Movies by the Bay
     
Welcome back to summer, and outdoor film fun, as this year we celebrate the unique role our own Bay Area has had, on-screen and behind the camera, in the magic of motion pictures. There's no reason for us to be jealous of Hollywood, as you'll see if you join us for this year's lineup of films. Most use San Francisco, Marin, and various locations in Sonoma and the Peninsula to give a strong sense of place to some of the best comedies, dramas, mysteries, and kid's films to find their way onto celluloid. Others make use of the enormous wealth of Bay Area talent in producing, editing, soundwork, computer animation, and special effects. All told, our list covers seven decades (!) from the 1940s to just last year.
I mean it when I say “a strong sense of place.” Too often, nowadays, films have a generic quality to their location. This is because they are either shot in Los Angeles or in Toronto, L.A.'s home away from home (where production is cheaper, largely for union reasons). Rare is a film like 2001's extraordinary In the Bedroom - shot on location in Maine - where the place is a character itself, as critical as any of the other characters in the story. Even when the film is supposed to be taking place somewhere specific, it often isn't filmed there, if a cheaper, more accessible look-alike location will do. I don't know about you, but I'm bored with nondescript American urban, suburban, and even rural stories that don't have specificity. Sometimes I think the filmmakers are going for a type of universality, but rarely (American Beauty is an exception) is there a real thematic reason for it.
There is no look-alike location for San Francisco - and if a filmmaker chooses to set his or her story here, there's a reason for it. I suppose now you could digitally fake anything. But just as you can't make good sourdough bread in any other city (because the composition of the air just isn't right), you can't film somewhere else and pretend it's San Francisco. And you can't tell a “San Francisco story” in another city.
Take Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, for example. This story of the darkest recesses of a man's passions and fears is set here because we have a certain type of visual and literal history. Imagine Vertigo without the scene of Scottie and Madeleine examining the rings of the redwood tree in Muir Woods (“Here is where I was born, and here's where I died.”), or of Scottie wandering the cemetery grounds at Mission Dolores (shot with a special green filter to create that eerie sense he's on another planet). The area's Spanish-mission roots are vital to the very fabric of the film, from the mystique surrounding the Empress Carlotta to the emblematic Mission San Juan Bautista, where the film's two climaxes take place. (The real mission, by the way, has no bell tower - that feature was added with the magic of matte painting).
And can you imagine one of the greatest car chases ever filmed roaring through the plains of Topeka, Kansas? Somehow I'm not sure Steve McQueen would have lost 14 (at last count) hubcaps if director Peter Yates had chosen to shoot Bullitt in the vast, flat middle of our country. (McQueen, by the way, practiced his driving at a racetrack in Cotati to prepare for his stunt work in that film).
Films don't have to be documentaries in order to preserve for us historical information about a place and time. Take a look at our offerings this summer, and you'll see some fascinating clues about how our own area has changed over the years. Look at Fourth Street in San Rafael today, and compare it to “the strip” the guys cruise in George Lucas' American Graffiti. You may recognize the See's Candies store entrance where Debbie (Candy Clark) gets picked up by Terry “The Toad” - but almost everything has changed around it. Other scenes were filmed at Tam High and Petaluma High (the school dances) and elsewhere in the city and North Bay. Alas, that best of all Mel's Diners - down at Mission and South Van Ness - is gone, but so many others remain, their walls full of American Graffiti stills and memorabilia. The voice of Wolfman Jack echoes in our heads.
Late in Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai, you'll get an amazing view of the Sausalito piers as they were in the late 1940s. The seedy sailor bars are not exactly the tourist-friendly culture we see there today. Foul Play will show you the houseboat scene at its heyday, circa 1978. (And for another great, more innocent Hollywood look at the Sausalito houseboat culture as of the mid-1960s, see the charming family comedy Dear Brigitte - as in Bardot - with Billy Mumy and Jimmy Stewart. Unfortunately, we couldn't bring you this, as it's not yet available on DVD - but you can find it on VHS if you search a bit). The climax of Lady from Shanghai purportedly takes place at Playland, another great San Francisco landmark which survived into the early 1970s. This scene became one of the most famous in film history (repurposed to great effect by Woody Allen in Manhattan Murder Mystery.) You'll see why Welles had to do most of it on a constructed set, actually, but in the end, a walk out of the real Playland and toward the beach near Cliff House brings us back home.
Speaking of home, Blake Edwards' 1962 Experiment in Terror may win the prize for being shot literally closest to where we'll be showing it, with scenes filmed in Fairfax's Marin Town and Country Club. A close second would be Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indy's house is actually right near Drake High. I'd give it a win if we were showing it in San Anselmo, but since we're running it in San Rafael, I think the mileage - well, let's call it a tie. Of course, Marin County's Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) has done the special effects and Skywalker Sound has mixed the soundtracks for so many films that we couldn't begin to show them all.
For that matter, the wonderful Saul Zaentz Film Center (at the Fantasy Records Building) in Berkeley was where Amadeus was edited and mixed. And the wonderful Saul Zaentz himself, producer of so many great independent films (besides Amadeus, there's Unbearable Lightness of Being, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The English Patient, and so many more) is a local treasure.
For most geographically confusing, we can give the award to one of my favorite films of all time, Mike Nichols' The Graduate. Don't let this keep you away, though. The script by Buck Henry, the directing, and the performances in this hilarious and poignant 1966 comedy/satire are among the best ever captured on film, but tell me how, exactly, do you get to Berkeley by going through the Waldo Tunnel? I suppose if you have a red convertible sports car and Simon and Garfunkel performing Mrs. Robinson on the stereo, you can do just about anything. Personally, The Graduate changed my life, the way Rebel Without A Cause changed the lives of teenagers half a generation earlier.
Speaking of life-changing experiences, I am pleased that Film Night is showing a truly remarkable film this summer. I urge you to keep the kids at home for this one, but I also do urge you to come see it: Peter Weir's Fearless, starring Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, and in her best film role, Rosie Perez. Australian born Weir is one of the most eclectic and consistently daring mainstream directors. His films include Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Gallipoli, Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Dead Poet's Society, Mosquito Coast, The Truman Show, and this year's Master and Commander, among others. He brought his camera to San Francisco in 1993 to tell a powerful story of the survivors of an airplane crash and their strange and difficult emotional journey back to the world of the rest of us. This film is like nothing you've ever seen. Prepare to be moved, devastated, exhilarated, and permanently changed. Don't miss it.
What would film noir be without San Francisco? Sure, Raymond Chandler had Los Angeles and his hot Santa Ana winds. But Frisco was the ultimate noir place, as Dashiell Hammett and his Sam Spade knew. Although we're are showing The Maltese Falcon before the festival kick's off this year (Saturday, May 29th at Washington Square Park in San Francisco), we're giving you Bogie and Bacall in Dark Passage, an unusual film done partly in a subjective camera style. It uses plastic surgery as a plot point, and so Bogart doesn't actually appear on screen (the camera represents his point of view) for almost an hour into the film - we just hear his voice. This adds to the edginess of the film. And so does the great Agnes Moorehead, who delivers a powerful performance, as always, to complement the action.
Another film not to miss, appropriate for today's times, is the late Michael Ritchie's political satire, The Candidate, starring Robert Redford. Nowadays we are much more familiar with the “selling of the candidate” process than we were when the film was made in 1972. Not only do we see campaign packaging at work, but we'll see some familiar sights: the Marin Art and Garden Center, scenes shot in Santa Rosa and Sonoma, and Oakland's Paramount Theatre (then under reconstruction) transforms into Bill McKay's campaign headquarters. The final moments of the film still ring as true and quietly haunting as they did thirty years ago.
Our concert films this year are Let It Be (our traditional Beatles film, and the only film we are showing all season that does not have a Bay Area connection) and Martin Scorcese's The Last Waltz. The latter, which, of course documents the final concert of The Band at Winterland in 1976, also, in its own way, speaks to the Bay Area's rich tradition as a rock mecca, and our including it pays homage to that tradition (and to our own Bill Graham) above and beyond the fact that the concert took place here and the film was made here.
A few words about the children's films: two of them come from the minds, pens, and computers of Bay Area animation geniuses. Shrek, created for Dreamworks by Pacific Data Images in Palo Alto, pokes fun at soft Disney stereotypes by creating a working-class Everyman who has to embark on a hero's journey to get back his home. For his efforts, he received an Academy Award. He's helped along by the voices of Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, and John Lithgow.
And the inimitable Pixar, my heroes, across the Bay in Emeryville, scored a huge hit last summer with Finding Nemo, which we are happy to present. Why? Because Pixar's writing is so darn good, for one thing, and for another, no one can render details like lighting with the kind of loving attention they can. Look at how the underwater world sparkles in this film and you'll know why they are simply the best - and why it requires one of the largest collections of computers in the world tens of hours to create 1/24 of a second of screen time!
More humanoid choices for children's entertainment include Disney's original Pollyanna, starring Hayley Mills (that house stands in Santa Rosa, although I visited the rest of the street a few years ago on the back lot at Warner Brothers - movie magic at work!). Disney is also represented by the original The Love Bug, so all you VW Beetle owners, come see your mascot. Robin Williams and Sally Field team up for the domestic comedy Mrs. Doubtfire, which will give you plenty of chances to see Williams do some of his excellent comic character work, while San Francisco views are aplenty. Remember, with all the films we are showing this summer, to check www.filmnight.org to see info on specific locations where each of film was shot.
Ray Harryhausen's effects make It Came From Beneath The Sea, a favorite of mine. Watch a giant octopus (a pentapus really - they didn't have the money for eight legs) take down the Golden Gate Bridge! This is one of those great 1950s sci-fi Saturday matinee films that creeped out an entire generation of atomic age kids.
We had wanted to represent our local treasure, Francis Ford Coppola, and his production company, Zoetrope, with one of his greatest masterpieces (and a terrific San Francisco noir film), The Conversation, but Zoetrope is in the midst of a major restoration of the film, and although they considered allowing us to show the unrestored version, ultimately we all agreed to wait until their restoration is complete (so watch our future schedules for it!). Instead, we decided to represent Zoetrope (and executive producer Coppola, as opposed to director Coppola) with The Black Stallion, a 1979 film that appeals to all ages. The film is made memorable by the stunning cinematography of Caleb Deschanel, the Oscar-nominated performance by Mickey Rooney, Carmine Coppola's sweeping score, and a solid acting job in the role of Alec by Kelly Reno (who was raised riding horses on a cattle ranch and, after this film and its sequel, The Black Stallion Returns, really never acted again, but instead grew up to become a big rig truck driver).
There are other fun films in our lineup, such as Peter Bogdonovitch's comedy What's Up, Doc? (one of Barbara Streisand's most successful comic roles and one of the most frantic films you could hope to see), Sirens of the 23rd Century (a home-grown satire on the beauty industry that defies description - trust me), Dogtown and Z Boys (an L.A. based skateboarder odyssey narrated by our own Sean Penn), and Hitchcock's The Birds (really great on the big screen, if you've never seen it that way - and do visit Bodega Bay, where the schoolhouse still stands). Don't miss Foul Play, which I mentioned in passing earlier. It's an underestimated screwball comedy from the 1970s. Goldie Hawn is delightful, there's another great San Francisco car chase up and down the hills (compare this one to the one in Bullitt), and note that San Francisco department store magnate Cyril Magnin has a cameo as the Pope!
As usual, there isn't enough room to talk about all our films in the detail they deserve. Just like our wonderful city, they have to been seen - preferably with friends, and a loaf of sourdough bread, to be enjoyed.
-- Kenn Rabin
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