All that was lacking was the customers. Business at Smart Parts, set up by George’s father in 1955, is now mainly conducted online; footfall is low. Caine waited all summer until one day in September Nirvan Mullick, a documentary maker, called into the shop, looking for a door handle for his Toyota.
‘There were all these boxes in the storefront and a boy with a bright blue shirt and a big smile. He asked me if I’d like to play his arcade,’ Mullick, 37, says. ‘I could tell he had spent a long time working on this. He told me it was $1 for four turns or $2 for a fun pass – 500 turns. I bought a fun pass.’
When Caine crawled inside one of the boxes to push out a ticket ‘my heart and mind exploded,’ Mullick says. ‘It took me back to when I was nine, and how much I loved making things and being imaginative. That was why I got into animation and filmmaking, because of the joy of creating things.’
Speaking to George afterwards, Mullick was astounded to learn he was Caine’s first customer.
A former philosophy student, Mullick had become obsessed with the idea of creating (and then filming) the perfect moment. ‘The idea I kept exploring in my work was what if you could look into a stranger’s heart and know instantly what would make them happier than anything else in the world and choreograph that perfectly and then film it. When I met Caine I knew what would make him happier than anything else in the world.’
Mullick organised a ‘flashmob’ on Facebook, inviting strangers to turn up, en masse, to the arcade. When Caine arrived for work with his father on October 2 there was a queue of about 100 people with homemade signs, chanting, ‘We want to play!’ Mullick filmed the whole day. in the film, after he has served his last customer, an exhausted Caine asks Mullick, ‘Was that real life or was I just dreaming?’ then, more certain and with a huge grin, he says, ‘They were real people, that was real life and they were really playing the games.’
With other projects on the go Mullick sat on his film for six months. but with his 37th birthday approaching he decided to finish the edit, ‘before Caine grew up and got into girls or something’.
He spent his birthday editing and decided to add a link that gave the viewers the option to contribute towards Caine’s university education. ‘I set the goal of $25,000, which my girlfriend thought was too high, but I thought I might as well try,’ Mullick says. the next day, April 9, he posted the video on the website Vimeo and went climbing to celebrate finishing his labour of love. When he left the climbing wall the fund had hit $300. By the time he went to bed it was $6,000.
Now, after more than six million people worldwide have viewed the video on Vimeo and YouTube, the fund has passed $200,000. George has told Mullick he plans to use some of the money now to get Caine a tutor; while he is quick at maths (his first response to hearing how much money his fund had raised was to work out how many fun passes he would have had to sell to earn that), he struggles with basic reading. George would like to educate his son privately when he reaches high school age.
As the money went up, Mullick set up the Imagination Foundation to foster and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in other children like Caine. For every dollar donated to Caine’s scholarship fund, a Los Angeles-based family foundation has promised to contribute the same amount (up to $250,000) to the Imagination Foundation. later this month the foundation will help to run a Caine’s Arcade Week at 50 schools around the world, where children will build arcades and use them as learning tools for maths skills, business, marketing and arts and crafts. ‘We asked Caine how he felt about the foundation and he said he was really happy to help other kids get an education,’ Mullick says. ‘He’s got the mind of a businessman and the heart of a social entrepreneur.’
The relationship between George and Caine was one of the key elements that prompted Mullick to make the film, he says, ‘because it reminded me of my own father who largely raised me’. it has also affected those who have visited the arcade. Mullick tells of an animator on the Simpsons who came to the arcade one weekend (as thousands of people have been doing, waiting for up to two hours to play). ‘He had seen the film and it made him tear up so he came with his wife and kids. When he got there he kind of collapsed and started weeping. this guy said that he didn’t have that relationship with his father that he saw between Caine and George. He said that it was a bitter disappointment that his own father didn’t live to see how he had made a living out of his creativity.’
George has become an online star in his own right, lauded for his ‘anti-tiger dad’ parenting approach. Mullick says that parents worldwide have been sending him videos of their own children’s cardboard creations, saying they have been inspired by George to just let their children play, rather than try to entertain them with video games and expensive outings. ‘We have had parents commenting on the video saying that they will let their kids make a bit more of a mess and not insist they clean it up straight away,’ Mullick says. ‘To me that is real world change. it is small but tangible.’
The story took a sad turn last month when George suffered a heart attack and had to have surgery. He has been flooded with messages from well-wishers. He is currently recovering at home, taking a break from the full-time support role he has provided to Caine’s flourishing business.
‘He hasn’t had time to do his regular deliveries for his car parts business,’ Mullick says, ‘because he’s so busy helping Caine sell fun passes.’
Mullick sees Caine every weekend, and takes him on outings. ‘The best was when a guy from the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory contacted me to say that he loved the film,’ Mullick says. ‘He remembered making rockets out of cardboard when he was a little boy and now he makes real ones. So he invited Caine over. We went with George and my dad, and Caine thought it was awesome.’
Apart from his scholarship fund, the change in Caine’s life has been enormous in lots of small ways. Where once he was too scared to wear his blue ‘Caine’s Arcade’ T-shirt because the children at school teased him for ‘pretending’ he had an arcade, he now wears it with pride. George says Caine’s confidence has increased so much that the stutter he once had when talking to strangers has disappeared. the success of his arcade has changed his future ambition from wanting to be a member of a SWAT team to wanting to be a game designer. He has all the signs of becoming a serial entrepreneur: he is currently designing wallets made out of duct tape, and Forbes magazine has predicted that he will be a billionaire by the time he is 30.
Doors have opened for Mullick too, with Hollywood interest in a feature-length version of the film – something that will only increase Caine’s levels of fame. but whatever happens, Mullick and the Monroys are determined to protect Caine. ‘We’re all looking out for him, but he comes from a very grounded place,’ Mullick says. ‘Fame for him just means he gets more customers for his arcade.’
- To donate go to cainesarcade.com
