San Francisco Film Critics

2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013
Casey Affleck George Clooney Amy Ryan Julie Christie
Best Picture
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Best Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Best Director
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men

Best Actor
George Clooney, Michael Clayton

Best Actress
Julie Christie, Away from Her

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone

Best Original Screenplay
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages

Best Adapted Screenplay
Sarah Polley, Away from Her

Best Documentary
No End in Sight

Best Foreign Film
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon)

The SFFCC issued a Special Citation to recognize the under-looked independent film “Colma: The Musical,” a homegrown song-and-dance extravaganza about the paradoxical drudgery and surreality of life in a city where the dead outnumber the living one thousand to one.

Lastly, the group presented its Marlon Riggs Award, honoring a Bay Area filmmaker or individual who represents courage and innovation in the world of cinema, to filmmaker Lynn Hershman-Leeson. Hershman-Leeson’s films include “Conceiving Ada,” “Teknolust,” and this year’s “Strange Culture,” the true story of a Bay Area artist’s Kafkaesque experience as a suspected terrorist in the era of the Patriot Act.

The San Francisco Film Critics Circle (SFFCC), founded in 2002, is comprised of film critics from Bay Area publications. Its members include Jeff Anderson (Combustible Celluloid), Jeanne Aufmuth (Palo Alto Weekly), Barry Caine (Bay Area News Group), Peter Canavese (GrouchoReviews), Andrea Chase (Killer Movie Reviews), Cheryl Eddy (SF Bay Guardian), Michael Fox (SF360), Susan Gerhard (SF360), Pam Grady (FilmStew), Peter Hartlaub (San Francisco Chronicle), Dennis Harvey (Variety), Johnny Ray Huston (SF Bay Guardian), Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicle), Carla Meyer (Sacramento Bee), Bruce Newman (San Jose Mercury News), Mary Pols (Contra Costa Times), James Rocchi (CBS-5), Tim Sika (Celluloid Dreams), Ruthe Stein (San Francisco Chronicle), Jan Wahl (KRON-TV), Jason Walsh (Pacific Sun), Kelly Vance (East Bay Express), and Richard Von Busack (San Jose Metro).

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon