Mission Mission

With Looking, Betas and Real World: Ex-plosion now available for your viewing enjoyment, the current SF production boom continues with Diary of a Teenage Girl, now filming around town. SFist has more on it here.

Day one of The Diary of a Teenage Girl ends at sunset in San Francisco. Couldn't be better. pic.twitter.com/UZvPmHnDe4

— Jorma Taccone (@jormataccone) January 21, 2014

Interested in a walk-on? Or at least being a blurry body in the background? Here’s the call for extras:

Do you know anyone interested in being a Background extra in SF on the film ‘Diary of a Teenage Girl’?
Please put them in touch using the info below!
We especially need men with longer/shaggy hair that fits the 1970′s period – call your hippy friends!

Please have all interested email the information below to the following email:
Diary.Casting.2@GMAIL.COM

1) Name, phone & email address
2) Are you over 18 y/o ?
3) Please attach a current photo. Candid or simple cell phone ” seflie” is fine.

All you need is hippy hair and a selfie!

Were you ever inducted into the Jejune Institute?

Back in 2008, I started seeing a bunch of Scientology-esque Memory-to-Media Center fliers around town, involving a device that could transcribe your memories and dreams onto VHS tapes, among other inconceivable claims. If you called the number on the flier, you would be led to the physical office of the Jejune Institute in the Financial District, then down a rabbit hole of scavenger hunts and mystery-solving through some of the lesser traveled nooks and crannies of San Francisco and Oakland. There was a whole host of mysterious characters and seemingly fictional organizations, including a cultish leader, a missing teenage girl, a rival organization threatening to take down the Jejune Institute, a dancing sasquatch, a bizarre low-wattage radio station broadcast from Dolores Park, and more.

It was revealed three years later that the Jejune Institute was a massive, intricate, immersive art project and alternate reality game, designed by artist Jeff Hull in order to encourage residents to explore their own city through an unlikely lens — a kind of Children’s Fairyland for adults. Around the same time, the Jejune Institute closed abruptly and left a lot of questions unanswered.

The Institute, a film by Spencer McCall, appears to be a documentary about the Jejune Institute, featuring many interviews with participants and the creator himself. However, it is not entirely clear how much of the film is real and how much of it is just another chapter to Hull’s art project. Some believe that more installments of the Jejune Institute await, and that this film is just the beginning of the next one.

The Institute is one of the most interesting and weirdly inspiring films I’ve seen lately, and it will appeal to fans of scavenger hunts, secret stairway walks, conspiracy theories, Unsolved Mysteries, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and the like. The Institute opens on Friday, October 4 and runs through Wednesday, October 9 at the Roxie.

Sure, they have movies at places like The Metreon, where you can get some fro-yo in the lobby, or Sundance Kabuki Cinemas where you can pay a mandatory convenience fee because they compost, or you can see a movie at The Balboa, where they show you a whole ‘nother mini movie before the actual movie! Check out The Wolverine, starring a few buddies of ours:

In response to the news of the production of the new ape movie in North Beach, Christopher Forsley shared a piece on our Facebook page where he tells of spending a sunny day watching all the apes movies to date, and fearing an actual ape attack in San Francisco:

I laughed until the childish and trite political commentary steaming off those piece of shit flicks knocked me out with a smell so disturbingly thought provoking that I couldn’t help but ask questions about the state of American culture – questions like this: When did our nation regress to the point that our intellectual cravings are satisfied by generic, diluted, substance-lacking yarns like the Planet of the Apes flicks?

Read on.

Scenes from set- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. #film #sf #set #sanfrancisco pic.twitter.com/rR91bvyoWZ

— SF Film Commission (@Film_SF) July 28, 2013

Our “Apes”. #film #sf #sanfrancisco #PlanetOfTheApes pic.twitter.com/le4O8vpZSN

— SF Film Commission (@Film_SF) July 28, 2013

Great shot! RT @AlexSavidge: North Beach looks like a disaster. Luckily it’s Hollywood magic, filming scenes pic.twitter.com/3x41d9NI4y”

— SF Film Commission (@Film_SF) July 28, 2013

Meanwhile, the reviews are coming in for Blue Jasmine.

Just in time for Pride, which is just around the corner! And seriously, when was the last time you saw something at the Victoria?

Frameline37 will be showcasing documentaries and narrative features from over 30 countries, and will also be screening films at the Castro Theatre and Rialto Cinemas in Berkeley. Notable films and events in the festival include a film adaptation of Michelle Tea’s Valencia, a retrospective screening of But I’m a Cheerleader, that James Franco-produced documentary on the Armory and Kink.com, another new James Franco project, a spotlight on Queer Asian Cinema, and more.

Here are all of the films screening at the Roxie, and all of the ones at the Victoria. Check out the Frameline37 website for full schedules.

If you’re a fan of Thee Oh Sees, you should see Petey & Ginger, screening at the Roxie this week as part of DocFest. Made for Danish television I think, it’s a 60-minute portrait of the director’s two American friends, one of whom is Oh See Petey. Its very loose thesis seems to be something about the American economy’s effects on creative types in the ’00s, but mostly it’s fun to get a few little behind-the-scenes glimpses of Thee Oh Sees at work (and at play).

At the premiere on Friday, Petey was on hand for Q&A after the film. He’d just had four shots of whiskey — which seemed fair seeing as how it was his first time seeing this feature-length documentary about himself — so his A’s were more entertaining than they were illuminating. I asked what it was like being able to leave his day job a few years back for a full-time job as a rockstar, and he giggled some and rocked back and forth a few times and slurred something about a European company buying the dildo distributor he used to work for. It was lots of fun. (Film festival rule of thumb: always go opening night for the Q&As!)

The movie is preceded by a short, Brute Force, about this musician Brute Force who worked with the Beatles for a second before slipping into obscurity. It stars him and his daughter, Daughter of Force, and shows what they’re up to nowadays in NYC. This movie is a gem.

Here’s Brute’s big (long-lost) hit:

Both films screen again Thursday night at 9pm, at the Roxie. Get tickets here.

Remember those good ol’ days when Woody Allen was in the Mission making a movie? The film opens next month and is called Blue Jasmine, and the first trailer is out, in which Cate Blanchett refers to an apartment nicer than yours as “homey” and another guy refers to the neighborhood as a “big comedown” from what rich people are used to.

SF DocFest, SF Indie’s 12th annual documentary festival, starts today and runs through the 23rd. The festival kicks off tonight with the west coast premiere of Spark: A Burning Man Story at the Roxie Theater.

Notable and relevant film screenings include:

• Petey and Ginger, featuring Petey Dammit of Thee Oh Sees and a local band-filled soundtrack
• Gut Renovation, about Williamsburg and all of our readers’ favorite topic ever, gentrification!
• These documentary shorts by local filmmakers
• Edible City, about the Bay Area Good Food movement
• This one about Pussy Riot
• This one about Bettie Page
• This one about The Pirate Bay

And there’s plenty more, so be sure to check out the full schedule (or just The Roxie’s schedule, if you don’t want to leave the neighborhood).

Our good pal Kate reminded about this gem from 1986 that stars Kevin Bacon as a hotshot stockbroker who loses it all and becomes a bicycle messenger on the mean streets of San Francisco.  Check out the trailer to also catch a glimpse of him racing a young Lawrence Fishburne down some speedy SF hills!

Also, more people need to be doing this in front of bars: