The 1947 film Dark Passage has quite a bit of San Francisco geographic weirdness, like Sam the cab driver’s story about a fare who with a bowl of goldfish who wanted to go to the ocean.
San Francisco in the Movies: Taking Goldfish To The Ocean
What is the First Movie to Mention Pizza?
In a scene in the 1953 film The Band Wagon, a cast member offers Fred Astaire “some pizza pie.” Could this be one of the first mentions of pizza in a Hollywood movie?
Examining the Hangover Cure in the Western “El Dorado”: Was Asafoetida Known in the Old West?
For some forgotten reason, I recently watched the 1966 Western El Dorado. It’s one of the better Westerns I have seen, with more humor and a lot less racism than the typical Western (though there’s a short cringe-worthy stereotyping of a Chinese person near the end). The film has a top-notch cast and crew: the […]
TV as Demolition: When the TV Show “Emergency” Filmed in Compton
One of my less productive minor obsessions is with the 1970s TV show “Emergency.” It began when a saw a bit of an episode set in San Francisco, which led me to buy a set of DVD that included the episode when “Emergency” filmed in San Francisco so I could learn the details of the […]
Mr. Monk and the San Francisco Goofs
It’s time again for some digressions about obscure television topics. The long-running series “Monk” from USA Network was set in San Francisco but it was rare that an episode had a strong connection to the city. That was probably in part by design since it was primarily filmed across the Los Angeles area (an urban […]
When “Emergency” Filmed in San Francisco
As a child, I sometimes watched the TV series “Emergency”, which ran from 1972 to 1979. Even though it featured crises and injuries that could easily happen to me or my friends or family, the show must have had some kind of attraction. Perhaps it was all of the heavy equipment or the explosions. With […]
Did the Bluth Family Build Sunnydale High School?
And now, a significant diversion from the normal content. Recently, while rewatching two of my favorite TV series—Arrested Development and Buffy the Vampire Slayer—I noticed that the same piece of art was on a wall in both shows. Very weird. In Buffy, I noticed it in the new Sunnydale High School’s main office (where Buffy […]