“Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla" and other films at the 2015 SF IndieFest.
In 1975, an arson swept through the Gartland Apartments at 16th and Valencia, just down the block and kittycorner from the Roxie Theater, killing 12 and destroying the building.
Three decades later, a Gartland-like blaze in the rapidly gentrifying 21st century Mission would be the inciting incident in “The Other Barrio,” San Francisco poet laureate Alejandro Murguía’s tale of murder and corruption told from the point of view of a building inspector seeking justice for the fire’s dead. Filmmaker Dante Betteo knew within minutes of picking up the 2005 anthology “San Francisco Noir” and reading Murguía’s short story that he wanted to film it. Betteo’s homegrown neo-noir, his feature directing debut, makes its world premiere as the 17th SF IndieFest’s centerpiece on Sunday at Brava Theater.
“It feels really good,” says Betteo. “It’s an honor to be selected, and also we believe it’s very appropriate, given the theme of the film, given the fact that we shot it almost entirely here and the fact that most of the players both in front of and behind the camera are from the Mission or have some connection to the Mission.”
Indeed, if ever a film was born for IndieFest, it is “The Other Barrio.” The festival has its roots firmly in the Mission. And so do Murguía (who appears in the film as — what else? — a poet), Betteo, producer Lou Dematteis, production designer Rene Yanez (a Mission resident currently embroiled in an Ellis Act eviction), composer Greg Landau, star and co-screenwriter Richard Montoya (who now makes his home in Los Angeles, but who hails from the neighborhood where he co-founded the theatrical troupe Culture Clash), and more.
“The Mission is very cinematic,” says Betteo, whose locations include Radio Habana, Balmy Alley, the nowdefunct drag bar Esta Noche, and other familiar Mission sites. “I think we’ve shown parts of San Francisco that
Hollywood doesn’t really focus on. The city is beautiful. When Lou and I started this, we agreed that the city had to be one of the characters.
“Most of the locations were scouted by Lou and I, not just because of budgetary constraints, but we’ve lived in the Mission for years and years. We know the area.”
‘Hits’ opens festival
That sense of place is also woven into the fabric of IndieFest’s opening-night film, “Hits.” Like Betteo, David Cross — the comedian, actor and writer of “Mr. Show” and “Arrested Development” fame — makes his directing debut with a comedy in which smalltown politics, reality TV, YouTube and the American obsession with fame intersect. Curmudgeonly (and paranoid) crusader Dave (Matt Walsh) rants weekly at city council meetings, which comes to the attention of a Brooklyn advocacy group who travel to upstate New York to help him with his fight (and make a name for themselves) at the same time as his ambitious daughter Katelyn (Meredith Hagner) is going to great lengths to record an audition demo for “The Voice.”
A resident of Los Angeles for nearly a decade, Cross found his original inspiration listening to Santa Monica City Council meetings on the radio. But when he wrote the movie, he set it in Liberty, N.Y., close to his own home. Like Betteo and Dematteis in scouting their Mission locations, Cross went with what he knew. In a sense, both the story and the locale were practical decisions.
“Of all the story ideas I had, this was the one I could shoot the cheapest,” Cross says. “The cheaper something is, the more likelihood that you’ll get to make it and I knew it was a story I could write and shoot for under a million dollars. I also live near the area where the story takes place, so I was able to stay at my house and people could crash on my floor. It was that kind of project.”
“Hits” had its world premiere a year ago during the Sundance Film Festival at the 1,270-seat Eccles Theatre. At IndieFest, the ensemble comedy, which stars a host of Cross’ talented friends — including Michael Cera, James Adomian and Derek Waters — will makes its bow locally in the more intimate 360-seat Brava. Cross, who is self-distributing, is grateful for the exposure ahead of the film’s theatrical and BitTorrent release.
“I’m certainly happy that IndieFest exists, because it is a celebration of films that don’t necessarily get distributed widely,” Cross says, “I’m happy to be a part of it with my film, which is very much in the category of a low-budget, little indie movie. I’m glad there’s a place for it.”
A literary fraud
If “The Other Barrio” represents the Mission, Marjorie Sturm’s “The Cult of JT LeRoy” is more downtown Tenderloin. That is where writer JT LeRoy claimed to be a homeless, abused, HIV-positive youth before he became the best-selling author of “Sarah” and “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” and before he was revealed to actually be a woman named Laura Albert. It is also the neighborhood where in 2002 Sturm was putting herself through San Francisco State’s master’s of fine arts film program as a social worker when a friend helped her secure a gig documenting the author, although the project ultimately went
nowhere.
“As JT rose, I knew I had this footage,” Sturm says. “As I watched JT rise, I had this footage in my closet for three years, at least. I thought, ‘Where’s this going? Where’s he going? What’s his big plan for his longevity?’ ”
Once the fraud became public, Sturm suddenly had a film, using the footage she already had and reaching out to people who had become embroiled in LeRoy’s story. Albert has both fans and detractors, which should make for fascinating crowds at the three IndieFest screenings at the Roxie.
“I know I’m using ‘cult’ like ‘cult of personality,’ but I’m also meaning real cult, too,” says Sturm. “It holds up, the real cult analogy, the deception, the flattery, the working people with status, big time. ‘It was just a pseudonym.’ What I say is, ‘A pseudonym doesn’t get on the phone. A pseudonym doesn’t say, “I’m HIV positive.” ’ I’ve had to really explain to people what was unethical about it a lot.
“It’s such a San Francisco story, but I think people are really kind of confused about it. ... In San Francisco, alternative cultures and the underground sociopaths have a lot of leeway, because the boundaries and rules are more open, so they’re not quite as quick to judge.”