The Dink Movie Premiere: Mary Steenburgen Got Snubbed at Open Play, Ted Danson Fell Head Over Heels for Pickleball, and Ben Johns' Celebrity Foursome
Dinks On Tap: The Happy Hour Pickleball PodcastShow Notes
You know how everyone at open play decides how good you are as a pickleball player before you've hit a single ball? Your paddle, your shoes, your warmup, whether the next twenty minutes are worth their court time?
It happens to beginners. It happened to an Oscar winner, and she told us about it over dinner.
Rivulet invited us to what we understood was a cast party for The Dink movie. Instead, we ended up at a table for eight on a terrace at Soho House with Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson. The next night we were at the premiere in Westwood watching the cast come through when we spotted Ben Johns across the atrium and decided the polite thing to do was run him down. Then we hosted a happy hour before a screening for our own pickleball community in Dallas:
This week we get into:
Our "is this really happening" moment at Soho House, and how fast it turned into the easiest conversation of the trip
Mary's paddle stack story, involving a group of strangers making up their minds about her, and what happened after that
What Ted said about the people who keep turning up at his house for dinner now, and how casually he said it
The celebration that gets under Ben Johns' skin, and the nearly identical one he finds hilarious
His celebrity foursome, which he admits has no chemistry in it whatsoever, plus the pick that made Lauren want to switch partners
What the whole cast had to learn before shooting, and what all of them did together on the final day
Why the trailer undersells this pickleball movie by a wide margin
Aaron Chen and Cleo King, and the scenes that land harder than the marketing lets on
The tennis rivalry storyline, and the choice that keeps it from turning mean
The bar Casie set before she handed out her rating, which involves Shawshank Redemption
Our Dallas crowd, unfiltered, seconds after the credits, including one review that ranks this above The Devil Wears Prada 2
This one is for anyone who knows that pickleball people get to laugh at pickleball, and understands that the deal doesn't extend past us.Pour something cold and press play. Cheers,
Casie and Lauren
Dinks on Tap
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More from Dinks On Tap: The Happy Hour Pickleball Podcast
How did a game three grown men made up on a badminton court, because a 13-year-old was bored, turn into the thing your group text runs on? We found the kid who complained, and he still can’t believe it either. In this episode, we get into our summer vault, full of conversations, stories, and a little pickleball drama we never got around to airing. We sat down with Frank Pritchard, the bored kid himself, who can answer “When was pickleball invented?” because he was there when his dad, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum made up the game on Bainbridge Island. We also cover Picklr’s Chapter 11 filing and the “is pickleball dying” headlines that followed, Genie Bouchard’s paddle-tap walkout and what it says about pickleball etiquette, and why the drinks after play keep the pickleball community together. You’ll learn: Why it's called pickleball, and the Pritchard family member who came up with the name A firsthand account of who invented pickleball, from the teenager whose complaining started it What the original pickleball paddle was made of, and which founder designed it The pickleball history most players don’t know, including how scoring and serving used to work Why Frank took a 30-year break from the game, and what brought him back What Picklr’s Chapter 11 filing means for your local club, according to the general manager of the Picklr in DFW How the pickleball business can struggle while the number of people playing keeps growing Why Genie Bouchard skipped the paddle tap, and whether we think she was justified How we won a tournament this summer by giving a screaming team a taste of its own medicine
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