A ‘Jack’ of All Styles : In San Francisco, Where Filmmakers Have Their Pride, Robin Williams Kids Around

The Scene: Monday’s premiere in San Francisco of Hollywood Pictures’ “Jack.” The screening was at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater (near the Golden Gate Bridge) with an after-party in the adjacent Exploratorium. The theater structure offered the spartan ambience of an embellished warehouse, but its lawn presented the awe-inspiring neoclassical domes and colonnades built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It was quite a contrast. Outside was Caesar’s dream of Rome, inside was Home Depot’s vision of outlet space in Omaha.

Who Was There: The film’s star, Robin Williams; director Francis Ford Coppola; producers Ricardo Mestres and Fred Fuchs; plus 1,100 guests, including Billy Crystal (who was in town filming an Ivan Reitman comedy with Williams), George Lucas, Barry Levinson, Rick Nicita, Walter Shorenstein, S.F. Mayor Willie Brown and studio execs Joe Roth, Charles Hirschhorn and Lauren Lloyd.

The Buzz: That Williams created a spectacular 10-year-old and that the film, about a child who ages at an accelerated rate, is an artistic departure for Coppola. “There’s been a lot of diversity in my career,” said the director. “What does ‘Rumble Fish’ have in common with ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Tucker’? Every movie is kind of an adventure and you learn from it. I’ve never hesitated to do a different genre if I have a personal connection to it.”

Quoted: Williams on why he did the film: “Francis talked about it in a real personal way. He talked about his own childhood, about moving around, about the horror of being the new kid in school. It’s such a hard thing to do. It’s like dead child walking, doing that last mile toward the classroom.”

Subject of Conversation: The difference between Los Angeles and San Francisco movie makers. “There’s lot of snobbism in the San Francisco film community,” said a woman who lives there. “They don’t produce many movies, but they do produce a lot of pretentiousness.” Said George Lucas: “These are working filmmakers, not hustlers.”

Hollywood Wisdom: A local savant on the fleeting nature of fame: “Here today, gone later today.”