One bad thing that came out of it was Billy’s accusations of cheating. Then, in 2018, Walter Day got caught up in that challenge of that lawsuit, and Billy actually called me and said, “Hey, have you seen what your film did to Walter? It brought him into this.” And so, as I’ve gotten older and done more Producing and directing documentaries, I realize you have a responsibility to the people you share their stories with. You can’t just make the movie and walk away. And so I got involved with Walter and his lawsuit. He’s an older guy living on social security. He’s being sued for millions of dollars.
I got involved with the lawsuit to help guide him and make sure that if they needed any assistance from our side, we were there. And it was on one of those legal calls that Colorswitch, the mobile game that ended up sponsoring his album, said, “Hey, did you know that Walter’s finally making his record?”
Walter and I were talking yesterday. This spring, 20 years ago, we first flew to Iowa to film with him. I’ve been hearing these stories about this music in his head, and we recorded a bunch of his music for 20 years. And so a spark went off because in the film King of Kong, he says, “I have these songs. This woman broke my heart. My dream is to be an artist, not a referee.” So, the fact that it came full circle, and it was fans of King of Kong who backed him because they had heard about his dream in King of Kong. It was actually one of the guys from Color Switch who said, “Hey, maybe there’s a documentary about Walter.”
That was July 2022, and we started filming in August 2022. And it really was magical. I don’t wanna say it was an easy production because all of them have challenges. But the story was written for us. And so it was just a matter of filming it and getting the right emotions tied to the story.
And then, when the woman who broke his heart agreed to participate, it changed the heart and depth of the film we had in our screening here. I live in Long Beach, California. We had a screening here at the art theater. The scene of her and Walter meeting for the first time just flipped the audience upside down.
“It was the most surreal experience I’ve had in a theater with any film.”
It was the most surreal experience I’ve had in a theater with any film I’ve ever made. It really seemed like, okay, this was the right thing to do. This was the right movie to tell. And it took us a while to film, edit, and find a distributor like Monkey Ridge Films that really got the film and was willing to get behind it, understood it, and understood Not just the history of Donkey Kong but the fans and what they would expect. And I’m proud that all King of Kong fans who have seen this film love it and want to go see it again. And all the people who haven’t seen King of Kong come out of it saying, I gotta go see King of Kong now. We made this film for a broad audience.
It’s not just for King of Kong fans; luckily, we needed to ensure we please them because they’re a very important part of our audience.
Jason Delgado: Yeah. On the surface, Arcades and Love Songs is a different movie from King of Kong. Were you concerned about that all at all?
Ed Cunningham: No. That was the intent.
Yeah. There was never an intent. As a matter of fact, there was pushback from a lot of people, including Seth Gordon, the director of the original film. We don’t want to do King of Kong 2. We’ve already made the King of Kong. Yes. There’s been this incredible story that’s more a miniseries than a movie with Billy’s lawsuits and defamation.
But we had no intent to remake King of Kong at all. So it was actually the intent not to try to recreate what we did. Now, that being said, one thing: Mike, Jake Nichols, who was the editor and a huge fan of King of Kong, loved the editing in the film and the tone of the film. He immediately got it.
He immediately got what the tone needed to be. He immediately got how we could edit it in a way that was almost reverential to the King of Kong. Seth Gordon, the director and editor, did a masterful job telling that story. So he wanted to honor that, but also be a very different film.
This is, the one of the executives we work with said, this isn’t King of Kong 2, but it’s in the King of Kong cinematic universe. And that was really what we were after. We were not after King of Kong 2. There was no appetite on our end for it. I didn’t wanna make that film. I wanted to make something a little, a little more personal.
It’s a very personal journey. King of Kong is Billy versus Steve. It’s a simple conceit, whereas our intent here was really to dive into Walter, someone we love and respect. We wouldn’t have been able to make the King of Kong without him. Yeah. Our intent was not to try to retread that ground.
Jason Delgado: Yeah. And so much hinges on that finale concert of his. Were you worried that he wouldn’t be able to pull off the singing for that?
Ed Cunningham: It wasn’t until he walked on stage. And Walter is a very good public speaker.
He’s very good with a microphone in his hand. When he got on that stage, because he had never practiced, he had taken voice lessons and he had practiced at home and we really, talked to him about, we’re gonna film you practicing. But when he walked on that stage and froze, I.
I was in the back of the room, and six cameras were rolling. We had a pretty big production in tiny little Fairfield, Iowa. And I freaked out. I was like, oh my God, he’s going to bomb. He’s just gonna bomb. And then he started Frank singing that first song. He forgot some lyrics.
I’m deeply disappointed by how difficult this interview is to read. It reads like a Google voicemail transcript and comes off as incoherent at times. The most egregious error is that it is “Mike J. Nichols,” not “Mike, Jake Nichols.” Anyone familiar with his body of work (Zappa, Echo in the Canyon, John Waite: The Hard Way) knows he is not just an editor who loves editing. This interview does a disservice to the movie, which is enjoyable and should be watched.
Walter Day’s shift from arcade legend to rock opera performer at 74 is nothing short of inspiring. Arcades and Love Songs isn’t just about gaming nostalgia—it’s a testament to chasing dreams at any age. Truly a unique redemption arc!