Caine’s Arcade

A seventeen-year veteran of “The Simpsons,” one among legions of recent pilgrims to Caine’s Arcade, broke down weeping at the sight of the real thing. He told Mullick that the moment recalled for him the scene in “Ratatouille” when the cynical food critic eats a bowl of soup, evoking visceral memories of his own mother’s cooking. “That’s what happened to me when Caine crawled into the box for the first time to push tickets out of a hole,” said Mullick. “It brought me back to when I was a kid, and reminded me of why I used to make things, why I wanted to make films, for the pure joy of creativity.”

As a philosophy student at New College, Mullick had been intrigued by the notion of the “perfect moment,” which Sartre explores in his novel “Nausea.” What are perfect moments? Do they exist? Can you create them? “I distinctly remember putting the book down and thinking about ‘perfect moments’ and how I’d lose myself when I do a drawing, and all track of time.” Mullick said the other day. “What if you could look into a stranger and know what it was that they wanted more than anything else in the world, and figure out a way to choreograph, and make that perfect moment happen for them in their life,” he continued. “When I ran into Caine, I knew how to create a perfect moment for this boy. I knew what he wanted more than anything: customers.”