USA,
2007, 119 min
Shown in 2007
CREDITS
- dir
-
Gary Leva
- scr
-
Gary Leva
- cam
-
various
- editor
-
Gary Leva
- cast
-
Peter Coyote (narrator)
- source
-
Lucasfilm Ltd., P.O. Box 299901, San Francisco, CA 94129 FAX: 415-662-2437. EMAIL: lynne.hale@lucasfilm.com.
- premiere
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World Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Gary Leva attended. Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggat called a number of "fog city mavericks" onstage after the screening, including Les Blank, Carroll Ballard, Walter Murch, Bruce Conner, Chris Columbus, Rob Nilsson, Peter Coyote, Saul Zaentz, George Lucas and John Lasseter. Leva, Zaentz, Lucas, Columbus and Lasseter answered audience questions during a Q&A session. Also in attendance at the screening was United States Speaker and San Francisco representative (and former party planner for the SFIFF) Nancy Pelosi.
OTHER
Since the early days of cinema, when Charlie Chaplin honed his craft hereabouts and the Essanay Company made a legend of Bronco Billy, the San Francisco Bay Area has been a hotbed of moviemaking ingenuity. Tracing a lineage from the pre-cinema photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge, Gary Leva’s big-talent roundup chronicles the amazing past 40 years of the lives and times of Fog City’s best-known directors, with particular attention given to the groundbreaking achievements, influence and independent-mindedness of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. All the lions of Bay Area big-film-making are here: Saul Zaentz, Philip Kaufman, Chris Columbus, Clint Eastwood and Carroll Ballard, as well as the CGI groundbreakers at Pixar, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird and Pete Docter. In all, more than two dozen resident geniuses—the above, plus Walter Murch, John Korty, Sofia Coppola, Caleb Deschanel, Matthew Robbins, Bruce Conner, Robin Williams, Robert Dalva, Ben Burtt and Steve Jobs, among others—are featured in insightful on-camera interviews. Leva skillfully layers these fascinating testimonials with terrific behind-the-scenes stories, rare archival photos and footage, lively narration by Peter Coyote and brilliant scenes from some of the finest films of our generation (all made, as it happens, by your friends and neighbors). All the film’s principals have been invited for an onstage introduction; a smaller group will participate in a post-screening Q&A.
—Graham Leggat
FACTOID #10
In 1960, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, which has inspired many women to jump into fountains, was pulled from the San Francisco International Film Festival’s program by the distributor and replaced with Roberto Rossellini’s Night over Rome.
