From Wing Bowl to Warcraft (and a side trip to Venezuela): Philadelphia Film Festival documentary highlights

Reviewing three documentaries from PFF33: 'No One Died: The Wing Bowl Story,' 'Men of War' and 'The Remarkable Life of Ibelin'

Every year at the Philadelphia Film Festival, there’s a film or two that doesn’t exactly attract the typical film festival crowd. For instance, there was only film at this year’s festival that was preceded by an in-theater chant of “E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles!”

That film was No One Died: The Wing Bowl Story. Directed by Pat Taggart, the documentary looked at the entire history of Wing Bowl, a chicken wing-eating contest that took place on the Friday morning before the Super Bowl every year between 1993 and 2018.

The much-decorated short film The Turnaround, which debuted on Netflix last week and had a local premiere at PFF, represented what I call The New Philadelphia Sports Fandom, one less negative, less hostile, and generally continuing to soak in the vibes of the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory in February of 2018. No One Died is very much a documentary celebrating the Old Philadelphia Sports Fandom, while also acknowledging that there’s a reason it’s been left in the past.

For 26 years, Wing Bowl was the event where Philadelphia fans gathered early on the Friday of Super Bowl weekend to drink all night in the parking lot, gawk at strippers, and watch a wing-eating contest featuring a bunch of men who resemble Senator John Fetterman, along with the occasional tiny woman who would often emerge victorious. And because the competition would end at 10 a.m., each strip club would host an “after-party,” albeit one too early for lunchtime.

The competition was organized by the local sports radio station WIP, the source of angry people yelling in the background of every documentary about Philadelphia sports in the last two decades. However, WIP did not cooperate with the film, meaning they provided no footage and did not authorize the participation of anyone who currently works at the station. Longtime host Angelo Cataldi, who has since retired from WIP, is the primary narrator, although Al Morganti, the Hockey Hall of Fame writer credited with inventing the idea, is not a participant.

No One Died provides a rollicking, very funny history of this only-in-Philly cultural oddity, complete with testimonials from several of the veteran competitors, several of whom were on hand for the premiere. (A gentleman known as “Mize” used to provide halftime entertainment at Wing Bowl by crushing beer cans against his own head; I ran into Mize in the lobby while waiting for my car after the premiere. )

And while people like to toss around the world “blue collar” when it comes to local athletes, these were guys in actual blue-collar professions, some of whom would head straight from that year’s Wing Bowl to go work a shift at their jobs.

Also, it appears several of these guys have done time. One of them, five-time Wing Bowl champion Bill “El Wingador” Simmons, is heavily featured and turned up at the premiere; I interviewed him back in 2016.

Wing Bowl grew from a few dozen people in a hotel at the beginning to an annual event in the city’s largest arena. It started as a competition among local working men, eventually drawing in famous professional eaters like Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi. Local sports luminaries and other celebrities, from Jason Kelce to Mick Foley, would participate and sometimes even compete. Strippers, along with ladies in the crowd who just felt like flashing, became an increasingly large part of the show as the year went on.

Indeed, by the end it was clear that Wing Bowl had gotten way too big — and honestly, way too sleazy — to continue as a corporate-sponsored concern, and WIP pulled the plug six years ago. That the final Wing Bowl was held two days before the Eagles won Super Bowl LII represents as perfect a demarcation point as I can imagine between the Old Philadelphia Sports Fandom and the new.

There’s no one word on when this film might get a public release; NBC Sports Philadelphia should start an annual tradition of showing it at 6 a.m. on Super Bowl weekend.

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Billy Corben already had a film come out just last month, From Russia With Lev, about Russiagate figure Lev Parnas. Now, the prolific documentarian is back with another, Men of War, which he codirected with Jen Gatien.

It’s more of what Corben does best: A seemingly too-wild-for-real-life true story, involving colorful figures and men in way over their heads, touching at least in part on the world headquarters of such things, Miami, Florida.

It’s also, I’m fairly sure, the first of Corben’s films that I’ve ever seen on a big screen; his work usually debuts on HBO, Netflix, or ESPN.

Men of War is focused on Canadian-American mercenary Jordan Goudreau who, in the early days of the COVID lockdowns in 2020, launched an ill-fated coup attempt in Venezuela.

In earlier iterations of the coup, he had the support both of Venezuela’s opposition and of figures in the Trump Adminstration but even after losing both, he inexplicably went ahead with the mission anyway, which was compared to both the Bays of Pigs invasion and the Fyre Festival. 

A war veteran who once worked security at a Trump rally, leading him to try his hand at the private security industry, Goudreau is interviewed extensively and proves a compelling documentary subject, sympathetic but also suffering some delusions of grandeur. He’s like a real-life version of Jeremy Renner’s character in The Hurt Locker, addicted to the adrenaline of war while at the same time, it’s clear, suffering from PTSD.

The other side of the film is about Venezuela, and how the idea of overthrowing leftist dictator Nicolas Maduro seems plagued by corruption, on the part of both the opposition and sympathetic forces stateside. We’re shown a signed contract in which the country’s would-be president, Juan Guaidó, has promised to disavow Goudreau’s mission should it fail- but doesn’t the existence of that contract contradict that?

The film also introduces us to South American political fixer J. J. Rendón, who may be my favorite documentary “character” of the year. Sitting in a well-appointed office in Miami, complete with swords and other ninja memorabilia, he talks around his interviewer when asked about the coup attempt.

I have no idea when Men of War is coming out, as it’s listed as a NEON release but I don’t see it on any release schedule. But it continues Billy Corben’s recent hot streak.

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Shown at the festival just days before its Netflix debut, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is a documentary, made by Norwegian filmmaker Benjamin Ree, which tells the story of a 25-year-old man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) who had a separate online life in the online game World of Warcraft.

Mats Steen died a decade ago, but the film successfully tells the story of both Mats the man, and Ibelin, his persona within the game, which is rendered using the game itself. It’s a very inventive way to tell such a story, and it’s presented successfully.

Another film at the fest that I did not get to see, Grand Theft Hamlet, was a more lighthearted version of the same idea, recreating the Shakespeare play within a game of Grand Theft Auto.

Ibelin, now available on Netflix, has a chance to break through in a serious way.