San Francisco-based filmmakers, says all-too earnest narrator Peter Coyote, “made us see, made us dream, aroused our imaginations, (and) showed us worlds we could have never imagined.” Unlike, say, those hacks in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, England, France, Mexico, Australia, or New Zealand. This ill-conceived documentary stakes its claim that the City by the Bay is a mecca for artistic experimentation that came to be a haven for iconoclasts. That label is better suited to George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and the Pixar gang than it is to Clint Eastwood, who may be a native, but lives in Carmel, and is more of an efficient old school director than a maverick. And what is Chris Columbus, seen here during the making of Mrs. Doubtfire, doing with this group? What we have in Fog City Mavericks is essentially a profile of well-known and commercially successful filmmakers who make the Bay Area their home (barely rating a mention are San Francisco's lesser known independent and documentary filmmakers). The various film clips are entertaining enough, and the interviews with, among others, Lucas, Coppola, Eastwood, Philip Kaufman, and John Lasseter (Pixar does look like the greatest place in the world to work) are excellent. But the project as a whole has the tone of a public relations initiative meant to lure filmmakers. Like Rice-A-Roni, this may be a treat in San Francisco, but it's optional elsewhere. Aud: C, P. (D. Liebenson)
Fog City Mavericks
(2007) 120 min. DVD: $19.98. Anchor Bay Entertainment (avail. from most distributors). Closed captioned. Volume 23, Issue 4
Fog City Mavericks
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