One of the speakers at this year’s Scotts Valley Hitchcock Festival March 14-16 is Aaron Leventhal, co-author of a book about the film director’s movies in the Bay Area.
He shared with Scotts Valley Times his passion for the subject.
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What inspired you and Jeff Kraft to write Footsteps in the Fog about the Hitchcock film inspirations in San Francisco?
Jeff and I were colleagues, and in our consulting work, we often had downtime as we waited on client responses to our submissions. During these pauses, we would find ourselves talking about a whole range of things that seemed to, more often than not, wander into cinema, such as movies we had recently watched or geographic locations in the Bay Area where movies were shot.
Aaron Leventhal
We quickly realized we both had a passion, like detectives, for figuring out the exact corner, intersection, and location of a given scene in films, including the time of day, what buildings were still there, etc.
We would regale our other colleagues with this sort of competition we had struck up to try and make the other one guess where this film’s car chase scene was in San Francisco or that film’s view of the Golden Gate Bridge was shot.
In fact, we started accumulating so much Bay Area film knowledge that someone suggested we write it down. We decided to try.
We initially thought of a map of Bay Area films, similar to their maps of the Hollywood Stars. We figured, at worst, what a great holiday gift for friends and family.
Once we had started to accumulate the research, we realized there was a fascinatingly large amount of Hitchcock films shot in the Bay Area. Given the Great Master was beloved by both of us and so many other people, we thought we might have a commercial venture on our hands.
We took our map concept and wrote it up as a proposal to publishers, which we submitted to around 20 different publishing houses. All said no in a short, neatly typed rejection letter. Although one was different. In addition to the typed letter, handwritten in the margin, it read, “If you want to turn this into a book, I might just be interested.”
The rest is history as our book, **Footsteps In The Fog, Alfred Hitchcock’s Bay Area**, by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal, with the help of our wives along the away, was published in 2002.
How long did the book take to research and write?
Jeff and I were both researchers and amateur detectives, so it was a joy to work on the book. Our wives often thought we were crafty, spending more time with each other than with them on some weekends, as we watched Hitchcock films again and again, took day trips to research locations, and drafted chapter after chapter on the Hitchcock films that included locations in the films or were inspired by Bay Area sites.
In all, nine of his films, from 1940 through his last in 1976, featured Bay Area sites, from Salinas to Santa Rosa. We visited tirelessly and with a great sense of discovery, everything we could find.
Six years after we started, working by the rule of “15 minutes a day” allowed us to publish the book through Santa Monica Press in 2002.
Can you still find the San Francisco landmarks you wrote about?
Many of the sites have changed as the years have passed, although some wonderful sites have endured.
What we ultimately discovered in our book is that Hitchcock used Bay Area settings for 9 of his films. Three films extensively used Bay Area settings, where the geography is so prominent it almost plays a starring role, including: Shadow of a Doubt, which is set in the 1940s small town Santa Rosa, during World War II; Vertigo offers a tour of the streets and sites of San Francisco, among other places, in 1958; and The Birds which blends 1960s Bodega and Bodega Bay. For each of these, there remain glimpses and significant sites that you can still tour, given so many of the locations were included.
Additionally, six other Hitchcock films utilize Bay Area locations and/or were inspired by Northern California settings. They include:
- Academy Award-winning Best Picture Rebecca (1940), with Point Lobos as a stand-in for European settings;
- Suspicion (1941), where Highway 1 vistas served as the English coastline;
- Psycho (1960), where a California Gothic mansion in Santa Cruz, called the McCray, served as inspiration for the Bates Mansion pictured here. Incidentally, today, this location is called the Sunshine Villa, which is a nice little ode to Hitchcock.
- Marine (1964) uses the San Jose Diridon train station as a double for Hartford, Connecticut.
- Topaz (1969), where the Salinas area served as a double for, of all places, Cuba, and
- Family Plot (1976), Hitchcock’s final film, which blended Los Angeles and San Francisco. You’re driving down the street in LA, you turn the corner, and you’re in SF.
For these too, the feel remains even if the buildings are long since gone.
Why has Alfred Hitchcock’s film legacy lasted so long?
Hitchcock was a personality larger than life. He defied convention by making himself a focus in his movies (he appeared in a cameo in every one of them) and came out from behind the camera to do his Hitchcock Presents TV shows, which were smash hits. Hitchcock had popularity and a personality that people remembered.
Plus, his movies always left a strong impression, for better or worse. He was known as the “Master of Suspense” for a reason — he created some of the best movies of their eras, which today remain watched, loved, taught, studied, and remembered.
Hitchcock found inspiration for so many classic films in one location. How unusual is that?
Hitchcock found Hollywood distasteful, although an important tool and location for making his films. While working on Rebecca, he and his wife Alma were convinced by friends to look at the area around Scotts Valley for a possible vacation home.
They both fell in love with the area and purchased a ranch and vineyard in the area. This gave Hitchcock a place to stay away from Hollywood and ultimately became a place he found inspiration for locations for his films.
His passion for the area — the food, the politics, the pace of life, the beauty — he found inspiring and thus was able to use that to create films from locations from a local’s perspective.
This gave him the ability to allow his passion for the area to shine through in his films.
What we ultimately discover in our book Footsteps In The Fog is that Hitchcock’s footsteps make an indelible mark on the region, and in turn, the region leaves a dramatic mark on his films.
His movies offer insightful glimpses into the geography, lifestyle, history, and glorious mystery of the San Francisco Bay Area., spanning four decades.
Hitchcock left a gift for residents and visitors to the Bay Area: An enduring image of not only drama and suspense but also the view of Northern California from the eyes of a true fan of the area.
What projects are you working on now?
More than 20 years later, Jeff and I have developed a second book on Hitchcock’s New York. However, due to photo rights and studio rules, we have not been able to get approval to print our next book. Jeff and I are both in our mid-50s and plan to find future projects related to this.
In the meantime, we raise our families and focus on our day jobs. We are honored to be part of Hitchcock’s celebrations and events.