Interview: Alika Tengan and Naz Kawakami on ‘Every Day in Kaimuki’
Marking the feature-length directorial debut of Alika Tengan, Every Day in Kaimuki centers on a young man named Naz (Naz Kawakami) is determined to give his life meaning outside of Kaimuki, the small Hawaiian town where he grew up. A local radio DJ who spends his days skateboarding with his friends, Naz wants to move to New York City to pursue a life and career outside of an environment that is on the verge of becoming too stagnant and familiar. Even though he faces many obstacles throughout the course of the film, Naz is never undeterred from his goal, hellbent on moving to New York even if it means leaving everything he’s ever known and loved, including long-term girlfriend Sloane (Rina White) behind.
A charming and soulful exploration of life, purpose, and identity, Every Day in Kaimuki is a compelling, quietly confident first feature from Tengan, who co-wrote the screenplay alongside lead actor Kawakami, who based it on his own actual personal experiences. “I told Alika that I was moving to New York and then a couple of days later, he came over land told me that he wanted to make a movie about this,” recalls Kawakami. “And then we drew a line and storyboarded on that line, and then six to seven days later, there was a script.”
At times, Every Day in Kaimuki practically bursts with authenticity, a testament to just how passionately and personally crafted the film was. So much so, that many of the scenes involving dialogue were completely improvised. “There was a lot of riffing,” says Kawakami. “There would be a page or a scene where it just says, ‘Naz and Holden talk about this.'” However, despite the fact that the film itself was based on Kawakami’s own personal journey, he makes sure to stress that he isn’t exactly playing himself in the film. “We wanted to present a fictionalized version of myself,” he explains. “And have certain things come off the way that they did, like when I’m first meeting Holden [Mandrial-Santos’] character, I’m just grilling him and asking him a lot of questions very quickly, and being sort of judgmental, and that was purposeful. We wanted to express a characterization of my character, express an exaggerated version just to establish that.” It’s a sentiment that Tengan more than agrees with. “I think we both like and admire films that have complex characters in them. They’re not good or bad. They’re just people. And so we tried to be really intentional when we carved that out with every character.”
The version of Naz in the film wants to leave Hawaii in order to pursue a bigger career, a more purposeful life. But despite the specificity of the story, Tengan and Kawakami portray it universally; in a way that many will undoubtedly be able to relate to. “I was going to move regardless just because I have always thought New York City was cool, and I wanted to see if it actually was,” says Kawakami. “But I think that my character just so happens to have wanted to move. But that move could have been anything. It could have been opening a bakery. It’s whatever the individual is trying to pursue but feels unable to, like they can’t do it. I think it’s particularly present in Hawaii because we are so isolated, literally surrounded by the ocean. And it’s expressed in the movie, in the sense that it’s not like I can just drive across state lines to somewhere else. It’s a very expensive, arduous process to leave. It’s like a black hole, and that just felt like a good thing to pursue because of all those natural obstacles. But deep down, if you remove the act of moving itself, it’s about a character feeling isolated in pursuit of proving themselves to themselves, almost.”
Every Day in Kaimuki was filmed a little over a year ago, when the world was still firmly in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Did they face any changes while they were making the movie? “We’re really, I don’t know if fortunate is the right word, but it’s kind of crazy,” muses Tengan. “If you look at the numbers right now in Hawaii, they’re hovering around a 20% infection rate on the whole state, but whereas a year ago, while we were filming, it was one to two percent. So I don’t really think we could have made it now, safely, in the way that we did at the time. Everyone was being pretty safe and taking all the necessary precautions to do this properly. Having two actors talk through masks was a little difficult sometimes, but I think they got really good at enunciating even through that. So it had its challenges, like any other film, but we really tried to lean into that.”
However, both Tengan and Kawakami were wary of not turning Every Day in Kaimuki into a pandemic-themed movie. “We were explicitly having conversations about not making it a COVID movie,” recalls Tengan. “What’s the phrase that I use to describe this? It’s a circumstance of the plot but it’s not the plot, you know? It’s there, but it’s not the point necessarily. It just happens to be an added thing, like a component more so than a central theme.”
Every Day in Kaimuki is also surprisingly the very first feature-length native Hawaiian film to debut at Sundance, a sentiment that Tengan sees as a huge honor. “I think Naz and I both take a lot of pride in being able to represent Hawaii in that way,” he says. “I feel very indebted to some of the native Hawaiian artists who came before us. Ty Sanga, I think, had the first-ever native Hawaiian short film with Stones in 2009. And just last year, Ciara Lacy was the first native Hawaiian female filmmaker to have a film at Sundance as well. So we really just stand on the shoulders of all these incredible artists that came before us.” It’s an achievement that Tengan hopes to repeat in the near future, as he turns one of his short films, Moloka’i Bound, into a full-length feature. “That’s what’s hopefully on the horizon for me,” he says.
Every Day in Kaimuki premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.