Category: In Production

In Production

A missing Fishbone and the pitfalls of marriage

One of the more encouraging trends in documentary these days is the eagerness of filmmakers to twist, shake, rattle and roll that most clichéd of genres, the rock doc. Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler’s portrait of the venerable Southern California punk-funk outfit Fishbone, Everyday Sunshine, aims to blend history, performance and character study into an acutely dramatic, if not radical, brew. "When you’re doing any sort of biography, it’s kind of difficult to veer too much off the path of the traditional music documentary," Metzler concedes. "That said, we’ve been focused on making this film not a VH-1 ‘Behind the Music’ doc but something along the lines of Crumb. A portrait of the artist with their own quirky sensibility."

Anderson introduced Metzler to Fishbone’s music, as well as the idea of making a movie about the band, and the San Francisco duo began filming two years ago. Anderson was the outreach coordinator for The Real Dirt on Farmer John, and Metzler was making the festival rounds with (Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea (co-directed with Jeff Springer, who’s editing Everyday Sunshine). They landed a wild catch in the Fishbone saga, even by rock’n‘roll standards.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary, features, music, women filmmakers

In Production

Ellsberg and the Empress

When Prince Charles and Camilla visited San Francisco in 2005, one of their most publicized outings was an hour-long stop at the Empress Hotel. The building had been converted just a year earlier into a residence hotel for homeless people, and was the pride of the city’s Direct Access to Housing program. As soon as the royals and the TV crews left the Tenderloin, of course, the spotlight drifted off the Empress. So much the better for esteemed S.F. documentary makers Allie Light and Irving Saraf, who subsequently began filming a portion of the hotel’s 90 residents.

“We went into it with a lot of naivete,” Light recalls, a surprising admission for veteran filmmakers whose subjects have included mental illness (Dialogues with Madwomen) and convicted killers (Blind Spot: Murder by Women). “I believed entirely what we were told,” by the residents, Light says, “how happy they were to have a place to live, and how much they were trying to get their life together. [One tenant named] Jeffrey is very verbal and clear about who he is and was. And then we see him out on the street selling a voucher from his therapist. They reveal themselves.”

topics: bay area, documentary film institute, independent film, political film

In Production

Putting flash to mustache, plus: Swenson's Salton Sea adventures

SF360.org editor’s note: This is the first edition of Michael Fox’s "In Production" column on Bay Area filmmaking, which will be appearing every other week in SF360.org.

Director’s Manual, Lesson 1: The idea for a film can literally strike anywhere. Laura Lukitsch was chilling at a rest stop in Arizona in 2003, en route to her sister’s wedding in New Mexico, when a busload of men on their way to the World Beard and Mustache Championships pulled in. She took out her new camera—which she was still learning to use—and discovered it had magical magnetic properties. "They came up to me and gave me an interview because it was the biggest camera there," the San Francisco filmmaker said with a chuckle the other day on the phone. When Lukitsch showed the sequence to family and friends, she got an unexpectedly passionate response. "Guys wanted to buy the footage," she recalled. "There was more to this than meets the eye. It seemed to bring up issues of family, of tradition, of religion, even male bonding."

topics: bay area, directors, distributors, documentary