Movies - A League of Ordinary Gentlemen

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	Movies - A League of Ordinary Gentlemen

A League of Ordinary Gentlemen is a Ten-pin bowling movie/documentary that was released on DVD in 2004. It was written and directed by Christopher Browne and stars the Pete Weber as himself (Wayne Web) and Walter Ray Williams Jr.

Blurb

Filmmaker Christopher Browne documents the mission of a group of middle-aged bowlers as they attempt to revitalize the sport and get the television-watching public interested in it again.

Charactors

Wayne Webb
Pete Weber
Walter Ray Williams Jr

Story

Though never a sport of Kings, at one point in time bowling occupied a perfectly respectable place in the pantheon of American sports. It has long been one of the most popular participatory sports in America. When Eddie Elias convinced the country's top 33 bowlers to kick fifty bucks into a communal pot in a banquet hall in Syracuse, NY, in 1958, the Professional Bowlers Association was born. ABC began televising PBA tournaments in 1962, and as the lead in Wide World of Sports, Chris Schenkel's Saturday afternoon bowling telecast was for many years one of the highest rated sports programs on television.

Then something happened: America ceased to embrace the portly, middle-brow image the PBA was selling, and bowling got kicked to the curb. The sport and its players, many of whom grew up idolizing the sepia-toned gods of bowling's golden era, found themselves wallowingin the backwaters of the popular imagination, alongside rodeos and tractor pulls.

In 2000, three former Microsoft executives (Chris Peters, Mike Slade and Rob Glaser) scooped up the entire apparatus of professional bowling -- its players, tournaments, trademarks and trophies, all for about five million dollars and assumption of the league's debt. Their stated goal was to save bowling from the brink of extinction and raise it to new heights, or at least put it on par with the Bass Masters tour, which, at current market values, would represent a tidy return on equity.

The heavy lifting for this mission falls onto the broad shoulders of a man named Steve Miller, a former top Nike executive who had played for the Detroit Lions and rescued Kansas State football from the NCAA cellar.

The film focuses on Miller and four of his charges, professional bowlers at very different places in their careers, and their sometimes funny, sometimes sad adventures on tour as professional athletes - albeit the Rodney Dangerfields of professional sports.

Press Release

Tracing the historical arc of the professional bowling tour, the film includes archival footage from the sport's glory days in the 1950s and '60s, through its near extinction in 1997. The story takes a twist when newly installed CEO Steve Miller sets about modernizing the PBA. In addition to Miller, the chronicle focuses on four pro bowlers: Pete Weber, bowling bad-boy and son of legendary bowler Dick Weber whose conservative style doesn't jibe with the direction Miller is taking the new PBA. Pete's nemesis is Walter Ray Williams., a straight-laced six-time world horseshoe-pitching champion and, with 36 PBA titles to his name, the dominant player on the tour. Also, there's Chris Barnes, a young father of newborn twins, who must leave his wife and sons at home and hit the road to compete for the winnings that his young family is depending upon. Finally there's Wayne Webb, a 20-time PBA champion who has fallen on hard times and hopes to squeeze one more good season out of his career to stave off bankruptcy.

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