8. Controversy

Most documentaries end up winning fans and also alienating people. Kong has been charged with simplifying the story and falsifying other elements.

For instance? There's a lot of debate about whether two friends of Billy went over to Steve's house and took his Kong machine apart to check for irregularities.

"It's not that they barged in," Wiebe has commented.

"My mother-in-law was polite enough to let them in, and it's true she gave them a quarter, which is funny....

"It was friendly, but it's not like I was happy to have someone drop by unannounced. I'm coming home from work. I want to take a shower and relax. I wasn't too happy, but I didn't express it. And the movie never says they broke in."

The truth is tough to divine, though Gordon himself admits that some moments were edited for story reasons and others are subjective.

"If you wanted to talk about it point-by-point we could, but the central fact for me is that Billy hasn't seen the movie and yet he has all these problems with me," he says.

"My official response is that I would love him to see the film and after he's seen it to have a conversation. My big thing is that I never knew Billy before this started and I never knew Steve. I had no particular opinion of either of them; I simply showed what happened.

"A lot of people come to conclusions that I don't expect them to based on what they see Billy do.

"I have a bit more sympathy for him than most. I think he's driven by a profound desire to be perfect and live up to the guy that he was when he was seventeen. He got an unbelievable amount of attention at a very young age.

"Now he's sort of fossilized and petrified - almost frozen in time. He's almost like a WWF wrestler.

"I've read some stuff online. It shouldn't be surprising to us when we make a film about people who obsess on the details of video games that they're going to obsess on the details of our film!

"But I don't get a lot of personal feedback. I know there are blogs and people talking. I also feel like when you make something like this, it's not really yours anymore. It's out in the world and people can say whatever they want. We had our voice and now it's their turn."

And what of the the next step?
 

Next: The Future...