Interview Last Cup director Dan Lindsay on the outright seriousness of competitive beer pong

Anyone who's briefly passed through a college campus or spent more than 45 seconds at a frat party has been invited to play beer pong, the drinking game with these rules. 1. Throw a ping-pong ball into a beer-filled cup, 2. Hit or miss, 3. Drink. For most, it's a simple social game that provides steady alcohol consumption and an excuse to show off pong-throwing skills to girls. But a few determined souls play the game with utter seriousness: Fly out to Las Vegas in January for the World Series Of Beer Pong to see an intoxicated but devoted competitor on the verge of tears after a heart-wrenching loss. That's where director Dan Lindsay ended up as he documented the journey of several impassioned beer pong players in Last Cup: The Road To The World Series Of Beer Pong. The A.V. Club caught up with Lindsay before Last Cup's screening at the Siskel Center on Saturday to find out why his subjects had dedicated their lives to a game that sends most of us nauseated to the bathroom at 5 a.m.

The A.V. Club: When did you realize beer pong had film potential? 

Dan Lindsay: My first experience with it was making the movie. I’d heard of it, but I didn’t know how it was played until the producer, Josh Otten, came to me. He had heard about The World Series Of Beer Pong, and he thought, “What do you think of that as a world to document?” And I thought, “I don’t know if I want to be the guy who makes a movie about beer pong.” [Laughs.] But in researching it and finding out that there are people who take it very, very seriously, that was the hook for me, that there were people passionate about something that on the surface seems kind of idiotic. Once we met the characters and realized there’s inherent drama in the way the game is played and that the competition is real, then it felt like we would have something suspenseful.

AVC: How did some of the guys rationalize how serious they take a competition where the championship team could have been called “Dong Bongs” or “Team Scumbag”?

DL: [Laughs.] That was something that I kept asking all the players: Why [has] this drinking game caught on, and why do you take it so seriously? No one could give that great of an answer other than the competition itself. We discovered that a lot of these guys are former athletes; this is a whole generation that’s been brought up on SportsCenter and the idea of being the best at something is very ingrained in them. We’d turn the camera on guys, ask them how the last match went, and if you didn’t know they were talking about beer pong, it almost felt like they were talking about a football or basketball game. Also, a lot of these guys are entering into adulthood and that isn’t really an exciting idea for them, and this gives them an opportunity to hold on to something a part of college life. Yet they’re also really good at it so it feels like it’s giving them some meaning.

AVC: The whole film seems to downplay the actual act of drinking.  Why did you keep that to a minimum? 

DL: I didn’t want it to become a film about drinking and doing stupid things or throwing up on themselves. I wouldn’t want to watch something like that, and the guys we were following, they weren’t the guys that got really drunk. They were truly there to try and win this whole thing. Purposely we had that one montage in there to address it, and of all of our guys saying, “I’m here to be the best, not to get really drunk.”

AVC: What’s the mood like on that championship game day? After two days of drinking and not sleeping, aren’t people incredibly hungover?

DL: It’s really intense. It was so quiet in the tent. That was what really struck me. These guys were warming up like they were going to play the NBA Finals or the Super Bowl. It was just deathly quiet, and everybody was really focused. Part of that is nerves, and that they’re tired and hungover. But again, the guys that were there to win this thing, they got their sleep the night before the finals. Later in the day, [you see] the guys that have been out all night staggering in to spectate, but for the most part, that third day—that morning at least—felt tense to me.  

AVC: What is your opinion of all these guys? 

DL: I’m very fond of all the guys. I was really impressed by how intelligent they were. I just talked to Iceman [Scott Reck] a couple weeks ago. I find him extremely fascinating. In fact, the reason we were talking is that he’s going back this year, and this is going to be it. In his words, he’s retiring from the sport, this is going to be his last World Series of Beer Pong. So I was like, “Man, maybe we should do another little short doc.” Because to me, his experience with the film has been really interesting, him becoming almost a minor celebrity. Just in that world, obviously. Not in the grand world. [Laughs.]

AVC: Why does he need to retire? What is he sacrificing by playing beer pong?

DL: I think he feels like he needs to move on, because in his eyes, he’s not as good as be used to be. And it’s time to move on with his life. It’s very epic and very important to him, and that is what makes him so interesting. He’s willing to be vulnerable and show emotion on camera, but he’s also extremely passionate about something that the majority of people don’t understand. I think he summed it up pretty well in the film where he said, “I’ve never been good at anything. I’ve always been a middle-of-the-road guy.”

AVC: So is it like Michael Jordan retiring at the top of his game sort of thing? 

DL: It would not surprise me in the least if that were part of his mindset.