Lights, Camera, Hella Action: The East Bay on Film
The best and the worst of the East Bay on the silver screen.
Some of the greatest movies all time (The Conversation, The Maltese Falcon) and a few of the worst (Nine Months, Just Like Heaven) are set in San Francisco. While the East Bay is maybe a little less cinematically iconic, it has had its moments. Here’s a rundown of the good, the bad and the Matrix.
Moneyball
For a movie set in Oakland, about Oakland, there is not a lot of Oakland in this acclaimed 2011 insider baseball drama. There are, however, a lot of sexy shots of Brad Pitt strolling around the Coliseum stewing on batting averages.
And staring at empty seats with a burning curiosity for RBIs.
The Graduate
One of the greatest films ever made (seriously, go watch it now—it’s perfect) was partially set and shot in Berkeley, but its locations are a little out of whack.
Dustin Hoffman’s aimless Benjamin pursues Elaine up from LA to UC Berkeley but somehow finds himself on the top deck of the Bay Bridge heading east into Oakland. (For those not from here, traffic went west on the upper deck of the old Bay Bridge.)
When he somehow gets to campus, he waits (maybe a bit too much like a stalker) by a fountain. However, there is no such fountain at UC Berkeley — this shot was actually filmed outside the Doheny Memorial Library at USC.
However, Sproul Plaza and Moe’s Books on Telegraph do make a welcome appearance.
This scene was reputedly filmed at the now-defunct Caffe Mediterraneum.
Mrs. Doubtfire
Though the house on 2640 Steiner Street in San Francisco has become iconic, the East Bay does feature in this slightly creepy but still funny latex-filled farce.
While Robin Williams’s cankled cross-dresser does correctly identify the exclusive club — the chichi Claremont Club & Spa in Berkeley — as a place where “you’d probably need a credit reference to get into” (the initiation fee is reputedly $15,000), the scene around the pool is more tropical oasis than professors’ water-aerobics class.
The beach bodies, kettle drums and fake tans feel distinctly more Oahu than Oakland.
The Matrix Reloaded
The spectacular freeway chase may be the best thing about this silly and messy sequel to the sci-fi classic.
It starts in the parking garage under the 16th Street entrance to the Latham Square Building in downtown Oakland.
The car later drops into the Webster Street tube running beneath Oakland to Alameda.
The big dancing-around-on-speeding-trucks finale was shot on a mock freeway on an old airstrip in Alameda, with the pre-Salesforce Tower San Francisco skyline clearly visible in the background.
The big dancing-around-on-speed rave / awkward orgy scene was also shot in a disused air hanger on the island.
Fruitvale Station
This acclaimed film features actual footage of the tragic incident that took Oscar Grant’s life at the Fruitvale BART station on New Year’s Eve in 2009. But beyond that, it shows Oakland in a very real, sometimes troubled light.
The very same BART platform where Oscar was killed was used to shoot these scenes.
Ryan Coogler’s heartbreaking movie depicting Oscar’s last day gets the East Bay right.
Photo credits, from top to bottom: photos 1 and 2: Moneyball (Columbia Pictures); 3–6: The Graduate (United Artists); 7–8: Mrs. Doubtfire (20th Century Fox; 9–12: Matrix Reloaded (Warner Bros,) ;13–14: Fruitvale Station (Weinstein Company)
