TIFF24: Samir Oliveros Breaks Down “Luckiest Man in America”
This review was originally posted on Film Obsessive.
In 1984, Press Your Luck was fresh on the game show scene. The set-up is simple: contestants answer trivia questions to earn spins on the massive, light-up game board. Along with a wide variety of cash and prizes, there are also squares that feature the Whammy character. If a contestant lands on a Whammy square, they will lose all of their earnings and prizes. As the show’s title implies, the game is built on luck. Or is it? In 1984, a contestant, Michael Larson (Paul Walter Hauser), would rack up over $100,000 over the course of two episodes without once landing on a Whammy. How did he do it? Is he simply the luckiest man in America? Ahead of its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, director and co-writer, Samir Oliveros, sat down with Film Obsessive’s Tina Kakadelis to discuss Luckiest Man in America, how game shows are a modern snake oil, and what reality show Oliveros would win. The transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
Film Obsessive: Hey, Samir! How’s it going?
Samir Oliveros: I’m good. How are you
Doing well, thanks. Just to jump right into it. How did you come across Michael Larson’s story? Did you get to see the original tape of Michael’s appearance on Press Your Luck?
That’s a good question. The original tape actually found me in the Goodwill in Silver Lake. I like to go to these thrift shops to look for tapes, film, and old photographs. A couple of years ago, during the pandemic, I went to this Goodwill and I found some a bunch of VHS. One of them was the recording of Press Your Luck. I started watching the show, and researching. That’s how I found Michael.
That’s crazy! I grew up on Game Show Network, and I got very into Press Your Luck. I’ve never seen the tape, but I’m so jealous that you just came across it in a random setting.
Yeah, 39 years later.
Michael Larson was a real man. There’s truth to the story that you’re telling as fantastical as it is. As a co-writer and then director, how do you draw the line between honoring the truth of who Michael was and the strange thing that he did, and then creating your own vision in a film?
We started doing a lot of research of how the tapings happened and we had Bill Carruthers Jr. as our creative consultant. He’s the son of the creator of the original show and he told us how the casting would work, what would happen in the commercial breaks, what would happen at the end of each taping. With this information, we started filling in the blanks. The 42 minutes of Michael playing the game are very faithful, but everything that happens in the commercial breaks and before and after is when we came in to complete the story. That story, though, is also informed by Michael’s life. Part of the research that we did was looking into his love life and realizing that the guy had,three failed marriages and different kids with these women. We learned that his love life was a little bit complicated. That’s where I felt like his need for validation came from.
As an international filmmaker, trying to make it into Hollywood, I felt I could relate to it. Also, several of my girlfriends have left me because I’m a struggling director trying to make it as an artist. I understood him, and that’s when I was like, okay, I can definitely tell this story.
Courtesy of Luxbox.
Like you said, most of the film is a single setting. I think you maybe have two scenes that don’t take place somewhere on the CBS lot. Did you get to shoot on CBS lot?
We were in a different studio and we recreated television City.
The film has a lot of really wonderful wipes and fades that are reminiscent of this 80s era filmmaking. Did you visualize that in the script or did it come about as you were doing the editing?
Some of them were while writing and some of them were during the editing process, but actually some of them happened in production, too. Especially the ones when Michael was touring the studio. We got to the set and we realized, like these guys need to come from the right, but we just left from the left. It would be really nice if we can do some wipes. Then the construction and the graphic and aesthetic part of it, we started experimenting with it in post. We were very much aware of those of those wipes. I’m a big fan of those transitions and the playfulness that that era brought that now seems to have been forgotten. Now everything is a little bit serious and formulaic. So we wanted to honor the time with these.
Game shows kind of exist in this, weird world because I would say they sell a short cut to the American Dream, but the contestants don’t often realize the taxes and the negative repercussions of winning a big. The shows are selling something that doesn’t exist. I was wondering how you personally feel about game shows and if you feel like they’re modern snake oil salesman of sorts?
Yes. I absolutely believe that. Those contestants are just the victims of the executives that need to sell entertainment. So, yes, I do believe that game shows are like the lottery. They promise you five minutes of fame and that’s why I do believe that Michael is such a beautiful, extraordinary case is because he avoided becoming a victim. He saw the pattern and he was like, oh, I can exploit this. He kind of like, flashed it back to the executives. He was like, I’m not going to be part of this. I’m not your puppet. I’m smarter than you all. That’s why I fell in love with the story.
courtesy of TIFF
That kind of goes along with my next question. Some executives in the film talk about how they think Michael’s cheating. They’re sure that he’s wearing a wire to notice the patterns or to know when to press the button. It sounds like you personally don’t feel like he was cheating.
No, not at all. I don’t believe that he cheated. I believe that he’s a mastermind who was a very smart, very brilliant man. He just exploited a loophole. He proved that he was smarter than the executives, than Hollywood people, which is always amazing.
Yeah, I don’t think he cheated for a second. I was familiar with the story and I actually talked to Tomás Gomez Bustillo a couple months ago, and…
Oh, really?
Yeah! I talked to him about Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, and I asked him what was coming up. He told me about this movie, and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to see it because I love this story. I just think it’s so interesting.
Oh, beautiful. Yeah. Tommy’s law partner in Plenty Good. I went to school with him and he’s my business partner. One of my best friends. I love him and his movie.
Courtesy of MUBI
Yeah, he’s such a great guy. When he mentioned this, like I said, I was so interested because I was curious how you would structure the film since this is not Michael’s first idea to hit it big and it was not his last either. Why would you decide to only focus on this small part of Michael’s life instead of a more kind of sprawling biopic if you will?
That’s a great question. At the very beginning, I wanted to do the Catch Me If You Can version. I started working on the script in the pandemic and we realized that if we actually wanted to make the film, we had to remove as many variables as possible for potential investors and producers. We realized that as first time filmmakers, you need to elbow yourself into the industry and prove yourself. People are always going to try to poke holes in your script and in your production plan, but if we presented something that was very self-contained and very foolproof, they would be interested.
That’s when we realized, okay, let’s make this a pressure cooker. Like a comedy thriller where it will be one single location and then we’ll exploit every single nook and cranny. That way, it will be accepted by the financiers and they’re not going to be able to poke any holes and they’re going to let us shoot the movie. That’s exactly what happened when we when we reduced the script and when it became a relatively simple single location movie. Everyone was on board. In terms of scope, I wanted to do something bigger, but the reality is that, as a first English language movie, I had to reduce variables and make it simple for financiers and producers. That’s why we resorted to that, but I’m actually very happy that we did because the idea is that you’ll get a sense of where he was coming from and what he was going to do after. Then, you can go and research his life and find out for yourself later after you’re done with the movie.
My last question for you is kind of a fun one. Which game show or reality competition do you think that you could win a big on like Michael? You can obsessively watch to prepare. Michael had 12 TVs up in his home to prep.
I think it has to be one of the survivor ones. I think I’m pretty self-reliant and I really love the beach in the Caribbean. I’ve shot in the Caribbean before amd I try to go there every year. Every time I’m there, I’m usually thinking, like, I think I could handle myself here.
What about the puzzles?
I think I could do those, too. I think part of the reason why I was really into Mike was because I usually tend to look for unorthodox ways to solving things, so I think I could get those done.
Very nice! Maybe I’ll see you in Toronto later this week, and then maybe I’ll see you on Survivor one day.
(laughs) Thank you so much!
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