THE MAKING OF "CROSSING THE BAR"

CONCEPTION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF FOREPLAY - 2 OF 10

The Writer-Producer's Background

The first goal of this writer-producer is to gain the attention of the San Francisco Film Society and to be chosen as one of their fiscally sponsored film projects. It seems to me that the goal will only be attained by convincing the Society that I have found a story that (a) has never been told before, and that (b)only I am able to tell it. Such are the facts.

You see, eight years ago, after a long career in banking and securities, I left the financial services industry during the "dot-com bomb" to become a filmmaker, which had already been an avocation of mine for ten years. My initial, some say audacious, move was to position myself as closely as possible to a San Francisco based maritime organization that was founded in the early 19th century. I became a driver for a male dominated team of sixty, state commissioned ship pilots - The San Francisco Bar Pilots.

As I continued to write and produce my other film projects, what transpired was a 36-month access into their personal and professional lives that originally sparked the idea of producing a historical documentary film set in San Francisco about the little known and highly influential gang of state commissioned mariners. Even though I have now reinvented the story as a work of biographical fiction, I am no less committed to telling this story through the eyes of the ship pilots because of my strong, well-informed and opinionated connection with the subject matter. "Crossing the Bar" reveals the historical demands and consequences of a male-dominated maritime enterprise that, since its beginnings, has sought to continue its unchanged expansion.

This tale is told from the point-of-view of Aimee Tanneur who provides the film's narrative voice. She learns first hand that all the world's elite societies of bar pilots, that repeatedly reject her and her sisters inclusion into their ranks, could not be in a more powerful position to do so. The very fact that they alone are charged with getting many billions of dollars worth of cargo to the final destination as quickly as possible has given them unquestioned authority to operate with limited oversight, such as here in the backwater of California governance for over 150 years. I recognize, as do they, that things are changing - and it galls them.

Genesis of the Film's Title

For four or more years one version or another of the film had been called "Pilots of the Golden Gate." But I needed a fresh name along with the fresh, new approach. I struck pay dirt when I came upon a 1889 poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson called (begging your pardon, sir) "Crossing the Bar." Tennyson used the metaphor of a sand bar to describe the barrier between life and death.

My film project draws upon the poem's title to describe the inexorable social change that occurred with the Second Wave of feminism. It must be noted that sand bars are a fundamental presence in the life of a pilot. In great part, sand bars are the reason ship pilots exist.

Next time we'll investigate the Second Wave of feminism. I was nearly swamped during that unrelenting surge, but rose from the depths. And I'm here write about it.

Copyright 2010 G. Leo Maselli