March is International Ideas Month, which is a celebration of great ideas, including everything from the discovery of the Earth being round to the wheel and cell phones.
It’s also meant to encourage people to recognize the power of their own ideas. To mark the occasion, we came up with five San Francisco-based films that are about ideas, both fictional and real.
‘Innerspace’ (1987)Joe Dante’s brilliant sci-fi comedy starts with an invention we could use: shrinking technology for medical use. Lt. Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) is a pilot who volunteers to craft the tiny pod through a test rabbit’s insides. But after the shrinking occurs, criminals interrupt the process, and Jack winds up inside a bumbling hypochondriac supermarket clerk, Jack Putter (Martin Short).
”Innerspace” won an Oscar for its visual FX, but its true genius is in its editing, with Quaid stuck inside his little capsule and Short letting loose all his slapstick glory in the real world. Both performers give surprisingly nuanced performances as they form a strange friendship. Tuck’s apartment is still at 377 Filbert St., and scenes were filmed at the Conservatory of Flowers. Available as a digital rental, starting at $3.99.
‘The Net’ (1995)
Sandra Bullock plays Angela Bennett — a loner, homebody and freelance systems analyst in Venice, Calif. — who cyber-commutes to her San Francisco job. When she discovers proof of an evil spyware plan, she finds herself under cyberattack, and all evidence of her life is erased. “The Net” was ridiculous fun back in 1995, but now it has the added benefit of seeming eerily prophetic, predicting a great deal of what life would be like more than twenty years later. (She orders pizza! On her computer!)
Only a small fraction was filmed in San Francisco, but that fraction — a trade show at Moscone Center — was an actual MacWorld convention; the production was allowed to change the sign for a few hours for filming. Available as a digital rental, starting at $3.99.
‘The Right Stuff’ (1983)
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While ”The Right Stuff” was filmed all over the Bay Area (including at the Cow Palace), San Francisco-based filmmaker Philip Kaufman cleverly disguised his locations, making it feel immersed in its time period. Based on Tom Wolfe’s 1979 nonfiction book, the movie begins as Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) breaks the sound barrier, and moves onward to early flights into space by astronauts such as Gus Grissom (Fred Ward), Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid), John Glenn (Ed Harris), and Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn).
The movie is packed with heart-stopping flight sequences, some surprising humor and a sly mixture of chest-thumping patriotism and darkly aware cynicism. Available as a digital rental, starting at $3.99.
‘Steve Jobs’ (2015)
Aaron Sorkin wrote this stylized biopic of the Apple co-founder, thankfully avoiding the usual biopic formula and instead focusing on three product launches: the Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT box in 1988, and the iMac in 1998, neatly dividing the story into three chapters (which Sorkin described as “the king falls,” “the king in exile” and “the king returns”).
Michael Fassbender plays Jobs as a flawed, sometimes terrible human, but still likable — a feat aided by Sorkin’s zippy dialogue and director Danny Boyle’s flashy camera angles. The movie is mostly set indoors, but was shot in War Memorial Opera House, Davies Symphony Hall and the Civic Center. Available as a digital rental, starting at $3.99.
‘Tucker: The Man & His Dream’ (1988)
With his pal George Lucas on board as producer, Francis Ford Coppola was able to turn his long-gestating dream project into a shiny, peppy story of the American Dream and its inevitable dark side. (The movie’s optimistic feel is a deliberate irony.) Jeff Bridges plays Tucker as a smiling, chipper dreamer who comes up with the idea for a new kind of car (notable for its safety features and its center, pivoting headlight), but clashes with the “Big Three.”
Martin Landau received an Oscar nomination for his role as financier Abe Karatz. Parts were filmed at San Francisco’s City Hall and the opera house. Streaming free with ads on Tubi and FreeVee.
