Director's Statement – Miklós Philips

Initially this crazy seed of an idea came to me sometime in the second half of 2007 where I wanted to bring an international mélange of characters together in LA who are here to pursue the American Dream but more specifically the Hollywood Dream and the Hollywood Delusion. I saw a Japanese girl in crazy Harajuku fashion who is a runaway from Japan. At the time I didn’t know that I wanted to make her an actual daughter of a yakuza boss. This came later. Then I saw a young American guy in his 20’s. A rookie cop who is getting trained as an undercover cop. I wasn’t even sure if his course was going to be narcotics or not, so the whole thing was just developing. I also saw the Russian mob and the Japanese Yakuza butting heads, basically having a showdown or a fight over territory in LA. I thought that would be really cool and interesting to explore against the LA backdrop.

Starting with this seed of and idea and throwing these guys together, I set out to find a writer who would match my sensibility… certain sense of humor and off-beat quirkiness… a kind of desire, or preference for off-beat and funny, crazy characters, and off-kilter kind of stories. Not the usual stuff. I was lucky to find Steve Serpas who came to me via another friend, and once I read his work I knew I had found the guy. I went through a bunch of people; maybe half a dozen other writers and ultimately settled on Steve, as he was to me the one who matched my sensibility the best and had the craft of writing,the intelligence and the sense of humor that this story would require. Luckily we hit it off, he agreed and we ended up meeting -- quite a bit, and and finding the same kind of sensibility. Throughout, I think about six months – I think we started writing in January 2008 and finished around April/May… I would say during the course of six months, Anna my co-producer, and I and Steve, the three of us basically hammered out a short script.

I knew the casting would need to be extremely sensitive or very selective as I really wanted to get good actors. It was a challenging script and there was a fine line. To be able to pull it off I felt there was a fine line between really completely falling on one’s face with it and creating something ridiculous and something that is intelligently funny -- and to create the latter, I knew I needed to get really good actors – people who totally fit the job.

The vision I had for this film was to create something that we could eventually parlay into a feature film. As from that very seed of an idea, I always had a vision for creating a feature film. Being a director in LA as far as casting can be a blessing and a hindrance as well. It came as a blessing when we found Satomi Okuno. I was really concerned about finding a Japanese actress of a particular age and quality to play KEIKO in LA and we were extremely, extremely lucky to have found Satomi who did an excellent job and turned out to be fantastic in the film. For the role of Mitch, the lead in the film, the young rookie cop, we had over two and a half thousand actors submit for that role and only weeks to go before going into the shoot… into production, still no-one. In a state of panic I proactively went out and found Chris on IMDB Pro and contacted his manager. He came in for a read and I was 99% sure that we had found our Mitch and this gave me an extreme feeling of relief. The two supporting characters, Diesel who is Mitch’s boss or trainer, the more experienced cop, and the role of Kazimir, the brooding Russian gangster, were also extremely important because they are the pillars of the film in many ways. They are really important supporting roles. Again, through miracles and word of mouth and various connections and reaching out, we found René Rivera to play Diesel, who graciously came along on the project. An accomplished actor with the Actor’s Studio. The same goes for Ilia Volok who is an accomplished Russian actor and also with the Actor’s Studio. They are both fantastic and really make the film what it is.

I’m extremely happy how the vision has turned out. It’s amazing to see that over the course of almost 18 months, from a seed of an idea the film is up on the screen and has fully come alive with its style and tone and humor, story and characters.

I really feel that this project has been blessed from the start and everyone involved miraculously came to the project and made it what it is.

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.” - George Bernard Shaw