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Who is Kaiser Soze?
On Wednesday we relished reading Matier and Ross's column about a brouhaha involving the San Francisco Film Commission. Seems that while shooting days in The City are up, all is not well between the commissioners and the executive director, Stefanie Coyote -- whom loyal SFist readers will remember from her previous brouhaha with deposed Treasure Island impresario Tony Hall over the Rent production.
So Stefanie gets in a fight with former deputy director Michael Billington and replaces him with Kristin Treiber. Worried that Billington's supporters might disrupt Monday's meeting, she arrives with her husband, Peter Coyote, and Hollywood tough guy Sean "Spicoli" Penn (who we assume was not allowed to carry one of his pistols through City Hall security). Luckily, hardly anyone showed up, but apparently the discontent doesn't stop there.
H. Brown accuses Coyote of firing Billington because he blew the whistle on $1,200 Coyote charged The City for location scouting photos from her own production company six months ago. Coyote called herself "naive" for not realizing that was an obvious conflict of interest, and returned the money. But H. forwarded us an anonymous note from one "KS" who says that there are more indiscretions and that they have documentation -- which they will produce if someone writes a 'fair' story. H. thought the KS was a reference to Kaiser Soze, from The Usual Suspects. We assume the letter was originally addressed to the SF Sentinel.
So KS, how about we go ahead and publish your salacious letter in its entirety, which should be fair enough from your point of view, no? In exchange, we'd love to see these 'documents.' After the jump: unconfirmed, potentially libellous (albeit entertaining) allegations from a rather vulgar anonymous source. Our motto at SFist is "run it up a flag pole and see who salutes," after all.
San Francisco Sentinel photo by Luke Thomas.
While you were taking pictures of the squarehead commissioners fellating Sean Penn and Peter Coyote in the street, the real story was being told upstairs, though you’d have had to really make some friends to get it.Matier and Ross are breaking the story of the ethics violation on Wednesday, but they probably don't have this:
Monday morning at 11 o’clock, Stephanie Coyote walked into the City Controller’s Office and presented a personal check for $1200; to cover an official city check she wrote in April, 2005 for $1200 to Wild Dog Productions, the company she owns with her husband, Peter Coyote.
A Whistleblower turned in the errant Executive Director for ethics violation (conflict of interest, in direct violation of city charter and her own employment contract), but someone in city hall called her to warn her. She has now paid back the money, six months later and on the very day of her supposed ass-reaming by Don Canady of the S.F. Film Commission, who has been sharpening his dagger for a couple of months since Coyote just sasses him back like a horny sorority girl mouthing off to her den mother over coming home late from a (successful) date.
Point is, she stole the money from the city and now they think that paying it back is going to make it go away, claiming that it was all a “mistake.” But she knew enough to not have done it: Amy Ackerman gave them all a long tutorial in what the do’s and don’t’s of being in office are about, and her contract is quite clear on “conflict of interest.” So they shouldn’t be allowed to make it go away. The law was broken, by a narcissistic little brat who runs people over if they get in her way. Oh, and by the way: she’s a thief. Sure, she paid the money back, but that doesn’t erase the ledger on her, does it?
Will you let this story die? Batshit Executive Director fires the guy who kept her office stitched together for years, through thin times, just because he tried to help her do her job the right way instead of her way. The Mayor doesn’t care; in fact, he’ll let Billington dangle the way he let Coyote dangle.
The mayor is promising all kinds of things to the commissioners to keep them from resigning in protest. Several commissioners are calling their friends to ask whether resigning would do any good, but Gavin Newsom is smoothing their feathers as he does, with probably-empty promises. And doesn’t anyone notice that Commission VP Rory Enke resigned just two weeks ago? Gee, why did that happen? Could it have been the shit that Coyote gives everyone on the commission? Why don’t you ask?
It was sickening: Morales and MC Cullough smiling away at an honest to god “star” even though they only showed to take some of the focus from the real deal – give ‘em bread and circuses and they won’t riot.
And who is Peter Coyote anyway? Why do people kowtow to him? What was the last picture he brought to S.F.? He damn sure ain’t Peter Kaufman or Chris Columbus. He ain’t Don Johnson and he ain’t Jennette Ethridge. Why, he’s not even Sean Penn, who made The Assassination of Richard Nixon in his own backyard.
And Stephanie Coyote has a habit of these little indiscretions: using city funds for all kinds of things. We have the records, and we’ll give them to you, if you write the stories, square and level.
KS