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People, Places and Trends of 2000 (continued) Paul Roach Painter/Filmmaker If you live in San Francisco, chances are you've seen Paul Roach selling his noirish, moodily urban paintings in various neighborhoods. Dressed in a rumpled tweed coat and a beret, the soft-spoken Roach looks more like a kindly professor than a multitalented artist. As good as his paintings are, he might be an even better filmmaker. After completing Sidney Bird: Private Eye, a murder mystery set in the Haight which received some notice two years ago, the Oakland-based Roach is now ambitiously working on two (!) independent features, On Thursday and A Dollar Out of 15 Cents. (CD) Stacy Ross Actor The Bay Area's answer to Lili Taylor, Ross is quirky, changeable, intelligent and alluring without being obvious--and is one of those actors who I think ought to work a lot more around here than she does. Ross can do goofy (as her turn in this summer's San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's A Comedy of Errors amply proved), smart-sexy-strong (her role in Charlie Varon's long-running comedy hit, Ralph Nader Is Missing!, two years ago), and wounded and vulnerable (her recent performance at Marin Theatre Company as a lovesick bookworm in Tennessee Williams' early play Spring Storm). The only thing I haven't seen Ross do is be boring. She's intensely watchable, and a helluva nice gal, to boot. (KR) Julie Ann Ross and Julia Lolita Martin Producers, Blood & Butter Productions No one in San Francisco puts on an event quite like the women of Blood & Butter Productions. Heavy on costumes and huge on personality, Julie and Julia's licentious balls, intimates and open clubs have them playing the roles of hostess, matchmaker, networker and promoter. While their parties continue to gain momentum and mass recognition merely one year after the company's founding, their VIP lounges are already legendary. And did I mention that they're gorgeous to boot? And the crowd that follows them around ain't bad-looking either. (MS) Paul Rowley & David Phillips Installation Artists As antidote to accelerated culture, video artists Rowley + Phillips find the poetic in the slowed, the stilled. As in most of their installations, "Esther" explores a fragment, in this case, an elderly woman attempting to rise from a hospital bed, to find its own melancholic narrative. Their feature-length As Lathair will extend the hallucinations of their western short film, Suspension, while continuing to locate tensions within the film's dense textures and within the momentary. (CB) Saul David Scott and Leo H. Vezzali III Filmmakers Ambitious, charismatic and driven by what appears on their screen, the Oakland boys at Shockwave Pictures are making films that matter. Currently in the works: a documentary on the local spoken-word scene and a travelogue titled The Boatman of Thailand. Trashing corporate concerns in favor of art, the duo hopes to educate and entertain its audience in the coming year. (DC) Tanya Shaffer Writer/Performer Shaffer's solo travelogue Let My Enemy Live Long! has enjoyed an odyssey of its own through Bay Area theaters--from its initial run at Venue 9 over a year ago, to winning pride of place as the Eureka Theatre's premiere production at their new downtown home last winter, to a slot in Berkeley Rep's Parallel Season this coming April. With heart, wit and incandescent charm, Shaffer takes us on a trip to darkest Africa--and sheds some beautiful light along the way. (KR) Joel Shepard Programmer From day one of his stint as film and video curator at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Shepard has positively swamped the place--from his Giallo Italo-gore-o-ramas to his recent shrewd reiteration of the ¨uber-B movies of Anthony Mann and John Alton. In person, he's a Zen zenith, his controlled temperament cloaking a brilliant, sick taste and a resourceful and ever-whirring film brain. (EC) Shotgun Players Theater Troupe Under the artistic direction of Patrick Dooley (a man whose picture ought to be in the dictionary next to "indefatigable"), the East Bay's best ensemble-driven company wandered from lows (an ill-advised production of Ariel and Rodrigo Dorfman's Mascara) to highs (a brilliant staging of Shaw's Man and Superman and a well-received San Francisco run with Adam Bock's goofy and lovable Swimming in the Shallows). They've been wandering from church to park to studio over the past year--but the first year of the millennium promises to land the Shotgunners in fresh new digs in downtown Berkeley, where they ought to be able to get the larger audiences they deserve. (KR) Joseph Silva Club Guru Ah, the dangling Gainsbourgian question! Qui est in? Qui est out? Our partial local answer is: Joe Silva. When he's not in town, running his bumptious '60s-'70s club In n Out, this eclectic be-fro'ed character is frugging it up at Cafe Bleu in L.A. or jetting to Japan to soak in the latest. His report is mildly chilling: earth shoes are still all the rage--Jean Seberg is still everywhere there. We hold him blameless for not wanting to be dubbed a "promoter." (SB) Sleepytime Gorilla Museum Ageneric quartet Opening in haunting lullaby on beautiful, harp-like percussion guitars, I wondered if the conservatory better suited this eclectic quintet rather than the bottle-clink of Bottom of the Hill. But by mid-set, the angular brilliance, with violin, metal percussion and "low end homemades" augmenting the usual rock instrumentation, proved at home in the rock milieu. Blending the fragile with the impossibly heavy, STGM proved more ass-kickin', more melodic and more astonishing than any one genre could describe. (CB) Ssab Songs Newly Hot Label Obnoxiously with-it independent filmmaker and provocateur Harmony Korine (Gummo, julien donkey-boy, a Sonic Youth Video) made a record. You're not cool enough to "get it," but when it's strategically placed in your CD collection, the right people are bound to take notice. It's actually not a bad noise record, if you go for that sort of thing. (TF) Kyle and Bryce Stafford Directors With their quirky, dialogue-driven independent film, Escaping Otis, the brothers Stafford hope to take this year's festival circuit by storm. Otis, written by Kyle Stafford, 26, and co-directed with older brother Bryce, 29, is a darkly funny comedy that owes more to Rushmore's Owen and Luke Wilson than the Coen Brothers. Raised in Sonoma County, the brothers split time between San Francisco and Irvine, where Bryce is finishing his M.B.A. degree. But film is the real family business, and Escaping Otis--shot in dives around L.A. on 16mm for $35,000--flies off the charts in hitting its edgily comedic target. (CD) Melinda Stone 8mm Savior, Curator With the Internet homogenizing public space, Melinda Stone brings her art out. The passion and perseverance of her subjects in Visionary Environments and Amateur Adventures, such as one man who erected his own cow town, is analogous to her own attempt at new scapes, through site specific screenings. In all her film works--the Super Super 8 Festival, Self-Reliant Cinema classes, and involvement with amateur film clubs--Stone pushes a please-do-it-yourself giddiness, within landscapes on-line filmmaking coldly discards. (CB) Benjamin Susser Photographer Formally trained in commercial, illustrative and digital photography, Benjamin Susser bridges the gap between the technical and the creative processes of shooting. Fresh to San Francisco, Benjamin has been working both as freelance shooter and as assistant to major studios. "Assisting is the most effective way to learn all the intricacies involved in working at the high-end." Benjamin will be assisting SF fashion photographer Rico Schwartzberg on the Gap Kids 2000 campaign. After that, says Ben, "I'm ready to get out of assisting and take on the rat race." Is it ready for him? (CF) Therapy Recreational Activity The sudden gold rush of Bay Area millionaires only leads to mo' money and mo' problems. For decades, New York owned therapy culture, hands down. Californians were supposed to supplant anti-depressants with herbs. But therapy is now as much a status symbol as an SUV, to the point that Laurel Village is being cheekily referred to as "Couch Hollow" due to the preponderance of psychiatric practices located in the neighborhood. Whereas depression was once an undiscussed and isolating illness, it's now as chic as carpal tunnel syndrome. (MS) Joe Trish Ghost The spirit of this former union projectionist has been rumored to haunt the Castro Theater since his untimely death at work in the projection booth more than a decade ago. The figure of a tall, thin, bespectacled, middle-aged man has been spotted in the theater's often-closed balcony, and has even asked customers to return downstairs on occasion. With the current renovation of his second-floor haunt, he's sure to be even more vigilant. (TF) Eugene Tsui Architect If you've ever tooled around the East Bay and come across a monolithic piece of curvaceous white-and-gold or white-and-blue architecture that looks like a sea creature on steroids, then you've seen the work of Eugene Tsui. The innovator studies nature--the load-bearing structure of a crab shell, the trusslike form of a seagull's bone, the circulatory system of the stegosaurus--in order to design self-sustaining, earthquake-, flood- and fireproof architecture. At www.tdrinc.com, check out his work and give him a call if you're looking to do some remodeling. He's saved clients two-thirds of traditional contractors' bids with his innovative building techniques and materials. Also, he's a champion gymnast. Who knew? (TB) Natalija Vekic Film Footage Fetishist Natalija Vekic rediscovers cinema's forgotten beauty of artifice, from the chiaroscuro fairy-tale The Sacred Heart to the balletic blue muslin and bubbles of The Pearl Boy, visually citing the dreamy fetishes of The Bride with White Hair, Dr. Caligari, and Pierre et Gilles. Her newest is, fittingly, a hypnotic tale of lost memories. Like its greatest muse, 1970's sexploitative Pink Narcissus (minus the cocks), Vekic's film transforms cramped spaces into surreal cityscapes through low-rent sets and gorgeous cinematography. (CB) Velcro Fastener What announces your arrival at the drum 'n' bass club better than the rrrrrrrrrip of your ultra-hip Velcro shoulder bag at coat check? Velcro's not just for sneakers anymore. It's the lace, zipper, snap and button of the new millennium. Who knew that Back to the Future 2 would predict the face of fashion? (TF) Vice Magazine This smutty Canadian import has been gaining fast ground with ¨uber-underclass San Franciscans who can't wait to read about the differences between cocaine in New York, Montreal and Houston or what Ol' Dirty Bastard says when you call him up randomly on his cell phone. Like The Onion, Spy and National Lampoon before it, it mixes fact with fancy and disguises wisdom as wit. Get it now, while it's still free. (MS) Vivendo De Pao Music Unit A sensual and charismatic Brazilian band that got its start a few years back at the now defunct Gathering Caffe on Grant Avenue. They can frequently be seen at the Elbo Room in the Mission and the Great American Music Hall. Check out their energetic first album, Terreiro de San Francisco, and then compare it to their new one, Scratch Cooking. (CD) Steve Wagner Independent Producer Former executive producer and host of Filmtrip (KGO)--and, more recently, publisher of MODA magazine--Steve is making another foray into the world of independent television programming. He describes his new project as "a multicultural program with national distribution, very exciting and definitely challenging." Steve is currently writing a script for a television drama, based on his years as a traveling singer and musician. (CF) Jef Weed Digital Videomaker Best known for his Dick Dale-meets-Penderecki guitar thrashings on the soundtrack of John Waters' Desperate Living, Weed--a former member of Baltimore's folk-punk twosome The Raisinets--now seems poised to cross the threshold into digital-video "film" production with a long-form sex travelogue of Thailand titled Take Care, My Dick. As yet unfinished, the film's rushes suggest a collaboration between a dissolute Chris Marker and a doddering Nicholas Roeg. Softcore but hard-edged, this mysterious new movie may tear Dogme '95 to shreds. (EC) The White Lady Party Promoter From whence did all this snow come? For years San Francisco club kids, socialites and stockbrokers survived on a tricky and varying balance of speed, marijuana, ecstasy and GHB. Now, San Franciscans don't blink an eye when heavily lined silver plates are passed around an art exhibition. How did all this happen? What kingpin suddenly routed his mules to SF in hopes of a welcoming nose rush? Find your rolled Franklin and cherchez la dame blanche! (MS) WoMA Gentrified Acronym The secretly bourgeois proletariat of San Francisco may decry the loss of a yet another bohemia, but the Mission has split quicker than post-war Vienna with high-end restaurants and shopping boutiques opening on Valencia, Guerrero and Dolores on an almost daily basis. The "West of Mission Area," or WoMA, has developed into its own semi-affluent community of patrons who wouldn't be caught dead (or perhaps only dead) on Shotwell or Capp streets. (MS) Frank Wortham Performer Some guys have all the luck--and then there's Frank Wortham. The 26-year-old performer channeled the spirit of every restless, on-his-uppers American soul from Walt Whitman to Jack Kerouac to Sam Shepard, and crafted a tender and touching portrait of urban twentysomethings stuck in low gear with high expectations in House of Lucky. After its initial run with Berkeley's youth-oriented Impact Theatre, Wortham toured the piece to Chicago, New York and Boston--and came home to a triumphant, three-month, sold-out run at the Marsh. (KR) Ken Yamada Independent Filmmaker After working on video games for Sony PlayStation, Ken Yamada turned to writing. He co-wrote a feature film due out this year and is currently working on his first independent screenplay. His debut attempt, Some Daze, is set to be shot in January. Creatively incorporating his knowledge of digital video technology into film, Ken is able to "inject something organic into a high-tech world." (CF) << Previous   [ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]