美国国家公共电台 NPR 'The Last Black Man In San Francisco' Is About Who Belongs In A Beloved City（在线收听）

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

"The Last Black Man In San Francisco" is a new film opening this weekend. It's inspired by the real-life story of Jimmie Fails. With the help of his best friend, Fails tries to reclaim the Victorian-style house where his family once lived in the now-gentrified Fillmore District. He dreams of what it could once again be.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO")

JIMMIE FAILS: (As Jimmie Fails) We could throw parties. You could put on one of your plays. We can yell.

SHAPIRO: NPR's Mandalit del Barco went to San Francisco to meet up with the real Jimmie Fails and Joe Talbot, who directed and co-wrote the movie.

MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: On a windy San Francisco day, Jimmie Fails sits at a bench in Duboce Park with his best friend, Joe Talbot, and actor Jamal Trulove, who has a role in the movie.

FAILS: It's crazy, like, sticking out like a sore thumb at Duboce Park, like, being black; that shouldn't be a thing. You know, me and Jamal the only black people probably at this park right now.

JAMAL TRULOVE: Right.

DEL BARCO: This area, the Fillmore, was once known as the Harlem of the West - a lively African American neighborhood filled with jazz and blues clubs.

FAILS: It was blacker. You know, it used to be, like, a lot of - like, Spike Lee flick or something. It was like boomboxes and dice games. And it wasn't this (laughter).

DEL BARCO: Dog park.

FAILS: Dog...

TRULOVE: Labradoodles.

FAILS: Yeah, labradoodles and avocado toast, you know?

DEL BARCO: Fails is just 24 years old, but he and his friends are nostalgic for the more diverse and more offbeat San Francisco they grew up in, before the city became virtually unaffordable, even for people like Trulove, who recently won a $13-million wrongful conviction settlement.

TRULOVE: I can't afford to live in San Francisco (laughter), even having the millions and, you know, stuff like that.

DEL BARCO: The gentrification also worries Joe Talbot, who's white. The fifth-generation San Franciscan grew up in Bernal Heights and met Fails at a city park when they were teens.

JOE TALBOT: We're working through a lot of what we feel about San Francisco. But part of that is that we still love this city. We still want to make it home. We just also recognize that it can feel, at times, nearly impossible. It's so damn expensive.

DEL BARCO: As a little boy, Fails lived here in the Fillmore with his family in a three-story Victorian. The house was foreclosed, and he bounced around, moving to the projects. For years, he dreamed of the Victorian of his childhood.

FAILS: The only place where my family was kind of all together and all lived as one. And the house, you know, when we lost it, it was like - we never really had that again.

DEL BARCO: The idea to make his story into their first big movie began years ago, during long conversations Fails had with his best friend, Talbot. Jimmie plays a fictionalized version of himself, painting and repairing the house he says his grandfather built, even while other people are living in it. After they leave, Jimmie moves in, and he even tries to buy it.

TALBOT: We wanted to sort of make it feel like this mini epic - this man trying to get back to home, trying to reclaim the kind of family throne.

FAILS: Trying to get the love of his life back.

DEL BARCO: The film is also about a gentle friendship between Jimmie and Montgomery, a quirky, creative soul played by Jonathan Majors. They both try to restore the house, and together, at times on the same skateboard, they navigate the hilly streets of San Francisco. They butt up against a smarmy real estate agent and annoying hipsters. And they quietly bond with those who give the city its unique character, like a naked guy catching the bus and a man singing on the street.

(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL HERSKEDAL, EMILIE MOSSERI & JOE TALBOT'S "SAN FRANCISCO (BE SURE TO WEAR FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR)")

MICHAEL MARSHALL: (Singing) If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear flowers in your hair.

DEL BARCO: The film opens in Hunters Point, where Jimmie stays with Montgomery and his grandfather, played by Danny Glover. Since the '40s, black San Franciscans have lived in this impoverished, isolated neighborhood. The real-life Jimmie Fails once lived in a housing project here across from the abandoned Navy shipyards and a former nuclear test site. Two weeks ago, he and Talbot revisited Hunters Point and found a barbed wire fence obscuring the bay view in the film's opening shot. Posted there was a long-awaited notice about the toxic and contaminated area.

FAILS: Cleanup plan proposed (laughter) - 2019, huh?

DEL BARCO: The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was added to EPA's Superfund list in 1989. Across the street is a sleek, new condo and, at the end of the block, an entire new luxury development, advertised as, quote, "the reimagined shipyards," with townhomes listed at $1.3 million.

TALBOT: They were starting to do construction as we were filming. We begged them not to, for the film and also just for, you know, the morality of the city (laughter). You can document these places that we love, but in some ways, it sometimes feels like it's all you can do, is at least just try to commit them to memory.

DEL BARCO: "The Last Black Man In San Francisco" asks who belongs in the city by the bay. Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails say they're keeping their hearts in their hometown.

Mandalit del Barco, NPR News, San Francisco.

(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL HERSKEDAL, EMILIE MOSSERI & JOE TALBOT'S "SAN FRANCISCO (BE SURE TO WEAR FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR)")