Bill Nighty thinks about it Queen. Not the end of her reign with her death in September, but the beginning.

One of young Williams’ earliest memories was of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in the summer of 1953 when he was just three years old. Even at this young age, he vividly recalls the historic moment of being amidst the crowds on the parade route.

“I got a coronation cup. We were in the park,” Nighy recalled. “There were a lot of flags and someone gave me – I think it was probably the first thing I registered that was mine – a mug with the Queen’s head on it.”

It was a different time, a different England. And it’s a time Nighy revisited for his new film Living, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 Japanese classic Ikiru.

The sizable segment of his fan base that associates Nighy with rock star Billy Mack, his wild and cantankerous character in Love Actually, or his role as Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, might have trouble accepting the fellow player recognize Mr. Williams. In “Living” Nighy is a stuffy London bureaucrat who afterwards For decades stuck in a dead end, he is shaken by an incurable cancer diagnosis.

As the title suggests, the film, adapted by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro and directed by Oliver Hermanus, is about life, not death. Mr. Williams’ obsession with cutting down the bureaucracy in order to have a children’s park built is an act of redemption for world building that would last well beyond his time on earth.

Nighy, who has also appeared in films such as Shaun of the Dead, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Emma‘ spoke to The Chronicle from New York in December, just days before he turned 73.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Review: Bill Nighy delivers a brilliant, subtle performance in “Living”.

Bill Nighy plays a bureaucrat who finds he doesn’t have long to live in Living. Photo Credit: Ross Ferguson / Sony Pictures Classics

Q: I found it interesting that Kurosawa’s original Ikiru was made in 1952 and set during that time period, and Living is also set in the early 1950’s. So one talks about current issues and yours looks 70 years into the past. How did the “Living” inform?

A: Actually, I feel like the general mood of this film is a timely thing. During the pandemic, we’ve all been thrown back to what really matters: your family, your friends, your work, art, compassion, kindness. This movie played really, really into it.

We live in difficult times. The film has been running in England for some time and my phone has been off the hook, full of messages. People say they are electrified by the film, they are inspired by it. COVID has forced us to reconsider our priorities.

Bill Nighy says that England in the 1950s was “a progressive time towards liberal democracy”. Photo Credit: Ross Ferguson / Sony Pictures Classics

Q: You grew up in the 50’s. What memories do you have of that time?

A: My father (Alfred Nighy, who ran an auto repair shop after working as a chimney sweep) would have been almost contemporaneous with the character I play in the film. I’m not playing my dad or anything, but my dad wasn’t a million miles away from that type of character. He was a very reserved man. He was modest in his general demeanor. And he had a passion for manners that went beyond their strategic value.

He was a principled man in all areas, not the least of which was how one behaved towards a woman. Anyway, this isn’t about my father, I have to say. But I remember the general atmosphere at the time. This period was progressive in terms of social development. The National Health Service (established in 1948), which educated the sons and daughters of the working class – it was a progressive period towards liberal democracy.

People glossed over the ’50s because the ’60s overshadowed them, and everything people say about the ’60s is largely mythical. As Keith Richards says, the ’50s were black and white and the ’60s were colour. But the 1950s were actually a very interesting time. I’m fascinated by it.

That’s not to say I admire all of this, and I resisted it growing up. But now in hindsight — not that I want anything back from sexism, homophobia, or racism — but there was a certain level of heroism in the level of restraint that humans demanded of themselves as social animals.

Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood) becomes an important figure in the life of Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy) in Living. Photo Credit: Ross Ferguson / Sony Pictures Classics

Q: What do you mean the ’60s were largely mythical?

A: When people say ’60s, they often mean ’70s. One speaks of free love. I mean give me a break. What does this refer to? And the permissive society? Well, it was heavily suppressed in the ’60s. Homosexuality wasn’t legalized until 1968 and feminism was just beginning.

It really is like civilization started relatively recently as we have been living on the planet for thousands of years. Women did not get the right to vote in the UK until 1928. You know, it’s a little late in the day. But we’ll get there.

There’s a lot of false nostalgia out there for a time that never was.

After years of working in television, stage and films, Bill Nighy rose to stardom in the 2003 film Love Actually, who played rock star Billy Mack. Photo: Peter Berg / Universal Pictures

Q: 20 years ago you made Love Actually, a pivotal film in your career. Looking back, what do you think of this film and what does it mean to you?

A: I have nothing but a deep, deep love for this film and gratitude for what it has done for me for changing my life. I will never be able to thank Richard Curtis (writer/director) enough for not obviously being cast in this film.

Who would have thought that it would penetrate the language to this extent? I met a woman on the street and she told me she had just joined a choir and I said, ‘Well, that’s great.’ And she said it was actually called ‘Choir’ and they were singing all the Christmas carols in the film . (laughs.)

People tell me it helped them through their divorce or their chemotherapy. There isn’t a country in the world where they don’t know.

“Life” (PG-13) begins Friday, January 6 at Landmark’s Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Ave., SF, www.landmarktheatres.com. Expanding to additional Bay Area theaters throughout January.

The post Invoice Nighy performs a dying man in a postwar Britain he recollects with respect appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco is a mystery. One of the best cities in America to walk to, but filled with streets so steep your legs will burn; a center of zero-emission vehicles and electric bikes criss-crossed with the world’s last manually operated cable car system; a left haven with more free market billionaires per capita than any other city in the world.

This complexity can lead to nuanced questions about the city, but sometimes people open their phones and ask, “Is San Francisco a country?”

I found the strangest questions people asked Google about the city, apparently largely shaped by a misunderstanding of maps and a campaign of misinformation from right-wing media.

Here goes.

(The following questions are all taken from the top 50 Google Search queries related to San Francisco.)

Is San Francisco in New York?

No.

Is San Francisco Open?

Yes indeed! San Francisco is open. The city was the first to shut down during the coronavirus outbreak and recorded some of the lowest per capita deaths from the disease in any major city in America. Bars, restaurants, clubs and gyms are all open now (if you are vaccinated).

Come to visit. Enjoy the view from the top of the Mark. Get the best Sichuan food in the country at Spices. Check out the sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf (don’t worry, the Bushman seems long gone). Have a cutty pony in Dolores Park. You can even take the cable cars again.

Is San Francisco the City of Love?

No, this is Paris. But the summer of love was here. San Francisco is “SF” or maybe “Baghdad by the Bay” or even “Frisco” (if it’s good enough for Otis Redding, it’s good enough for us). It’s never “San Fran” and it’s definitely not the “Golden City,” despite what Goop thinks.

Is San Francisco Safe From Fire?

Although the city’s history has been shaped by a devastating inferno and the surrounding state suffers millions of acres of damage every year, San Francisco is largely safe from forest fires. The last urban conflagration near San Francisco occurred in Oakland in 1991 when a wind-fueled firestorm destroyed nearly 3,000 homes and killed 25 people in the hills.

Is San Francisco an Island?

Almost. The city is at the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water that becomes less salty from the Pacific through the Golden Gate to the bay. The south side of the city is a land border with San Mateo County and the cities of Daly City and Brisbane.

However, San Francisco has islands, from the tiny Seal Rock off Ocean Beach to Alcatraz, Treasure Island, a small part of Angel Island and, furthest away, the uninhabited Farallones – home to many shipwrecks and a colony of elephant seals (and some hungry seal-eating Sharks).

Is San Francisco Built on Sand?

Great question. Kind of like that. The entire western part of the city – now filled with the green lawns of Golden Gate Park and suburban streets – was once sand dunes. Part of the city on the east coast was built on the wreckage of ships abandoned by gold-crazy prospectors.

Some downtown skyscrapers are literally built on sand, which didn’t work well for the residents of 301 Mission St.

Is San Francisco a Country?

No. But it once had an emperor. In 1859 a San Francisco newspaper published a notice announcing that an English businessman in the city, Joshua Norton, had proclaimed himself “Emperor” of the United States at the request of a “large majority” of the population.

Although he had no real power and all of his decrees were ignored, he became a real city celebrity, walking the streets wearing a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather. Most of his ideas were ridiculed, for example when he created his own currency with his face on it, but he suggested building a bridge to Oakland 50 years before this became a reality.

Joshua “Emperor” Norton, San Francisco

Bettmann / Bettmann archive

The town took Norton’s crazy ways, selling pins and belt buckles with his likeness, and even providing him with military insignia if his beaver hat was thin. After he fell dead on California Street in 1880, 10,000 San Franciscans are believed to have attended his funeral.

Is San Francisco Better Than Los Angeles?

Yes sir.

Is San Francisco Safe?

It is possible that this question will be asked by confused Fox News viewers with fond memories of the beautiful city that is now picking up host Laura Ingraham’s prime-time rant against San Francisco, calling it a dystopian city in decline. She recently claimed the city was “ruining itself” by building a bike path in the city.

Let’s look at the violent crime numbers. According to FBI data from 2017, the homicide / negligent homicide rate in San Francisco is 6.35 per 100,000 people. This number is far lower than years ago (in 2007 it was 13.63). It also makes the city safer than Miami, Las Vegas, Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska in this metric. In fact, San Francisco has fewer murders, aggravated injuries, and rapes per person than 65 of the country’s 100 most populous cities. Recent data shows that violent crime in the city continued to decline from 2018 to 2020, although the number of vehicle thefts increased.

So safe from crime? Relatively yes. Safe from right primetime agitprop? Maybe not.

Is San Francisco Coffee Good?

Despite an infamous 1963 headline that said, “The Terrible Coffee in SF Restaurants: The People of a Great City Are Forced to Drink Booze,” Tea and Coffee magazine ranks the city’s coffee as Seattle today second best in the country. Coffee businesses from Folger’s to the bougie third-wave roaster Blue Bottle (now owned by Nestle) started in the Bay Area.

It’s not cheap, and not all of it is delicious. I went to Lombard Street once and paid $ 17 for a cup of coffee that went through a cat’s gut and tasted like donkey.

Is San Francisco Sodom and Gomorrah?

No. The biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were ravaged by divine retribution by a very angry god because of their human wickedness. San Francisco is very beautiful and doing well.

Is San Francisco Bike Friendly?

Yes very. According to a SmartAsset study, it is the safest city in the country for cyclists.

One of the busiest bicycle routes in the city is the wiggle. The zig-zag cycle path between the Panhandle and downtown, which winds its way through the hills, is an extremely popular commuter route for cyclists who want to avoid the leg crusher inclines. The route actually follows an ancient stream that was used by cattle and settlers long before the bicycle was invented.

San Francisco

Alexander Spatari / Getty Images

Is san francisco cold?

Honestly, yes. Except for a couple of weeks in early fall, when it’s downright magical.

Is San Francisco Chinatown Safe?

Yes sir. And pretty. The largest Chinatown outside of Asia is a vibrant, bustling neighborhood with hidden alleyways, fantastic food, ornate churches, and some of the best bars in town. It is also home to Portsmouth Square, where elders gather to play Chinese chess in the oldest public square in San Francisco.

Is San Francisco Dog Friendly?

Very. DogTime rates the city as the third best in the country for dog owners. Puppies are welcome in many restaurants and even gyms, and the city has a lower relative pet deposit than anywhere in the country.

The city’s fondness for dogs could start with a curious furry duo named Bummer and Lazarus. In 1860, San Francisco’s city dogs were loved. The couple had a penchant for going to saloons and drinking from fountains to the delight of residents. They were exempted from city ordinances and even received evening tickets to every opera house in the city. Mark Twain praised their demise, and their stuffed bodies were on display in their favorite bar long after they uttered their last ruff.

Is San Francisco known as the windy city?

Come on now.

Is San Francisco expensive?

Very. Illegally. A family of four needs to make $ 111,136 annually to make ends meet in San Francisco. Investopedia lists the city as the second most expensive city in the country after New York. Despite the endless stories of people who have left San Francisco, the city is still very sought after. Time Out has just named it the greatest city in the world, and with the ocean and bay leaving no room for suburban sprawl, there’s little chance it will become more affordable anytime soon.

Is San Francisco Hilly?

Extremely. There are 48 named hills in the city. Some, like Irish Hill, were wiped out by dynamite. Others, like Mount Davidson and Mount Sutro, are hidden paradises in the middle of the city. Many have their own famous identities, from the parrots on Telegraph Hill to the old calm of Nob Hill. The hills and steep streets make the city what it is. An ambitious man tried walking up the 10 steepest streets and found that the steepest block is not where you think it is.

Is San Francisco Due To An Earthquake?

Yes sir. I mean no. I’m sorry, nobody really knows. Experts say the bay should experience a quake at the city’s 1906 level every 200 years. USGS says the chance this will happen in the next 30 years is around 2%. So probably not? But it can’t hurt to start building this earthquake kit.

What is the main newspaper in San Francisco?

San Francisco has a long history of belligerent newspapers claiming this coat, mostly between the Call, the Examiner and the Chronicle. In the 1890s, this resulted in an extravagant and sometimes stupid skyscraper war, which was eventually ended by the 1906 fire that gutted the towers of the Publications downtown.

This resulted in a very brief moment of brotherly love when all publications joined forces in the days following the disaster to publish under the Call-Chronicle-Examiner.

Today the biggest news site in San Francisco is SFGATE. With about 25 to 30 million monthly readers, only the LA Times can count more loyal readers across California.

San Francisco is dying?

No.

The post ‘Is San Francisco dying?’ People are googling some unusual questions on SF appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

You may not want to remember January of this year, an incredible low point in a young year 2021. But in the hellish landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot, the New York Times published a story about Tech freaks fleeing San Francisco for the greener, sunnier pastures of Miami, Austin, Puerto Rico, and other parts of the world outside the Bay Area and the state.

This article, titled “You Can’t Get Out of the Bay Area Fast Enough,” signaled a turning point in technology’s relationship with the city. Other places had less taxes, less crime, more space for less money – and as writer Nellie Bowles pointed out, they were not despised by their neighbors. (That said, if you talked to some longtime residents of these new tech hotspots, that firsthand opinion could change quickly.) They could work remotely and get their way financially, even if they accepted a cut in salaries.

The Times article wasn’t the editorial of San Francisco’s tech exodus, but it was certainly the most prominent national account of the phenomenon. It drew strong opinions from the creators and creators of San Francisco Twitter – techie or not. In doing so, the Times set the tone for much of San Francisco’s tech experts. (Something that is not alien to us on this side either.)

So it’s strange to see the newspaper turn around almost six months to the day its first story of San Francisco’s suffering was published without even mentioning its previous story and itself as part of the panic Involving an SF exodus was perhaps an exaggeration.

On Thursday they published an article that serves almost as an expanded addendum to their own coverage: “Tech Workers Swore Off the Bay Area. Now they’re coming back. “

In it, the Times sings a different tune than the Swan Song of San Francisco in early 2021. Now the allure of big city life in the bay is too strong despite all the complicated reservations.

Perhaps with new information in tow – namely, U.S. Postal Service’s address change dates revealing that those who left San Francisco mostly ended up in other parts of the Bay Area or the state – the Times wanted after their previous spicy doomsaying. But the least they could have done would be to explicitly refer to their own comprehensive January coverage.

There is a pointed reference to exaggerated “Exodus headlines” without mentioning their own. There’s not even a follow-up to the previously interviewed people, the various app founders and investors who flatly denounced the Bay Area.

After all, the story of the California Exodus is certainly more nuanced than it would be in either piece. Lots of people are gone forever, sure. But despite the Bay Area’s myriad of warts and ailments, so many more remained nearby. Some companies even doubled their stay and moved to San Francisco instead of fleeing entirely. For many tech, San Francisco was less about crime and homelessness than it was about how tech adoption left the locals behind.

The Times quoted a co-founder of an investment firm as saying that the graduates “were pretty noisy about leaving the Bay Area,” but perhaps less so for those who have crawled back. It ultimately feels like they pulled a similar trick.

The post The New York Instances cannot determine whether or not San Francisco is dying or not appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

For some time now I’ve wondered why San Franciscans are so interested in stories of people leaving the Bay Area.

The obvious answer is that they want to leave themselves, but I think it goes deeper.

San Francisco is becoming increasingly inhospitable to the average person. The average rental for a one bedroom one bedroom apartment is $ 2,695. A family of four is considered “marginal” if they earn less than $ 97,000. This place is difficult to survive in the long run.

I think this obsession with “leaving SF” narrative comes from a healthy amount of bitterness – bitterness that you can’t stay here, bitterness that you can’t buy a home and take root, and bitterness that doesn’t plague others Indolence, can see these facts and go.

As San Franciscans we will always look over the shoulder of Austin and Portland and Denver and wonder what life is like in a more hospitable city. Yet so many of us stay.

A new collection of essays questions the idea of ​​”loving and (sometimes) leaving” San Francisco. Published by Chronicle Books, The End of the Golden Gate: Writers on Loving and (Sometimes) Leaving San Francisco ($ 17.95) includes essays by Margaret Cho, Daniel Handler, and Michelle Tea, among others. The essays are fun, heartbreaking, insightful – and sometimes provocative – and many grapple with the question I asked above: why are we staying here when we know better?

For many of the writers, it’s a matter of memory, history, and nostalgia.

“The End of the Golden Gate: Writers on Loving (and Sometimes) Leaving San Francisco” (Chronicle Books).

There is a moment in “The End of the Golden Gate” that seems to embody all three things, written with a light hand and scrutinizing gaze by comedian W. Kamau Bell:

“I once did a show at the Vesuvio Cafe where Allen Ginsberg opened with a new poem. Margaret Cho stopped by to try new material. Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Jerry Garcia played folk songs on acoustic guitars. Annie Sprinkle wrote a visual history of porn. … Armistead Maupin sat in the back and wrote a book that ended up being ‘Tales of the City’. And, unnoticed by all of us, Willie Mays and Rick Barry were in there the whole time. ”

In his essay, Bell admits, “Um, I don’t think the timeline is working” to the fictional gathering he conjures up above, only to get his friends to reply, “You missed it man. It was so cool. ”

Bell captures what I consider to be the current dominant discourse in San Francisco. The city will never be what it was, and damn it, you’ve already missed it. Oh, and I have to remind you, it’s never going to be as cool, so cheap, as counterculture as it was when I first came here.

That is the challenge for writers writing about San Francisco. Many of the essays deal with this self-mythologizing of the city and its inhabitants. But how do you write about a missing place? How do you separate memory from reality?

When I look back in my memory of childhood San Francisco – I was born at the start of the dot-com boom – my memories of the city are hazy like fog. They come in scraps of pictures: shopping for back-to-school clothes in the huge, shiny Westfield Mall, buying a pretzel from a vendor on Market Street, drinking coffee with my best friend’s aunt in Muddy Waters on Mission.

In my memory, the Tech Bros do not exist. Neither the high rents nor the housing crisis nor the traffic. I remember the first time I saw him get off the BART train at Powell Street Station: imposing and lively and energetic and lively.

The purpose of this reflection is to point out that looking back causes us to turn our memories pink. But I think that’s also the majesty of a place like San Francisco: It belongs to each of us, like a shimmering jewelry box that contains the tiny gems of individual memories we made along the way. My San Francisco will never be your San Francisco, and that’s the dizzying, wonderful, and crazy thing about this place.

But maybe I’m naive. Although I grew up in the suburbs of the Bay Area, I’ve only lived in San Francisco for five years. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I still see it the way I was when I was a bored, nerdy teenager who itches to get out of the suburbs and get out of this glittering city of hills. Memory plays such tricks on us, coloring our present and future perceptions in ways we seldom see or acknowledge.

The villains in “The End of the Golden Gate” are well known. Technology, capitalism, Mayor Ed Lee’s tax laws. All authors seem to agree on one point: San Francisco has changed, and in many ways for the worse. The city is of course the standout character in the book and sometimes plays the villain too.

Many of the book’s essays are downright melancholy and long for the San Francisco the author knew and loved. Before techn. Before widespread gentrification. Before all of that.

“The San Francisco that I knew and loved was modernized, smooth, chrome-plated, polished, colonized, homogenized and marginalized as a cultural innovation force,” writes Peter Coyote in “San Francisco, For Sale by New Owners”. “The transformation was carried out smoothly and seamlessly through money and an addiction to power.”

“San Francisco,” he wrote earlier in the essay, “is too expensive, too monoculturally wealthy. A wealth of technology and privileges have turned it into a cozy enclave for the heartless. ”

There is an undertone of acidity and melancholy in all of this, and I understand why. The idealized version of San Francisco only ever slips a little out of hand. It will never be the same again. The people who made it special fled and died. The rents are too high.

The question I kept asking while reading The End of the Golden Gate was: What’s next? People are leaving the city, technology has changed them, all artists are gone. But where do we go from here?

I found an answer in Gary Kamiya’s outstanding essay “San Francisco Is My Home”. Kamiya acknowledges the downside of this city: “The exorbitant housing costs, the influx of technicians, traffic, crime, dirty streets and an ever-worsening homeless crisis.” But he also overcomes these now familiar complaints and tries to explain why he is here despite everything want to live.

“Every moment you move through the winding terrain of this city, behind a shop front or a neon sign, a strange hill or a piece of unknown water will suddenly rise in the distance, as mysterious and alluring and otherworldly as one of these unknown landscapes in the background of a Renaissance painting, ”he writes. “San Francisco gives you the universe for free every step of the way.”

I recently returned to San Francisco from Los Angeles, and one of the things I missed most – as silly as it may be – was the hills. I now live downstairs in one, and just 90 paces from my door I can climb the sloping sidewalk to see the city glow as the sun sets. There’s still magic here.

Sometimes I worry that the discourse about people leaving San Francisco will harm the city more than it will help it. I should know I was SFGATE’s de facto Exodus reporter for years, writing about people who moved from the Bay Area to Austin, to Portland, to the Midwest. But this discourse feels so tired to me now.

If people want to go, let them go. I’m much more interested in those who stay – the “Lifer”, as musician Terry Ashkinos calls them in “Lifer”.

“A lifer is someone who cannot give up life,” writes Ashkinos. “A life artist cannot stop trying to live the artist’s life in its purest form. And they do this because they have no other option. ”

I think so of San Francisco. For me there is no other place I would rather be.

More stories from San Francisco

The post San Francisco is endlessly dying appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.