It was the winter of 1975/76 and I was living in the City, in the flat on Vallejo Street with Ellenwood, Duffy, and Mace.  Ellenwood was attending SF State and had a project due in his film class.  The assignment was a short film.   The Patty Hearst trial was the big news at the time so it was decided to make a short super8 film spoofing Patty and the SLA.  For younger readers I will offer a brief history of the SLA.  As for super8, I’m not going to explain, google it.

Patricia Hearst, heiress to the Hearst media empire, was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment in February, 1974 by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a leftist terrorist organization led by escaped convict Donald DeFreeze aka “General Field Marshall Cinque”.  Their goal was to bring about revolution through acts of urban warfare including murder, robbery, and kidnapping.  Soon after Hearst swore allegiance to the SLA and took the name “Tania”.  In April she took part in a robbery of the Hibernia Bank, brandishing a rifle and shouting orders.  In May, after Cinque and most of  his followers were killed in a shootout in L.A., Hearst and the other surviving members went into hiding in the Bay Area.  Then in September the FBI caught up with them.  Now the trial was front page news.

Ellenwood and Mace wrote the script overnight and the usual suspects were gathered for the cast.  Patty was played by Ellenwood’s sister Mary, who bore a passable resemblance.  Carlton, the only black member of the troupe at the time, of course played Cinque and I was cast as Bill Harris.  Most of the filming, including the kidnapping scene, were filmed in and around the flat.  The film would climax with the now infamous Hibernia bank robbery.

Realizing it was highly unlikely that the bank would allow us to “shoot” inside, the plan was to do an exterior shot.  The plan was to do it on Sunday morning when the bank was closed and the streets fairly empty.  So on Sunday Ellenwood and I loaded the camera and a cache of prop guns into the blue Olds and headed for the Sunset district.  Heading west on Noriega Street we soon realized that we had no idea where the bank was.  It was a lovely sunny day in the city and soon we came across a line of parents with their kids lined up outside a Bud’s Ice Cream shop.  Ellenwood pulled the car to the curb and I shouted, “Does anyone know where the Hibernia Bank is?”  One of the dads responded, “Back at 22nd Avenue”, gesturing east as he approached the car…only to stop dead in his tracks as his eyes fell upon the pile of guns on this front seat between us.  With a “Hey thanks!” Ellenwood flipped a u-turn in the middle of the block and we headed back toward the bank.

When we arrived everyone else was already there so we hustled to set up the camera and set the scene.  The shot called for us to hide around side of the bank and then suddenly rush the door as Ellenwood filmed from across the street.  So we grabbed our props and took our places, waiting for the signal.  Just then one of the local street people wandered west up Noriega and into the crosswalk at 22nd, his mind seemingly still fogged from the night before.  He was halfway across the street when he noticed us, huddled along the wall on 22nd , clutching our fake guns.  From his reaction I could see that this moment of instant clarity had been a shock to his senses so I pointed over to the camera to try to calm him.  He then proceeded to the corner where the camera was set up and started giving Ellenwood a piece of his still inebriated mind.  I started over to assist but as I started across the street the sight of the replica Walther PPK in my hand seemed to convince him to continue on along his way.

With the situation resolved we shot the scene in one take and then quickly dispersed before we attracted any more attention.  Of course if we had tried doing this today we would likely have the swat team down on us in two seconds flat, but things were different back then when we were too young and dumb to know better.