A personal memory I have of that hotel is the 1990 and 1991 Out/Write conferences, which brought together the whole LGBT literary world for the first time. Searching for some mention of these conferences on the web, I found a lovely piece by Edmund White, in which he gives a glowing description of the 1991 conference.

Also read: Curbed SF on the Jack Tar Hotel

It’s hard to know where to start with a film as rich as A Christmas Tale (trailer), which opens tonight, November 21^st at the Bridge Theater for an exclusive one-week run. It’s under consideration for one of France’s top film honors, the Louis Delluc prize, and no wonder: in two and a half hours that never drag or bore, director Arnaud Desplechin explores every aspect of a crazy dysfunctional family, and takes us on a journey that, for all its length, almost feels a bit too short.

The heart of the story is Junon (Catherine Deneuve) and Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon), whose three adult children have been locked for years into a state of passive-aggressive feuding. Overshadowing their lives is the fate of their oldest child Joseph, who died of leukemia forty years earlier at the age of seven. When Junon develops the same disease — and there is a chance that one of her children may be able to donate marrow to save her life — they all return to the family home to be tested, and for the holidays. Merry Christmas!

It sounds like a depressing film — as Desplechin himself said of it, everything “in the scenario should scare a producer half to death” — but in fact it’s often quite hilarious, and all the tragedy is treated with a light touch that somehow doesn’t trivialize it. But in the end that’s very true to life. Add in the wonderful cast — Mathieu Almaric, Emmanuelle Devos, Hippolyte Girardot, and Chiara Mastroianni (the only actress I can’t stop thinking about and Deneuve’s real-life daughter) — and it’s a film you just can’t miss.

Desplechin visited San Francisco back in October to attend a screening of the film at the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now festival. We chatted in his hotel suite; his accommodations delighted him so much that he took us out onto the balcony to share the amazing view he had of downtown and the bay. We enjoyed a rich, wide-ranging discussion about this and his other films, about his process, his opinions about various films ranging from Fanny and Alexander to The Royal Tenenbaums to The Outsiders, his plans to make a film about the birth of hip-hop in France, and why he refuses to think about casting while working on a script — even if, as with the case of Catherine Deneuve in this film, there’s really nobody else who could do the role.

It’s a lengthy interview but well worth your time, if you’d like to get a glimpse into the mind of one of the finest directors working in France today. Full text after the jump.

You’re sometimes compared to Truffaut, but as I watched this film, I kept thinking of Fanny and Alexander. It was partly the Christmas holiday, but it was mainly how comprehensively this peels back the surface of one family’s life, and really explores the tensions between the individual family members.

Fanny and Alexander must be the one film I know by heart. For me it is the absolute Bible; everything that I love in cinema, is in that film. It was very important for me because, in a certain sense, I was its exact contemporary. It came out at exactly the right time, and I was exactly the right age to receive it. And it was extremely important for Eric Gautier [the DP] as well. So when we did our first film together, which was La vie des morts, we just used Fanny and Alexander because we knew it by heart. But when we started working on this film, for me it was too close because of the Christmas thing, so I didn’t allow myself to watch it again. I used three other films to escape from Fanny and Alexander.

What were those other films?

One was The Dead, the John Huston movie, because there’s a Christmas there too. But mainly I was in love with two movies that were released the same year in France. One was Saraband, the last Ingmar Bergman movie, and the second one was The Royal Tenenbaums.

No kidding! Well, I can certainly see the connections there.

Yes. And I really fell in love with the two films. They were so close. To me they both had the same plot. You have one divorce, one suicide, you have one family, trapped in a house.

One is funny but it’s not that funny. Mainly the Anderson movie is about despair, like all of his movies, and the other one — you could say, because Bergman was the director, that it’s not funny, it’s threatening, there is incest … and I was thinking, am I the only person who sees these two films and sees how much they have in common? And I thought that my film could be the thing that these two films share.

Okay, you mentioned La vie des morts, and of course that was the film of yours that I kept thinking of, because obviously, in both films, the threat of an impending death draws a fragmented family together into one physical space. Was this film a way to have another go at that material?

Well, yes. When I brought my first sketches of this to the producer, I felt a little embarrassed because, you know, it’s a little silly, I already did this, and it was kind of a trick to do it twice, just with brand-new materials. The structure of it, I mean — come on. It’s a house, it’s a family, they’re attracted there. But the producer really responded to it. In a way, it wasn’t entirely pleasant for me. Much like Fanny and Alexander, La vie des morts was something I wanted to keep out of my mind.

This is a rather somber drama, but there’s also a great deal of humor in it. And wherever there is alienation and hatred in the family, there is also tenderness and love. Junon has this wonderful line: “Thanks to my disease, we’re being reunited.” Did you consciously try to strike a balance between melancholy and humor?

Not really. I’d say it’s worse than balance, it’s something much deeper than that.

First of all, everything that is in the scenario should scare a producer half to death. I mean listen to me, “it’s actually a family with a dead kid, plus the mother is dying, and her grandson is going crazy and tries to kill himself, plus the sister and the brother hate each other’s guts, and these three couples are just moved by despair and brutality.” It’s a story with despair, death, failure, lack of money, suicide.

So how can one transform this material into something that would be pure enjoyment? You know, to transform all the things that, on a narrative level, would seem to be a burden, and to transform this burden into energy.

Really the first sketch I showed the producer was that quote from Emerson, the opening lines, being said by the father in the graveyard. He’s speaking of the death of his young kid, who was seven years old. The point of those lines is: my son has died, but I feel no sorrow, he’s just like a leaf falling from the tree. It’s just so cruel, it’s so brutal, but I knew it would be good material for an actor because it has such poetic strength. It became a kind of quest to create a character who would be capable of saying such a thing.

So here you find the narrative principle of the movie: the father is not denying the fact that his son is dead; he is contesting the value of sorrow.

What we usually think is that the gentle parts of life won’t teach you anything, but that the brutal parts will. Sadness or suffering or cancer or suicide, they all teach me things about life, and the gentle part teaches you nothing. But the father is saying: no, no — I contest sorry, I contest death. I think laughter has more value than weeping.

Obviously this is absurd. That’s why, I guess the family is so sick, because this contestation becomes the moral principle of the family. It’s a family that contests the value of sorrow.

Do you think that’s because otherwise their sorrows would overwhelm them?

I suppose so. For sure for the father, because you can see that he can’t spend a day without thinking about his lost son. I guess all the rest of the family forgot him, but for the father, well … you see photos of the son on the table, on the bed, everywhere, the father can think of nothing else. But — he contests the value of sorrow.

Told you it was worse than mere balance!

Where did this image of the wolf come from? It’s such an effective way to remind the audience of all these sorrows hanging over the family. The hallucination, the story about the wolf in the basement, and so on.

Well, there’s always stories like that in families, and in people’s houses. But it’s true what you say, the wolf represents sorrow, the cancer, and all that. But at the same time it represents a kind of power that the grandson is attracted to. There’s a scene I like very much, when the young man looks at his reflection in the mirror, and when he says, if I donate my bone marrow, I might kill my grandmother. There’s a feeling of power he gets from that, and even enjoyment. “This could make me an adult, and I could even be as nasty as my uncle!” And so that wolf, the image of that wolf, it’s an ambiguous image for the young man, in his episodes of madness.

It’s both an omen and a promise.

Yes, that’s right, exactly. It exists in both senses.

Many of these actors have worked with you before. Did you have casting in mind as you developed the script?

I forbid myself to think about that question while writing. Otherwise I’d be certain to restrict the role, to bend the role around my preconception of what that actor could do. If I think I’m writing for Mathieu [Almaric], for example, it will restrain the part.

You know that scene where he’s walking along drunk and he’s mumbling all that obscene, weird stuff? When I wrote that I thought, Mathieu won’t be able to act this. So I wrote a second text that I thought would be easier to do. So on the third day of shooting I said to him, let’s do the new text because the old one would just be too weird. And he looked at me almost with tears in his eyes and said: “But I can play it. Let me play it.” He was so sad, because I was trying to restrict the role according to this idea I had about him.

This was so even with Deneuve. That character is an older woman, and you know, there just aren’t that many French actresses, of her caliber, at her age. So the producer said of this character, “Deneuve, for sure.” But I said, “forget it.” Deneuve can play perhaps this, that, or the other, but not this role. And so we worked very dilligently to find five other possible actresses for that role. After we did all that, we were looking at all the photos we had up there on the board, and when the producer saw it he just laughed, saying, “obviously, it’s still going to be Deneuve.” In the end, she came by the producer’s office on some other business, and before she left she said to him, “I hear that Mr. Desplechin is making a film and he needs an actress, may I give you my photo?” So we called her the next day. But we did all the other stuff before that!

What’s next for you?

I have two little embryonic sketches that I’m working with. One I’m sure I’ll use is — you know this new American genre of films set in the 1980s? They evoke the 80s and the feeling of 80s films — late 70s, early 80s. And recently I saw a film set in the early 90s, it was called The Wackness. It was okay. I saw the trailer of it and thought it would be great, then I saw the movie and thought it was a little lazy.

Even so, I thought it would be really interesting to try to adapt that kind of genre to a French setting, and the birth of hip-hop in France. Because we are actually the only country outside the USA where hip-hop is so strong. And why? Yes, a lot of French hip-hop is made by North Africans, and black Africans, but also by a lot of white people, and it’s — so you see, it really belongs to everybody. And I would love to show this moment of its history.

You remember The Outsiders, the old Coppola movie? I recently saw the new editing of it. It’s a little bizarre because, it’s an 80s film, but it’s this revival of the 50s in the 80s.

I’d forgotten about that movie. I haven’t seen it since I was 14!

Well, don’t see it again, because now you are too old for it. You would be a little embarrassed by some of the writing, sometimes it’s just — well. The cast is amazing. But the idea I have is, this bunch of young people during the 80s, you know, at the very birth of this music that we don’t always understand, because it’s so bizarre and political, and has drug dealers and gangs and so on. So what I was a little disappointed by in The Wackness, what I missed there, I would love to try and create that.

There’s another aspect to this. One of my first films was a spy story. I was really young then, and I had certain views about the cinema. I’d like to do something like that again, but in the meantime we’ve seen all these impossibilities become reality: September 11th, a united Europe. I’d like to go back and revisit that genre, in light of the impossible having taken place. You could say that I’d like to find some way to acknowledge September 11th from Europe. You know, it’s so difficult to tell a big story about the state of the world, but it should be possible for me to find a way to make a personal statement about the way things have changed.

And the hero will be a girl. That much I know!

[Translation from the French, where necessary, by myself and Don McMahon.]

This week, Marjorie Knoller, was back in court and sentenced, yet again. Knoller was the strange little woman whose giant dogs attacked and killed her neighbor, a college lacrosse instructor named Diane Whipple, back in 2001. The trial stirred up plenty of sordid details, including the pet owners’ “adoption” of an adult white supremacist convict they represented as attorneys, whose dogs they were apparently raising on his behalf.

The case was always controversial, and since a judge threw out the original jury’s second-degree murder conviction in 2002, an odd and continuing legal tug of war has existed between competing benches. In 2007, The California Supreme Court had ruled Knoller’s eventual 4 year sentence for a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter was inadequate. She would need to return to jail.

Knoller, who completed a four year stint (living in Florida and apparently estranged from her former husband who was paroled in 2003) has been brought back to California for re-sentencing that occured this morning. Little Marjorie is now expected to finish a “15 Years to Life” sentence, with eligibility for parole in 10 years when she’ll be 63 years old. The judge reportedly admonished Knoller and fined her as well, including almost $7000 in prison earnings…

Knoller’s attorney, Dennis Riordan, said they plan to file an appeal.

Bow Wow Yipee Yo Yippe Yay!

Now this story from the Chronicle yesterday, SF Landlord Couple plead not guilty…

A San Francisco landlord couple who are accused of waging a campaign of terror at a South of Market apartment building to drive out their renters are the victims of a lawsuit-happy tenant and did nothing wrong, their attorneys said Friday.

This gets interesting in this notable exchange where the landlords attorney ask for a reduction in bail.

“There were no actual threats of injury,” Whelan said, adding of Nicole Macy, “She’s clearly not a safety risk to society in general.”
Peltz said cutting out Morrow’s floor supports put him at risk of injury. He also said the couple had made death threats against tenants.

There was a developer who would burn his own buildings to the ground to get around the permitting process in SF a few years back. This doesn’t seem beyond comprehension that these owners would start to dismantle their own building to get their tenants out.

h/t to SFGate.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

This past weekend after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, the Code Pink group marched through the Presidio and arrived at Nancy Pelosi’s 2640 Broadway address (between Scott & Divisadero) around four o’clock in the afternoon. The group read aloud the names of all US servicemen killed in Iraq and called out for Pelosi.

The intentions of Code Pink, whose most prominent nationally known members include Medea Benjamin and Cindy Sheehan, is to personally pressure Nancy Pelosi to do more about ending Bush’s botched & apparently somewhat costly Iraq War. A war whose mission was supposedly “accomplished” several years ago, yet is still ongoing and approaching it’s 4th anniversary this weekend. Since GW Bush declared the $400 billion dollar war, over 3000 thousand American servicemen have perished, and it’s estimated that well over half a million Iraqis have died.

It was just this sort of info that on Monday March 12th prompted some SF Board of Supervisors members to announce their own non-binding and largely symbolic resolution that calls on Congress to “discontinue funding for ongoing military operations” and requests Congress to hold the Bush administration to account for its “total failure in Iraq.” Co-sponsored by Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano, Bevan Dufty and Ross Mirkarimi, the item was brought up during a typically dull but seemingly unrelated Budget and Finance Committee hearing. The resolution will be considered by the full Board of Supervisors at Tuesday’s regularly scheduled afternoon Board of Supervisors meeting. Over 63% of SF Voters approved a ballot measure calling for troop withdrawal from Iraq in November 2004.

Pictures from IndyBay.org and Code Pink

Other activities for those wishing to publically voice opposistion to a really fine , costly & outstanding US war effort include a teach in at the Federal Bldg on Weds, two marches this coming weekend, with organizer contact info provided after the jump…

If you’d like to know what’s going on at Camp Pelosi , a hotline # has been provided, so call (415) 260-1120 to reach activists Leslie and Toby at the camp.

Nancy’s casa in Pacific Heights is not the only location Code Pink is hitting, on Wednesday they intend to hold a teach-in at Nancy’s office at 450 Golden Gate. For those that do not know that address, it is the Federal Bldg, and Code Pink suggests bringing a photo ID, as security is generally on high alert at that location.

Wednesday’s lunchtime anti-war teach in is scheduled for 450 Golden Gate Avenue, (near Civic Center BART)
Bring photo ID! Y’all can meet for snacks in the 2nd floor cafeteria to receive info packets, then proceed to Nancy’s office at noon.

Two Anti War Marches Are Scheduled This Week:

Starve War/Feed Peace
Saturday, March 17th 11:00am
Walnut Creek, CA

Peace activists, families, children and all area citizens are urged to join this event on Saturday, March 17, 11 a.m., to promote the cause of peace. The march will assemble in the Walnut Creek BART parking lot, and proceed through downtown and on to Civic Park (Civic Drive and Broadway) for a rally at noon featuring speakers and music.

For information: www.mtdpc.org

Sunday, March 18 12noon
Justin Herman Plaza, March to Civic Center
San Francisco, CA

On March 17, 2007, the 4th anniversary of the start of the criminal invasion of Iraq, tens of thousands of people from around the country will descend on the Pentagon in Washington DC . Sf’s March is the 40th anniversary of the historic 1967 anti-war march to the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. The message of the 1967 march was “From Protest to Resistance,” and marked a turning point in the development of a countrywide mass movement.

For information: http://www.actionsf.org/
____________________________________

Before we got started chatting, he stopped at the Letterman campus. A lady there, started yelling at him , why did the outbound 43 not pick her up? She asked. Because you’re not standing at the right stop, he replied. Go across the street. She still didnt’ get it and continued to yell. He left, then turned to me to explain. Then, we started chatting and figured out that I was near his route’s end. Dangers, after the jump.

I was asking him about whether he got to choose to drive a motored coach versus an electric. He said he did, and he invariably would choose the motors. Some regulars got off, and there were “Merry Christmas” “Happy Holidays” all around. He continued that what he didn’t like about the electrics is that sometimes the wires were old, and when the arms got disconnected, you had to swing them up, and sometimes that broke the wire, and it would come down and shock you (the driver). Other stuff- it was hard to navigate around stalled cars in front of you- fire engines, etc. I usually avoid the motors since I’m so green (yeah right) except this route is fun because it swings through the Presidio- a cheap thrill, like the Staten Island Ferry or the J-Church through Dolores Park. I can’t imagine a job where you regularly run the risk of getting shocked.

* Casino Royale movie haiku:
total chick movie
craig is naked a whole lot
and we like that, yep.

Wow! I have to say that I really love the views of San Francisco.

This breath taker was round a bend as I ran my morning workout. Look closely, its Telegraph Hill there in the distance.

In the foreground, another, different landmark – America’s curviest road.

Both of these I came about just wandering around town. An amazing town with a different sight at every turn.

Danny Plotnick, a local indie filmmaker who in the past has documented the city’s indie rock underbelly via his 8mm masterpieces, and his late great magazine Motorbooty, now has curated a unique cinematic themed photo art show opening this week opening on Friday as well at a unique gallery spot in Pac Heights…

Ellenby, the official Noise Pop Festival photographer for a decade, has been documenting the local rock scene and has captured icons like The Flaming Lips and John Lee Hooker, to way obscure up & comer like 764-Hero, The Velveteen, John Vanderslice and many more. He’s now got a book with lotsa fine pix from venues like Bimbos & Great American Music Hall, plus a 21 track CD audially documenting the action pictured in the many dozens of colorful pages…

The CD features bands like Death Cab For Cutie, Rogue Wave, Chuck Prophet and lots more… full tracklist here.

Stop by 111 Minna on Thursday eve from 6-9 for a free reception & DJ throwdown featuring adult beverages, photo exhibit, book signing etc.

For those looking for a noisier time, Ellenby has put together a show at his fave spot The Bottom Of The Hill featuring a few of the bands pictured in the book including John Doe of X, who wrote the book’s forward.

Also on the bill are Oranger, engine 88, Carlos!, and a rare appearance of the late Overwhelming Colorfast.

small sonic sample:

Overwhelming Colorfast – Blue Fanclub

earlier on Friday night , for a bit of a more youthful trip…

Danny Plotnick’s art show is called “Left In The Dark” and is at The Jackson St Gallery, which is part of University High School where Plotnick is on the faculty as an Art & Film instructor. The show features Rebecca McBride’s portraits of SF’s last single screen theaters or what’s left of them. There are also installations from filmmakers Natalija Vekic and Christian Bruno that explore the decline of cinema via a cabinet of curiosities and film specimens as well as hand-sewn 35mm filmstrips that form a beautifully textured opaque screen.

Get Out & Support The Youth Arts!!!

Friday, October 27, Reception 5:30-7:30
San Francisco University High School
3065 Jackson Street (btw Baker & Lyon)

If you can’t make the opening, the University High School show is on view at it’s JACKSON STREET GALLERY until November 21 during normal, high schoolish hours.

Karr reportedly was spotted peering into the window of the Convent of the Sacred Heart school, where he worked as a teachers aid for awhile. This was of course, after emerging from a limousine hired by that cheery & wholesome breakfast program “Good Morning America” .

more bizarre baffling non-news on this lil incident , and how you can thank ABC’s parent company Disney for helping a bro out…after the jump…

Sgt. Steve Mannina told the San Francisco Chronicle that SFPD were called by a teacher after Karr “stepped out of the limo and stood (outside the school) for two or three minutes, walked down the sidewalk, went up to the door and looked in the window,”

Karr’s computer child porn charges were just dropped by a Sonoma County judge on Thursday, and for a celebration Karr might have been attracted to SF by the Chronicle’s recent expose’ on our thriving sex trade?

According to a UPI story “ABC did not say why the producers drove Karr to the school, but he has reportedly hired an entertainment attorney to help him stay in the spotlight.”

ABC’s corporate apologist flack VP of news, a former William Morris man, Jeffrey Schneider, was quoted as saying “His behavior gave us serious pause and ABC decided not to proceed with the interview.”

Here’s the email & phone of Manhattan’s man about town if ya want to complement his and his ABC colleagues quick & professional sense of “pause”

jeffrey.schneider@abc.com

tel: 212-456-3587
fax: 212-456-4912

addendum:

Last night this writer contacted Mr. Schneider mentioning my shock at ABC’s “sad tabloid journalism” and concern ” why a news department would stoop to this level, and whatever sort of ratings benefit you may have sought to gain is certainly offset by the distinct lack of respect your organization will now receive post this stupid & unnecessary incident.”

and

This morning I was surprised when I received the following contrite , if canned reply:

We were extremely disturbed by the incident at the school and canceled our planned interview then and there. Our producers were shocked when he jumped out of the car at the school. Your points are well taken. With regret, jeffrey