"The completion of a dream," is how director Samir Oliveros describes the world premiere of his game show thriller The Luckiest Man in America at the Toronto Film Festival.
That's because the life story of Michael Larson — an ice cream truck driver from Lebanon, Ohio who won big by gaming a popular 1980s CBS game show with a secret — in many ways mirrors the Colombian filmmaker's own journey to beat Hollywood at its own game.
The Luckiest Man in America features Paul Walter Hauser as Larson, who in real life spotted a flaw in the seemingly randomly flashing game board for the 1980s CBS quiz show Press Your Luck and boarded a bus to Los Angeles to win a record-breaking $110,237 during a two-episode appearance.
His winning streak behind the buzzer quickly caught the attention of CBS executives in the control room who realized the guy from Ohio had memorized their "Big Board" lighting sequence for its cash-winning patterns and could bankrupt the network if not stopped.
That will leave TIFF audiences for The Luckiest Man in America to question whether Larson's 15 minutes of fame was the result of cheating or if it's a rousing example of an ordinary guy taking down the man. Oliveros has clearly already drawn his own conclusions.
"I believe he [Larson] was just being smart and looking for things where nobody else was looking," says the director. Ahead of his Toronto world premiere, Oliveros talked to The Hollywood Reporter about his own "alternative and maybe unorthodox methods" to make it in the movie world's biggest arena.
Your film is based on what many have called a game show scandal. Was this a scandal? If so, for Michael Larson or CBS?
What Michael did was not wrong. I just believe he found a little loophole and exploited it. So it's a scandal because he did make a lot of money. Nobody had ever made that amount of money on a game show, and that record held for a very long time, over two decades. Yes, of course, the press called it a scandal, because that way they could blame somebody else. But the reality is that they [CBS] were at fault. And the reason why is they didn't spend more money on a randomizer, and the reason why Michael was able to find the patterns is because the game show didn't have the budget. They cut corners. And by cutting corners, Michael was able to find that [loophole]. The scandal was more on the game show because it exposed them as the cheap executives they were. What Michael did was a good deed, and he just found a flaw in the system and pushed it as hard as he could.
On game shows, we expect contestants to play by the rules. CBS chang ed the rules after Larson's record win to ensure it never happened again. Did CBS do something wrong?
The fact they changed the rules later just showed what they initially had developed as a game show was flawed, but I don't know if changing the rules was wrong. I think that after somebody comes and exploits a flaw in your system, you realize that you need to do something to prevent more Michael Larsons from coming onto the show. And it shows how Michael is such an interesting character because they never expected somebody to realize there were five patterns on the board. It showed the type of person that Michael was, to find that pattern and beat these city people from Hollywood who thought they were better than the contestants that come to play the game.
Your movie portrays Michael Larson as the little guy who beat the system. But he also comes across as something of a schemer. How do you see Michael Larson?
The reality is we cannot ignore the fact that this was not the first scheme in his life. He had been committing a couple of low-profile scams throughout his life. But once again, I don't know that what he was doing was illegal. The way I see Michael, I just see him as somebody who was really, really smart. And instead of applying his brainy logic to something positive, and something where he could have become extremely successful, he always tried to find shortcuts, to find ways to beat the system, which, in a way, is a search for validation.
How did it happen that a director from Colombia made a film centered on the American Dream and striking it rich?
I do believe it's quite meta. When I started working on the movie, the more I delved into the story and the more we advanced in making the movie, I realized I was doing pretty much the exact same thing Michael was. At the beginning, we had to pitch ourselves to the executives that were going to finance the movie, just like the opening scene. And there had to be somebody that was going to say, 'yes, I believe in you. Here you go, here's your check to make the movie happen.' The reality is, what I told these executives was the best version of myself. I was decorating everything I said for them to say, 'okay, this guy knows what he's talking about. Let's give him money so that he can make a movie.' And then I needed to show up on a set, with a lot of lights and a lot of cameras and a lot of actors and, under a lot of pressure, execute what I had been planning for a long time. That was making this movie happen, which was exactly what Michael was going through. He showed up to the set, and he had to execute under a lot of pressure and the heat of the lights and all of the cameras pointing at him. He had to make sure he could actually land on those patterns he had memorized. So there's a big parallel there. After getting the money from executives and getting the green light to show up on the set, I needed to execute my vision and be able to get the movie done with all the pressure indie movies have.
At the end, also, the heart of the story is Michael was trying to earn money to be able to get his family back. That's also a parallel to my life. I was really just hoping to make a movie to show my ex I really, really, really could be a filmmaker, and that I could prove myself to her. That ended up being a very, very interesting parallel to what I was going for, like the American dream of breaking into Hollywood. As an outsider coming in, like [Michael] coming from Ohio, me coming from Colombia, we are both, in a way, trying to make it into Hollywood. So that's why I believe I was the right person for the film.
And your vantage point as a Colombian director made you uniquely positioned to examine the American dream?
Absolutely. Being and seeing, more importantly, from an outsider's perspective allowed me to analyze in a way that, if you're submerged in American society, you wouldn't be able to see things so clearly. You don't have the distance or perspective. By coming from an outside point of view, immediately I'm distanced from this place. Because I'm not from the U.S., I was able to see this and distill what you were calling the American dream, and tell a story about it, and also just put myself in those shoes.
And as an outsider, what were you able to see that others could not?
It has to do with finding alternative and maybe unorthodox methods to make movies to accomplish your dreams. Because making movies as an outsider and financing them and being able to kind of like elbow yourself into Hollywood requires looki ng into different ways to make your movie happen, or to make your dream come true. For example, we knew that this was an American story. But the reality is everything happens inside a studio. So we could shoot this movie anywhere in the world. And if we keep the budget small enough, we were able to finance the film outside of Hollywood and keep it to a single location, so we could make our movie happen outside of the traditional Hollywood system. And that's what I see from Michael. He was just looking for an alternative way to accomplish his dream, and he was looking for unorthodox ways to do so. Maybe some people would call them illegal. But I believe he was just being smart and looking for things where nobody else was looking. And we were trying to find alternative ways to finance this movie and alternative ways to cast this movie.
So what did you do that was unorthodox in financing and producing the movie?
Shooting the movie in the middle of the two [Hollywood] strikes was something unorthodox and something everyone advised us not to do. They said, listen, you got your lead. You were able to cast Paul Walter Hauser. But now the strikes are coming, you should not shoot your movie now. Your financiers are going to drop. You're not going to be able to bond the movie. But we realized all these amazing actors didn't have work in the middle of the strike. And the agencies helping us cast said, 'listen, your script is a very solid one. If you want, we can offer you some of our talents that are desperately looking for work, because they don't know when the strike is going to be over. So instead of saying, oh yeah, the orthodox way, the responsible way, the Hollywood way would have been let's stop. Let's wait until the strike is over. But the reality is that because we got that big opportunity of being an independent movie — and we had t he SAG waiver — then all of these actors said, yes, we'll join your cast. That was one of the unorthodox things that we did to be able to make the movie happen.
So with your next movie, the maverick filmmaker from Colombia will follow the Hollywood rules?
I hope I can find the balance, by keeping one foot in Hollywood and one foot outside. As a director, that allows me to keep creative freedom and to be responsible for the whole process. Because if you go into the Hollywood model, if you're working with big studios, you start losing creative control. Sometimes you land in the post process and some people take control of the edit. And you're not going to end with the movie you set out to do, because some people obviously looking for commercial viability will try to morph your movie into something not originally conceived. I'm not saying I don't want to make a commercially successful movie. That's exactly what we're looking for. That's why the production company I founded with Amanda [Freedman], the goal is to be able to have one foot inside Hollywood and one food outside, so you can keep that balance of, yes, we are going to make commercially viable movies, but we are going to t ell stories about bold characters and bold decisions, so we can still keep the rebel part to it.
And now that you made a movie about TV game show scandal, do you want to work as well in TV?
Absolutely, yes. There are some stories that I do want to tell that would benefit from a long form, at least a mini-series. I'm a big fan of shows that have been kept to limited series. Yes, I would love to work in TV.
Finally, what are your thoughts on The Luckiest Man in America having its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival?
It's the completion of the dream. Exactly a year ago, we were in the third week of principal photography. We had not even finished shooting the movie a year ago. And if you would have told me a year later we would be sitting down in Toronto, talking to you, from The Hollywood Reporter, I would not have believed it. It's the completion of the dream. That's what Michael wanted at the very beginning. He wanted to be on that game show, to be aired at a specific time, on a specific date, so that his ex could see him and maybe rekindle his love and want to get the family back together. This is like the final pressure for me, screening the movie in Toronto and proving myself and showing that I can actually make movies that are recognized in festivals like Toronto and that I was able to fulfill my dream.
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