Ed Cunningham Chronicles Walter Day’s Emotional Comeback in Arcades and Love Songs

His voice didn’t sound great, and I just thought it was probably 20 minutes into the show, and then the audience lifted him up. That’s the one thing that was really beautiful: seeing all of these people in the crowd who had supported him through the years that he had supported, and he had always put in the spotlight, turned around, and supported him, and I think the entire performance changed.

When he started talking to the audience, they started encouraging him, and then his confidence grew to the point that by the time he performed the encore song, it sounded great. He knew the lyrics. I. Because the crowd had heard the song before, they were singing along. His songs are very. They have great hooks.

He’s a really, and I’ve been listening to his music for over 20 years now. He’s a great songwriter. And so when the songs clicked, he clicked. And that was really our goal in editing, was to give the audience the same feeling I had, which was, oh my God, this is gonna go sideways. And some of the feedback we got earlier on our test screen was: I thought you guys were making fun of him. I thought he was going to bomb. He couldn’t really sing, but then all of a sudden, he could at the end, and it was great. And okay, he’s not a great singer, but he performed well, and it was. I was very proud of how we presented that scene because, in that room, I was scared to death that he was going to bomb.

It was pretty rough for the first 20 minutes of that show.

Jason Delgado: Yeah. But it turned out so amazing. That really makes the whole movie there. But. Billy Mitchell is gonna portrayed in a different light this time around. Has he changed over time, or was that more of a conscious effort?

Ed Cunningham: No, he’s changed a lot, and as a matter of fact, if he wasn’t as supportive and pushing Walter forward. To do this and be in the spotlight. I probably wouldn’t have made the film if it was just about Billy and trying to grow his brand, I wouldn’t have been interested in making that movie. I personally like Bill, and I know a lot of people have problems with him.

He is cocky, he is verbose. He does wear a tie and has hair. But through this process, I’ve grown to know him quite a bit better. His son Billy is also in the movie. He’s a really good guy, and he understands the power of the King of Kong. Even though his dad wasn’t shown in the most flattering light, his son really understands the power of the movie and why it lasted.

But yeah, Billy’s changed a lot, and we have Walter talk about that a little bit right before the show. Billy shows up and says he’s become more humble. He’s become more kind. But yeah, that’s one of the things that’s been nice. One of the reviews that just came out was seeing Billy in a different light, where he’s not just a bragga dio jerk; he’s really there to support his friends.

So that was a big hurdle for me when we were making it: What is Billy’s position in this movie? We were just trying to show that as truthfully as we could not gloss over the Bragga show. The movie starts with him still being the same guy. And then it changes when you see he really does support his friend. He really does love his friend. And that was touching for me because I didn’t expect to find that.

Jason Delgado: Yeah. Yeah. I love that about the movie, too. Do you think Walter will get the girls now with his music?

Ed Cunningham: It’s funny. We were very careful in telling the story of Shane Harris because we didn’t want to mislead the audience.

Walter’s in his seventies, and he hasn’t had an Intimate relationship in years. I don’t know if that will come around, but it sure feels good to start helping get his music out there. I really think his music’s beautiful. We’re actually working on a record contract right now for him, and we hope to release his album around the video-on-demand release in mid-May.

So we’ve got a contract from a record company, and we’re helping him look through it. That really gets it because I really love his music. I think we’re in a time in our society where hope, love, and determination (the tagline on the poster) are never too late, and I think that’s an important theme for us to get through in this time when we’re all feeling a little like the ground shaking underneath us.

It seems like it’s a good time for Walter.

Jason Delgado: Yeah. It’s just so amazing to see him at that age, following his dreams for the first time. That’s the incredible thing about the movie, I think.

“This isn’t King of Kong 2, but it’s in the King of Kong universe.”

Ed Cunningham: Yeah. I’ve known him for so long that it didn’t dawn on me that, hey, this is a 74-year-old guy doing this, just because I’ve always known him and I met him 20 years ago when he was in the fifties, and someone pointed that out to me in one early screening, one early test screening of an early version of the film.

Someone’s like. How is this guy doing this at this age? You just don’t see someone at this age going for it. Really going for it. He spent months working on that album. He had to drive an hour and a half each way to that studio, and he would go there sometimes twice a week to work on this album and to have that energy and enthusiasm.

Again, it did, and because I’ve known him for so long, it took an outside person to say, “Oh my God, this is extraordinary for a guy this age to be chasing a dream like this.”

Jason Delgado: Yeah. And speaking of chasing a dream, your movie shows Steve Weeby still has dreams about music. Do you think he’ll continue with that?

Ed Cunningham: He still plays. He’s a noodler, so he’s almost always writing. He. He constantly is like banging out tunes on his piano. He’s still making music. I think he sees it now as a hobby. I think he was hoping that it would become something bigger. But we actually have two of his songs in the film.

I don’t know if you watched the credits, but we used two of his songs in the movie. Again, something we did in King of Kong was use people’s music as part of the bed music. And so we did that here when we came into the scene, where we went to Steve, and he talked about music and called Walter. That’s his song playing underneath the opening of that scene. We’re trying to get him out there a little bit, too. He is a very talented guy—a very talented musician. So we definitely, and that was the nice part of being able to tie him into this story. because he, he, and Walter are friends, but Steve wasn’t involved, like Billy was in the lawsuit and trying to help Walter.

So what was nice for us was that it gave us an organic way to get Steve into the movie. He supported Walter being a musician and talked about how hard it is to make an album and perform. So it was really organic and a great way for us to get Steven into the film.

Jason Delgado: Yeah, definitely. And years ago, I heard rumors about maybe a script, a scripted feature version of King of Kong. Do you know anything about it?

Ed Cunningham: Yeah, that’s probably dead. We kicked it around. New Line Cinema spent a lot of money on writers, and we ended up with a very good script. But I think what it came down to was we’ve already made the movie. There wasn’t much of an appetite to go back and remake the same story, and there wasn’t really a version that made sense other than the version we’d already made. So, it’s lost steam at this point. Who knows in the future, but at this point, that project’s dead.