Hoodline recently met up with longtime Lower Haight resident and location scout/manager Peter Moody at his home. Over the years, he's worked on numerous feature films shot in the city, collaborating with A-list directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Tim Burton, and Clint Eastwood, just to name a few. Oh, and he also loves gin martinis.
Our tour of the Moody home started in the living room, which is modeled after iconic Upper Haight bar Aub Zam Zam. It's where Peter and his wife, Mara, went on their first date in 1992, after meeting that same night at Club Deluxe.
Before he and Mara married, Peter lived at 42 Belvedere St., the same apartment in which ballet stars Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn got busted for marijuana at a party in 1967. At the time, they were the first celebrities to be arrested for weed, and though the charges were eventually dropped, the story made national news.
Though location scouting is his primary occupation, Moody is also a director: in 2004, he made a “happy-hour length” docudramedy on the Zam Zam's favorite drink: the martini. Called Olive or Twist, it played in numerous film festivals around the U.S. Moody still keeps a collection of martini shakers in his living room.
Peter and Mara moved to the Lower Haight in 1997, purchasing their house right after the Fillmore projects were torn down. Over the past 18 years, they've seen a lot of changes, “all positive,” Peter says. When the couple first moved in, back in the '90s, muggings were common. “There are still a fair amount of car break-ins in the area. Just two days ago, there was a car theft right out front,” he told us. “There are obviously problems and some violence in the area, but overall it’s a great neighborhood.”
Moody says he likes that the Lower Haight has kept its character over the years, with longtime businesses like Noc Noc, Toronado, and Mad Dog in the Fog still going strong. He prefers the "sunnier" Lower Haight to the Upper Haight. “That’s how Divisadero got its name,” he jokes. “Because it divides the fog from the sunny part of Haight.”
Moody got his start in the film industry by directing a music video for the Camper Van Beethoven song "Take the Skinheads Bowling,” which did well on MTV. He started working as a production assistant, and his colleague and production coordinator, Cat Isakson, told him that he was "really good at finding weird locations," so he went into scouting.
He soon teamed up with location manager Rory Enke, who's worked extensively with Robin Williams and Francis Ford Coppola over the years. Williams' Bicentennial Man was the first movie Enke and Moody worked on together; they've now been collaborating for 18 years.
Moody's basement office, a Tim Burton-esque movie museum, is full of memorabilia. One of his favorite pieces is a print of the poster for Manhattan, autographed by Woody Allen.
Moody worked with Allen on 2013's Blue Jasmine, and described him as “kind of quiet, and insulated by friends and family ... [each day], he would go to a different restaurant for lunch. That’s how he discovers a city. His producer does a lot of research to find restaurants for him. Apparently, he walked out of Mission Chinese.”
Moody says that Allen has become “claustrophobic and can’t go in elevators or through tunnels, so when taking him around, you have to avoid certain things.” He's also retained his trademark neuroses: when the pair went looking for an exterior to be used as Cate Blanchett’s sister’s apartment for Blue Jasmine, Moody showed Allen an apartment that had trees out front. Woody told him that he didn’t want to use the apartment, because "trees are too happy." (He eventually settled on a different building, on South Van Ness.)
Each director has specific skills and quirks, which Moody relishes. He spent time driving around with Tim Burton as they scouted locations for last year's North Beach-set Big Eyes, and says the director has “an encyclopedic mind.” As Moody and Burton drove by Danielle Steel’s house, Burton turned to him and said, “Wasn’t a scene from Bullitt shot there?"
Moody also worked with Clint Eastwood on 2010's Hereafter, and described him as a very precise director. “Clint usually shows up on the set at 10 am, does one or two takes, and that’s it. He likes to be done by 5pm, so everyone likes working with him. The trick is that everyone on set needs to be prepared, because they don’t have a lot of chances to get it right."
Moody's film scouting process starts with reading the script and looking around for a space that will match the character or setting. Sometimes, he’ll also get specific requests from the production designer or director. He then drives around the city to take photos of places, creating a virtual tour. The production designer examines the photos, and then shows four or five of her favorites to the director.
More film shoots may be in the cards for San Francisco, Moody said. California's tax incentive program for in-state filming has tripled this year, meaning there's $330 million of rebates in play—and filmmakers get higher incentives for filming outside of LA. As a result, he expects a lot more features and big-budget films will be shot in San Francisco in the next few years.
Some of those films may be shot in the Lower Haight. One of Moody's favorite locations is 770 Haight, the home of the late Jay Johnson. Moody scouted it for Big Sur, Milk, and the HBO series Looking, and it was used in all three. He also scouted locations for Ant-Man and Looking at Buena Vista West, in addition to a few Reese Witherspoon films.
As much as he likes working in the Lower Haight, Moody says he aims to look around and use different locations throughout the city. He enjoys the challenge of scouting new locations, and also wants to avoid making neighbors mad. "When they film at the same place over and over, neighbors tend to complain.” For example, right after Looking shot at 770 Haight, forthcoming film The Diary of a Teenage Girl (which Moody did not scout) also filmed there, frustrating some neighbors.
"We were really reluctant to let them have a permit for that location because we didn’t want to impact the neighborhood so soon," said Susannah Greason Robbins, the executive director of the San Francisco Film Commission, of the back-to-back shoots. "What we did was limit the amount of parking that they could take out, because we really didn’t want to inconvenience everybody again ... We are a city where parking is difficult on a good day, so when productions do come in, and we need to reserve parking for their vehicles, it does inconvenience people and we do acknowledge that."
"We hope that the upside of the productions taking place here is that they provide jobs for local crew and actors and local spending, which goes into the economy, into the businesses in the area," she continued. "Then, when you see it on screen, you’re so proud that you’re seeing your neighborhood and your city on the screen."
Moody's most recent SF feature project was Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Michael Fassbender as the Apple founder and Seth Rogen as his business partner, Steve Wozniak. The locations he helped select for shooting include the Flint Center, the SF Opera House, and Davies Symphony Hall. The film will be released on October 9th. Here's a trailer:
