Caine’s Arcade – Caine Monroy & Nirvan Mullick

Caine Monroy is a 9 year old boy from East Los Angeles. Caine loves taking his toys apart, building things with Leggos, and watching shows about how things work. Caine’s Arcade is located inside his dad’s used auto parts store (Smart Parts Aftermarket), family owned since 1955. His arcade is open on weekends only.
twitter/facebook: cainesarcade www.cainesarcade.com

Nirvan Mullick is an Academy Award nominated short filmmaker who studied Experimental Animation at CalArts. Nirvan started “The 1 Second Film” collab, which currently has over 13,000 Producers in 110 countries, from Stephen Colbert and Kevin Bacon to gas-station attendants and grandmothers (www.the1secondfilm.com). Nirvan lives in downtown LA, founded The Collaboration Foundation, and is a partner at Interconnected (www.interconnected.is). @nirvan on twitter, films & animation @ www.nirvan.com

What Nirvan will be doing at DIY DAYS

SPECIAL SCREENING AND ARCADE EXPERIENCE FOR ALL TO PLAY

Caine’s Arcade

About a month ago, I went to East LA to score a used door handle for my ’96 Corolla. I pulled into a used auto parts store on Mission, and stumbled across a mysterious cardboard arcade built by a 9 year old kid named Caine. He had used boxes from his dad’s store to build it, and had also set up a cardboard display of prizes you could win.

I started asking Caine about his games. He explained that for $1 I could get 4 turns, or for $2 I could get a Fun Pass and 500 turns. I got the fun pass.

Caine stamped my hand and I spent the next 30 minutes playing mini-soccer and mini-basketball with a crumpled up paper ball. It was super fun. When I scored a goal, Cain would crawl under the box and push out little tickets through a slit in the cardboard. I racked up about 14 tickets, and redeemed them for a sweet toy car that I gave to my friend’s son.

I asked Caine the name of his arcade so I could tell friends, and he turned around to show me the back of his shirt, which read “Caine’s Arcade” – the front of his shirt said “STAFF.”

I was blown away by this kids imagination and execution.

When I shared the story with my friend Lance from DIY Days, he encouraged me to make a little film about Caine for the conference. I then asked Caine’s Dad if I could make a short film about Caine’s Arcade, and he thought Caine would love it. However, he warned me that I had been Caine’s only customer. At that point, a plan was hatched to invite everyone in Los Angeles to Caine’s Arcade, flashmob style.

The film tells the story of how the internet came together to make Caine’s day.

- Nirvan Mullick