Eddie Muller introduced Try and Get Me! (aka The Sound of Fury, 1951) as an extraordinary production based on a true story with a local angle, namely an infamous incident that took place in 1934 in San Jose, California—the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart and the highly-publicized public lynching of his murderers—that serves as the basis for this film, which first inspired Fritz Lang's Fury (1936) and later Joe Pagano's novel The Condemned, written in the late 1940s.

Try and Get Me! was the first film of fledgling producer Robert Stillman who bought the rights to Pagano's novel and hired him to draft the screenplay. In addition to being a continuation of honoring Noir City's guest Peggy Cummins—by way of Curse of the Demon (1957) and Hell Drivers (1957) shown at the festival earlier in the afternoon—Try and Get Me! joined those two films as a subtle tribute to Cy Endfield, who was the uncredited writer for Curse of the Demon, the writer and director of Hell Drivers, and the director and final uncredited screenwriter for Try and Get Me!

Describing Noir City's opening night feature Gun Crazy (1950) as "catching lightning in a bottle", Muller commented that the same could be said of Try and Get Me! After Frank Lovejoy and Lloyd Bridges give, perhaps, their best performances in a motion picture, there is also an underappreciated yet fascinating supporting role by Katherine Locke. The ever fabulous Adele Jergens is likewise in the cast and, of course, Richard Carlson—ever easy on the eyes—plays the ambitious news reporter too quick to break a story, inciting unbridled public fury.

Like so many of the films that Noir City seeks to find and preserve, Try and Get Me! was released at the height of the Hollywood witch hunt era. Cy Endfield was one of the men blacklisted during that period and Try and Get Me! became the last film he would make in the United States. Just like Jules Dassin, he left the country, went to England where—because of his name Cyril Endfield—he was presumed by later generations to be an Englishman. He went on to do a lot of work with Stanley Baker, made the great historical epic Zulu (1964) with Michael Caine, and so everyone thought he was British, though in fact he was Cy Endfield from New York.

Obviously, Endfield, and Robert Stillman and Joe Pagano felt they had created something incredibly special with this movie. It was released in December of 1950 under the title The Sound of Fury. Because of the witch hunt climate of the time, the film was considered somehow "dirty", was almost immediately withdrawn from circulation and retitled Come and Get Me!, except in two cities where it continued to play as The Sound of Fury: San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Muller admitted that Come and Get Me! is a film he has wanted to restore since the beginning of the Film Noir Foundation (FNF) and, thus, he was especially delighted to have finally achieved this through the auspices of FNF and the UCLA Television and Film Archive, let alone to be presenting the world premiere of the film's 35mm restoration at Noir City. It was "a torturous road" and Muller felt compelled to thank Paramount who—they found out—did own the picture and allowed the restoration to happen. He also shouted out to the For the Love Of Film (Noir) Film Preservation Blogathon hosted by Marilyn Ferdinand (Ferdy on Films) and Farran Smith Nehme (Self-Styled Siren). "They created an international blogathon to raise money to help us restore this film. It was an absolute grass-roots [effort] that I cherish. Film writers all over the world for one week wrote about film noir with links to provide money to the Film Noir Foundation."

Muller asserted that, by film's end, he was confident the audience would consider Try and Get Me! "one of the most emotionally devastating film noirs you will have ever seen" and quickly joked, "and you know I never oversell."

There's no doubt in my mind that watching the restored print with the beamingly proud Marilyn Ferdinand at my side proved to be one of those outstanding cinephilic moments one can only be proud to experience. Earlier in the day, I had taken Marilyn to lunch at Mission Chinese, introduced her to filmbud Brian Darr, walked her through Clarion Alley, and—as synchronicities go—was surprised to find her sitting next to my saved seat while I was off schmoozing with the crowd. Some friendships are just meant to happen. I walked her "home" afterwards.

As for the film itself, it's an uneven piece, though I was especially taken by the inversive twist of Lloyd Bridges' performance as Jerry Slocum—the film's homme fatale—who seduces gullible Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) with his flashy clothes, fast talk, vain preening, and sleek physique. As Alan Rode later quipped, "I'll never look at Seahunt in the same way again." The mob sequences seemed to me to be appropriated footage from some other less sinister event, with folks in the crowd obviously having a good time rather than being enraged, though the actual prison assault—as Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton wrote in their 1955 survey A Panorama of American Film Noir 1941-1953—"remains one of the most brutal sequences in postwar American cinema." This sequence is raised to a frenzied pitch by the previously cool-as-a-cucumber Bridges transforming into a wild animal rattling his cage, anticipating his public lynching by a vengeful mob, and shouting out the film's title in defiant rage.

Underscoring the international reach of film noir, here's a lovely set of German images for Hell Drivers (Duell am Steuer), courtesy of one of my favorite film blogs Filmprogramme.

In his introduction to a double bill of "showbiz noir", Alan K. Rode stated that those in the audience who were habituers of Noir City would recall that Repeat Performance (1947) screened at the festival in 2008. Joan Leslie was the featured guest that year and was given an on-stage tribute, despite the unfortunate fact that a 16mm print was the best that was available to screen at that time. So when Todd Weiner and company at the UCLA Television and Film Archive asked the Film Noir Foundation (FNF) to partner in a 35mm restoration, FNF immediately said yes.

Repeat Performance is historically important for a number of reasons. Although Eddie Muller's notes in the souvenir program guide describe the film as a backstage melodrama crossed with The Twilight Zone, Rode described Repeat Performance as the film noir version of It's A Wonderful Life. "Who else," he posed, "gets the chance to relive the past year after they've killed their husband on New Year's Eve?"

The film was made in 1947 and directed by Alfred Werker, better-known for He Walked By Night made the following year. Originally, Jules Dassin had been hired to direct the film with Franchot Tone in the lead role but in Hollywood—then as now—all that changed and Werker stepped in to direct and Louis Hayward was cast as the male lead instead. Hayward was a major star married to Ida Lupino who went off to war in the Pacific, saw quite a lot of combat action, and—as with many people involved in the war—came back a changed man, divorced Lupino, and ended up increasingly in B pictures; though in 1947 he was still a major star.

Interestingly enough, the Assistant Director on Repeat Performance was Robert Stillman (who produced Try and Get Me!). Stillman went on to become Stanley Kramer's partner on a number of productions into the 1950s. Repeat Performance also featured Virginia Field, Tom Conway (who took a break from playing The Falcon at RKO to play a role that his brother George Sanders might have been better suited for), and Natalie Schafer (better known for playing the wife of Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island).

But most notably, Repeat Performance was the feature debut of a quite young and beautiful Richard Basehart. Basehart had received the New York Drama Critics Award for his performance in the Broadway production of The Hasty Heart and was brought to Hollywood amidst great fanfare. He didn't end up at MGM, or Warner's, or 20th Century Fox but at Eagle-Lion, a studio that was trying to build itself up as a solid competitor, with Repeat Performance being one of their key projects in their effort to produce A films. The problem lay in the fact that the major studios at that time also controlled the theaters. Eagle-Lion became involved in the infamous lawsuit that resulted in the studios having to divest themselves of their theaters, thereby breaking that monopoly and ushering in the collapse of the studio system. Repeat Performance premiered in Richard Basehart's home town Blainville, Ohio. Basehart, of course, went on to star in many other films and television projects, including the memorable narrative voiceover for the 1984 Olympics.

Watching this gorgeous restoration print of Repeat Performance reminded me that it was one of the first films to focus my attention on the use of Diego Rivera's Cargador de Flores as set decoration—not only here but again in such noir favorites as Walk A Crooked Mile (1948) and The Prowler (1951)—which I wrote up for The Evening Class for Noir City 6.

"The theme of today's screenings is 'showbiz noir'," announced Bill Arney, the Voice of Noir City. "And as someone with their own television show Cheese Theatre every Saturday night at 10:00pm on Comcast's Channel 26 Marin, I know a thing or two about the darkness and despair at the core of so-called 'entertainment'. But today is a happy day because we are about to present the American premiere of the digital restoration of one of the greatest films of all time, noir or otherwise: Sunset Blvd."

Eddie Muller then took to the Castro Theatre stage to introduce the film. "I am very excited about today's program for a number of reasons, but number one it's because—not only were we able to create a double-bill of show business noir; Broadway and New York in Repeat Performance and good ol' Hollywood and California in Sunset Blvd.—but we also get to finally show one of our brand-new 35mm restorations (Repeat Performance) side by side with a fully digital restoration of a classic film. As you know, this has been a major issue not just here at Noir City but all over the world as digital becomes the standard for film preservation. Those of you who have been here regularly know that I'm a hardliner—our catchphrase for this year is 'keeping it reel'—but I'm also not a fool. I know that I could spend the rest of my life fighting the future; but, I will—as much as I possibly can—hold the responsible people's feet to the fire and demand that what's actually put out there for public consumption is absolutely and positively as good as it can possibly be. So, in that vein, I am absolutely thrilled that Paramount Pictures has chosen Noir City and the Castro Theatre to premiere its digital restoration of probably its greatest film. So this is quite an honor and you, this audience right here, is in for a treat because you are the first people in America to see this."

Hoping that some people in the audience were seeing Sunset Blvd. for the very first time, Muller mentioned as "a cute little aside" that Bill Arney, the "Voice of Noir" up in the projection booth, met his future bride at a Noir City festival many years ago and Laurel, his wife, has been bugging Muller ever since to show her favorite film Sunset Blvd. at Noir City. "Well, Laurel," Muller shouted out, "I am showing Sunset Blvd.on your birthday!" and then quipped to Arney, "Bill, if you don't get lucky tonight…."

Muller admitted there was little he could say about one of the greatest films ever made, other than that Billy Wilder totally deserves all the credit. It was a film shot almost entirely in secret. Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote the script for the film in fits and starts and actually went into production without a finished script. The story behind the casting of Gloria Swanson is now legendary. Many actresses were approached in Hollywood for what was considered a kiss of death role and much praise must go to Swanson—who had been a huge silent film star—for embracing this and creating one of film's truly legendary characters: Norma Desmond.

William Holden's performance is likewise splendid and it must be remembered that—at the time the film was made—Holden was not a huge star. His rising star had actually dimmed and a lot of people thought that his appearing next to this "tarantula" on screen was not the wisest choice; but, he gave an amazing performance that revitalized his career.

The one little tidbit that Muller wanted to share about Sunset Blvd. was that—when David Lynch was filming Eraserhead, which took him years to get done—he worked with a lot of different crews, and before he would start filming each time he would sit everybody down and show them Sunset Blvd. and said, "This is the feel I want for my movie." Who would have thought there would have been a connection between Sunset Blvd. and Eraserhead?

Finally, Muller gave a big shoutout to Andrea Kalas of Paramount Pictures for making this restoration happen and for allowing Noir City to host the American premiere.

Of related interest:Brian Darr's write-up on Sunset Blvd. for Hell on Frisco Bay, wherein he notes: "Today's Sunset Blvd. screenings are the first time in eleven years that Noir City is trumpeting the world premiere of a restoration not presented from a newly-struck 35mm print but a newly-created DCP drive. Sunset Blvd. is one of four such digital presentations at the festival, also to include Experiment in Terror on Wednesday and the pair of 3-D films on Friday. For some this may feel like the beginning of the end of an era for a festival that has almost never utilized digital projection for anything other than its pre-feature montages, and a betrayal of this year's terrific poster image and slogan 'keeping it reel'."

"Time travel is our specialty here at Noir City," Bill Arney—the "Voice of Noir City"—announced to his murmuring Monday night audience. "We usually set the dial on the Way Back Machine to take us 50-60 years back. Well, it looks like the boss fell asleep at the switch. Tonight we zip right back past post-WWII and smack into the Prohibition Era."

Taking to the Castro stage, Eddie Muller explained, "It's Monday night. This is where we generally take a big, deep breath after the pandemonium of those first three nights. I figure a lot of people need a little break, but then I know there's the hard core and so we try to program something special for the diehard movie lovers in the crowd. So, yes, back to the Prohibition Era." Muller acknowledged beverage sponsor Speakeasy Ales who were serving Big Daddy up in the mezzanine. "Where else for $10 are you going to get three pre-code movies and free beer?" He admitted he liked "a good, intelligent, lubricated audience."

Before introducing the films, Muller revealed that he'd had a very emotional afternoon putting Peggy Cummins on the plane back to England. Cummins had the time of her life at her on-stage tribute at Noir City; but, as testament to the magic that happens in the Castro Theatre, Cummins came back on Saturday to watch Night of the Demon and on Sunday to watch Sunset Blvd. She was literally in tears when she had to leave San Francisco; but, before leaving, signed one of the limited edition Gun Crazy posters for Muller, which—when he finally looked at it later—read: "Eddie, I will be back!"

Having checked with the projection booth, Muller was pleased to announce that all three pre-code films on the program were graded excellent and uncut prints and that his Noir City audience would be watching the best possible versions of these films in existence. That afforded a shout-out to Bob O'Neil, Dave Oakden, Paul Ginsburg and Mike Feinberg of Universal Pictures who take great care of their film library. "We did not have to go searching and scouring to resurrect these films, they had them in the library and they were available to us."

The program started out with William Wyler's A House Divided (1931) starring Walter Huston in a physically challenging role that might have been better suited for Lon Chaney. Fans of Dracula would recognize Helen Chandler in the female lead. All three of the evening's films, including A House Divided, were created under the auspices of Carl Laemmle, Jr., production head at Universal Pictures, who was often reviled in some circles because he was seen as the epitome of Hollywood nepotism. His father had created Universal Pictures and positioned his son as the head of production in the late 1920s-early 1930s. By 1936, Carl Laemmle, Jr. had ruined the studio, overspending on a slate of films that did not recover costs at the box office. Of course, Carl Laemmle, Jr. is also the man responsible for all the fantastic Universal horror films (Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat), which remains his signature in film history; but, Noir City has taken a liking to showing Laemmle's rarely-shown pre-code films. As an early example of William Wyler's work, A House Divided shows that Wyler was already head and shoulders above a lot of other filmmakers in Hollywood at this time and reveals—as Muller cited in the souvenir program—"a command of cinematic language that was, for the time, far ahead of his studio peers", including a stunning and "brilliantly realized" sea storm climax.

That tempest at sea gave a lithe Douglass Montgomery (billed as Kent Douglass) the opportunity to rip off his shirt and brave the elements, thereby signifying his shift from boyhood into manhood. Described at IMDb as a "strapping young man with chiseled, handsome looks and a naive, innocent demeanor", Montgomery delivers a heartfelt turn as the son of an abusive fisherman who falls in love with his father's mail-order bride. A House Divided further amused me for featuring a drunken Huston dancing a jig that shows up decades later in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933), directed by James Whale, was one of Whale's films from the '30s that had allegedly gone missing; a proto-noir courtroom drama starring Frank Morgan (the Wizard himself in a loose-fitting role) and Gloria Stuart, who likewise appears in the evening's third selection Laughter In Hell (1933), and familiar to modern audiences from her "Heart of the Ocean" turn in James Cameron's Titanic (1997). The Kiss Before the Mirror was notorious for its nude scene and—when the Production Code went into effect—they basically put this film on the shelf never to be seen again. A mere three years later, James Whale directed a remake of his own film that was cleaned up and not quite the film screening at Noir City. One of the amusements of the Way Back Machine is catching actors early in their careers. As Gloria Stuart's handsome young lover, Walter Pidgeon is nearly unrecognizable with his shocking dark hair.

Finally, the bonus feature for the evening was Laughter In Hell, long thought to be completely lost, and based on the novel by cult favorite Jim Tully, who is often considered to be the father of hard-boiled writing. Tully is quite the saga, an Irish-American from Ohio, vagabond, boxer, the prototype of the hobo-intellectual who ended up moving to Hollywood early on where he fast became an enemy to many people for writing colorful essays about life in Hollywood that spared no one. Laughter in Hell was Tully's big prison book. Tully's biographers in a book that was published last year [Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler by Paul Bauer and Mark Dawidziak] described Laughter in Hell as a completely lost film. Muller grinned, "They should have called me. Universal had this movie and the only reason it was considered lost was because, I guess, [Bauer and Dawidziak] didn't know the phone number of the archive at Universal."

The San Francisco Independent Film Festival, a.k.a. SF Indiefest, celebrates its 15th birthday this year and has appropriately dubbed the occasion, ¡Fiesta Quinceañera! Running from February 7 to 21 and mostly headquartered at the Roxie Theater, 2013's festival boasts 34 features and 43 shorts from 17 countries. I've attended practically every Indiefest to date and declare that in terms of highly anticipated, edgy big buzz films, this line-up promises to top them all. Luckily, I've been able to preview much of it via DVD screeners and on-line streaming.

Topping the list is Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio—arguably the most critically acclaimed UK film of 2012—in which Toby Jones gets perfectly cast as a British sound editor hired to work on a gruesome Italian giallo flick. This milquetoast-y momma's boy, more accustomed to working on nature documentaries, is forced to create sound effects for a movie about tortured witches in a girls' equestrian academy, all while being simultaneously coddled and tormented by his Italian co-workers. It's a classic fish out of water scenario that ultimately jumps down a Mulholland Drive-like rabbit hole. The resultant ending doesn't easily satisfy, but Berberian Sound Studio is much less about plot than it is about atmosphere, mood and tongue-in-cheek humor. I can't wait to experience it again, but with an audience on a big screen.

While we never actually see the gross stuff of Berberian's movie-in-a-movie, there's gore galore in Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral. The apple hasn't fallen far from the tree in this auspicious feature debut from David's son, which contains more "body horror" than any Cronenberg Sr. film since 1999's eXistenZ. In a future dystopia where butchers sell "meat" grown from the cells of celebrities, and where people pay to acquire the diseases of the rich and famous, Antiviral's protagonist smuggles celebrity maladies from a high-security clinic by injecting them into his own body. What could possibly go wrong? Up until a convoluted final act, young Cronenberg's direction is extremely assured. He's helped by an inspired production design and creepy lead performance from pasty-skinned redhead Caleb Landry Jones (Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights). The film competed in Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar last year and was written by the director following a nasty case of flu.

Also having competed at Cannes, but in the Director's Fortnight sidebar, is Ben Wheatley's morbidly hilarious third feature, Sightseers. Like his first two films Down Terrace and Kill List (the latter screening at Indiefest14), grisly criminal behavior is discomfortably raked with savage humor, although this outing finds Wheatley capably directing material written by others. Tina, a sheltered young woman with a spiteful mum, takes off with new boyfriend Chris on an "erotic odyssey"—actually a road trip via mobile home visiting banal Yorkshire tourist spots. After a confrontation with a litterbug unmasks Chris as a volatile psychopath, Tina discovers her own inner assassin and the pair fuck and feud their way across the British countryside. Combining elements of The Honeymoon Killers and Serial Mom, Sightseers is more of an outright comedy than Down Terrace or Kill List, albeit one with plenty to offend genteel sensibilities.

SF Indiefest's 2013 Centerpiece Film is Everardo Valerio Gout's debut feature Days of Grace, a slick thriller that world premiered as a special Cannes midnight screening in 2011. The movie earned 15 Ariel Award nominations (Mexico's Oscar®), won eight of them and can only vaguely be considered "indie." Highly stylized, intricately constructed and steeped in violence and corruption, Days of Grace cross-cuts between three kidnappings which occur during three different World Cups. I found it difficult keeping track of the three threads, (even though different composers, including Nick Cave, are employed for each section), but I'm not always the brightest bulb in the marquee when it comes to navigating complex plotlines. The showy soundtrack utilizes three interpretations of "Summertime"—by Janis Joplin, Nina Simone and Scarlett Johansson—to nice effect.

Paul Bunnell's Greaser sci-fi musical, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, returns to the Bay Area nearly a year after its 2012 world premiere at San Jose's Cinequest. Despite shortcomings, it's easy to enjoy this ambitious labor of love for the cheesy special effects, clever musical numbers and eye-grabbing B&W cinematography (shot with the very last of Kodak's B&W Plus-X film stock.) And then there's Kevin McCarthy's final screen appearance as the Grand Inquisitor who banishes Johnny X to planet Earth. TGLOJX has the distinction of being the lowest grossing film of 2012, earning the pauperly sum of $117.00 during its U.S. theatrical run. The final narrative feature I previewed was Wrong, Quentin Dupieux's much anticipated follow-up to 2010's "killer tire" spoof, Rubber. As with any gag-filled, absurdist comedy, one's mileage will vary greatly. It was the hangdog charm of actor Jack Plotnick's shell shocked ex-travel agent pursuing his kidnapped pooch that stuck with me at the end.

Amongst the narrative features I did not get to preview, I'm most anxious to catch Davide Manuli's The Legend of Kaspar Hauser. Vincent Gallo plays two roles in this surreal, B&W Italian "techno-western" which reimagines the classic 19th century foundling story. The festival kicks off with Michel Gondry's latest, The We and the I, which also opened Cannes' Director's Fortnight sidebar last year to mixed reviews. The film follows a group of Brooklyn teenagers (all played by non-pros) as they ride the bus home on the last day of school. The trailer resembles many insufferable weekday afternoons I've spent riding MUNI. Closing Indiefest 2013 will be a new work from prolific Mumblecore pioneer Joe Swanberg (LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs). All the Light in the Sky stars Jane Adams (Happiness, Hung) and both she and Swanberg are expected to be in attendance. (The film reappears at the Roxie as part of a three-day, 12-film Joe Swanberg retrospective from February 22 to 24.) Other narrative features perhaps worth considering include Ghosts with Shit Jobs (a dystopian faux-doc in which six Caucasian slum dwellers find themselves subservient to the Asian new world order), The Last Elvis (about a delusional Argentine Presley impersonator from director Armando Bo, who co-wrote the script for Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful), and Simon Killer, a controversial new film from the gang that produced Martha Marcy May Marlene.

As always, Indiefest digs up a few fabulous repertory titles, which are presented this year in a sidebar titled, House of Psychotic Women. That's also the title of a new book by Kier-la Janisse, described as an "autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films." Ms. Janisse will be on hand to introduce screenings of Born Innocent, the legendary 1974 made-for-TV women's prison movie starring Linda Blair (in a rare 16mm print) and an even rarer 35mm print of "unnerving, squirm-inducing" 1972 teen prostitute pic, Toys Are Not For Children.

There aren't many documentaries at Indiefest because the organization presents its own non-fiction showcase, SF DocFest, each autumn. I count five in this line-up, two of which I missed at last month's Palm Springs International Film Festival and was relieved to find here. Leslie Zemeckis' Bound by Flesh tells the astounding tale of conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, who were among vaudeville's highest paid performers during their between-world-wars heyday. From their 1908 birth to a Brighton barmaid to their 1969 death from Hong Kong flu in a South Carolina trailer park, this sympathetic portrait surveys two truly inseparable lives that survived exploitative guardians, detention at Angel Island, carnival sideshows, appearances in Tod Browning's Freaks and (very) loose biopic Chained For Life (available on available on YouTube), publicity stunt marriages to gay men, hard-drinking Burlesque years, grinding drive-in movie circuit tours and finally, "legit" work as supermarket produce clerks. Actresses Nancy Allen and Lea Thompson narrate as the Hilton Sisters, while various authorities and distant relatives provide the talking heads. My only complaint is the film's overuse of certain archival materials.

The fest's other highly recommended bio-doc is Jorge Hinojosa's utterly fascinating and insightful Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp. Executive-produced by rapper Ice-T, it tells the story of Robert Beck, an emotionally wounded university drop-out who at age 50 transformed a lifetime of criminality into a wildly successful writing career under the pen name Iceberg Slim (selling over six million books prior to his death in 1992.) Hinojosa and editor Danny Bresnik engagingly assemble extensive archival materials, poignant animation sequences, pulp fiction artwork and interviews with admirers like Henry Rollins, Leon Kennedy, Snoop Dogg and Quincy Jones. Most importantly, we hear plenty of firsthand testimony from Beck's first wife Betty, the Caucasian speed-typist who encouraged her then roach exterminator husband to dictate his wild tales in their South Central L.A. kitchen.

As I've only touched upon half the feature films which make up SF Indiefest 2013, be sure and check out the rest of the line-up. There are also seven programs of shorts to sample. And don't forget, Indiefest is one Bay Area festival that's known for its parties as well as its film programs, which include a 10th Annual Big Lebowski Party (with mini-bowling, White Russians and 35mm midnight screening), an 80's Power Ballad Sing-a-long Party and a Roller Disco Party.

Cross-published on film-415.

There's no question in my mind that Joshua Grannell and his onstage persona Peaches Christ—and the village that has helped create him—have had much to do with popularizing drag art entertainment and inciting the veritable explosion of drag performance currently available in San Francisco. You can't walk down Castro Street without seeing cleverly-photoshopped posters announcing drag parodies of favorite films and television winking at you from windows or boasting their flamboyance on bulletin boards and telephone poles. The Peaches Christ team has become a highly visible and important presence in San Francisco's cultural landscape, and helped bridge the contentious gap between high and low art when in September 2007 the San Francisco de Young Museum hosted a "Decade of Peaches Christ Retrospective" featuring artistic contributions inspired by Peaches. That event included ten years of costume design by long-time collaborator Tria Connell and ten years of graphic design by artist Chris Hatfield, underscoring the collaborative nature of the Peaches Christ experience.

I've spoken with Joshua many times, first for the 10-year anniversary of Midnight Mass at the now-defunct Bridge Theatre (parts one and two), then again a couple of years later, then as Fangoria's on-set journalist during the filming of Grannell's All About Evil (2010). You'd think we would have said all we had to say, but the ever-creative Joshua Grannell always has something going on to pique my interest. This month alone in San Francisco he has a Sketchfest screening of Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) with guest celebrant Heather Matarazzo, the Trannyshack Starsearch Competition at the DNA Lounge, and an Oscars® viewing party at the Midnight Sun. I thought it was high time for us to coffee clutch at the Café Flore and talk shop.


Michael Guillén: What I notice every time I come back to San Francisco is that you're always doing something!

Joshua Grannell: It's true!

Guillén: Your presence is constant on San Francisco's cultural landscape and I feel a need to compliment you regarding that; you have become such an important figure in San Francisco's cultural heritage.

Grannell: Thank you so much.

Guillén: I'm particularly excited about your upcoming Sketchfest event: a screening of Welcome to the Dollhouse with Peaches Christ on stage with Heather Matarazzo. I love that film and I love Heather. The last time I saw her she was hanging upside down bleeding out onto a sadistic lesbian who was bathing in her blood.

Grannell: I know, right? Sooooo crazy.

Guillén: I'm looking forward to your on-stage conversation with her.

Grannell: Based on Cheryl Eddy's Guardian piece, it sounds like she's not really done this.

Guillén: How could she resist? So let's talk about this, backtracking first a bit. I've long been intrigued by how you and the Peaches Christ team manage to mount one event after the other. Do you keep a list of films you want to turn into stage shows? Or a list of people who you want to interview onstage? How does that process work for you?

Grannell: Yes, there's always this rotating list of movies. Some are, obviously, movies we've already done so they're in a "repeats" category. The only one that's annual is Showgirls. But there's always been a list in my mind of what I call premieres or new shows. Because the year before was my first year of doing a series of events at the Castro Theatre, we tended to stick to our old favorites that were first mounted at the Bridge Theater then tried to blow them up for the Castro stage—Mommie Dearest, Purple Rain, Showgirls—shows we had done before but which now had the added challenge of making them big. Once that first year was over and I felt I had become familiar with how to stage a show at the Castro, it opened my mind to possibilities of new shows we could do.

Pam Grier had always been on my list, always, and—I dunno—I reached out and she accepted. I had reached out many times in the past and it had never worked, not because of a lack of interest, but because she was busy working. The first time we reached out, she was busy with The L Word. But when someone puts a book out [Foxy: My Life In Three Acts], it's a good time to extend because they're in that mode of promoting and being out in the world. So we were able to do Pam Grier.

We did the Barry Bostwick show, which was a new challenge because I had never done The Rocky Horror Show (1975). It was like the Holy Grail for me. Nothing was a repeat except for Showgirls. Silence of the Lambs, Death Becomes Her, and Edward Scissorhands, were all movies that had been in my head for a long time and had been cooking for years.

Guillén: Can you speak to the staging challenges of "blowing it up" (as you say) from a smaller venue like the Bridge to the vastly larger Castro stage? As well as how the venue shift affected audience interaction, which was so crucial at the Midnight Mass series at the Bridge?

Grannell: For sure. We cut our teeth on my movie premiere for All About Evil, which was the first show that we brought to the Castro. There was a lot of pressure. I overbooked the number of dancing monsters. I think my biggest fear was that if you were in the balcony some of the more intimate moments theatrically wouldn't translate, even though we're queens. The All About Evil show was more like a giant musical numbers show, plus staged skits. It wasn't until we did our spoof of Mommie Dearest (Tranny Dearest)—where it was really dependent on three people: Me, Martiny and Heklina delivering performances—that we had to compensate for the Bridge where the performances could be intimate. If I rolled my eyes at the Bridge, or gave Martiny or Heklina a certain look, I could be pretty confident that even people at the back of the house could see, understand, and get it. I was very nervous about moving it to the Castro. Of course we had to amplify our voices so we were dealing with mics, which are the kiss of death for me. I think I'm cursed when it comes to microphones. So we had to solve that dilemma and figure out how to—either with our voices or our bodies—communicate attitude in a new way. Luckily, we've done some of these characters long enough that we're able to know when to punch up a joke and sell it to the back of the house, which at the Castro feels like it's 10 miles away. When you're on the Castro stage looking up at the projection booth—and we've had shows where people are in those last rows up by the projection booth—it feels like it's across the street. But, honestly, I've been thrilled with how well the transition from the Bridge to the Castro has worked.

Guillén: As part of the San Francisco International Film Festival, the world premiere of All About Evil was, for me, one of the cultural benchmarks in my 30+ years in San Francisco. It was a truly spectacular event and you pulled out all the stops. So many memories are woven into that event, including conversing with a then-failing Graham Leggat and his telling me how good the whole event was making him feel.

Grannell: For me too. Certainly, after that night, I fully realized, "Yes, I want to make another movie—and I'm working on that—but, I'm in no hurry. I've always benefited from juggling a lot of different projects at once. My performances, my live events, my producing feed into making a feature film. Ironically, some people ask, "Aren't you working on your next movie?" when actually these events, these shows, help more towards that than anyone would ever know. The juices flow. I'm not one of these people who can go away for three months to write. I admire that. I think it's so amazing when people disappear, go off into the woods, and come back with a script. I can't do that. I have to be exercising the performance muscle and producing and writing all at the same time. So after doing the All About Evil show, we knew we could keep doing it. The Castro became our new home. It was a dream come true. And not that there was anything wrong with The Bridge, there wasn't ever, but we had outgrown it. The last few seasons at The Bridge when we were selling out more than one show a week and still turning people away, well, at some point we had to say, "Okay, it's time for us to accommodate people who want to come to the show."

Guillén: Let's talk about the All About Evil tour, which was exciting to follow on your Facebook page. It was delightful to see you getting so much mileage with the film. Can you single out one or two experiences on that tour that you cherished the most? It seemed like you played everywhere!

Grannell: We did it in a lot of places. What's funny is that—even though it's out on DVD and on cable television—it still looks like there's going to be a North American distribution maybe later this year. It's already being distributed in other countries certainly. I still get requests to bring that show. I'll be doing it in Canada later this year. And I just did it in Vienna this past year. So what's great is I don't think the mileage is going to stop. John Waters said to me, "Well, there aren't many directors who can dress up in drag and put on a show. Even if people have seen the movie, they want to watch it again with you doing your thing." So who knows? I might end up in a wheelchair performing All About Evil and singing that stupid song.

Guillén: And why not?

Grannell: But to answer your question, I would say one stand-out memory, certainly in the U.S., would be when we did All About Evil at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse. That experience blew me away. As a programmer—as you know—the Alamo has grown to become its own church in a way with its own legendary mystique. They're so creative and they do such a good job, and I admire so much of what they do, that I was almost worried that I would be disappointed; I'd heard and read so much about the Alamo Drafthouse. That particular show was myself, Cassandra Peterson and Mink Stole. Doing a show with Peaches, Cassandra and Mink at the Alamo Drafthouse where they put you in balconies to watch the movie with a personal server bringing drinks was truly memorable. We did two nights, one of which was two shows in one night. We did the first show and it was really fun. Of course, Cassandra and Mink are pros, they know how to turn it on, they're hilarious and Peaches does the whole opening number with local talent. Wherever we went we tapped into the local drag art scene so we used my friend Paul Soileau—who's the character Christeene—who lives in Austin and rounded up the drag troops down there. Peaches did the opening number and brought out Mink and Cassandra and we talked about the movie and it was just really fun. We watched the movie; it was Cassandra's first time watching the movie (sadly, she was the only one who couldn't make it to the San Francisco event). Those two, they're not big drinkers, but they were being brought drinks throughout the movie. So we get on stage to do the late show and the interviews, everything, went totally different than the first one. Let's just say they were a lot more loose. I'll never forget that experience of being with two of my idols.

Guillén: The Alamo Drafthouse is in the process of converting The Mission Theatre into their West Coast venue. Will you be working with them at all?

Grannell: I don't know. As soon as I heard they were going to be here, of course—because of what I do and what I'm interested in—I thought, "Oh, well, maybe there's a place for me to do something there." But I haven't reached out, they haven't reached out, but specifically what I would be interested in right now—because the Peaches shows and the Peaches events are at a place where I wouldn't want to add more; I don't think I could add more—I would love to do something at the Alamo where as Joshua / Peaches I could program a series but not have to do a show for the series. There are so many movies I would love to screen but that can't support an event, where 100-200 people coming to see the movie needs to be enough. Of course, these would be more obscure horror films, more obscure comedies.

Guillén: I trust that's something that will manifest itself in due course. It seems a given to me. As the drag queen who did good, how competitive or supportive are you of the drag scene in general here in San Francisco? It seems like each time I return the drag scene has gained more and more visibility, and multiplied its parodies of TV series, which appear to have successful runs. There has always been drag culture in San Francisco, of course, but the current drag art scene has become a huge sidebar of San Francisco's performance art scene. More than just a demonstration of individual self-expression, drag performance has become a viable, marketable theatrical subgenre. You say you produce, do you help produce any of these other drag shows?

Grannell: Sometimes. When I say I produce, I produce my events. We have produced other events for queens here and there that aren't Peaches-related. I co-produce the Trannyshack Reno event where I take busloads of drag queens to Reno—that's been going on forever—but, as far as the rise and success of, let's say, The Golden Girls, Sex and the City, Designing Women and Rosanne, that's really been Heklina [Stefan Grygelko] creating this machine with D'Arcy Drollinger. They're old friends—and I mean that literally, old friends [laughs]—and I actually had a meeting with the two of them about becoming more involved, but I had to step away because there's only so much I can do, though I promote and support their collaborations. We're very supportive of each other. In terms of the drag scene in the Castro alone, there's the Café, the Edge, the Midnight Sun; they all have drag shows now.

Guillén: I'll probably be joining you for your Oscars® show at the Midnight Sun. Is this your first year to do that?

Grannell: It is, though I've thought about it for years because there's all these Oscar® events….

Guillén: Do you remember what happened with Whoopi Goldberg?

Grannell: What's that?

Guillén: When Whoopi hosted the Academy Awards® at the Castro Theatre, the next year she ended up hosting the Oscars® on live television!

Grannell: Really?!

Guillén: I remember that because it was such a trip to see what the space of one year did for her career. Pow! There she was, trading up stages.

Grannell: Well, who knows? You never know!

Guillén: I'm looking forward to the Midnight Sun event.

Grannell: I was looking into producing an Oscars® event at a movie theater, but the problem was the liquor license, and the rights. To rent the Castro is sooooooo expensive. Once I started to dig into what it would take to produce it, just about the same time the Midnight Sun approached me and asked, "Hey, would you be interested?" We had been talking about pre-parties, after-parties, for my shows, of course as a sort of sponsorship; but, I said to them, "You know, I'm really interested in emceeing an Academy Awards® party." So that's how that came to be.

Guillén: Will you be adlibbing throughout?

Grannell: Just during the commercials. I talked to the Midnight Sun and I said that I thought it would be fun to do the Mystery Science Theater thing, but it's a 3-4 hour show plus red carpet. So we might talk over the red carpet—it'll be me and Hugz Bunny and Lady Bear—and we've actually done this for the Indie Erotic Film Festival and I think our senses of humor combine really well with each other. As for some sense of format, we're going to limit it to commercials. So if people are interested in hearing the sound for the commercials, our event's probably not for them because it will be a lot of snarky recaps….

Guillén: Just like in my livingroom!

Grannell: Exactly! Just taking everybody's teeny-weenie Academy Awards® party and opening it up to whoever wants to come. No cover.

Guillén: For an old-timer like myself, it will be fun to be allowed back for one night into my old cruising grounds.

Grannell: There you go!

Guillén: So now let's turn to the event at hand: Sketchfest, Heather Matarazzo and Welcome to the Dollhouse. Has Heather just written a book? Is this why she finally became available?

Grannell: No. Circling back, I met Heather at the All About Evil premiere in New York City. That's where we first met. I was, of course, dressed as Peaches, we did the whole show, and she was a friend of Natasha Lyonne's. A lot of folks came to the movie in New York because Natasha lives in New York and Natasha's been famous for a long time so she has lots of actor friends. I remember being overwhelmed at those New York screenings. Frank Henenlotter was there—the director of Basket Case (1982) and Frankenhooker (1990)—and I was so nervous when I realized that.

Guillén: It's hard for me to imagine you being nervous.

Grannell: Only around certain people, because Henenlotter, I grew up watching his movies on VHS and worshipping them, and now he was going to watch my movie. For me, it was mindblowing. If Brad Pitt had walked in, I wouldn't have been as nervous as having Frank Henenlotter there.

After the show I was meeting people and looking around to see who was there and I spotted this quiet, shy woman standing near Natasha and I thought, "Wait a minute, I know her."—without it registering just how I knew her—and then it clicked, I ran right over to her, this giant Peaches, and I said, "Oh my God, I love you, I love you, I'm a huge fan, I love Welcome to the Dollhouse…." I could see the look of terror on her face, y'know? Natasha was kind of like, "Calm down."

Guillén: But the truth is that Peaches is your persona who worships these performers.

Grannell: For sure.

Guillén: So I can imagine that—when you actually get into being Peaches—your love for these actors is huge.

Grannell: There's no filter. [Laughs.] It's a very pure thing. There were lots of notable people there, but for Heather and Henenlotter to be there, I just couldn't believe it. I didn't know Heather was there until after the screening and so I asked her—probably very inappropriately—"If I ever did a Welcome to the Dollhouse event, would you consider coming?" She smiled and said yes. We chatted very briefly and that was about two and a half years ago. So, again, this idea has been in my head for a while; but, it didn't manifest until I taught a course at the San Francisco Art Institute and used my students as programming guinea pigs. I'm now 39 and my nostalgia films were not the same as their's, y'know? I'm constantly having to figure out things like, "I like Death Becomes Her but are there enough people who like Death Becomes Her to do a show at the Castro?" So while teaching the class I spit out titles here and there—my class was only 13 students; it was a small class—but, when I said Welcome to the Dollhouse, there was an audible gasp from the art students, all in their early twenties, or younger. That's when I thought, "Okay, it's time. We should do this."

Guillén: What a clever approach to grooming a new generation!

Grannell: However, the challenge becomes how to wrap a film favored by younger audiences into the Peaches experience. For example, I think Jesse Hawthorne Ficks could do an amazing show with the director Todd Solondz. I could do that too, perhaps as Joshua, but I don't think it would be that amazing with Peaches, based upon what I know about Todd. He's a serious filmmaker. He's an auteur.

Guillén: Are you saying that Peaches onstage with Heather caters more to a diva aesthetic?

Grannell: It's the camp. It's the fun. It's the celebration that the fans of the film want. For example, a great wonderful night at the movies talking to Todd in person screening Dollhouse or Happiness would be for me a completely exciting, worthwhile experience. Fans of Peaches who love Welcome to the Dollhouse? They want Heather.

Guillén: Which is what I love about what you do: you keep your finger on the enthusiastic pulse of fandom. You let fans love their favorites.

Grannell: That's because I earnestly am a fan and also because my job as a producer and an entertainer is to create these celebrations from the point of view of what does the audience really want? And that's what's great about what we've done, in terms of people showing up for the shows. This is not me, it's my audience, it's San Francisco, and the cult that's built up around what we've done, that it's very hard for the special guests not to feel that emotion in the room. When you have someone like Cloris Leachman onstage, or Pam Grier, or Barry Bostwick, or Heather, you get them swept up in the moment and often I'm able to pull an interview out of them that you might not be able to get at a film festival with a film critic (no offense!) interviewing them in a more sober environment.

Guillén: No offense taken; you're absolutely clear. So will your onstage interview with Heather take place prior to or after the screening of Dollhouse?

Grannell: Before.

Guillén: Anything after we should linger around for?

Grannell: Well, what's funny is that on the same night as we're screening Dollhouse, Sketchfest is presenting Pootie Tang (2001)with Pootie Tang, who comes in right after us. One of the great things about working with Sketchfest is that you have these smashing situations.

Guillén: Is working under the aegis of Sketchfest new for you?

Grannell: No, this is my third Sketchfest. Last year we did The Rocky Horror Show with Barry Bostwick, and Cloris Leachman was my first with Sketchfest.

Guillén: I took note that Bruce Campbell is back with The Evil Dead and I considered it, but then I thought, "Peaches has already done this. No need to go. How could it be any better?"

Grannell: Like John Waters, there are some performers who are so trained and professional that they just deliver no matter where they are. I was impressed with Bruce as a performer, as an entertainer, but I wasn't as prepared to be impressed by his schtick, his being Bruce Campbell, as I was. I've never seen someone both be able to annihilate his fans and his audience, just completely making fun of them, completely putting them down, while also being self-deprecating enough that his audience loved it. They loved him abusing them. But it's because he's making fun of himself.

Guillén: Speaking of John Waters, I have to say that I flubbed up on my dates and ended up being in San Francisco when he brought his Christmas show to Boise, which drove me nuts because my understanding was that this was his first time to Boise?

Grannell: It was, yeah.

Guillén: You can imagine that when I moved to Boise, several people sent me that image from Pink Flamingos (1972) of Babs hitchhiking to Boise. So I truly regret missing him there.

Grannell: I didn't know he was doing it. We talked right after the holidays. We hadn't talked for probably months and it's very surreal that we're buddies now and he calls me when he's in town and we go see movies and things. I, of course, know that he has a million things to tell me about, has met tons of new people, and has all sorts of gossip, but his trip to Boise was the thing he was most excited to talk about.

Guillén: He was certainly loved, I heard later.

Grannell: I bet. And I understand John's enthusiasm. For as fabulous as those New York and Los Angeles screenings were of All About Evil, some of my most memorable moments as Peaches have been in smaller towns. I did a gig with Elvira in Indianapolis in September and—when you're in a place like Indianapolis or Boise where there's a real hunger for what you do—it's almost a more wonderful and satisfying experience.

Guillén: To wrap up then, what are your hopes for this Friday's event? Are ticket sales good? Are you anticipating a crowd?

Grannell: Ticket sales are good. It's not sold out yet; but, that's partly because it's unbelievable the amount of things that are going on at the same time under the umbrella of Sketchfest. If I weren't doing my show, I'd be across town seeing Maya Rudolph in her Prince cover band. Despite the sheer number of shows they're doing—they're doing 166 shows in this festival—we're doing well with ticket sales but there are plenty more to sell. But I'm not worried about it. I can tell by the numbers that it's going to be a full house.

My hope is to present this movie that so many people love and which is—in many ways—a misunderstood movie. I showed it to my boyfriend who's from Turkey and at one point during the film he turned to me and said, "This is a comedy?" I thought to myself, "That's part of the brilliance of this film." I understood exactly what he meant. He explained that back in Turkey, yes, they had bullying, yes, they had teasing, but nothing like this. I told him, "For a lot of people, especially in the U.S., unfortunately this is a common experience. Most of us who were not the cheerleader or the jock relate to Heather's character Dawn Weiner in Welcome to the Dollhouse. Yes, in some ways it seems that you're laughing at her; but, we're really not. Most of us that love this movie have a little Dawn Wiener past. There's Dawn Weiner inside of us. Watching the movie, I thought, "She really is a hero to me because she stands up to her mother, she stands up to her teachers, she stands up to the kid who's going to rape her, and she gets what she wants out of life." On the one hand, Welcome to the Dollhouse is incredibly dark and painful; on the other hand it's a real celebration of the triumph of the underdog or the nerd. By having Heather on stage, my hope is that we all get to celebrate the Dawn Weiner in us. As cheesy as it sounds, I added a Nerd Pride Parade to the bill because that to me is what this screening is about, standing up and being counted as the kids who were picked on and bullied and saying, "We survived and we're here to laugh about it."

Nicknaming Noir's City's first program of African American Noir as "Noir Noir", Bill Arney—The "Voice of Noir City"—then introduced Eddie Muller who, in turn, offered a short film clip to help contextualize the West Coast premiere of the restored 35mm print of Native Son (1951). The clip, provided by California Newsreel, was from the 1995 documentary Richard Wright: Black Boy.

Richard Wright's Native Son, published in 1940, was a runaway bestseller and a landmark of American literature. In the early 1940s, Orson Welles and John Houseman staged a theatrical production starring Canada Lee that received tremendous reviews. "Obviously," Muller stated, "when anything is that successful, Hollywood is interested. But if you think that Hollywood was going to touch this novel in the 1940s, there would be no way. Richard Wright knew that—if it ever got to the screen Hollywood-style—it was going to be completely eviscerated and never emerge on screen as the book he had written. So he really thought there was no hope of this ever reaching the screen. But, in fact, Richard Wright was a huge movie fan, loved cinema, and like all authors harbored the hope that somehow, some way, his book would eventually be turned into a film.

A producer in Argentina named Jaime Prades saw the theatrical production of Native Son and decided that he wanted to produce it so he and a French film director named Pierre Chenal—who was no stranger to noir; he had directed an adaptation of Crime and Punishment as well as some really terrific noir films in France—decided they would team up to bring Native Son to the screen. It couldn't even be shot in the United States of America, so they decided to shoot it in Buenos Aires to substitute in for Chicago, where the novel is set. They did come to the United States at one point and shot illegally in Chicago to get second unit shots, inserts, and things like that; but, most of the film was shot in Buenos Aires. They wanted Canada Lee to play Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the story, but—by that point—Lee was no longer really interested in playing the character. He was 47 years old and the character of Bigger Thomas in the book was 20, so he felt that he was too old to play the part. Of course, anybody with any common sense would know that the issue with Bigger Thomas was not his age, but the color of his skin.

When it came down to it and Jaime Prades had gotten all the money together—a combination of European and South American financing—they were ready to go and there was a deadline for how long they were going to have the budget but they had no lead actor. So Pierre Chenal turned to Richard Wright, who at that point was living in Paris, and said, "Why don't you play the role?" Richard Wright said, "That's ridiculous. I'm not an actor." Chenal countered, "But you wrote the book. It's not a question of acting. Just get in front of the camera and feel what you wrote." So he did. And he probably rued doing it because—when the film was done—everybody turned on the producers and on Richard Wright.

The promises of distribution in Europe evaporated because, of course, when they finished the film it was 104 minutes long. Though Native Son was a film that was never going to play in the South—it was only going to play in major metropolitan areas—they needed to get some money out of the United States, so it played with almost 24 minutes cut out of it. Richard Wright was heartbroken and crestfallen. Pierre Chenal was very disappointed. The whole production imploded and the critics were merciless about Richard Wright's performance. There were, in fact, racist overtones when these critics talked about his performance in the film.

But though Native Son has had a traumatic history, fast forward to a year ago when Muller was in Washington, D.C. doing a version of Noir City, and met a wonderful man named Edgardo Krebs, an Argentinian anthropologist. Krebs approached Muller and offered to show him the complete Argentine version of Native Son that no one had ever really seen in this country. He arranged a screening at the AFI Theater in Washington, D.C. The experience proved bizarre. The only other person watching the film sat right next to Muller (who had no idea who he was); but, he was somehow connected to the making of the film. Muller later found out that he was Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, a two-time president of Bolivia who had worked on Native Son as the assistant director. It was such a multicultural production that de Lozada was the most qualified bilingual person Pierre Chenal could find and thereby became a very important contributor to the production of the film.

What Muller had been shown at the AFI Theater in Washington, D.C., of course, was the uncut version of Native Son. He was then asked, "Do you think this is film noir?" and he stated unequivocally, "This is an absolute and definitive example of film noir." Muller added that it also happened to be an adaptation of one of the great American literary works of the 20th century. "Never the two shall cross," he laughed, "except in this film tonight, as you are about to see. Obviously, Richard Wright's ambition far exceeded something of a genre piece or a crime thriller, but it fits the bill. Stripped down with the internalizations removed from the novel to put up on the screen, it plays like a film noir."

Muller added: "From the very beginning of my reign as the Czar of Noir, I have had very interested African American movie fans come up to me and say, 'Are there any examples of African American noir from the classic period?' and I've always had to say, 'Not that I know of.' I don't have to say that anymore because you are about to see it."

Muller dedicated the Noir City screening to Edgardo Krebs, the man who saw to it to singlehandedly resurrect the film. He stressed the specialness of the occasion by reminding his Noir City audience that—each of us would watch the film and judge for ourselves what we thought of Native Son as a piece of cinematic entertainment—but, judgment notwithstanding, he could assure us we would be watching an immensely significant cultural artifact.

In Noir City's glossy souvenir program, Eddie Muller synopsizes: "Nobel prize winner William Faulkner's 1948 novel is a high-minded piece of crime fiction, written as an atonement for the mistreatment of blacks in his native South. Proud African-American farmer Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernández, in a memorable portrayal) is a defiant Mississippi landowner accused of murdering a white man. When the county's most prominent lawyer (David Brian) refuses to defend him, it's left to a young boy (Claude Jarman, Jr.) to stand up to the vigilantes and help solve the crime. Clarence Brown strips away MGM's patented glossy patina in this gripping, streamlined retelling of Faulkner's rumination on American-style apartheid, magnificently filmed by cinematographer Robert Surtees on location in the novelist's Oxford, Mississippi, hometown. Critics raved—but audiences stayed away, leaving it for later generations to reevaluate the film's merit, as both cinematic and social history."

Introducing Intruder in the Dust (1949) as a labor of love for director Clarence Brown based on, arguably, one of America's greatest novelists, Muller added: "One of the things I love about Noir City and how marvelous this festival has become is that there are all kinds of wonderful surprises that happen along the way." He offered his audience one of them and welcomed to the stage the star of Intruder in the Dust: Claude Jarman, Jr., who—additionally among his credits—served a stint as Executive Director for the San Francisco Film Society.

"I'm a great, great fan of film noir," Jarman addressed his audience, "and am honored that this film is part of this festival. It's a wonderful experience. I love coming back to this theater. When I was with the San Francisco Film Festival, we did a lot of films here and I have great memories of them.

"I thought I'd tell you just a few things about the film you're about to see, in case you don't know. The film was made in 1949. MGM was the studio. It was at the time when L.B. Mayer was very flush with Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) and all the musicals and the last thing he wanted to do was this film. It was really a labor of love for Clarence Brown who happened to direct The Yearling (1946), in which I was in. Clarence had witnessed a lynching in Atlanta as a young boy and—when he read Faulkner's story—he was determined to make this movie; but, L.B. Mayer was adamant that it was not going to be made.

"Dore Schary, who was then the creative director at MGM, fought for the film along with Clarence and finally Mayer said, 'Okay, you can make the movie'; but, when it was made and ended—it got great reviews—but, MGM basically buried it. They did not promote it at all. It was not a film that they were proud of. I'm delighted that it had its legs and kept going on through this period.

"The film was shot entirely in Oxford, Mississippi. To show you the difference in what was going on in those days, Juano Hernández—who's the real star of the film—could not stay in the hotel with the rest of the cast. He had to stay across the tracks in the Black town. A lot of that has changed, obviously, for the good. In fact, the movie was so far ahead of its time that it was only two years later that they had a race riot when they admitted the first Afro-American in the University of Mississippi.

"My wife and I a few years ago went back to the 60th anniversary [of the film] in Oxford, Mississippi and a lot of the townspeople who had been in the film were still there. At any rate, William Faulkner was very involved, he was on the set every day. He would never venture to say anything unless someone asked him a question. It was a great experience. It's probably the film that I'm most proud of and I hope you enjoy it."

Muller then concluded the introduction by admitting that Intruder in the Dust could be considered to be extending the boundaries of "noir" a bit; but, more importantly, Noir City wanted to show two powerful and significant literary works that just happen to have a noir spine to them. He also wanted to recognize Juano Hernández as a great treasure and that his performance as Lucas Beauchamp might just be his greatest performance.

Introducing the first of two "San Francisco Noir" films, Eddie Muller recalled that Noir City screened The Sniper (1952) at their first festival back in 2003, but was delighted to bring this interesting film back for another round. The writing team of Edna and Edward Anhalt did a lot of research. "Believe it or not," Muller stressed, "In 1952 when this film was made there was not a serial killer movie coming out every single week. This was sort of the groundbreaker, right? It actually plays interestingly on a double-bill with a later film shot in San Francisco: Dirty Harry (1971). Those of you who are familiar with that movie can see the parallels between the two. Of course, in 1952 a great deal of time is paid to the official manhunt that tracks down the sniper, whereas—by the time 1971 rolled around—the cop had to actually throw away his badge and go out as a vigilante to track the guy down. That says something."

A terrific movie bolstered by the research endeavored by the Anhalts who studied the psychology of serial killers, Muller mentioned that those in the audience who saw Try and Get Me! and endured the character of Dr. Vito Simone (Renzo Cesana)—"the know-it-all Italian physicist who told us exactly what was necessary for mankind to exist in harmony"—finds a student in Richard Kiley who performs an equally know-it-all function in The Sniper.

One of the fascinating aspects of The Sniper is that it was directed by Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten. The film was made after he had recanted and offered up names to the House Un-American Activities Committee so he could regain his Hollywood career. Hearing some hissing in the audience, Muller asserted, "Everyone was a victim, trust me." Dmytryk signed on with Stanley Kramer to direct The Sniper, the second movie he'd made after being reinstated, as it were, in the industry.

Muller wished he could have been a fly on the wall during The Sniper's location shoot "because the man who played—that's right—Lt. Kafka, Adolphe Menjou, was one of the great red baiters in Hollywood; in fact, he was insufferable. To imagine he and Dmytryk on the same set together," Muller fantasized, "Oh my God! I would have loved to have heard what some of those conversations were like."

The sniper is played by a wonderful actor, Arthur Franz, who within the movie plays a character named Eddie Miller. After deadpanning his baited laughter, Muller quipped, "Say no more!" The Sniper likewise features one of Muller's favorite dark city dames, the fabulous Marie Windsor.

Because The Sniper includes fantastic location shooting in San Francisco, as a special treat to his San Francisco Noir audience Muller offered a clip reel concocted by Brian Hollins—administrator of ReelSF.com—which shows all the San Francisco locations used in The Sniper, first as they originally appear in the film, followed by video of how they appear today.

"With that," Muller concluded, "let's all curl up and get snuggly and close for the first serial killer movie shot in San Francisco."

To introduce the world premiere of the brand-new 4K digital restoration of Experiment in Terror (1962), Eddie Muller expressed his gratitude to Sony Pictures. "You've heard my rap all along about the studios that take care of their films and the studios that don't. Sony Pictures is the absolute great. They own the Columbia library. This is a studio in Hollywood where probably in 10 years you'll be able to have a choice when you ask for a film like Experiment in Terror. They will say, 'The film or in digital?' Yeah! That's a nice option to have."

Muller staged a competition between the studios regarding their digital restorations. He said he was going to call Grover Crisp at Sony and tell him that Paramount has just done an awesome digital restoration of Sunset Blvd. and that his Noir City audience was going to compare it to Sony's restoration of Experiment in Terror. The studios like this, Muller explained, because this is actually how the future is going to work. He has to be able to hold the studios' feet to the fire and say, "This is now the bar. This is what the public expects." I clearly took this staged rivalry too literally, however, when later in the mezzanine I cornered Muller and placed my vote. I wasn't much impressed with the digital restoration of Sunset Blvd.—the contast seemed off to me and the blacks never seemed more than a dark grey—but, Experiment in Terror was thrillingly lustrous, especially in its darkest scenes. In my opinion, Sony had set the bar. Hearing this, Muller tossed me a disgruntled look and emphasized that—as far as he was concerned—both of them had done a great job. Whoops! Whether or not we were supposed to actually choose, my vote remains with Sony.

Having just shown The Sniper—which took a good look at a serial killer in 1952 San Francisco—Noir City now offered San Francisco in 1962 as seen in Experiment in Terror with its beserk, psychotic criminal mastermind. "There's a very significant difference between the two," Muller asserted. "This guy [in Experiment in Terror] does not just pick women off the rooftops, this guy tortures them psychologically first. And we're very lucky that the woman he's torturing is Lee Remick."

Director Blake Edwards loved San Francisco so much that he filmed two movies here back to back—Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and then Experiment in Terror—and really gave Alfred Hitchcock a run for his money with Experiment. Though everyone thought of him as a comedian, Edwards proved he could pull a Hitchcock and ratchet up the suspense, plus he worked with his long-time collaborator Henry Mancini on an absolutely fantastic score; one of the best ever, really.

Because Experiment in Terror includes fantastic location shooting in San Francisco, as a special treat to his San Francisco Noir audience Muller offered a clip reel concocted by Brian Hollins—administrator of ReelSF.com—which shows all the San Francisco locations used in Experiment in Terror, first as they originally appear in the film, followed by video of how they appear today.