How Long Is “Special When Lit”?

Before video games took over the world's amusement arcades, convenience stores and bars, pinball was a leading pastime for folks with some change in their pockets, and in the 1950s and 60s, America's pinball machines took in more money than the movie industry. While electronic games have won away a large part of pinball's market share, there are still plenty of fans of the old games out there, and filmmaker Brett Sullivan offers an entertaining look at pinball's past and present in the documentary Special When Lit. The film presents a history of pinball (including how the addition of flippers radically changed the nature of the game) as well as profiling hard-core fans that are still committed to pinball and show off their winning styles and strategies. Special When Lit was an official selection at the 2010 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.