Caine’s Arcade is a short film about a 9 year old boy’s cardboard arcade, located in his dad’s used auto parts store in East LA.
Backstory
Caine Monroy is a 9-year old boy who spent his summer vacation building an elaborate DIY cardboard arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store.
Caine dreamed of the day he would have lots of customers visit his arcade, and he spent months preparing everything, perfecting the game design,
making displays for the prizes, designing elaborate security systems, and hand labeling paper-lunch-gift-bags. However, his dad’s autoparts store
(located in an industrial part of East LA) gets almost zero foot traffic, so Caine’s chances of getting a customer were very small, and the few walk
in customers that came through were always in too much of a hurry to get their auto part to play Caine’s Arcade. But Caine never gave up.
One day, by chance, I walked into Smart Parts Auto looking for a used door handle for my ’96 Corolla. What I found was an elaborate handmade cardboard
arcade manned by a young boy who asked if I would like to play. I asked Caine how it worked and he told me that for $1 I could get two turns, or for
$2 I could get a Fun Pass with 500 turns. I got the Fun Pass.
…………………..
This short film tells the story of Caine’s Arcade, and of our attempt to make Caine’s day.
A roughcut of the film premiered at DIY Days, where Caine set up his arcade for people to play. Caine was commissioned by an attendee to build a
custom cardboard claw machine, which he did for $80.
This film is a collaboration between all of my friends who chipped in, as well as all of the folks online who got behind the idea of helping to make
Caine’s day. Big THANKS to everyone who helped! Film Credits here
After the flashmob, at the end of the day as Caine and his dad drove home, Caine turned to his dad and said, “Dad, this was the best day of my whole
life.”
clevohardcore - 4-10-2012 at 09:57 PM
Proof that humanity can still evolve positively. This is the word RAD in every syllable. Six66Mike - 4-11-2012 at 07:53 AM
