The creative team behind one of the most viral San Francisco political videos ever has produced a new ad about the city’s renaissance, funded by supporters of Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Image courtesy of Portal A
The creative team behind one of the most viral San Francisco political videos ever is dropping a new “love letter” to the city’s renaissance Wednesday, called “Comeback City,” funded by supporters of Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Directed by Joe Talbot, who won a Sundance prize for his 2019 film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” and featuring cameos from San Francisco icons including Joe Montana, Francis Ford Coppola, Dave Eggers, Steph Curry, and rapper Stunnaman, the three-minute film is a genteel dis track to San Francisco haters by the Believe in SF organization that backs Lurie.
The organization, which includes a charitable and a political arm, raised $1.8 million this year from a fund connected to What’sApp co-founder Jan Koum and venture capitalists including Jonathan Gans and Matthew Paige. The group spends largely in support of Lurie’s political priorities. This latest video echoes many of the same pro-San Francisco themes that Lurie has espoused since taking office but is aimed at an audience beyond those who typically consume political news.
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The larger question: Can the creators, San Francisco production company Portal A, strike viral lightning twice in an internet world that is different than the one where it created a video for former Mayor Ed Lee more than a dozen years ago?
“San Francisco is a very complicated place,” said Nate Hougheling, a founder at Portal A, co-writer of the new piece, and recent documentary producer of a film about affordable housing. “Everyone has an opinion. Whenever you talk about it, the knives come out, even from people who live here.”
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The point of the film, the creators say, is to celebrate the city’s burgeoning renaissance in a way that isn’t a typical recitation of crime stats dropping or a new company moving into town. Instead, it highlights the city’s creativity, beauty and the enchanting wackiness of its residents. At the end it includes a link for those who want to help improve the city, from planting a tree to picking up trash to volunteering at an animal shelter to helping with San Francisco First Lady Becca Prowda’s day of public service, “One City Day.”
“Comeback City” starts with a coyote (portrayed by two coydogs — the filmmakers say no AI was used) looking at San Francisco from a point high above it in the Marin headlands, and follows him as he meanders through the city.
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“It was really Joe’s idea to center it on the coyote as (representing) this outsider coming, looking at San Francisco from the Marin headlands and seeing the city twinkling in the distance, and being drawn to it and feeling a calling toward it. Then following it like an outsider finding their place in the city,” Houghteling said.
Using a coyote as a narrative thread is an outre idea that will stir conversation, and that’s the point, said Dan Newman, a veteran Democratic political consultant and one of the state’s best political admakers who helped germinate the idea.
The success path, however, for offbeat videos to go viral is tougher than it was a dozen years ago.
Lee, a former city administrator, was appointed to fill the rest of Gavin Newsom’s term when Newsom was elected lieutenant governor in 2010. Lee initially promised not to run for a full term, but changed his mind in 2011. Portal A created an ad that re-mixed Hammer’s 1991 hit “2 Legit 2 Quit” with a riff on how Lee was too legit to quit being mayor. It featured cameos including the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, San Francisco Giants reliever Brian Wilson and tech executives including Marissa Mayer and Biz Stone, with some sporting Hammer’s signature baggy pants. It was unlike any political ad then — or now, for that matter. Yet the creators weren’t sure what the reaction would be.
It exploded in the middle of the campaign, helping to hip up the dowdy, understated Lee’s image and boosting him to victory. (It has been seen more than 624,000 times — way more than anybody who’d watch an ad on local TV.) But that kind of ubiquity is hard to replicate, said Newman.
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“There’s a higher bar and that can lead people to swing bigger and take bigger risks and fall on their face more too, ” Newman said. “People need to have a reason to talk about it, and share it, and discuss it, and even argue about it.”
There is little that’s likely to be controversial in this. Unlike Portal A’s Lee video, there are no tech execs featured. That could have backfired at a moment when voters are wary of billionaires’ outsize influence and seeking to rein in the use of AI. And yeah, some of the celebrity responses on an accompanying behind-the-scenes video are hackneyed. When Montana is asked what represents San Francisco to him, he says, “the cable cars. C’mon.”
One celebrity appearance, however, was unplanned. When directors Chris Columbus and Roman Coppola and novelist Dave Eggers were being filmed in North Beach, Francis Ford Coppola, who lives nearby, happened to wander past and was soon recruited to be in a scene. The film also includes a spoof of Lurie, who shows up in a scene where the coyote startles him as he appears to be filming one of his ubiquitous “Let’s Go San Francisco” social media bits. Political insiders will notice that’s done with a huge wink as Newman helmed the independent expenditure fund that supported Lurie’s favorite candidates and ballot measures in the June 2 primary.
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But the film is largely apolitical — and it will be interesting to see how It might be harder for something that’s largely sunny to catch fire online in this hyperpartisan environment. It’s hard to argue with a Valentine, especially after years of cheap San Francisco-bashing from conservative media.
“Those videos we made 15 years ago,” Houghteling said of the Lee video, “that was like a different time and a different internet.”