MPI Original Films and Bang Back Pinball Lounge invites you to a pre-release screening of our award-winning feature film Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game followed by a Q&A session with the film's directors, Austin and Meredith Bragg, and executive producer Roger Sharpe, whose life inspired the film.
A BAN? ON PINBALL?! In the 1940s, pinball was outlawed by New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia who claimed the game was one of chance, not skill, and thus a form of gambling. La Guardia made the ban a top priority for the New York Police Department, instructing officers to undertake prohibition-style raids and dump thousands of the offending machines into the Hudson River. Most major cities across the country also outlawed the game including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Thanks to the efforts of GQ journalist and pinball wizard Roger Sharpe, the New York City ban was lifted in 1976. Bans in other cities were also lifted with Kokomo, Indiana, the last to legalize the game in 2016…and now the whole country’s talking about a pinball ban that still exists in South Carolina—but for minors.
As we await the South Carolina Legislature’s vote on pinball for minors, MPI Original Films and Bang Back Pinball Lounge welcomes all persons, including minors, to come and enjoy a film that we hope will inspire lawmakers to reverse a decades-old ban.
