Five In Focus | Graham Leggat: Artists, writers, musicians, politicians, and filmmakers share their favorite films

Graham Leggat

Graham Leggat, the executive director of the San Francisco Film Society since October 2005, has 18 years experience in the non-profit arts world, including executive positions at the American Museum of the Moving Image, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and board fixtures at Media Alliance and the Association of Independent Film and Videomakers, all in New York City. He has been the publisher of Film Comment magazine, contributing editor for FILMMAKER magazine, and columnist for the New York Daily News. He has been written widely on a variety of subjects. His first novel, Song of a Dangerous Paradise, was published in January 2007.

Since Graham has adopted San Francisco as his home town, we asked him to choose five films that show us why he’s glad he lives there.

GRAHAM LEGGAT'S TOP FIVE SAN FRANCISCO FILMS

1. |

Medicine for Melancholy

Gorgeously shot in muted tones in neighborhoods from the Marina to the Tenderloin, this bittersweet two-hander is not only a beautifully scripted romance but also a debate on race, class, assimilation, and gentrification. Made on a shoestring and brilliant in just about every way you can think of. An absolute gem.

2. |

Crumb

Hands-down one of the best documentaries of the past 15 years, made by beloved dyspeptic native son Terry Zwigoff about beloved dyspeptic comic-book genius Robert Crumb, then-resident of San Francisco. It’s not warts and all, so much as it’s all warts, as far as the eye can see. Completely riveting.

3. |

The Conversation

Dread, paranoia, anxiety in the limpid sunlight of America’s most beautiful city. Gene Hackman sweating his way through a soiled raincoat. Blood rising in the flushed toilet. Hackman tearing his apartment to pieces, then sitting amid the wreckage playing his saxophone. Work of genius.

4. |

Bullitt

The star, the car, the hills, sure, but also one of the purest and most effortless displays of I-could-care-less attitude that you will ever see. Something to aspire to.