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Colombian filmmaker Samir Oliveros was previously at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival (a sub-festival of TIFF with committee members made up of students) with his feature directorial debut, Bad Lucky Goat, and has now been promoted to the main festival with his latest. The Luckiest Man in America is an interesting narrative feature depicting Michael Larson‘s historic (and scandalous) run on the gameshow Press Your Luck. Oliveros spoke to Film Inquiry about what captivated him about Larson‘s story, and how he approached adapting his story to film.
Wilson Kwong for Film Inquiry: Can you elaborate on what attracted you to the character of Michael Larson?
Samir Oliveros: I just thought that he was a very complex character, and I do believe that bold characters that make bold decisions are usually the best vehicles for movies. I don’t know if you heard Martin Scorsese say it, but he usually says that people remember characters, and not plots. So when I saw Michael Larson, I really thought that he would be an amazing lead for a movie. So that’s why I started working on the movie.
And were you aware of Michael’s game show run beforehand, or was it something you learned about while researching and writing the movie?
Samir Oliveros: No, it actually happened in the middle of the pandemic. I liked to go to thrift shops and Goodwills looking for tapes and negative film that captured memories. I usually find those to be really good inspiration for movies. So I found this VHS tape and I played it, and it was a Press Your Luck taping. I was like, oh wow, I never heard of this game show before. It looks very visually stimulating, so I started researching and then I found the Michael Larson scandal. When I went out looking for the movie, I realized that there was no movie, and this could be a fantastic movie. So that’s why I started working on it.
Aside from watching the old tapes, how else did you do your research for the film?
Samir Oliveros: Unfortunately, Michael died in 1994. But we were able to contact the son of the creator of the show. So our creative consultant was Bill Carruthers Jr, whose his dad is played by David Strathairn , and he was amazing. He was the person that every time we would finish a draft, we would send it over to him, just to make sure that everything was faithful to what the real thing was. And he actually gave us really good details about the day of because he happened to be in the audition room, and then in the actual stage where Michael started his streak.
Everything certainly feels very authentic. Were you a big fan of game shows growing up? Or was the authenticity mainly from all the research you did?
Samir Oliveros: Both, actually. I think every kid sees a game show and they’re like, oh yeah, this looks very fun. So yes, I grew up watching game shows. There’s this certain type of fetish with game shows because they’re like a lottery ticket. You see a game show and you’re like, one day I could be there and my life could be completely different. So as an international director, game shows always felt like a lottery ticket to the American dream. But I did a lot of research of the timing of it all, and the timing of tapings because initially we thought that this was live to air. And the most important thing [were] the commercial breaks, because we knew if you go on YouTube, you’d find the clips of Michael winning, but those are edited. You really don’t know what happened before or during the commercial breaks. And that’s why we really wanted to understand commercial breaks because that’s where we, as screenwriters, would come into play. That was our playground.
Can you talk about the tone of the film? There’s something really ominous about it, which fits the story very well. But at the same time, there’s elements of comedy as well.
Samir Oliveros: We actually spoke a lot about this with the producer and Maggie, my co-screenwriter, because there have been several game show movies that take themselves too seriously. And we kept discussing the fact that this is quite a fun thing to watch. And I don’t know if you know, but the show [Press Your Luck] is still on the air and it has 4 million people that watch it every single day, and the host is Elizabeth Banks. So we knew that it has a wide audience and that this has mass appeal. We kept thinking if we make it really dark and serious, we could maybe just scare away a lot of the audience that could watch this movie. If you look at it, watching Michael is incredibly fun and I laugh every time I watch it. So we knew that we would have to resort to comedy as the vehicle for the movie, and that’s when things started feeling natural and organic and falling into place.
So were earlier drafts of the script much darker, and things evolved as you developed the film?
Samir Oliveros: In the very early stages of the movie, we had more of a Catch Me If You Can biopic approach. Michael cheated and had some little scams before the game show, so it was a little bit bigger in scope, and he died in the Everglades in Florida running away from the FBI. So it did have a little bit of a darker ending, but that never stayed as a possibility for an outline. We actually never outlined that version of the movie. We realized that it would be fun to keep it in a single location. And the reality is that we’re nobody to judge Michael for what he did. I don’t find it to be wrong. I think he just found a loophole and exploited it. And I think it’s up to each audience member to decide if what he did was wrong or not. So I didn’t want to judge him and I just wanted to present a complex character. So from the very early on conversations, we knew that it was going to be a single location comedy that had thriller elements.
The Luckiest Man in America (2024) – source: Toronto International Film Festival
In terms of casting Paul Walter Hauser, was he always your choice to play Michael? Or did you have a large audition process?
Samir Oliveros: Because we knew that we were going to resort to a dark comedy, we wanted somebody from the comedy world [who] could give the characters the depth that Michael needed to answer the four questions that we set out to answer; which were, what is he doing, how is he doing it, who really is this guy and why is he doing it? So we knew that we needed somebody that had the range, and we had been tracking Paul for a little bit. We saw his range in Blackbird, and we saw it in several other movies, so we were like, this guy can definitely act. And I’m pretty sure that he’s going to be able to be the perfect vehicle to give complexity to the character, to make him weird and funny, but also loving. Then you find yourself rooting for him because of the game show, and you understand his reasons and it makes for a complex watch, which is what we were going for.
And with such a great cast in general, how did you balance out the film so that each performer had room to shine in their own way?
Samir Oliveros: So the beauty about this cast is that they’re all so professional. And I’m a big fan of soccer, and if you follow Madrid, when José Mourinho, who is a very famous coach, landed Real Madrid, he said, “I’m not here to teach Cristiano Ronaldo how to take a free kick or how to play football, I’m here to teach these guys and coach them on how to play as a team” And that was my approach to dealing with all of these very, very incredible actors.
Film Inquiry would like to thank Samir Oliver’s for taking the time to speak with us!
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