Well, it's been a minute since Tartine Bakery was making headlines for its unionization dispute. And now that everything associated with Elon Musk has the stink of Trumpian Republicans and oligarchs running roughshod through our government, a Tartine partner getting in bed with Musk is not a good look.

It looks as though, as the New York Times and Chronicle are reporting, Bill Chait, the LA restaurateur who came on the managing partner of Tartine several years back, is working on Elon Musk's plan to open a Tesla-branded "retro-futuristic" diner and drive-in theater in Hollywood, which we first heard about this week.

Chait was an investor in Tartine going back to 2016, and was listed as a partner around the time that Tartine was expanding to LA, and as husband and wife co-founders Chad Robertson and Elizabeth Preuitt were divorcing. He was also quoted in several media pieces from three and four years ago when the Tartine Union dispute was rumbling — like this New Yorker piece, in which he pushed back on the idea that Tartine was some sort of "conglomerate."

Also joining the team for this Tesla diner will be chef Eric Greenspan, a familiar face for watchers of the Food Network, and especially Guy's Grocery Games — though Greenspan has yet to comment publicly about the project.

Musk has been talking about this diner idea since 2018 — when he tweeted about building "an old school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla supercharger locations in LA."

But, of course, he was a more popular figure in 2018 than he is currently, and it doesn't exactly seem like the most opportune time for Tesla to open a public-facing business like this in a largely liberal city like Los Angeles — but has anyone credited Musk with terrific self-awareness anytime in the last five years?

Much as the X/Twitter brand has been tainted since Musk took it over, Tesla is likely to continue taking hits as many Tesla owners and the general public are outraged about Musk running roughshod through the federal government, slashing and burning entire agencies at his whim, and without analysis, rationale, or transparency — it's all, he and Trump say, simply "waste" until anyone says otherwise.

And the opening of this diner is guaranteed to come with more protest than fanfare.

Chait, for his part, appears to have edited his LinkedIn page in the last hour, trying to suggest that he ceased to be an investor in Tartine in March 2019. An earlier version showed him as "president" of Tartine, and he was clearly quoted as a managing partner in multiple publications as of 2022. His new position is listed as Restaurant Investor in LA Restaurant Group.

Tartine has yet to comment on the situation, and neither has Chait, or Tesla. It's certainly possible that Chait became involved in this Tesla diner project years ago — and he is best known for LA projects like Bestia, Otium, and Rose Venice. Chait's company Zero2One LLC is the one listed as doing the hiring for the upcoming Tesla diner.

Tartine's current CEO is Dar Vasseghi, who is also based in Los Angeles, and previously held executive roles at Chobani and Jamba Juice.

The Times reports that work on the Tesla diner, which is located on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood and might be called Milliways, per the rendering above, is "progressing rapidly," and KCAL just did a broadcast from the construction site last weekend.

Update: Tartine CEO Dar Vasseghi has issued a statement. "Rumors are flying about a supposed tie between Tartine and Tesla, and I’d like to set the record straight: Bill Chait is not part of the Tartine management team and has not held the title of company president for the past 5+ years. He is one of the company’s many investors. Tartine has nothing to do with Tesla, except both words start with the letter 'T'."

Top image: Rendering by Ed Howard/Howard Models

The Oscar-winning film The Holdovers, which stars Paul Giamatti and is set at a New England boarding school in the 1970s, is brazenly similar to a screenplay that a former Pixar writer penned and shopped around Hollywood in recent years, that writer says.

His name is Simon Stephenson, and his credits include work on Pixar's Luca and Paddington 2. A former San Francisco resident, Stephenson now lives in LA, and he recently filed a formal complaint with the Writers Guild of America claiming multiple similarities between a script he wrote titled Frisco, and the screenplay for The Holdovers by David Hemingson.

As the Chronicle reports, Stephenson calls out multiple similarities, including the premise. The Holdovers is about a boarding school teacher who gets stuck watching over a 15-year-old during a Christmas holiday break, while Frisco is about a pediatrician who gets stuck watching over a 15-year-old.

Stephenson says the Holdovers was lifted "line by line" from his script, and "the evidence the holdovers screenplay has been plagiarised line-by-line from frisco is genuinely overwhelming — anybody who looks at even the briefest sample pretty much invariably uses the word 'brazen.'"

Stephenson's letter to the WGA further says "I can also show that the director of the offending film was sent and read my screenplay on two separate occasions prior to the offending film entering development. By ‘meaningful entirety’ I do mean literally everything — story, characters, structure, scenes, dialogue, the whole thing. Some of it is just insanely brazen: many of the most important scenes are effectively unaltered and even remain visibly identical in layout on the page."

Stephenson says that director Alexander Payne had access to his script twice, in 2013 and again in 2019, and ultimately passed on it to collaborate with Hemingson on The Holdovers.

Payne has said publicly that he lifted the premise of the film "from a 1935 French movie (‘Merlusse’) I’d seen at a film festival about a dozen years ago." That film, directed by Marcel Pagnol — the same director whose films inspired the name Chez Panisse and the name of Alice Waters' daughter Fanny — has pretty much the same premise as The Holdovers: A tough teacher is stuck at a boarding school looking after a group of students over a Christmas holiday and thereby comes to understand them better.

Reportedly, the WGA responded to Stephenson telling him he ought to take the matter to court, if he wishes. The union said it could not intervene due to the fact that Frisco had been written on spec.

In addition to winning Best Supporting Actress at last night's Oscars ceremony for Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers has won multiple prizes this awards season. The film won Best Cinematography and Best Breakthrough Performance for young actor Dominic Sessa at the Independent Spirit Awards, and Randolph also won supporting actor prizes there and at this year's Golden Globes.

Top image: Judd Apatow, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti seen during Focus Features' "The Holdovers" Los Angeles special screening and Q&A at Linwood Dunn Theater at the Pickford Center for Motion Study on February 13, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images for Focus Features)

Movie theater operators are projecting a debilitating post-Barbenheimer hangover, as the twin strikes by the SAG-AFTRA and WGA threaten to erase upcoming blockbusters and Oscar-season prestige films from the 2023 film release calendar.

It’s a fun bit of trivia that the Examiner brings us the news that the Barbie movie is the Outer Richmond’s Balboa Theatre’s biggest money-making film ever in the theater's 99-year history. Barbie has currently grossed $1.34 billion worldwide, while Oppenheimer has itself pulled in $853.2 million worldwide. And that’s a sorely needed boost for a COVID-battered movie theater industry that, locally, has seen the loss of the Westfield's Century 9, the Landmark Embarcadero, West Portal’s CineArts, and the CGV San Francisco (formerly 1000 Van Ness).  

But that boost may go bust because of the ongoing writers and actors strikes by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). The Examiner reports that SF movie theaters are worried that the rest of 2023’s big movie openings will be delayed, because actors are refusing to do publicity tours for new releases during the strike.  

"You can't help but support the actors and the writers. They need to have something set in stone for them. I completely understand that," Balboa Theatre owner and operator Adam Bergeron told the Examiner. "It's just hard to imagine that it won't affect the exhibition business negatively."

The celluloid really hit the fan with the late August announcement that tentpole blockbuster Dune: Part Two had its release date moved to March 2024, after an original November 3, 2023 release date. Other projected smash hits being moved to 2024 include Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and the Zendaya tennis drama Challengers.

All of these movies have completed filming, and are in the can and ready to go. The film’s studios just don’t want to release the movies if the star-studded casts are unwilling to promote them with publicity appearances.

"Writ-large, we're bummed out," Alamo Drafthouse programmer Jake Isgar said to the Examiner. "But the movies will come out when they come out. We definitely want the artists to be paid for their labor."

As things stand now, there are plenty of big releases and Oscar-bait films still scheduled to be released in 2023, despite the strike. Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro is still on for December 20, plus other perceived Oscar contenders like the Joaquin Phoenix vehicle Napoleon (November 22), and the musical version of The Color Purple (December 25). And big-budget crowd-pleasers are still on too: Saw X (October 27), The Marvels (November 10), The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (November 17), and the Timothée Chalamet Wonka reboot (December 15).

But those dates could change yet too. Oh, and there’s no guarantee the actors and writers strikes will end by early 2024.

Related: Hollywood's Strike Reaches Silicon Valley: Writers, Actors, and Activists Picket Netflix HQ in Los Gatos [SFist]

Image: @sagaftra via Twitter

A window display display was swiped from a Pleasanton clothing store in a bizarre robbery in which the thief left behind $200 and a note signed with the name of a character from the 1987 film Mannequin.

KRON 4 has the strange tale, reporting that the crime went down at Pleasanton's "KJCOUTURE," a store whose website says "It is our mission to help all women feel comfortable in their own skin," and which apparently is "the #1" location at which to buy "waist trainers," garments intended to smash women's bodies into a teeny-tiny waist shape. You know, because it's "comfortable."

ANYWAY. The waist-trainers had a scare this week, when the main mannequin in their front window display was stolen while the store was closed.

Owner Kim Gapol notes that nothing else was taken — not the computer behind the desk, nor the cash in their drawer. Where the mannequin stood was left two Benjamins and a note that read “Sorry for stealing your statue she needed a better home. You should consider better security. Love Hollywood.”

"Hollywood," one might reasonably suspect, is a reference to the window display designer played by the late Meshach Taylor in the film Mannequin.

Gapol muses to KRON that perhaps the thief thought the mannequin in her store looked like the one from the movie, which when "alive" was played by Kim Cattrall. When not alive, she looked like this:

According to KRON, Gapol is offering a $200 reward for the mannequin's safe return, which is nice symmetry given that that's what was left behind. She also says that the theft has been reported to police, who are "treating it as a crime." My tip to detectives: Keep your eye on the carpool lane.

Previously: CHP Nabs Carpool Cheat With Creepy Lady Mannequin

It's safe to say that last Christmas was completely ruined for Rick and Jill Larson of Larson Studios, a small, family-run, Hollywood-based audio post-production business for big-name television shows.

In an exclusive obtained by Variety, the Larsons detail exactly what went down on Christmas of 2016 and how a few mysterious texts led a group of hackers known as The Dark Overlord to release the entire season of Orange in the New Black a month before it's official Netflix release.

We've covered the high drama here before, so catch on up, but the Variety story is the first time that the Larsons have broken their silence about the incident. Here's what went down:

Two days before Christmas, both Larsons received a weird text from an unknown number, which the pair just ignored. On Christmas Eve, the couple both received another text from the same unknown number which read, "Why are you ignoring me, check your email for a message that will change your life."

Upon checking their email, the Larsons realized that a hacker group calling itself "The Dark Overlord" had made its way inside the company's servers and was threatening to leak Larson Studios' data.

"Once I was able to look at our server, my hands started shaking, and I almost threw up," said Larson Studios' director of digital systems Chris Unthank.

The hackers had stolen and deleted all of the studio's data and they wanted 50 Bitcoin, or approximately $50,000 to give it back. The Larsons had to promise not to tell anyone, and the hackers promised they wouldn't tell anyone. If the couple just paid up, the data would be returned and no one — including the big studios who hired the Larsons — would be the wiser.

Larson Studios called the FBI. But, as Variety explains, the feds weren't much help in dealing with a sinister hacker group demanding a ransom.

"It was an evolutionary process. The Dark Overlord had given us a very short window to respond. They were threatening us with actually releasing Orange Is the New Black before New Year's. So the feeling was that we needed to at least initially agree to cooperate and buy time," explained Jill Larson.

The Dark Overlord also provided proof of the content they held, which included titles from Netflix, ABC, CBS and Disney.

After studying The Dark Overlord's history, it appeared to the Larsons that once paid, the hackers kept their promise and either returned or deleted the stolen data. "It was Gorilla Glue before us, and a children's charity right after," Dondorf explained Variety of The Dark Overlord's previous targets.

"They would return the materials, destroy the materials, and it was over. This was the way they work," said Rick Larson.

Despite numerous advice against paying the hackers from their bank, the FBI, and a security expert who deals with these sorts of things, the Larsons decided to suck it up and send the money. Over the course of 19 transactions, Jill Larson paid off The Dark Overlord.

"We had a trust from our clients to protect their intellectual property, and the best way to do that with these people was to pay them," explained Rick Larson.

But once the Larsons paid, the FBI called to say that The Dark Lord had been blackmailing big studios with the data they'd stolen from the Larsons. Netflix refused to submit to the hackers' demands and with that, Season 5 of Orange is the New Black was released a month-and-a-half before it's scheduled launch.

The hackers sent the Larsons a final email, explaining that because the pair contacted the FBI, they hadn't followed The Dark Overlord's instructions and all bets were off. "They said they felt they owed us an explanation as to why they had done it," said Jill Larson.

The experience has been a life and company-changer for the Larsons, who obviously lost a lot of business — not to mention 50 grand — due to the hacking.

"We work closely with the studios. Some have just been very supportive," said Rick Larson.

Other studios weren't, and took their business elsewhere. But the (nice) studios helped the Larsons get rapidly educated on cyber-security and transform their once-hackable business into a secure one. As it turns out, the hackers got in because one of the Larson Studios' computers was using an old and very hackable version of Windows. "They were basically just trolling around to see if they could find a computer that they could open. It wasn't aimed at us," explained Dondorf.

"You've got people around here who've spent the last six months living, breathing and dying this whole situation. Lots of lost sleep, and boy, a lot of learning. We probably know way more than we ever wanted to know about this," said Rick Larson.

Related: Muni Hacker Hacked, Turns Out He's Extorted Ransoms From Multiple US Companies

Former teen heart-throb and accused domestic abuser Johnny Depp is set to star in King of the Jungle, an upcoming film about tech entrepreneur turned cocaine/maybe other things addict turned international fugitive John McAfee. According the Hollywood Reporter, it's a dark comedy that will be directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa with a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.

As CNet notes, the movie is based on a 2012 Wired article called "McAfee's Last Stand" about journalist Joshua Davis's experience chronicling John McAfee's journey to becoming a fugitive and accused meth manufacturer in Belize — something we also covered on SFist at the time right after McAfee started blogging insanely about being on the lam.

McAfee, whose name you might remember from 90s-era antivirus software, disappeared from the tech world as a multi-millionaire before popping up in the investigation of the murder of his neighbor in Belize in 2012. He now does things like post videos of himself explaining how to uninstall his famous software while lighting $100 bills on fire with Hello Kitty lighters. His website lists his girlfriends and their ages (he likes 'em young). It also says he never killed his neighbor in Belize.

This is actually sounding kinda perf for Johnny Depp.

Last summer found McAfee returning to his old stomping grounds for a tech conference in SF, bringing along a couple of handguns for safety.

Yesterday found him him tweeting about the Depp casting, which he's obviously pleased with, and today he was posting about his "masterwork come to life," a website for a planned, unpermitted event in DC this August that is called Woodstock to Washington.

No exact date has been set, and this seems to be some sort of fever-dream creation of McAfee's about which he commissioned a website and that's about it, but the description goes like this:

Make your way to Washington D.C. and do publicly and in the streets whatever you wish, so long as no one is hurt. The results will be staggering. Our goal is for 500,000 people to participate, a number that would be impossible to shut down with arrests. 500,000 people going naked, smoking weed, playing bagpipes, operating unlicenced food carts, or whatever else suits their fancy cannot fail to make the necessary impression.

McAfee declares, "Freedom in America is dying," and the grandly stated goal of the event is to "make history and to change history, with a spectacle of real freedom for which there is no precedent."

If you're thinking what I'm thinking, this is going to end up being a lot less Woodstock '69 and a lot more Berkeley '17, with "freedom" taking on a more militant and libertarian bent that involves helmets, Trump signs, anarchists, and tear gas.

But hey, if McAfee thinks it'll be a glorious day of bagpipes and naked hippies, then let it be so! Let's just hope he doesn't bring his guns.

Previously: Arriving For Tech Conference In SF, John McAfee Tweets Photo Of Guns He's Bringing

Joseph “the Animal” Barboza, the first mafioso to turn government witness and testify against other mobsters, was a brutal and widely feared hitman in the Boston mob of the 1950s and 60s, and ultimately met his end on the streets of San Francisco. A new book about him, titled Animal: The Bloody Rise and Fall of the Mob's Most Feared Assassin by Casey Sherman, is getting made into a major motion picture.

Barboza got his nickname after biting off another man's cheek in a fit of rage, and eventually, in 1967, after a falling out with the Patriarca crime family, Barboza was convinced to become an FBI informant in order to protect his family. He was relocated under the witness protection program to Santa Rosa in 1969, where he was enrolled in culinary school. As Sherman tells CBS, he got quickly bored and "thought that San Francisco had a void of leadership when it came to organized crime. [So,] he [thought he] would see if he could take over the rackets in San Francisco." He's rumored to have killed ten men while in California, and was imprisoned in 1971 after pleading guilty to a second-degree murder charge.

The court trial, though, brought to light his whereabouts. Not long after being paroled in 1975, while living in an apartment in the Sunset district, he was gunned down five months later, in February 1976.

There's no word on who's attached to the film, but according to CBS, the book has been optioned.

[CBS5]
[Amazon]

One thing we'll never tire of are real-life tales of working with Faye Dunaway. The most recent tidbit comes to us from Rutanya Ald, the actress who played Carol Ann in Mommie Dearest. Before Ald makes a cameo appearance at the Castro Theatre this Saturday for a special screening of the cult Joan Crawford biopic -- most notable for wire hangers, child abuse, uneaten meat, and a revelatory performance by Dunaway -- she talked to the Bay Area Reporter about what it was like working on the set with Faye.

Turns out it was a living hell.

"People despised Faye," she tells the BAR. "Joan got her way in a ladylike way. Faye was despised because she was so rude to people. Everyone was on pins and needles when she worked, and everyone relaxed when she didn't. I wish Faye had learned from Joan."

Which is to say, Dunaway's behavior was so bad that she needed to learn manners from the bipolar, child-abusing actress whom she was portraying. Yikes. Doesn't get more damning than that.

No wait, it does!

Expressing how Dunaway "has no humor in her life," Ald went on to recall how the noted actress shut down production for an entire week and also "wanted a producer credit for her boyfriend Terry O'Neill, even though he had nothing to do with the film's production."

Over the years, Dunaway has made an odd, completely vain decision to eschew Mommie Dearest, which has not only become a cult classic but also an amazing film on its own. Granted, some of the dialogue is stilted and affected, but the entire production -- from Crawford carrying a plate of meat down an art deco staircase to her chilling rant in the Pepsi Co. boardroom -- is genius.

You can hear the Academy Award-winning actress's disdain for the film, among other things, in this infamous voicemail rant. Remember, journalists, she's not interested in "dilly-dallying" over Mommie Dearest. "I don't want to even discuss it in my interview," she will scream at you.

Mommie Dearest, with guest star Rutanya Alda (Carol Ann!), will be screened Saturday, May 11, 7:30 p.m. at the Castro Theatre (429 Castro), SF. Tickets are $15.

Software mogul and self-diagnosed not-insane person John McAfee is about to see his life flash before him on the silver screen. Or at least the part that begins with him living in Belize with underaged girlfriends, experimenting with various jungle drugs before going on the lam, accused of murdering his neighbor. As Vulture reports this morning, Warner Brothers is nearing a deal that will translate Joshua Davis' Wired magazine report to the big screen. But one question looms: who should play the 66-year-old drug-addled creator of the world's first anti-virus software?

According to Vulture, directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra of Crazy, Stupid Love fame are attached to direct, but bringing back Steve Carell for another lead turn would probably put John McAfee's Zero Dark Virus Scan (working title we just came up with) in the realm of a druggier and even more depressing Dan in Real Life. Johnny Depp is probably the only person who can make that sort of obscene experimental drug use look completely normal after two turns as Hunter Thompson. But if we're being honest with ourselves here, Requa and Ficarra should take a hard look at Al Pacino. At 72, Pacino is bit on the older side, but he did just wrap a TV movie based on Phil Spector — another innovator who completely lost his shit.

Oh, and SPOILER ALERT: the McAfee flick probably ends, depressingly, at a McDonald's in Miami.

Previously: John McAfee Is In Miami Now, Says His Crazy Talk Was Just An Act
John McAfee Arrested in Guatemala, Blogs Crazy Stuff From Jail
Former Anti-Virus Software Giant John McAfee Suspected of Murder, Blogs About Being on the Lam
[Vulture]

What with Nora Ephron's untimely passing, one of her most noted films' famous quotes, the one that follows Meg Ryan's (very) fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally, has been played on every major news channel over the last 24 hours. And with that, we here at SFist, along with help from friend Beth Spotswood, came up with our own list of favorite food lines in cinema history. Look, we'll warn you that the the top 7 is somewhat biased, very gay-minded, and resoundingly accurate. You won't see any "favas beans with a nice chianti," that line you recall from that time you sat through Duck Soup in your Intro to American Cinema class, or — God forbid — anything foreign. These are only the most critical and soul-piercing food lines ever uttered in motion picture history. (Feel free to add your own or argue about them in the comments.)

They are:

7. "Fey, I see salt and pepper. Is there a salt substitute?" (What About Bob?)
Bill Murray, the Linda Evangelista of male comedic actors, works wonders in this scene here from What About Bob? that starts out with a some freshly shucked corn. The entire thing is worth repeated viewing. Which is probably why it's always on cable.

6. "Lt. Dan, I got you some ice cream. Lt. Dan, Ice cream!" (Forrest Gump)
We could dress this up for you, but, like every memorable line in this Boomerific flick riddled with SGI, the ice cream line is funny because, well, Forrest is mentally disabled. Tom Hanks' portrayal is the head-scratching gift that keeps on giving.

5. "Shelby...drink the juice!" (Steel Magnolias)
Look at Shelby. Not drinking her juice. M'Lynn and Truvy aren't having any of it. Stupid Shelby. Drink your juice. (Side note: We dare to see Queen Latifa and Jill Scott come anywhere near close to the stern yet maternal forced imbibing as executed here by Sally Field and Dolly Parton.)

4. "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." (The Godfather)
Clemenza might as well have said, "Leave the gun. Take the spicy meat-a-ball" while tossing pizza dough in the air. The line is that Eye-talian. But this moment is still popular, still an indefatigable moment in cinema, and still has us pining for a box of cannoli upon each viewing.

3. "Eggs! Eggs! Eggs!" (Pink Flamingos) Edie sits in a crib sporting a bouffant like no one can. Won't someone give her some eggs? You know how she likes them.

2. "I'll have what she's having" (When Harry Met Sally)
RIP, Nora.

1. "You took worst, because you have best-quality heart." (The Joy Luck Club)
Surprise! We're giving the greatest food line in cinematic history to the greatest Chinese American movie based in San Francisco featuring a cast of multi-ethnic actors playing Chinese/Chinese-Americans! And what a film it is. In this scene, casually played over a sink of dirty dishes, June finally reaches the emotional connection with her mother that she has wanted her entire life...and it comes in the form of bad-quality crab. (It gets going around the 5:45 mark.)