San Diego Asian Film Festival 2008

Love is often found in the most unlikely places. In fact, it seems more the rule than the exception. In Eli Akira Kaufman's California King, a womanizing mattress salesman, who employs faux physics to get female customers into bed, falls for a skeptical insomniac who knows her science better than her heart. Of course those lovelorn characters deserve nothing less than each other.

The son of an eighth grade science teacher, Kaufman grew up hearing so much about Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, and Charles Darwin that he actually thought his mother knew him personally. The degree to which his vision is inspired by these great philosopher scientists is impossible to overstate. Indeed, the concept behind California King germinated from a conversation with his mother about Newton's Third law of Motion, which states, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." She humanized Newton's law by putting it in humanistic terms, "You can't touch without being touched in return." Struck by this idea, Kaufman developed a love story where two individuals literally change the course of each other's lives.

Sloan adviser Matt Malkan, UCLA Professor of Astrophysics provided excellent supplemental information on Newton's Laws as well as some great asides about falling in love.

Kaufman was interested making Newton's Laws of Motion accessible to the broadest possible audience by comparing the universal theme of falling in love to the physical laws that govern our universe.