By Matthew Schwartz
August 6, 2025
How many times have you heard pickleball players laugh during a game? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
An upcoming online pickleball film is aimed at cracking you up faster than a Franklin X-40 in cold weather.
It’s called Night of Pickleball Comedy: A Compilation Movie and will be available starting August 8th-National Pickleball Day, and it’s free.
“Our goal with this film is to get it in front of as many people as possible and let them experience the fun, energy and creativity that our team of comedy creators brought to the world of pickleball,” filmmaker and host Jordan Bryant says. “There are so many wild personalities and funny situations that happen on the court, you can write endless, hilarious viral content from it.”
Bryant loves making movies and playing pickleball.
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Bryant is a 33-year-old content creator and comedian. He asked 15 prominent pickleball video creators to send him funny scenarios.
“One hundred percent of the videos were orchestrated,” Bryant says. “I personally reached out to each creator and invited them to be part of this compilation movie, and they all agreed to submit their best work. From there, we selected what we felt were the strongest and most suitable pieces for the film.”
The result is 20 short films; the longest clip runs 13 minutes, the shortest is one minute. Running time is an hour and 15 minutes and Bryant says it’s rated PG13.
Although most of the clips in the compilation are on the internet, Bryant says, “You could spend tons of time digging through TikTok, YouTube and Instagram trying to find them all, but why would you? We’ve organized the chaos into one hilarious, original compilation movie.”
Bryant was born in Torrance, California, raised in Medford, Oregon and has lived in Temecula, California, since he was nine-years old. He has been making movies since his grandmother bought him a camera when he was 14. He played tennis in high school and at Palomar College in San Marcos, but quit school after his freshman season to start the filmmaking business.
“When I told my parents I was quitting school, they weren’t very happy,” Bryant says. “They said I had to start paying rent. So I went all in and started my film business called “Jordan Bryant Films.” I began filming three to five weddings a month, along with music videos and commercials.”
Bryant first played pickleball in 2017. “While running my small filmmaking business, I met someone-an unspoken romance who was also my film client's employee. She introduced me to pickleball.”
He later got beat by a much older player. “I was so frustrated. That’s when I realized I really loved the sport, because anyone could win.
“One thing I love about pickleball that tennis just doesn’t have is how easy it is to meet new people. You can show up at any court, almost anywhere in the world, and jump into a game with people who play at your level. In tennis, it’s really hard to find someone to play with who matches your skill. I’ve also always been a big ping-pong player, so I love how fast and exciting pickleball is. A lot of my friends who couldn’t really get into tennis picked up pickleball, and now we’ve built stronger friendships because of it.”
In 2021, Bryant started a company called Pickleflix, filming comedy sketches for a major paddle company. “I had an idea, why not do the same thing with pickleball and create a compilation movie of all the best skits from top pickleball creators and average Joes?”
Bryant says he pays the bills from his full-time job of creating comedy ads for businesses using artificial intelligence. “I use tools like Google’s VEO 3 to build super realistic scenes, then write funny skits that include product placements for my clients.”
In 2024, Bryant came up with a different compilation of pickleball clips and rented a theatre in Temecula for a showing. It sold out with 350 people attending and raised “a good chunk of change,” as Bryant says, for Unified Sports for Special Olympics, a program that pairs special needs high school students with other students to play sports together.
“After that ‘Night of Pickleball Comedy’ premiere, I had a thought,” Bryant says. “So many people told me they couldn’t make it to the premiere because it was sold out. That got me thinking: What if I could make this movie available nationwide, and self-distribute it online and make it available for free? And that’s where the idea for streaming the film really came to life.”
You can watch the trailer and sign up here to register to watch the film. I’ve seen the trailer and while I don’t think every skit is hilarious, most are funny enough that I look forward to watching the film. I think most pickleball players will get plenty of laughs out of it.
Thoughts of the week, not all pickleball
· Why do people who paint pickleball courts make the kitchen the same or similar color as the rest of the court? A million colors to choose from and having little or no contrast isn’t the best choice, especially for helping players peripherally see the kitchen. Personally, I like the kitchen in fire engine red and the rest of the court in royal blue. Like the courts I played on in Weaverville, North Carolina, near Asheville, as seen in the photo below.
My favorite pickleball court color scheme, in Weaverville, North Carolina.
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· I think paddle companies should include a case with every paddle they sell. And please, when you include one, spare me the line saying it’s a “$25 value.” You can buy neoprene covers on Amazon for under 10 bucks. And by the way, they probably cost $2 to make.
· Please notify me the next time David Muir opens ABC World New Tonight and does not say, “Breaking news tonight.” The “breaking news” is often old news. Muir opened a ’cast last month calling the fatal shootings of Idaho firefighters “breaking news.” The shootings happened the day before, at 1:30 p.m. That’s 28 hours before ABC called it “breaking news.” When I was in the business (not that long ago) we never called anything breaking news if something wasn’t actually happening or the story wasn’t advancing at the time of the newscast.
· I drink my coffee at home but on the rare occasions I buy it outside, I’ll take Dunkin’ Donuts by a mile over the overrated, overpriced, and often overly strong Starbucks.
· I am amused by rec players who buy a paddle mainly because a pro player’s name is on it. Don’t you think most pros endorse paddles because the company was the highest bidder? That’s the pro player’s prerogative, of course. But it’s kind of naïve for rec players to believe that since so and so endorses the paddle, it’s because he or she thinks it plays the best, as opposed to pays the best.
Remember, if you buy any Hudef paddle that costs $169.99, use my discount code MS30 to knock down the price by 30%, to $119.99. For the new Apex Pro 2, instead of paying $149.99, use code MS10 to get the price to $135. Any less expensive paddle, the code is MS15, giving you 15% off.
