we had a great back and forth. About halfway he was like, “Alright—alright guys! I’m in. Let’s do this”. It was good.
Austin: And Dennis too! Don’t forget Dennis. He wasn’t on our radar initially. It was Roger who said, “You should check out Dennis”. We looked into him and we saw a lot of serious roles—Better Call Saul. Like, is this going to work? We got on a Zoom with him and I think with him—it was like, five minutes in and we were all insulting each other and having a good time. It was really instantaneous.
Meredith: I think Roger kept having people say, “There’s a guy on Better Call Saul that looks like you.” That was why he was on his list of people for us to contact. He looks remarkably similar. There are still people today who think that’s actually Roger.
And as for the physical aspects of playing pinball, was Mike actually playing? Did he train up on the game to get the accurate footages of him playing? Or did you guys get the actual Roger Sharpe to do that for him?
Austin: You nailed it.
Meredith: Yeah, we got Roger. He was on-set when we were doing inserts – those close-up shots. We have this camera rig on top of the pinball games we need for maybe one of our last days. I’m not sure if it’s accurate but we have been told that real pinball players can tell if you just flick a ball versus if you hit it with the flipper. They can tell with the spin. So, we thought, “We’re going to do this right”. We’re going to try and get it from the flipper. Then we realized, we have Roger right here. Maybe he could actually make the shots.
He was like, “What do you need?” and he was getting into this sort of contorted position. We’re set up to hit this target over here, and then bang—what’s next? I mean, he’s that good! It’s shocking when you see someone of his caliber. He says he’s somehow lost a step but I don’t see it.
Mike did, however, on his way from Ohio to upstate New York — where we were shooting – stopped by and spent a couple of days with Roger and Ellen. He played pinball with Roger and watched Roger, and there are definitely mannerisms that he incorporated. Not just in his general physicality, but also in the way he plays. Roger says he has some back issues so what he does is occasionally, he’d throw his leg up in the air. That’s a very distinctive style of play where people say, “Oh, that’s Roger”. Mike used it. I think Mike got better [at pinball] but I’m not sure he’ll ever be as good as Roger. That takes decades.
And see that scene where he pulls the plunger back and it lands in the middle, how many takes did that take?
Austin: That’s the interesting thing. We set up for that shot and we’d assume maybe we’d have to CG it or it’d take a number of takes. Mike got it on the first try. He got it down that center lane. That was Mike. I don’t think he got it again, but he got it on the first try. As soon as we called cut, he was just like, “That’s not hard”. I don’t think he got it after that. I think that’s the one we used.
As creatives, was there a part of Roger Sharpe as an individual that you guys really gravitated towards? I know for myself, watching him struggle through rejections in his writing was something I really understood as a journalist.
Austin: There’s a ton of different parallels that we can draw. Not just with the family stuff, but professionally as well. I mean, a lot of the story is about Roger writing his first book, and here we are with our first feature. You know, sometimes it’s great and sometimes things do not go as you planned. It resonated more and more while we were in production, I would say. Even having them cut out all the interviews for the book – which is still, to this day, devastating for Roger – there’s so much stuff that we left on the cutting room floor, even in the script phase. His relationship with his sister, his time growing up with his dad; like there was so many things I wish we had the time to put in. But that’s just the reality of it.
Meredith: And also, just the idea of risk, safety and really committing to something even with not knowing how things are going to turn out. When you dive into a movie, you’re going to take literally years on it: writing it, shooting it, editing, and then just the post. We’d had about a year with this movie out, but we still get to have interviews like this which is lovely. You just don’t know. I mean, people will tell you they know, you can do everything you can to be prepped but you just don’t know how people are going to react to it. That part has resonated with me pretty deeply.
That’s a wrap on this Bragg Brothers interview. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game has been out on video-on-demand for a while now. But it has found a new lease in life with star Mike Faist’s newfound popularity thanks to the release of Challengers and The Bikeriders. Keep the support up for the Bragg Brothers by checking out the rest of their work on their website. If you want to learn more about the game of pinball and Roger Sharpe, celebrate today by watching the film on Amazon Prime. Do let us know what you think of the film on Instagram or Twitter! Read more director interviews here, and checkout our previous article, Naheem Garcia On Playing Tashi Duncan’s Father In Challengers Starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist.
