In 1970s Northern California, a counterfeit artist helps his boss with a vanity film project, getting tangled up with a free-spirited actress and some unpredictable criminals in the process.

Welcome to Northern California, 1970’s. The Mountain King is a character driven up beat film following a counterfeit artist who gets tangled up with a free-spirited actress and some unpredictable criminals in the process. The shady character exaggerations induce us with the era’s egotistic power trippers and reckon the up and down moments of the hustler’s life.

The film grew out of my fascination with the Watergate era in Northern California, when the hippie ideals of the Summer of Love were tested by the Nixon administration and a lot of social upheaval. It seemed like an interesting backdrop to tell the story of a couple of hustlers who come to terms with reality. I was also drawn to the idea of using vintage recordings as part of the storytelling structure.

With the story’s narrative being progressed by an old tape recording narration from the main character, along with the pacy up beat flow of the film, we can certainly see that director Peter Brambl’s inspirations came from films like Boogie Nights and Blow. An excellent editing job with a buoyant soundtrack really gives the film the added edge, to an already cinematographically packed production.