CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 09/14/07

Treasure Hunter:
King of California's Mike Cahill

By peter clines

The writer-director behind this week's King of California talks about the years it took for his first film project to find its way to the screen and the roundabout path he took just to get there.

At some point, many screenwriters toy with the idea of giving up Hollywood and writing plays or that novel they've been kicking around. Mike Cahill tried to get out with his novel A Nixon Man, but then found himself falling back in with an offbeat idea he'd been playing with for years, an idea that eventually became the quirky, cross-genre indie film King of California.

Teenager Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood) had dodged the system, living alone in her family house. But then her eccentric and once-suicidal dad, Charlie (Michael Douglas), is released from the psych ward and returns home with a plan, disrupting her carefully established life. While in the institution, he deciphered the clues leading to a buried treasure, a pile of gold hidden away centuries ago by a Spanish missionary. Shanghaied into his scheme to scour their suburban town for clues and old landmarks, Miranda has to decide if this another of Charlie's delusions or if her addled father might finally be on the trail of something real.

As King of California opens nationwide, Cahill took a moment to speak with CS Weekly about getting inspired by dreams, trusting your story's voice, and the discovery of how much work making a movie can be.

So, one of my first questions…you are the writer and director, yes? IMDb lists three different people with the same name…
It's all me. I don't know what's up, but my agent's trying to fix it. But I am Mike Cahill, and I wrote and directed King of California (laughs).

Were you always interested in writing screenplays?
What happened was this: I started out as a kid making movies. I was eventually fortunate enough to get into UCLA film school's graduate program. I made some films there and started writing scripts. I got representation and tried to get stuff across as a screenwriter and maybe see if I could direct something. Then I found a story that I tried to write as a screenplay, and it just didn't it work. It seemed like it was a novel, and at the same, time I was having a difficult time getting screenplay work. So, I thought, "Y'know what, I'm going to write something that's finished. It's not going to be rewritten, not going to be changed, it's just going to be a finished product on the page." A novel. So, I spent a few years going down that road, and I found myself teaching writing. Then I was talking to Alexander (Payne) while he was writing Sideways, and he asked, "When are you going to make a movie?" And I said, "Well, here, I have a script and an idea. What do you think?" And he liked it. So, I gave him the script and he gave it to Michael London and I came full circle. That was King of California. That's a drastic encapsulation of several years, but that's sort of the route I took. I would not rule out going back and writing books, but right now directing movies is the most fun thing in the world. I love it and I've wanted it all my life, so I'll just try to do it again.

Were there any films or storytellers that particularly influenced you?
When I was a kid I used to love a movie called Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which eventually was remade a few times. You probably know the one Heaven Can Wait. This movie had Robert Montgomery, and I used to pretend to be sick when I was a kid so I could stay home from school when that movie was on Dialing for Dollars. I just love that movie. I did see, at the Cinerama Dome in 1979, Apocalypse Now, before it had been changed at all and they were handing out programs. And it just blew me away, the whole experience of that movie. But there's tons of others. I love a Satyajit Ray movie called Pather Panchali, if you know that one. It's a beautiful movie about family and so simple—deceptively so. That one I go back to again and again. I wish someone would return my copy of that DVD (laughs).

What gave you the first spark that became King of California?
I actually had a dream about a guy, an old man, who woke up and went out into his back yard with a lantern and a shovel and he started digging. I woke up and I started wondering, what's he digging for? Why did he wake up? And why's he use a lantern, not a flashlight? I thought about it for quite some time, and then I wrote a script that had, as its main characters, an old man and an ex-convict. It was not a very good script at all. I put it away (chuckles). And that was when I wrote the novel. I felt like I had to try something different. Then, several years later—seven, eight, I'm not sure—it occurred to me that I should revisit that story of people looking for treasure in modern-day southern California, but it should be a father and daughter. At that point I wrote it pretty fast. It was neat, finding you could substitute different characters and all of a sudden you have it.

How much research did you do for this?
I am an amateur historian of California, north and south, so I read a lot. I have a pretty good collection of obscure California texts. So, I did a lot of research. Then I stopped reading those and started reading Don Quixote. And then I wrote the script.

You kind of skimmed over it before, but how did the film get green-lit?
>From when I met Michael London, when Alexander took me in to meet him, to the point when we went into pre-production, was three years, minimum. We had been set up at two different places, and for various reasons they fell apart. Then we met Avi Lerner at Millennium, and I was thinking, "He doesn't do these kind of movies." Then I educated myself and found out that, in fact, he does. If you look, he does go this way now and then, and I think maybe he'll be doing it more now because of his affiliation with First Look Pictures. Anyway, we met Avi and we had Mr. Douglas, and then it was still another several months. But, in terms of decision making in Hollywood, I'd say that Avi Lerner is one of the quickest guys to just decide yes or no, right away. And he said yes. Finally, someone said yes.

Now, the whole time you were searching for financing, did you always plan to direct it?
Yeah, and I don't know whether or not that actually made it take longer. I think it might have. But I wouldn't've wanted someone else to direct the movie.

Was it tough being the director of your own script? What was it like when schedules or locations or actors required you to make cuts or changes?
Well, just as a response to the last part of that, no actor said that I should change things. I should have this experience every time. It was so great. Neither Evan or Michael or anyone, including Ari, ever suggested that we change a word. If there were changes, they were reached on the set by running through it and deciding, "Hey, y'know what, this would work better." It was by consensus and finally my choice.

Backing up, it was an extremely loaded schedule. It was 32 days with 49 locations. One day was nine locations on one day. It was just really balls to the wall, and not having done this before, I had to ask people who had. "Look, is this a really tough schedule?" And people said yes. It was so good with the people I had on the film. Last night we had a cast and crew screening, so I got to see everyone again, and that might be the best part of the whole thing—the great people you get to work with. It's not like you're the only one working. Everyone's working, and it gets done.

Now, there's a lot of voice-over in this from Miranda. Generally that has such negative connotations, so what made you sure it was right for this story?
First, it's just the way the story came to me. It came with her voice, like she was telling this story. Second, I just love that movie To Kill a Mockingbird. I always have. Third, I guess, my novel is a first-person story. I like the first person, although I think I'm ready to try a third-person telling. It just seemed the right way to go. Nobody ever said, "Don't do voice-over."

You've also got a tough protagonist in Charlie, who goes between completely loveable and completely aggravating. How'd you manage that balancing act?
That comes in rewrites. The first draft I just let him be who he was and I did not judge him at all. Then, later on, I looked at the overall and tried to balance him, with an eye to keeping him from being completely unsympathetic. That said, I think to certain viewers he may still be unsympathetic, but that's okay. That makes him close to being a real person, in my mind. It's definitely a consideration, and all the way through shooting and then certainly in the editing room, that's where the real balancing act between the two of them came into play.

Was there anything you lost in editing that you really miss?
That's a good question. I cut quite a few things, and I'd think, "Boy, that was a neat shot," or "That was a good scene." But then when I watch the movie in its totality, it just didn't belong. It wouldn't've worked. In other words, I don't regret having to cut anything.

Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.

Mike Cahill, King of California courtesy First Look Studios

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