Imagine dropping out of high school, never attending college, but still dreaming of making a feature-length film. Imagine the thousands, maybe tens of thousands of other filmmakers looking for their chance at getting a movie made in line ahead of you because they did graduate and go to film school. Take those odds and then imagine having your first project discovered by one of the most respected production companies in the industry who convince one of the most celebrated prestige studios of the decade, A24, to finance and distribute it. That is a scenario that simply doesn’t happen. Even in the indie film world. In fact, it’s a story some industry veterans would find hard to believe. But it did happen and its quite the success story for Joe Talbot.
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“The Last Black Man in San Francisco” debuted at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival to mostly raves from audiences and critics alike. In my review for The Playlist, I noted how hard it was to believe this was Talbot’s first feature film. It’s a subtle, slow burn about a struggling twentysomething, Jimmie (Jimmie Fails), who is obsessed with a Victorian home he once lived in as a child that is now occupied by richer, white folk. They don’t keep it up like they should in his eyes, so he’ll stop by and paint a window sill or fix a broken shingle. The residents don’t like it, but he refuses to stop. It means too much for him. When an opportunity to live in the home presents itself, he can’t help but squat in it, hoping a miracle occurs so he can buy the property back.
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Like Talbot’s fairy tale odds in getting “Last Black Man” made, the story in the movie seems like a fantasy, except that it’s inspired by a real-life story, Fails own childhood. A tale Talbot first learned of it when they met growing up in the San Fran neighborhood near Presidio Park.
“We’d play football, play basketball at the school right next to it and Jimmie always says at first it was like a silent acknowledgment of each other, but when you’re boys I think you’re like too proud to be like, ‘You wanna be my friend?’ But it … Hi,” Talbot recalls. “And then eventually one time Jimmie came over to my house. I was there with my girlfriend and we just talked late into the night. It was sort of like as the conversation went on, it’s like one person shared something vulnerable and the other person does, it gets deeper and deeper and deeper and eventually, we were just really enjoying ourselves.”
Fails would star in the short films Talbot was making as a student at an SF creative arts high school. They started talking about the idea for “Last Man” before Fails left for college in New York. That only lasted a year, however, and when Fails returned they started brainstorming about the concept again.
“I think in a way we were kinda channeling our feelings about San Francisco, mine for having been there, his from coming back and looking around the city and being like, ‘What has happened to my city?’ into this movie,” Talbot says. “So, the first thing we did was we shot this concept trailer because I think we knew a high school drop out and an actor who’s never acted in a feature film, not exactly the most bankable pair trying to make, get a movie made.”
That short piece led them to producer Khaliah Neal, an Oakland native who had also returned from New York looking for new projects. She immediately clicked with Fails and Talbot and soon they were off and running. Talbot notes, “She and I and Jimmie cobbled together this group of other friends who became our film family who had also seen the concept trailer and they became our core unit who worked together to develop the story, develop the script, develop the materials.”
Talbot’s “weird funky path” then took a different turn. He was accepted into the Sundance Writer’s Lab but was rejected from the Director’s Lab (sweet irony as he won the Best Director prize at Sundance for “Last Black Man”). That led to the strategic decision to shoot a short with his team which, obviously, also included Fails.
“I had never been on a set before, so I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a liability on our set. I’m already going to be the least experienced person. The PAs are going to know more than me,'” Talbot says. “We also wanted to make something together too because it was like, ‘We know we’re going to be in the trenches together on ‘Last Black Man.’ Let’s get ourselves prepped.'”
“American Paradise” ended up screening at the 2017 Sundance and SXSW Film festivals. When it played in Park City the short got the attention of Plan B’s Christina Oh. Plan B, in case you were unaware, is the production company formed by Brad Pitt (and at one time Jennifer Aniston) that is effectively run today by Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner. They have produced Best Picture winners “12 Years A Slave” and “Moonlight” as well as “Moneyball,” “Okja,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “The Big Short,” “Vice,” “The Tree of Life” and “Selma.” Basically, they have exquisite taste. And Talbot says he’ll never forget their surreal first meeting.
“We met Dede and Jeremy on the set of ‘Ad Astra.’ Somewhere Brad Pitt was probably hanging in front of a green screen somewhere,” Talbot jokes. “That day, they were like, ‘We want to do this’ and Khaliah and I just left and cried because it was just like, I don’t know, you get so used to things not working out or you know how hard it is. There are so many good filmmakers you meet along the way that have these great films and they just never happen.”
He adds, “You have moments of doubt and insecurity. I feel like having dropped out of high school you have that sort of imposter syndrome where you’re like, ‘Oh, maybe I don’t belong here.’ For a long time, I didn’t call myself a filmmaker because I felt like I hadn’t made a feature yet. I think I only started really feeling that way after this last Sundance. A big part of it was I had a really great team there.”
The team that came together to make “Last Black Man” comes back again and again in my conversation with Talbot. Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra was hired a week before production began and delivered the best work of his career. Emile Mosseri had never scored a film before but flourished with a grand piece of music that even turned the heads of a number of award-winning composers at Sundance. Fails, if he wants it, now has an acting career to pursue. But they all came together to overcome massive hurdles to make this particular movie a stand out.
“Before Jimmie and I started talking about this movie I was in that state where I was like lonely and feeling like my best friends were leaving San Francisco. I didn’t have a lot of friends,” Talbot admits. “And this movie brought all these people together, the people I just mentioned, some of them have become my best friends in the world and out of that, when you’re going through it, in your darkest moments, you have those other people who are going to pick you up and they’re not just there for the movie. The movie brought us together but they’re like family now.”
That collective has a name now, Long Shot, and Talbot says they have an idea about what they want to do next.
“We have been discussing now for the past few months this movie potentially being the first installment of San Francisco trilogy,” Talbot says. “Not the same characters necessarily or even the same story, but different characters who exist in San Francisco and have their own very strange story that comes out of the fabric of the city right now. What it is [like] to be in San Francisco right now. So. we’re hoping to come back together, a lot of the same people, and make the next one.”
Art house box office hasn’t been kind to distributors this year, but no matter how “Last Black Man” fares don’t put it past Talbot, Fails and Long Shot to find a way to make it happen.
“The Last Black Man in San Francisco” opens in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on Friday.
