Here's some little-known info about Poolhall Junkies...
The DVD will be finally released on September 2nd, after three major delays that pushed back the street date. The last delay was because the DVD cover artwork that HBO designed was completely rejected by the movie studio and the lead actors. It was re-designed based on the original version-A poster art.
Walken enjoyed making the film, but he was almost unavailable for promotion when it was scheduled to hit theaters. He was planning to leave the country for a while, but he stayed in the US to attend the Oscars when he received the nomination for his role in "Catch Me if You Can".
We (Billiard Boys) produced five one-of-a-kind deluxe black Poolhall Junkies wool & leather jackets that were personally given to the actors right before the screening in Hollywood in February. Mars, Chazz, Rick, Michael, and Alison, each jacket personalized with their name, and a large PHJ logo embroidered on the back (in a cool black-on-black effect). They were all impressed and thankful; Chazz told his agent that he wanted his jacket framed.
Mars Callahan was unfortunately hospitalized around the time of the movie release, so he missed out on the promotion of the film. In June he spent time in the sound studio working on audio commentary for the DVD with co-writer Chris Corso. At the same time Mars also worked on a "cleaned-up" version of the film for airlines, for showing as an in-flight movie (I'm unsure if it ever did). He apparently was very skilled at imitating the voices of Walken and Palminteri while re-mixing that "PG" version.
While the film was being considered for cross-promotion late last year, the studio had a tentative deal with Coca-Cola for a major ad campaign, but ONLY IF they could scale down the movie to at least a "PG-13" rating. (Coke has a policy against cross-promotion with rated "R" films). To get a PG-13 rating from the MPAA, a film can have only ONE instance with the "f" word and it "must not be used in context". So the PHJ project heads sat down and watched Poolhall Junkies again, and started counting that word to see if it would be possible to clean it up. Well, they finally stopped counting at 150 and the film was still not even halfway through, so it wasn't going to happen.
Poolhall Junkies is well known in the Billiards community, but it's virtually unknown in the movie community. The DVD is considered a "loss-leader" by the distributor, so a VERY LIMITED PRODUCTION is scheduled. A fair comparison for this low-budget movie would be to look at other similar marketed films from the same studio. Ever heard of "Sonny", or "The Man From Elysian Fields"? These recent films had similar budgets and marketing, and were released to DVD in the same way; see if you can find them at your video store...
The DVD is now available for pre-order on our website:
www.billiardboys.com If you order before August 5th you're GUARANTEED to get a copy; all orders after then will be filled by the distributor on a first-come, first-served basis. When they sell out, sometimes backorders take 20-30 days to fill. All Poolhall Junkies DVDs purchased on our site will come with a free quarter-sheet version-A poster.
Does anyone have any interesting facts about production of the film in Salt Lake City?
-- Darren M., Billiard Boys L.L.C.
