Feature film · 2023 · Music supervisor
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
A new job, a missing phone number and the songs that hold both. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is a warm, funny true story about the writer who helped make pinball legal again in New York City. Reality Club’s founder was the film’s music supervisor. The job: Use music the audience already knows to bring them closer to Roger, not further away.
- Film
- Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, written and directed by Austin and Meredith Bragg
- Release
- Premiered in 2022, released in March 2023
- Role
- Music supervisor
- Engagement
- Reality Club’s founder, for the filmmakers, 2022
The moment
Winning at life. A new job, a chance encounter and one very important phone number.
After a divorce and a long stretch of unemployment, Roger finally gets a break: A full-time job as a culture reporter at GQ.
Earlier that day, on his way to the interview, a kind, mysterious stranger gave him her phone number in the elevator. Now, in the middle of celebrating, he has to find it. And then he has to find the courage to call.
The music has to hold the joy of a life opening up and the uncertainty of what happens next.
The challenge
A familiar song never arrives alone. It brings the listener’s memories with it.
That familiarity can make a scene feel personal in an instant. It can also pull attention away from the character and into a story the audience already knows.
For Pinball, a significant challenge was using well-known music from the era where it could matter most emotionally. The question was how to put that recognition in service of Roger’s story.
What the music needed to do
- Carry the relief. Let the new job feel like a real turn in fortune after a long run of disappointment.
- Keep the question alive. Leave room for the missing number and the vulnerability beneath the celebration.
- Make the moment his. Use the emotional charge of recognition to bring the audience closer to Roger, with the aim of making the scene memorable in its own right.
The value is in knowing what a song brings into a room, and what the story needs from it.
The approach
Reality Club’s founder joined in post-production, while the directors, Austin and Meredith Bragg, were settling their final edit. They wanted a music supervisor who knew the music and culture of the 1970s deeply. The decade had many soundtracks, and the Braggs wanted the one Roger lived in: Recognizable songs from the era that carried the spirit and feeling of his efforts.
She answered with a lived-in palette where power-chord classic rock, country-tinged folk and earnest soul meet and mesh: The music of the rooms, radios and record collections Roger’s 1970s ran on. She and the filmmakers decided to let the songs span the whole decade, not only the later years when the story takes place.
From there she worked through final cue selection with the filmmakers.
Where it landed
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game premiered in 2022 and was released in March 2023.
The aim was for the relief to land, for the question to stay open and for a familiar song to feel like part of Roger’s story rather than a detour into one the audience already knows.
The value is in knowing what a song brings into a room, and what the story needs from it.
In good company
Reality Club’s founder thanks Austin and Meredith Bragg for Roger’s story and for trusting the music to help tell it.
- Film
- Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2023)
- Directors
- Austin and Meredith Bragg
- Music Supervisor
- Jocelyn Michelle Brown
