Poor people take the bus
Jan. 9th, 2007 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaSpontaneously, I went out near the ocean to see a movie last night. I don’t know if "The Pursuit of Happyness" is playing outside of SF anymore, but since they disrupted my life for awhile while filming it I was curious how it all turned out.
Basically Will Smith plays a single dad trying to provide for his son (played by his real life son) while completing a competitive and unpaid stock broker internship at the beginning of the Reagan ‘80s. Everyone in SF kinda knows the plot because it’s "based on a real life story" and took so long to film so beware if you don’t want to read "spoilers". Anyways, he and his son get thrown out of their home in the Mission/Chinatown/Nob Hill district, move to a hotel in the Mission/Chinatown/Nob Hill /Los Angeles District and then become homeless, sleeping at Glide memorial and the bathroom of the Glen Park Bart Station.
This movie wasn’t what I expected. I expected a more feel-good-about-capitalism story since I knew going in that the guy would get his job and become a multi-millionaire. I thought there’d be just enough of a taste of adversary for us to feel empathy and a lot of celebratory anyone-can-do-it stockbroker wankfest. Instead, the movie is kinda of brutal for a big Hollywood film, mostly showing how easy the descent into homelessness and grinding poverty can be. People in this movie actually spend a lot of time taking the bus which is Hollywood shorthand for "desperately poor".
A usual conceit of the let's-all-be-happy-for-the-millionaire movie is they are exceptional people. In this movie Smith’s character is so exceptional though (talking his way into getting hired at Dean Witter while fresh out of jail, paint-covered and wearing a tank top, fixing the expensive bone density scanner he is trying to sell by window light at the homeless shelter, etc.) that he is beyond identifying with. I was all, "Guess I would have slept in that shelter for the rest of my life."
The heart of the movie is the obliviousness of the rich people in their interactions with Smith. In a wonderfully unsubtle metaphor for the Reagan ‘80s. the camera follows a convertible of laughing suits (who could be Smiths co-workers at Dean Witter) until they turn the corner and then the camera finds Smith and his son in the middle of a massive line for the few beds at Glide. The higher-ups are always asking to borrow petty sums of money, not realizing that it means Smith will miss a meal.
But whatever, Smith wants to be one of them and with a dogged persistence, and without a word about junk bonds, he overcomes blah blah and achieves success in the last two minutes of the movie. Unfortunately we are only told of his good fortune via epilogue so we don’t get to see Smith in his convertible driving by the lines of homeless people.
But really I only went for the San Francisco bits. The scene where Smith stiffs the cabbie and before he runs into the fake BART Station in Duboce Park: right in front of my apartment. Smith was sitting in front of the house for hours in a directors chair sipping orange juice. With the history of "Vertigo" and " Bullitt" I don’t expect characters to actually make any sense in their travels trough the city and I wasn’t disappointed to see the mansions of Noe Valley and Will Smith run from place to place, he was always running, that would have been impossible in real life. Minor mistakes like a character saying "415" when giving his number out (510 didn’t exist yet and even when it did people, would only specify "510" for years as 415 was assumed), and the use of the Denver Boot for parking tickets which didn’t happen until the ‘90s in SF*
But it is fun to see films made in San Francisco. Speaking of which, did you hear that Kink.com bought the Armory? (press release NOT worksafe).** (EDIT: oh hey, they do have a worksafe version of the press release. Here ya go.) They "look forward to an exciting restoration project and helping revive San Francisco’s movie industry." I can’t wait until The Mayor has Charlotte Maillard Swig host a soiree for the visiting film stars.
Also, we now have a place to make our last stand when the Christian right tries to take San Francisco by force. Someday the Armory will be our Alamo.
*In the SF Bay Guardian’s most memorable letter to the editor, Homocore Tom Jennings responded to the Guardian’s editorial for "anarchists" to dismantle other people's Denver Boots by saying, basically, that anarchists had better things to do with their time.
**Worksafe armory pics here
Basically Will Smith plays a single dad trying to provide for his son (played by his real life son) while completing a competitive and unpaid stock broker internship at the beginning of the Reagan ‘80s. Everyone in SF kinda knows the plot because it’s "based on a real life story" and took so long to film so beware if you don’t want to read "spoilers". Anyways, he and his son get thrown out of their home in the Mission/Chinatown/Nob Hill district, move to a hotel in the Mission/Chinatown/Nob Hill /Los Angeles District and then become homeless, sleeping at Glide memorial and the bathroom of the Glen Park Bart Station.
This movie wasn’t what I expected. I expected a more feel-good-about-capitalism story since I knew going in that the guy would get his job and become a multi-millionaire. I thought there’d be just enough of a taste of adversary for us to feel empathy and a lot of celebratory anyone-can-do-it stockbroker wankfest. Instead, the movie is kinda of brutal for a big Hollywood film, mostly showing how easy the descent into homelessness and grinding poverty can be. People in this movie actually spend a lot of time taking the bus which is Hollywood shorthand for "desperately poor".
A usual conceit of the let's-all-be-happy-for-the-millionaire movie is they are exceptional people. In this movie Smith’s character is so exceptional though (talking his way into getting hired at Dean Witter while fresh out of jail, paint-covered and wearing a tank top, fixing the expensive bone density scanner he is trying to sell by window light at the homeless shelter, etc.) that he is beyond identifying with. I was all, "Guess I would have slept in that shelter for the rest of my life."
The heart of the movie is the obliviousness of the rich people in their interactions with Smith. In a wonderfully unsubtle metaphor for the Reagan ‘80s. the camera follows a convertible of laughing suits (who could be Smiths co-workers at Dean Witter) until they turn the corner and then the camera finds Smith and his son in the middle of a massive line for the few beds at Glide. The higher-ups are always asking to borrow petty sums of money, not realizing that it means Smith will miss a meal.
But whatever, Smith wants to be one of them and with a dogged persistence, and without a word about junk bonds, he overcomes blah blah and achieves success in the last two minutes of the movie. Unfortunately we are only told of his good fortune via epilogue so we don’t get to see Smith in his convertible driving by the lines of homeless people.
But really I only went for the San Francisco bits. The scene where Smith stiffs the cabbie and before he runs into the fake BART Station in Duboce Park: right in front of my apartment. Smith was sitting in front of the house for hours in a directors chair sipping orange juice. With the history of "Vertigo" and " Bullitt" I don’t expect characters to actually make any sense in their travels trough the city and I wasn’t disappointed to see the mansions of Noe Valley and Will Smith run from place to place, he was always running, that would have been impossible in real life. Minor mistakes like a character saying "415" when giving his number out (510 didn’t exist yet and even when it did people, would only specify "510" for years as 415 was assumed), and the use of the Denver Boot for parking tickets which didn’t happen until the ‘90s in SF*
But it is fun to see films made in San Francisco. Speaking of which, did you hear that Kink.com bought the Armory? (press release NOT worksafe).** (EDIT: oh hey, they do have a worksafe version of the press release. Here ya go.) They "look forward to an exciting restoration project and helping revive San Francisco’s movie industry." I can’t wait until The Mayor has Charlotte Maillard Swig host a soiree for the visiting film stars.
Also, we now have a place to make our last stand when the Christian right tries to take San Francisco by force. Someday the Armory will be our Alamo.
*In the SF Bay Guardian’s most memorable letter to the editor, Homocore Tom Jennings responded to the Guardian’s editorial for "anarchists" to dismantle other people's Denver Boots by saying, basically, that anarchists had better things to do with their time.
**Worksafe armory pics here
