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SAN_FRANCISCO_FILM
November 08, 2021
On the question of San Francisco movies...
First of all, an honorable mention has to go to the Sun
Ra movie, "Space is the Place". It's probably a better
Oakland movie than a San Francisco movie, still it's got
quite a few San Francisco scenes-- the scenes outside
the Youth Center were shot up on Potrero Hill, for example.
(Speaking of which, the Oakland Museum has an
Afrofuturism exhibit going just now that I still need to
see-- though actually, maybe it's on hold for water
damage.)
I also want to mention the movie "Dark Passage" (1947),
not because it's really a *good* movie, but because it's
an excellent San Francisco movie, featuring an art deco
apartment building up on Telegraph Hill (and that's
actually still there, and a tourist attraction for the
better class of tourist). It's the third of the Bogart
and Bacall movies-- it looks like it was structured as a
favor to Bacall to keep the camera on her a lot in the
early scenes.
An obvious pick which scores high both on
scenery and as a movie, is "Harold and Maude" This one tops lists of best
(1971), with lots of scenes of the pre-yuppie goth movies, as well, with
Bay Area, circa 1970. a morbid young man that
likes to drive an old
I wonder what the kids these days would make hearse and has an odd
of this one-- it's about a relationship fascination with simulated
between a teenage boy and an old woman. A suicide.
lot of people seem very hyped up about such
age differences these days--.
"Sister Act", mainly using a church in San
Francisco's Noe Valley, is pretty funny if
you know what the neigborhood was like while
they were filming. They had to tart it down
quite a bit with bogus graffiti and such...
I've heard a story that's *probably* true
about the activist couple Medea Benjamin and
her husband Kevin Danaher-- he'd picked her
up at the airport and as a prank, he drove
back back home going through the Church St
area that had been decorated for "Sister
Act", commenting sadly about how "the
neighborhood had changed". She responded in
character: "We've got to organize!"
I can't say "Bullit" ever really grabbed me that much--
the famous chase scene mangles the geography too much,
suddenly teleporting from one place to another whenever
they turn a corner. It leaves you going "how the hell
did they get over by the Golden Gate Bridge, they were in
Chinatown a little while ago".
Interestingly, I can't think of any movies that do a good SEEKING
job of capturing what you might call the punk era of SF
back in the early/mid-80s. For New York there are movies
like "Desperately Seeking Susan", or the amazing indie BASQUIAT
film "Downtown 81" (featuring Basquiat himself), but I
can't think of anything that captures the spirit of San
Francisco back when I got interested in the place.
Ah, actually the Charles Gatewood
documentary from 1988, "Weird San
Francisco", comes close.
MOVIES
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