Category Archives: San Jose Cinema

The Sarah Winchester Movie: A Former Winchester Tour Guide Weighs in on What Should be Included

Posted on by
9
Winchester_Mystery_House_(door_to_nowhere)

Will the Sarah Winchester movie be a hit? Or will it go…nowhere?

As many of you San Jose enthusiasts already are well aware, Helen Mirren is slated to play our beloved Sarah Winchester in a movie sometime in the next year. We’re already dying of curiosity to see what type of angle this movie takes.

So what should the movie include? We thought that the best person to ask is someone deeply familiar with the Winchester story, and the mansion itself. Cue our resident Winchester expert Brian, former Winchester Mystery House tour guide. Here are his thoughts on some ways Hollywood can maximize the story.

The earthquake
“If there’s one scene that I would love to see put to screen, it would be the 1906 earthquake. The mansion used to be considerably larger than it is now, and the most spectacular piece was the large, 7 story tower. Following the earthquake it was so damaged that it had to come down (and an entire wing of the mansion was sealed off to boot), but it’d be very slick to Hollywood that up. Add in the shrieking of angry spirits and so forth as the gigantic 7 story tower goes toppling down to the path below. And it should also probably explode.

In seriousness, though, it seems like the earthquake had a pretty profound effect on Sarah. She was trapped in an unfinished room for several hours, and while I’m not sure that she blamed the spirits for the earthquake, she definitely blamed them for her being stuck in that part of the mansion. She boarded it off (basically the entire front part of the mansion, aka the only part of the mansion that actually looks a little bit nice) and focused more on cheap, rapid, eternal building. That’s one of the reasons for the varied designs you see when you walk through the house. You have her initial, crazy stage where she’s trying all sorts of fun, kooky stuff (the secret passages, traps, and so forth). Then she gets to the, “Oh… wait… I’m rich…” portion, where she tries to make things look like a rich person’s home. Then the earthquake hits and suddenly she goes into the “clearly I’m not building fast enough” phase, where she just builds as cheap and fast as humanly possible.”

The supernatural

Meet Brian!

Meet Brian!

“If they’re going to go with the ghost angle, it might be fun to have the workers (who are supposed to be the current ongoing residents of the mansion, not Sarah) start developing their unnatural connection to the place. Like you could have one of them quit and move away, but the work crew continues to see him around the site. They could even telegraph him to make sure he’s not still around, but he’s just sort of left this permanent imprint. Or you could have them develop their own superstitions and paranoias about various portions of the house.

There was one spot in there that always freaked me out at the end of the day. When we would shut the lights off and begin to close up, there was a long hallway that had an intersection with another long hallway. No matter which way you looked: in front of you, behind you, to the left or to the right, the hallways stretched straight away into dark eternity. I HATED that part of the mansion. I can’t help but imagine that the workers would develop their own aversions, maybe particularly to the sealed off front part of the house.”

The Winchester rifle victims
“Another supernatural angle: what if the ghosts of the people killed by the Winchesters forgot how to be human, and so they started imitating the workers whose routines were predictable and constant? So the ghosts at the mansion today are actually the same ones Sarah was afraid of, only they behave like the workers they observed for so long.”

What do you think should be included in the movie?

Juuuuust to the north of Hollywood: Films shot in San Jose

Posted on by
7

You find yourself looking around San Jose with it’s not terribly high skyline, corporate offices, and lack of landmarks, and think that it’s not exactly a highly sought-after location for filming a major motion picture. Well, this is why you and I aren’t location scouts. Turns out there are PLENTY of nooks and crannies here in our beloved San Jose that film directors deemed perfect for a few key scenes. Here’s just a smattering:

Beverly HIlls Cop 3 (1994)

California’s Great America

Eddie Murphy appears to hang from a giant ferris wheel ride in a nightmare-inducing scene from 1994’s Beverly Hills Cop III, and it happened right in the heart of what’s now California’s Great America. At the time, the park was owned by Paramount, who also released the movie. The ride in real life was called The Triple Wheel (called “The Spider” in the film), but is no longer in the park. Fun fact: my family was at the park the day they were filming this scene. I never went on the ride again.

The Rookie (1990)

I-680 Freeway

The freeway chase scene in this 1990 classic was filmed on what appears to be I-680 (you can see street signs for Capitol Expressway and Alum Rock Avenue in one scene) and boasts actually really lovely aerial views of the city at night.

 

Marnie (1964)

Diridon Station

Alfred Hitchcock loved using Bay Area locations for his films, and Marnie is yet another example. This 1964 classic, crazy-female-pathological-liar thriller begins in Diridon Station in San Jose. It’s the very first scene of the movie, but was the last to be filmed.

Marnie

 

 

 

 

 

 

And speaking of Alfred Hitchcock…

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

Nha Trang Restaurant
Okay, yes. It’s not EXACTLY The Birds, BUT it sure wants to be! Birdemic was made on a $10,000 budget and is thought to be one of the worst movies of all time. The director, who went to school in San Jose, filmed a few scenes (potentially with birds? I mean, who actually has seen this?) at Nha Trang Restaurant located at 1820 Tully Road. And I hear their Nem Nuong Cha Ram Ninh Hoa is delicious.

NhaTrang

 

 

 

 

 

Flubber (1997)

San Jose State University, San Jose, California, USA
The late Robin Williams lived in San Francisco, which might explain why movies like Flubber and What Dreams May Come include so many Bay Area locations. In Flubber, you see a house in the Rose Garden district, a classroom at San Jose State U, and the Adobe building at 345 Park Avenue.

Edtv (1999)

SAP Center

At 1:48 in this trailer you’ll see the SAP Center and Ed riding on the zamboni machine. The scene was filmed during an actual game (Sharks v. Mighty Ducks), and the 17,483 game attendees got to be extras.

Lots of other movies including Kiss Shot (featuring Whoopi Goldberg),  Larger Than Life (with Bill Murray), and Mad City (starring Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta traipsing ALL OVER San Jose) include scenes from San Jose as well, but I’ll let you schedule your own movie night to do those SJ sightings.

Great Scott! San Jose has a Back to the Future Connection!

Posted on by
2

Century DomeBack to the Future Day may have come and gone however its celebration allowed us here at SearchlightSJ to go back to the past and find an interesting San Jose connection to the film.  The bonus features include commentary from Bob Gale, the Co-Creator of the trilogy.  In the commentary Gale describes the first public screening of the film in which movie-goers entered the theater not knowing what to expect and left not wanting the fun to end.  Steven Spielberg remarks that other than E.T. the first screening of Back to the Future was the greatest preview he had ever seen.  Where would such an enthusiastic and fun audience come from?  From San Jose of course!  In May of 1985 Back to the Future received its first test screening at the Century Domes Theater Complex off of Winchester (the dome has since been granted historic building status by the City of San Jose saving the now defunct theater from the wrecking ball).  The screening went so well that the release date was moved up from mid-August to July 3rd in order to capture larger summer audiences.  It also resulted in the removal of over 6 minutes of footage which are now available as bonus scenes in the DVD and Blu-ray releases of the trilogy.

One question remains unanswered surrounding the screening; what prompted the creators of Back to the Future to hold their first screening in San Jose and not at Universal?  Spielberg, with his South Bay ties, may have had familiarity with the dome which was completed in 1964, a year prior to his graduation from Saratoga High School.   Perhaps more importantly, the creators of Back to the Future wanted an initial screening to occur without the presence of studio executives to maintain creative control over the film.  Following the screening several minor tweaks were made before a formal screening at Universal Studios which included studio executive who gave their immediate approval of the film.  Regardless the reason of how the sneak peek ended up at the Century Domes it just goes to show that whether back to the future or back to the past, we can always bring it back around to San Jose.