Longing For the City You're Locked In: Experiencing San Francisco Through Film
There was another time in my life, wherein no global pandemic was involved, when I was unable to leave my apartment. Instead, I was cripplingly depressed and in the throes of what I would later come to understand as a total mental breakdown. Going outside was a nightmare I attempted to face as rarely as possible, which worked out because I had no money or prospects, so what good was going outside anyway? I’d stay underneath the covers, in a room that got increasingly hotter as the sun moved across the sky, and think of the best time of the year to kill myself in order to not destroy anyone’s important events like Christmas or weddings.
During this time, one of the few activities that brought me any solace or even joy (aside from the blessed silence of sleep, which was less about joy and more about not being conscious) was watching movies filmed in San Francisco–the city I’d been living in for the past two years. It was both a soothing and aggravating experience; it helped me to remember why I had spent so much of my life fantasizing about living in this technicolor Sodom, but it also reminded me that I was struggling in poverty and unable to get my head above the figurative water. Had the water been literal, I would have just sunk to the bottom. Get me back to the ether, it’s quiet there.
Half a decade or so later, I come to find both myself and my entire city shut in as the shelter in place order (the first in this country) was enacted, and we were asked to do our part to protect vulnerable populations, a task San Francisco understands all too well. Without meaning to, I yet again found myself watching movies that covered all of California. I started with my teenage favorites Big Wednesday (1978) and The Doors (1991) and drifted towards NorCal movies with The Fog (1980), and before I knew it I was scouring the internet for Petulia and Fearless.
Watching movies filmed in a place you love when you’re stuck somewhere else can be a bittersweet experience. The normal feelings of homesickness crop up, you deal with it, and then you go about your day. Watching movies filmed in a place you love when you are physically present in said place but unable to enjoy it is a completely different story. The times I was unable to leave my apartment due to my mental state, San Francisco movies reminded me that there were thousands of places I could choose to live but I wanted to be here. I knew there would again be a time where I could experience my city. This time around, my concern about watching anything San Francisco-based during a crisis was that it would make me antsy–I’d be scratching through the walls I was already climbing. I was stunned when the result was the exact opposite; seeing the place I called home on film was a panacea.
First was Richard Lester’s Petulia (1968), a true San Francisco film about the collapse of the social revolution and the hollow culture brought in by the throngs of hippies who flooded the city in the 1960s. Petulia stars George C. Scott and Julie Christie as two sides of opposing generations who stumble their way into love. There’s a lot that makes this movie exceptional, starting with its odd combination of humor–from absurd cutaways in the vein of 30 Rock to deadpan delivery and satirical characters–but it’s also a time capsule. It was made in 1968, which makes its portrayal of the counterculture as being propped up by nothing but hot air prescient to say the least. It also features locations like Daly City back when it was just a few blocks of houses. Landmarks that were built in the 1970s that we now take for granted are missing, notably one of my favorite iron behemoths, Sutro Tower. This is a movie that incorporates every aspect of its location, not just its aesthetic beauty but the draw it’s had on people over the years. Its endless “gold rush city” quality and the patchwork culture created by waves of populations and movements. It’s a movie that both loves a place and rolls its eyes at the infuriating bits, which is how most of us come to find peace in the place we call home.
The second movie was one that was free on Youtube, a saving grace to yours truly during this bizarre time. Foul Play (1978) starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase is a movie about a librarian (Hawn) that accidentally gets caught up in an assassination plot. It’s a farce that, like so many of its kind, relies on mistaken identity and coincidences to get its story going. Chase is serviceable as the bumbling detective trying to help and Hawn is note-perfect in her goofy hilarity as always, but the real star here is San Francisco. Like Vertigo, this is a movie that cares not for geographical realities and goes for shots and scenes that don’t always make sense in real life. But it does bring us stunning views of bridges, beaches, and hilly streets flanked by pastel Victorians. The library (Sarah B. Cooper Public Library) Hawn works at is classical and beautiful, though no longer with us. For those of you in the know, it looks very similar to Noe Valley library on Jersey street. Every apartment these characters enter is great; every spot they stop for a chat or a panic attack is striking. Foul Play uses San Francisco as a city-scape canvas, less concerned with the culture and the quality of its location but here for the views.
The final movie is one that has already been mentioned on this site by the one, the only Mr. Carlo Vanstiphout. What else could it be but The Manitou.
For those of you who haven’t seen The Manitou (1978), of which I was one up until about 18 months ago when I saw it at the Alamo’s Terror Tuesday, I urge you to go find it and enjoy this weirdness, pronto. A movie that features a deformed Native American spirit growing out of someone’s back could only take place in a city as weird as San Francisco. Maybe New York too but we’ve got a lot more mysticism out on this coast, what with all the cults and mandated-by-God serial killers we’ve had over the years. Out of the three movies mentioned, this one has the least amount of San Francisco in regards to culture and setting, but what it does have is architecture and interior design. One character (Tony Curtis in a role that I believe is who he would have been had he not become Tony Curtis) lives in an quintessential San Francisco apartment with bay windows and a fireplace he’s actually allowed to use. That’s how you know this movie’s old: they don’t let us renters use fireplaces in wood buildings no more.
Most of The Manitou takes place in a hospital room and the star-filled dimension that hospital room turns into, but prior to that we do get to see some of the grooviest domiciles that ‘70s San Francisco had to offer. We’re talking beaded curtains hanging from high arched alcoves, old beauty parlor chairs tucked into nooks with huge windows, and crown molding as far as the eye can see. It’s a fun feeling to see an apartment in a movie, think to yourself must be nice to live there, then look around and see that essentially you do.
The Bay Area is faring better than a lot of the world right now in regards to the pandemic so one (me, I’m the one) hopes that I’ll be able to get back to loving my city in person sooner rather than later. As it stands, I’ll spend the next month or so doing what I did for the years before I moved to California and the few that I spent trapped inside, breaking down my psyche in order to rebuild it: loving my home through the movies made there and daydreaming about the time that I’ll be part of it all again.
