Oakland has been by way of rather a lot lately, shedding a sports activities legend and a beloved actor — to not point out two sports activities franchises.
Maybe one option to cope is to flee to the films, or one explicit film, the place you may hoot and holler as a bunch of East Bay teen punks give a whuppin’ to neo-Nazis exterior the 924 Gilman Road music membership. If that doesn’t pep you up, how about cheering on a fictionalized model of Golden State Warriors legend Eric “Sleepy” Floyd as he slam-dunks some actually rotten guys?
You get all that craziness and extra — together with belts of actual historical past and nostalgia — all through “Freaky Tales,” the anxiously awaited spring film launch a rowdy, gory stroll on the wild facet set in 1987 Oakland. Written and directed by the filmmaking duo Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (“Half Nelson,” 2019’s “Captain Marvel”), this massive fats smooch to The City opens Friday in space theaters and connects its plot dots by way of 4 storylines, some loosely rooted within the fact.
“I think Oakland needs this movie right now,” the Berkeley-born Fleck stated throughout an interview with Boden at one of many movie’s star areas — the venerable Grand Lake Theatre.
“The city’s gone through some tough times. We lost Rickey Henderson, Angus Cloud (the late “Euphoria” star who seems within the movie). We simply misplaced lots of people … the Oakland A’s. I feel (this movie) is only a celebration.”
And the way. “Freaky Tales” made a splashy debut on the Sundance Movie Pageant in 2024 and final month obtained rounds of high-fives from an enthusiastic crowd gathering for a particular screening held on the Grand Lake. The East Bay pink carpet introduced out native icons together with rapper Too $hort and Sleepy Floyd, together with stars Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis, Ben Mendelsohn and extra.
“Freaky Tales” recaptures the vitality and artistic may of Oakland whereas additionally celebrating the style filmmaking that turned all the fashion within the VHS age. A prevailing love for Oakland will get blended in with a surrealist tinkering of key figures, native occasions and areas as storylines bounce from a rap showdown between two feminine ice cream store employees and Too $hort (performed by rapper Symba, a Berkeley native) and a few wild Tarantino-level shenanigans involving Sleepy Floyd (performed by Ellis). Too $hort — whose 1987 track lends the movie its title — narrates and pops in for a cameo whereas Floyd – who now lives in North Carolina — additionally has a cameo.
One of many movie’s brightest smiles is available in a scene the place Pascal’s debt collector character enters an area video retailer the place he engages in a hilarious dialog with a movie-loving clerk, performed by Harmony native Tom Hanks.
Pascal says taking pictures that scene was knowledgeable and private spotlight.
“Not only was I with Tom Hanks, but I was on a set that was a mockup of a real VHS rental store that I grew up going to. I cannot tell you about the embarrassing amount of time I spent in VHS stores. It was sort of like my dream landscape as a child. … I knew every single movie that was on all the shelves. I was identifying all of the Tom Hanks movies that were on the shelves of this set while doing a scene with Tom Hanks. It was kind of like a nostalgic ecstasy.”
Pascal fondly remembers Hanks mentioning a number of spots round Oakland the actor is aware of effectively, at one level telling Pascal: “I got my ass kicked on that corner.’”
Oakland has turn out to be a hotbed for inventive, outside-of-the-box filmmaking. Just a few of the films which have set there embody Oakland director Ryan Coogler’s 2013 debut “Fruitvale Station,” 2018’s “Blindspotting” from East Bay natives Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs and Boots Riley’s surreal 2018 comedy-drama “Sorry to Bother You,” with LaKeith Stanfield. To generate much more Bay Space scripts, Casal and The Black Listing have created the Bay Listing, a challenge aimed to focus on the highest 10 scripts from the Bay Space screenwriting group. Boden and Fleck are concerned in that as effectively.
Everybody behind and in entrance of the digicam of “Freaky Tales” will get a bit nostalgic, since this movie dives into an East Bay approach of being, but it surely does have some sharp edges to it.
Why, although, is it set in 1987 Oakland? Two phrases: Sleepy Floyd.
“I listened to the (Lakers/Warriors) game on the radio and heard (Warriors sports commentator) Greg Papa’s play-by-play, where he actually called Sleepy Floyd ‘Superman,’” recollects Fleck. “That was just ringing through my head for years after.”
Boden heard her filmmaking collaborator pitch varied iterations of “the story a few child within the Bay Space within the ‘80s” for more than a decade and then helped him turn it into “four stories that are all about these different underdogs in the East Bay that collide in this genre, mix tape, mash-up, action-packed kind of way,” she said.
The first tale was inspired by an actual incident where 924 Gilman Street patrons faced off against a group of skinheads in a David vs. Goliath moment, she said. The final Floyd storyline takes the “Superman” moniker and runs off with it in gory ways.
Since the plot hinges on a few real-life personalities and thrusts them into unique and — in the case of Sleepy Floyd — absurd situations, it would be easy to assume that not everyone would hop aboard in an instant.
But everyone did. East Bay rapper Too $hort, who still lives in the East Bay, didn’t hesitate.
“He was on board from day one,” Fleck stated. “As soon as we told him what this was and what we wanted to do, he said ‘Cool, let’s do it.” Actually, the influential musician went on to function an govt producer.
“We were a little more nervous about approaching Sleepy given where we take (his story).”
They didn’t have to be.
“He was super friendly and supportive,” Fleck stated.
Floyd took the decision with Fleck and Boden to debate the movie after he stated he obtained a message through LinkedIn from the studio.
“I was just blown away because I had no idea what the call would be about,” Floyd recollects. “They gave me the basis of the movie and that it was going to be based on the 1987 game with the Warriors. I didn’t realize I would be killing people exactly,” he stated, laughing. Within the movie, Floyd can also be the celeb spokesperson for Psytopics, an East Bay cult-like religious middle.
The expertise of being part of the movie and coming again to the Bay ushered in some nice recollections for him.
“It makes me feel good and proud,” Floyd stated. “To be able to have a moment that still lives today in people’s psyche and memory … . It kind of brings that game, that night, back to life. Because as you get farther and farther away from it, it’s just a memory and a stat.”
Floyd additionally will get nostalgic about what it was like for him to be on the house staff and play on the Oakland Coliseum. (The evening earlier than the Grand Lake premiere, Floyd and others on the movie attended a Warriors recreation in San Francisco. He and Too $hort reminisced about when the Warriors performed in Oakland.)
“We were talking courtside last night and it just felt like family there (at the Oakland Coliseum),” he stated, whereas praising the Warriors’ new digs on the Chase Middle. “But you knew the ushers. You knew the people in the parking lots. You develop relationships with those people over the years. You lose that. I’m sure they’re gaining all of that back. But we were just reminiscing about the old Oracle Arena and how fun it was.”
What was notably enjoyable for Fleck was to plunk the tales in precise areas that maintain fond, private that means to him, even when the unique companies are now not there — such because the Loard’s Ice Cream on MacArthur Boulevard or Candy Jimmie’s membership and gathering spot, house now to The New Parish.
Though “Freaky Tales” is City-centric, the filmmakers see it having broad enchantment regardless that Bay Space audiences may choose up on allusions others may miss.
“The intention was for people everywhere to come into the movie and have a good time. That’s No. 1,” Fleck stated. “But yes, for the Bay Area people there are a lot of Easter eggs.”
For that cause and others, “Freaky Tales” is a sort of movie greatest skilled with a crowd in film theaters, Boden stated.
“Look we admit, not all our motion pictures have been massive rambunctious crowd pleasers the place you’ve an entire viewers screaming and applauding and laughing. However this film is like an infectious expertise to see with different folks.
