Great movie, loaded with extra features! Learn how it feels to be a PBA bowler in this striking bowling documentary on DVD.

---

Product Description

In 1958 the professional bowlers association was born & quickly became one of the highest rated sports programs on tv. Then something happened: america ceased to embrace the pba. In 2000 3 former microsoft executives bought the pba to save bowling from the brink of extinction. Studio: Magnolia Pict Hm Ent Release Date: 11/07/2006 Run time: 93 minutes Rating: R

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33827 in DVD
• Brand: MAGNOLIA FILMS
• Released on: 2006-03-21
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Features

• 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

---

Customer Reviews

A lot of fun, and insightful
This is a story of four very different men, channeled though the scope of profession bowling. It's a story of how the PBA (Professional Bowling Association) was rescued by a group of former computer executives looking for a new challenge. But more than all that, it's a story of a sport that many of us grew up with, how that was almost lost, and is being found again, one person at a time.

League of Ordinary Gentlemen is a well done, interesting documentary that mostly follows Walter Ray Williams, Jr., Pete Weber, Chris Barnes and Wayne Webb. The film takes us inside their lives and occasionally inside their mind, showing that it's not just one type of man that chooses to make his living bowling, nor is their one specific path to the PBA. Each and everyone is different. There's conflict, camaraderie, and an exciting ending.

Whether you like bowling, or even just remember your parents doing it when you were a kid, this is a great remembrance of that time. If you're just into watching documentaries, it's a fun one to view. If you're like me and you have both of those components, than check this film out.

Recommended.

At last, a bowling movie WE bowlers and bowling fans can be proud of... BRAVO!
Well folks, It's finally out on DVD, and I have been waiting for its DVD release since it came out in limited runs in theatres nationwide back in May 2005, predominantly in markets in which the Professional Bowlers' Association (www.PBA.com) hosts Denny's PBA Tour events.

It is the official movie of professional bowling, as endorsed by the PBA, filmed during the 2002-03 PBA Tour Season, A League Of Ordinary Gentlemen (www.BowlingMovie.com), which features four of the PBA's brightest stars:

41-time titlist and PBA/USBC (United States Bowling Congress, www.bowl.com) Hall Of Famer and 6-time world horseshoe pitching champion, Walter Ray Williams Jr.,

2005 U.S. Open champion and rising star and former Team USA great and All-American at Wichita State University, which has a tremendous collegiate bowling program led by their legendary coach Gordon Vatican, 6-time PBA champion, Chris Barnes,

"The Bad Boy of The PBA Tour", as shown by his track record of previous suspensions for misconduct, and son of the late great 26-time PBA champion, Dick Weber, and 32-time PBA titlist, "PDW" Pete Weber,

And finally, but not to be outdone, former 20-time champion, with 3 of those titles coming in events at Landmark Lanes in Peoria, Illinois (1989, 96, 97), PBA Hall Of Famer, Wayne Webb.

Anybody out there who wants to take a cheap shot at our great sport of bowling, in which my wife Alice Yantz and I enjoy very much (Alice and I are both league bowlers and proud USBC members who bowl at All-Star lanes in Silverdale, Washington, just 40 miles away from our home and BIGHMW.com headquarters here in Port Townsend), thanks mostly in part due to the negative image of it as portrayed by sham movies like Kingpin and The Big Lebowski will be awfully surprised when they see the REAL PBA Tour as well as the diametrically different roads that these four great professional bowlers take, week-in-and-week-out.

This movie is highly recommended by yours truly, as it ALSO features actual footage straight from ABC Sports of their legendary Professional Bowlers Tour series which featured broadcasting great, the late great Chris Schenkel, and that aired on Saturday Afternoons during January though July from 1962-1997 as part of "The ABC Sports one-two Punch", which was followed by ABC's Wide World Of Sports.

Out of the ordinary
This is probably the best bowling themed movie ever. That may not be saying much given the history of bowling and bowling themed movies (Dreamer, Greedy, The Big Lebowski and Kingpin), but this is really a very compelling film. The choice of the four athletes followed is excellent as they are a diverse lot. Watching a bitter former great like Wayne Webb alternatively rail at the "new" PBA and then step back and realize that the new owners' vision it is what is allowing the Professional Bowlers Assn. to survive is very interesting. The movie is quick, about an hour and a half, and it easily could have been longer and still enjoyable. There's a great deal of focus (as there should be) on Walter Ray Williams, the current reigning great of the tour and Pete Weber, himself an all time great and perhaps the most compelling figue of the last 25 years. The movie misses an opportunity to focus on Walter Ray's obvious disgust with Weber's showboating, although it is obvious they both respect each other as players. Watching Steve Miller, the commissioner and a non-bowler, as he tries to build the tour "brand" is fascinating. It's obvious he really favors Weber, perhaps to the detriment of other pros. The film zips along and the "extras" are pretty good.