How The Last Black Man in San Francisco Soundtrack Reshapes the City’s Hippie Nostalgia
Late in the new film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, there is a sequence soundtracked by Scott McKenzie’s 1967 hippie standard “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” But instead of using the cheeseball original version, director Joe Talbot commissioned a gorgeous cover sung by Michael Marshall, best known for his hook on the Bay Area rap anthem “I Got 5 on It.” For the revamp, Talbot also drafted Norwegian jazz artist Daniel Herskedal, whose tuba playing is meant to evoke the foghorns of Hunters Point, the historically African-American neighborhood where much of the movie is set. Like the film itself, the soulful cover is steeped in Bay Area specificity, built from unlikely inspirations, and born of a deep collaborative spirit.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is Talbot’s debut feature and much of it was inspired by the life of Jimmie Fails, who plays the film’s main character, also named Jimmie Fails. The movie is ostensibly about Fails’ attempt to reclaim a Victorian house in the Fillmore District built by his grandfather, but really it’s about him trying to figure out his place in a city that’s in the final stages of an irrevocable identity change brought on by gentrification.
Talbot and Fails met as kids, when Talbot was, as he puts it, “the white kid that made beats for a lot of local rappers.” His longtime obsession with music is felt in the film through his inventive use of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” and Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” but also in the hilarious cameos from San Francisco icons like the Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra, who plays a Segway-riding tour guide, and the rapper San Quinn. The Last Black Man in San Francisco is also bolstered by a score from composer Emile Mosseri, whose stirring pieces add depth to moments when victory is within grasp or when the realization of failure hits. Speaking over the phone about the details of his film’s sweeping soundtrack, Talbot says, “Music is the only thing that I think I love more than movies.”
Pitchfork: Was music always a big part of your life?
Joe Talbot: Yeah. I grew up in a very musical household. My dad in particular raised me on a lot of the great music from the ’60s in San Francisco—Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Big Brother [and the Holding Company]. And movie scores, too. My parents played The Piano soundtrack and Last of the Mohicans. And sometimes all those things would combine. I’d sample some weird soundtrack or an old San Francisco song for a beat that I was making. One of the first beats I made was this terrible, butchered version of the song that’s in the movie, Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco.”
What’s your relationship with that particular song?
It’s a funny one, because my parents are old San Francisco lefties, and for a lot of people, including them, that song was seen as a hokey slice of hippie pop. It was written by John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas as sort of marketing material: Local authorities were afraid of all the kids descending on Monterey for Monterey Pop, so he wrote that song to assuage their anxieties.
So my parents didn’t play that song, but I kind of loved it when I heard it because, by that time, it felt warm and nostalgic. San Francisco has this obsession with its past, and music from that ’60s period conjures very strong feelings from people who lived through it and even for people like me, who were raised on stories of that time. When we started thinking about this movie, we wanted to take music from that period and update it into a newer, darker, stranger San Francisco that lives in a more perilous place. We were thinking about who could add a new twist to these old standards. Michael Marshall was one of the first people we thought about, and the first time he sang “San Francisco,” it moved us to tears.
Beyond Michael showing up in the film to sing “San Francisco,” there are also appearances from Jello Biafra and San Quinn. What was the impetus behind getting these cult Bay Area music figures in front of the camera?
Jello embodies a certain part of what I feel like is being lost in San Francisco. He has that great, twisted sense of humor. He came into our first audition with like 20 different possible outfits. I think he reveled in being a shithead in the film a little bit, which is why Jello is great.
San Quinn is another one of those guys. I grew up listening to him. What’s interesting about Quinn is he’s got that beautiful, deep, almost preacher-ly voice. He’s also this great orator. In some ways, it was too bad we didn’t get to use more of him, because he’s an incredible storyteller. He’ll just sit with you and tell you about Mac Dre and what happened in Kansas City [where Mac Dre was shot and killed in 2004]. He’ll talk about what Fillmore was like and the beef between people that lived in Victorians versus the kids in the projects. He’s part of the fabric of the city.
The way you use Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” in the film, where it’s almost chopped up, is not a traditional music cue. Why did you give that song that treatment?
Oftentimes, making beats can be a gateway into tracking down the original music, and you get into music through something that was sampled in a rap song. I first heard Mac Dre’s song where he samples “Blue” at a funeral for someone I knew who had been killed when I was a teenager. It always stuck with me because it wasn’t the music I would expect to hear at a funeral. But it was one of that kid’s favorite songs. I eventually found out where it came from. I must have been playing it, and my dad was like, “Someone fucking sampled Joni Mitchell?” Initially I wanted to use Mac Dre’s song [in the scene] as well, but unfortunately he hadn’t cleared the rights.
Did you ever consider doing the score for the movie yourself?
I wrote some music before we actually even wrote the script to help me flesh out the world and think about what the movie could look like and feel like but, to be honest, I just didn’t have anywhere near the chops to do the score. I spent a lifetime around music and working on it in some way, but there are so many things I don’t know.
Early on, I had these hopes of working with the people that made the music for films that I had grown up on, like Carter Burwell or Danny Elfman. But I realized that on an indie film like this, particularly with me being a first-time director, guys like that were most likely not going to allow me the kind of back-and-forth I was able to have in every other part of this film. Music is so important to the feeling in this film that the idea that I wouldn’t be able to get my grubby little hands in there and actually work with someone made me really nervous.
But when I met Emile, we bonded; he and I talk every day, still. He’s really grounded and not afraid, so he would let me be in there singing him shit and never be like, “Hey man, get the fuck out here. Let me do my thing.” It was really collaborative, and he wanted to honor this thing I had been living with for five years. He actually listened to my input and then took it to levels I hoped for but never imagined.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
