 Fog
City Mavericks: The Filmakers of San Francisco
Director: Gary Leva
Starring: George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Robin Williams, Clint
Eastwood, Chris Columbus, Sophia Coppola, John Lasseter, Milos Forman,
Saul Zaentz and more.
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Face it, documentaries can have a tendency to induce sleep; or
they play to the literati of their selected genre, alienating
the common folk in the darker theater pews…
This
is so not the case in Fog City Mavericks. This work reminds
its lucky viewers why they fell in love with movie-going to begin
with: the creative minds behind the frames that paint moving images
to feed our imaginations.
Here,
director, producer, writer and editorial wiz Gary Leva and his
crew tell the story of some of America’s boldest, bravest
and honest film makers.
However,
unlike the who-did-whats you may have seen tally-ho’d prior,
Leva's subjects have a common element which until now has been
unfocused on: San Francisco; a quiet roaring artistic behemoth
that’s a mere seven square miles of an uncompromising Bohemian
slant reminiscent of Paris circa 1920.
In
fact San Francisco is considered by the celluloid purest to be
where American film began. Makes sense, since the gold rush boom
brought in a tsunami of high-energy brave hearts from all points
throwing caution to the wind for a taste of success; hard earned
success. Is there really any wonder the city morphed into the
ongoing creative Mecca it is today?
Two
of the Fog City’s “children” are considered
by film enthusiasts to be the fathers of modern cinema: George
Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.
They
met on a set and each admired the others point of view without
being too much of an egotist. They also both detested the Hollywood
machine that forced box office results over art that was in its
seventh decade a few hundred miles south.
Naturally
youth and desire led the pair into a self directed company filled
with friends to play in their medium of film. They would make
films they liked on their terms.
When
reality hit idealism, Coppola, like many film geniuses (think
Orson Welles), would dip into the flaming studio cauldron and
sell a bit of his soul to keep funding going.
Lucas,
meanwhile, was sorely bashed and prodded when he ran a tasting
spoon over the cauldron – even when he delivered to it a
crowd pleasing mirepoix called, American Graffiti.
The
suffering of fools was never a more well served cliché.
Were Lucas a lesser man he would have certainly given up…Ah,
but what does not kill us…makes us dig in and create Star
Wars. Well, him anyway.
Fog
City doesn’t just spot light the two universally famous
honor roll lads. It also offers smile broadening insights to many
other San Fran leaders: Clint Eastwood, Saul Zaentz, Chris Columbus,
and John Lasseter to name drop the bare minimum included here.
You’ll learn about a neat tie to Chaplin’s legacy.
And see how a group of some celluloid purest pop culturists successfully
managed to dance around Hollywood politics to make some of the
finest films ever illuminated.
The
doc uses hundreds of clips that will warm your heart like grandma's
rum-laced warm apple cider on a winter's sunset. The chosen scenes
instantly place you in a happy crevice of your brain where you
stored the endorphins of the first time you saw them. A sample?
Sure: the Star Wars films, the Indiana Jones films, The Godfather
works, Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus,
Toy
Story, The Incredibles, The Black Stallion, on into Lost
in Translation.
The
most important thing Fog City Mavericks does is restore
your faith that there are keepers of the flame of the first doe-eyed
filmmakers. There will always be a group of film fidgeting mavericks
who will trust instincts, let hunger pangs roar and keep us sane
by producing the anti Fast and Furious homogenized cookie-cutter
crap the big blue meany studios want to force feed us nowadays.
A
blunt aside: Comedian Robin Williams has one of the final
lines in the flowing doc. He throws in an impression of Truman
Capote as Darth Vader – and frankly, if for no other reason,
rent this! Buy
this! Share This!
Snack recommendation: Something
quiet to nibble upon as Fog City is just that interesting.
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