 I became involved in 2015 I believe the director Doug was just starting on the project and he had a couple of research research assistants and one of them saw my name online for a lecture that I had or a presentation I had given about the history of the Hobart building on Market at Second Street my company which is a historic preservation architecture firm had been working on the building and researching the history so I was learning about it and the Hobart building was one of the buildings that Chesley worked on with Willis Polk so Doug's assistant contacted me I had never heard of Chesley at that point partly I think because Willis Polk took all the credit for himself even though I'm sure he had many people who worked for him and but I was interested in the project and so I ended up contributing some historic research early on I did some exploration of projects that Chesley may have worked on with Willis Polk in his early career here in San Francisco and then another year or so later I did the filming in a little bit of narration and since then took another couple of years I think for editing post-editing and then we've just been showing the film and several of us have attended a few of these types of screenings which has been really fun to be involved in thank you thank you for coming how I got involved almost everybody in this film is a friend of mine when I did my documentary the damnedest finest ruins on 1906 I was a I was a wrestling coach part-time and Ben Burtz who Ben Burtz has won four Oscars for sound effects design his son was on the wrestling team that's how I met Ben and one day I asked him I said I need an editor for my film and Ben said he started rattling off days he said wait a minute I'm an editor and so we started so we worked together on the film then he went to work for Pixar so I had Craig Baron who's one of the great matte painting artists in the world and one of the great authorities on it he's also a friend of mine and then I believe Doug Stewart had actually seen my documentary and knew that I gave a lot of lectures about San Francisco history and so I probably came at it from a little different perspective I was not I was I knew of Chesley's artwork but I was not an authority on his art by any stretch Ben Burton some of the other folks were but because of the fact that I was aware that his designs had helped to sell the Golden Gate Bridge three quarters of the engineers and architects in the United States said you can't do this it's impossible you no one had ever built a big a bridge that big I mean it is still the most influential bridge in the world and and to build a tower in and the Pacific Ocean 65 feet down with the currents through everything it just seemed impossible so and that that case on that they build it in that has the cross section that actually was washed out by a freak wave and stuff and the percentage of skeptics went from 75 percent probably to 95 percent I'll never work Robert could talk more about that probably so they wanted to know for me what I knew about building and rebuilding San Francisco afterward you know and I knew I did for some weird reason know that Chesley almost fell out of the window he was he was quite a carouser to be on the Barbary Coast then till 2 30 in the morning and night before there were not a lot of savory activities going on in the Barbary Coast but I knew some of that stuff so anyway that that's how I got involved in everyone that Doug kept talking to kept saying you gotta get Della Sandra down there he's got an opinion on everything so I guess that's how I got here I guess is that working Doug just came to me because he saw the book I did on the dream of spaceflight but the reason I did that book was actually because I grew up during the time as you did I'm sure to when Bonestil was painting these pictures for colliers and the conquest of space and it's something that the film tried to get at but I don't think really came directly at it is how different the feeling was at that time then it became after the reality after we saw the reality in the 1950s there was a kind of equilibrium or balance in a small moment of time between the romantic fantasy of spaceflight on one side the Buck Rogers flash Gordon the pulps and the coming reality on the other side the v2 is it sent a second stage outside the atmosphere and we saw that it was going to happen and the two the coming reality and the old fantasy kind of enhanced each other and there was a moment when the fantasy was more than fantasy and the reality was more fantastic than it really became and it was a unique time to grow up and care about this sort of thing this was a time when we we still thought that there could be people on Mars I mean really in the 1950s for all we knew they were there were people on Mars I mean that's how little we knew about planetary surfaces a lot was a lot was said about Bonestil's accuracy a lot of things were accurate a lot of the detail but the pictures in the conquest of space for example were not he had a canal on Mars he had castle like rocks on Venus he had a liquid gas waterfall on the surface of Jupiter and so on but they were very romantic images and and just about everyone who became involved in the space program the engineers astronauts scientists most of them say that Bonestil was a motivation to get into the space program so in a way Bonestil launched the space program if we'd had some kind of extra powerful telescope and could have seen the barren realities of these of these planetary surfaces the space program might have been delayed for some indefinite period so Bonestil had that role but now some of those paintings really have shifted from scientific art to nostalgic art there's a nostalgia for me I cut those pictures out of the conquest of space I framed them and commune with those pictures on my wall when I was in junior high school in high school and and I think people born after the moon landing after the Voyager photographs can never really understand the feeling that that my generation had when we had that that momentary balance of the romance and the reality it's a unique period it'll never be again I got involved with this because of not knowing anything about Bonestil's science fiction work but just having discovered his paintings at the bridge and as art they were I've lost my voice I just had some surgery it's not come back yet I'm sorry is that okay now okay I'm sorry thank you anyway so I discovered these paintings at the bridge and that they were artist conceptions done prior and during the construction of the bridge before anybody could really visualize the bridge and so they were you know publicity pieces as such and when I started working to the bridge in 73 I always say that there were still guys there working at the bridge who had built it and so it was an interesting time and there was all you know stuff and there were files and stuff and now the files are archives and the stuff are artifacts as time has gone on we still don't have a museum hopefully they'll be a museum about the bridge someday but in any case came across the paintings and stuff and then this Fred Durant it was who later wrote a coffee table book came out in early 2000s about Bond Still and he was a curator at the Smithsonian and he was putting together a one-man show of Bond Still space science work and so in the process of researching it he'd come across the fact that Bond Still had done this stuff about the Golden Gate Bridge so that was important since the Golden Gate Bridge is so important so he comes to the Golden Gate Bridge and says the word Bond Still to the receptionist at the tell you got to see Bob David so so the conversation started and he advised me that Bond Still was still alive and living in Carmel and so then as a result I went to see Bond Still and the among other things and I bought some little visuals here this particular painting here this is the take that Brian because that's Bond Still one of the paintings he had never signed and so that as said in in the film that's him signing it at his table there and and what's I think is so cool is this is a view this is his studio on top of his house in Carmel and this is a view looking in the other direction of the room and I was sitting on my tripod against the far wall which is the wall you see here and that portal is Trumple it's painted on the wall and I had to be two feet away from it to realize it was so good and it's totally flush it's amazing I go gee it's totally flush he says yeah I painted it there he says so anyway that's just so cool the also in the in this is a view those of you who are Golden Gate bridge groupies like I am if you want to come up and look at this later this is that actual painting of the cross section of the south tower this was a topic of special interest because the it was such a complicated construction underwater such immensity and what have you and he did several cross sectional views of of that of that feature of the bridge so anyway and then then this is him sitting with that painting and my friend Mary Russell is with me here she would come with me one to when I visited the Bond Stills in Carmel she's in the picture but she's in back holding the painting vertically so anyway so then the film of five years ago Doug Stewart come to comes to the bridge and contacts our public information officer who's last name is also David like mine Priya David and you'll see her on KQED starting in the near future she just left the bridge last week take to take a new job she's gonna be doing I forget what it's called but it's that feature that the velvet Davis used to do commentary on news and things but I forget what it's called anyway so he contacted Priya Doug Stewart the film producer and so you gotta see Bob David and so then he was just so gratified when he met me that I had actually met Bond still in person and did these photographs among others and what have you so that's how I got into the film and the history of Bond still and the Golden Gate Bridge so thank you very much for all of you for for talking about that another question well one thing I I have to confess that I didn't know Bonestell before we put together this whole program and so and of course in in the movie and elsewhere you find that he's sort of referred to as like a forgotten artist or nearly forgotten artist why do you think he's nearly forgotten anyone have thoughts on that well half the people in America can't tell you who the vice president is so the fact that we are I don't mean to denigrate my country here I'm an Italian citizen it was well and speak the language quite well and when you go there they can give you chapter and verse and everything that's happened in 2,500 years for some reason America is a strange place maybe it's because we're not a homogeneous people we're a you know we're a polyglot and I don't know what just seems we don't care as much you know it's strange so it's very easy for things to fall by the wayside and and I think there was a point in the film and made a very good one how many of you folks by the way as long as we're asking us questions did not know much or or anything about chesley when this started almost everybody in here do you find it interesting yeah I think this is this is about this is a fun part I guess with the four of us do you know four of us sitting up here is you get to learn about things you know so I guess somebody said to me one time they said you mr. dull senator of people taught history the way you do it I would have paid attention I said I got news here if they did it the way I do it I would have paid attention um so I just think I don't know maybe we have the wrong approach to it you know maybe maybe memorizing the dates is not as interesting as the crazy characters but as it said in the film here the reality of what transpired replaced chesley's interpretations or imagination but you know as went said here without that that wouldn't have happened you know the golden gate bridge might not have been built if chesley had not told people it's going to be beautiful that's the first time I've ever saw I had ever seen that that horrible rendering of how they wanted to build the bridge I've never seen that before and I've been doing lectures on that bridge for a long time and I'd never seen that drawing so I guess I guess it just chesley became obsolete maybe that's the simple answer right it would just be they out they outdid them eventually with science well I think that for all the talk of accuracy that there really was a lot of inaccuracy and they don't the pictures of the solar surfaces of solar planets were were not what we found in the Voyager photographs so so they're really people that didn't grow up with those pictures don't understand the romantic feeling that that they that they that they had that they no longer have because we know they're not not that the reality is anything less there and it's kind of a shift from romantic wonder to intellectual wonder which is probably has a lot more depth and meaning but but I think they they serve their their purpose at their time and when the generation that grew up with them is gone I think maybe a lot a lot will be lost about what who he was and what he was and I would just say that after he passed away and wasn't continuing to produce artwork his pieces are in some collections private collections and otherwise and they've been shown at certain exhibitions but they're not readily available all the time for people to see and access so actually that's one of the great things about this film is that we've been able to share Chesley's story to a lot of people who hadn't been exposed before to his work I think another amazing thing to me about the film and and Chesley Bonestell is is how many different things he did you know he helped with architectural design and you know went to Hollywood and helped with the the films there and then of course had a whole career with the the space art or science fiction art as far as architectural goes Christina how many other buildings did he work on in san francisco um so he was most known for working on the Hobart building and Phyloli I believe he assisted with a handful of other projects for Willis Polk early on in the teens then he left and went to New York and came back and worked on projects in the 1930s which included the bridge as well as some work for the the Golden Gate international exposition on Treasure Island I think partly he he was really an illustrator he rendered these images he showed what they would look like what these buildings would look like once they were completed versus being a technical architect who is doing the blueprints I didn't really find any architectural drawings with his name on them um but he was publicized in architectural journals which is what I was researching because he was showing these beautiful illustrations of what the Hobart building would look like once it was completed things for advertising the projects um and was really talented with perspective which I think then lent itself to his later work both with the Hollywood map painting and his space art his understanding of of space and perspective but can I ask you a question wasn't his um effect on New York more significant than it was in San Francisco the Chrysler building and some others I think he got look when Doug asked me to participate I do what I always do I start researching because you know I mean I know what I know maybe what I could contribute but I'm interested in the whole story it certainly seemed to me Willis Polk was one of those guys who took all the credit or as much credit as you could possibly get and when he when Chesley went to New York um they gave him more free reign I think as I read and I understand it if I'm asking you can question that but he started to design buildings from the outside in in other words it wasn't like they didn't do the structural stuff and then bring Chesley in to do the skeleton Chesley started imagining things he started saying well we could do this so we could do that and then this sort of um you know form follows function is the architectural adage but in this case it certainly seemed like Chesley you know Chesley's conceptions of what they should be and unique looks that he could bring to the buildings you know were the were the focal point as opposed to as you said the nuts and bolts that's that's what I gleaned from reading it he really came into his own in New York more than here is that is that accurate well he was his early career when he was working here so certainly I would expect that he would have developed in his skills over the years um so the the early teens compared to the sorry the 20s when he was in New York just appear he got more um opportunity and respect and they knew that he was so good that they let him um go to the forefront more and in New York than they did here that's what I that's what I've seen everything I read indicated that thank you um so we have let's see we'll have about another um 15 minutes here um I would like to open up to some questions um I'm going to go to the back because I saw this this arm go up first and if you don't mind asking into the microphone thank you very much I know a lot about Chesley's art because I bought the two books his first two books as a boy and was very stimulated but I didn't know anything about the Golden Gate Bridge and about the building so this is a wonderful broadening of my mind about him uh two quick questions if I show up tomorrow with the administration building at the Golden Gate Bridge can I see these things are they open to the public um well the administration building is is exactly that if you have business there you come in and speak to the receptionist and go from there on days of board meetings um which are the uh I think they're always in they've I'm semi-retired now I'm not keeping track of things as I used to um if you look on the Golden Gate Bridge website there is a calendar of events for the board of directors and it'll show that on the fourth Fridays of every month is a board meeting and the board meetings are open to the public so you come in upstairs to the paintings are in the board meeting they're actually hanging in the hallway outside the board meeting about outside the boardroom on the second floor and sometimes just walk in and ask and say you're interested in seeing the the go the pastel paintings uh use my name depending on who you talk to you'll be welcome and second of all I seem to remember um there's only four of them on the wall right now so it's four more than I know about um I seem to remember as a boy also watching the Walt Disney show yeah and I believe they showed the Collier's images in their construction about going into space it might it might correct that those were Bonestell's images that Walt Disney used in his tv show I don't I don't have you're asking me I don't know if they Disney used the Collier's images I don't remember well Bernard von Braun was always on the Disney show if you recall and in that context he must have brought in the images I believe they were actually I believe they were that's because um a lot of his rockets about this much I do know were um he was a fanatic um for trying to be accurate obviously when he was doing the moon early he was inventing things but when he started to work with wonder von Braun um he based his paintings on the science he knew that day that for instance when you left the earth for the atmosphere that the rockets had to separate you couldn't carry that massive rocket with you so it'd go in different segments you got down to the to the smallest of the capsules John Kennedy from what I I've read him been told um read the work of wonder von Braun and saw chesley's drawings and that's why he made that I always thought that was that is inauguration but it wasn't it was later on what he said we'll we'll send the man to the moon in this decade and bring him back safely that was directly based wonder von Braun in the 1950s said we can do this we can go to the moon and come back and he hired chesley for a symposium to do the artwork on that and you know it was clever von Braun he knew that if people could visualize it that it would be a hell lot better than reading his complex mathematical formulas and I John I know I know reasonably sure that was John Kennedy's uh inspiration for picking it was a very forward thinking guy John Kennedy I thought he was a great president and a brilliant guy um so yeah I do believe that that's accurate I'm pretty sure about that okay more questions down here um maybe this is a question for you Christina but anyone who knows um regarding photographs of chesley bonus to himself when he was young and and particularly that photograph in Willis Polk's office showing all the staff I think chesley's one do you know where those photographs can be found who has the rights I'm not sure I didn't find that one myself I would know that um I think that dug the producer's assistance found that one uh but it could be here at the history room in the san francisco library I don't think more the california historical society um other uh repositories include um the uc-berkeley environmental design archives what is in the coffee table book yeah I've seen it I've seen it published in one of the books so the the credit for it must be in the book how about chesley bonus to his own papers or collection I'm guessing it might have come from his family but no one knows okay yeah okay any questions over here I have a comment and a uh question the comment about the crisis building I worked across the street from that in manhattan so I'm listening to an avenue if you ever get to new york and you'd be interested to see an extremely well preserved art deco monument that's the building to see it's gorgeous the lobbies the outside gargoyles everything we've got there makes it a fascinating building to see my question is um how did the u.s. government who led this pursuit of van bran when the german missile development program was absolutely top secret was actually done in uh poland rather than germany who led this initiative of seeing importance of getting someone like van bran who could join a group and point out where other talent existed in the german retreating armies there was a a program after the war to bring german scientists over here I forget the name of his operation something I can't think of the name of it now but they brought all kinds of scientists over in van bran was one of them um there's a story about uh he was trying to escape the uh and he was getting away from the russians and he went into the american zone and and uh he was stopped there and and the rest is history they brought him over here um I can't think of the name of that program but many many of the german scientists were brought over here right after the war there's an interesting little aside on humerus aside on on kennedy's decision to go to the moon everybody knows that that it was mainly to beat the russians as far as the political uh aspect of it and apparently he asked his science advisor what we could do to beat the russians and his first idea was could we desalinate the sea and the science advisor said no we couldn't do that and then he just uh came up the idea came to the maybe we could go to the moon american and british intelligence knew who the geniuses were in the german military and they also knew that russia was going to be their next enemy so the big rush was to get every one of the top german scientists before the russians got them i don't know the name of the program but i can't remember yeah but they they they wanted all that that was a they they had them targeted on brown and all those guys that they were going to snatch them before the russians got them so um that was a big part of program sorry i want to thank you for this program it was absolutely fascinating it seems like uh chelsea was the unsung hero kind of behind a lot of inspiration for the bridge and for the space program um but i'm sitting here just so curious about those s's in his name and just wondering if there's any special symbol symbolic meaning to that um s for space uh is it some kind of secret code that he got from the from uh some outer space um is there any meaning to those you may have stumped the authors i do this every year i do lectures i know it's twice a year you just got me and it's only february uh i because i knew this in the very end he was still putting that little and i thought it was a kind of a slip of his uh hand at that age but now i'm seeing it now it was very purposeful yeah but when he signed the painting in 82 or 83 i guess it was of that painting it was obviously not as steady as it used to be but he still had those little details yes he did yeah yeah well i'd like to add one more comment too on in terms of bond still in the bridge and overall i do a lecture about the history of the bridge uh frequently and in it um the architects for the bridge was a husband wife team by the name of Irving and Gertrude Marl er Gertrude was one of the first women to graduate in architecture at Berkeley uh and and they they had a firm they call themselves Marl and Marl they were in the D young building on market street and they were referred to Joseph Strauss the engineer of the bridge by among other by uh ira interestingly by um Maynard Dixon the painter and at that time Maynard Dixon the painter was married to Dorothea Lang the photographer and so the Marlows and Marl Marl and Marl and Maynard Dixon and Chesley Bond Stell i attribute to be the artistic consortium that this decided the bridge would be orange and that that's a big deal because bridges were always gray or there was a pale green they use sometimes and sometimes absolute black and so the Golden Gate Bridge being orange was a big big deal when it was done and of course it's part of its landmark feature so anyway i put that on the table for you uh and Maynard Dixon and Dorothea Lang at that time lived on Gulf Street between uh Green and Vallejo which happens to be near where i live i never knew them of course way before my time but in any case Bond Stell and Strauss would visit them there at the house uh along with the Marlows and stuff and so there was this ongoing thing i was in touch with the Dixon's two sons in the 1980s and so i got the dinner table talk from the 1930s and uh so it was just interesting to hear about that happening so and picking up on Maynard Dixon and stuff you know his paintings now we have a Maynard Dixon painting at the bridge it's right in the main lobby as soon as you walk in on the left it's large 40 by 60 unusual for Maynard Dixon and but you look at it and you say oh my god that's Maynard Dixon and it's signed as well but um in any case uh when we we had an exhibit about the bridge at the California Historical Society for the 75th anniversary of the bridge in 2012 and it was the first time that this artwork the Dixon and the Bond Stell pieces and some other feet pieces uh left the building and went down to the Historical Society for the sake of the installation there and they were there almost a full year at the California Historical Society on Mission Street and the uh so they had for the first time ever these things had to be appraised to be insured to be transported and uh and they praised the Bond Stell pieces at about 50,000 each um especially the large one and then but the Bond the Dixon one they praised at only 125,000 and I said wait a minute his stuff goes for one to two million and they said well it's not his seminal work I go but yeah it's not his grandmother's rocking chair it's the Golden Gate Bridge you know and and of course then I realized later the job of this appraiser was to low ball it for the sake of the insurance premium so anyway that's a little aside on art any other questions okay one question over here hi thank you very much for the movie uh we all really appreciated it uh the operation paper clip was a name of the mission to capture the journals operation paper clip yes it was three or four years ago by the same title it was fascinating to read two quick questions uh one in the lobby of the administration building on Treasure Island there's some really interesting murals that show recovery of capsules in the ocean is there any connection to Bond Stell with those and second question I was really interested to hear about connection between uh Buckminster Fuller and Bond Stell do you can you tell us anything more about collaborations or conversations or information about that relationship thank you he only said he was here for dinner that night with Ansel Adams that's how I learned about it I talked about it later with Ansel Adams a few months later he corroborated the story but what the real connection with buck bucky Fuller was I'm not sure other the fact that you know they're visionaries in that same aura of things you know structures and you know domes etc and what have you I suspect in again the coffee table book by Durant about Bond Stell would be the primary source to really get into all of the details of this stuff so it came out in I get 2005 or something like that I don't know of any connection with the murals in in the Treasure Island building I don't think that there is one I have a question about his biography some of the details it it seems like he did not want for female companionship ever in his life does anyone have any insights into his charisma or his dating secrets he seemed to have quite a interesting life my only observation was the guy spent a hell of a lot of time on the Barbary Coast yeah he started out early like I like I said there there were no churches on the Barbary Coast that I know of it you know it made story villain New Orleans look tame and he was there a lot so it just seemed like he was you know I don't know that much about his life but I always stuck out to me that he was there a lot starting as a teenager I mean reasonably young like 15 16 years old you know it's amazing he didn't get Shanghai which would so we would have a slightly different story I think probably wouldn't be here if that had happened you what Rowdy yeah I guess yeah a little bit yeah and who his wife when I met him which was his fourth but fourth wife third woman the delightful person of all sorts and when he passed away in 86 she stayed in touch and she was classic old-time letter writer and would send us letters and things and then she she wanted to go to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge and and stuff and so in her late 80s after she had just had a hip replacement I took her up there and she was just wonderful character I mean just fabulous so so we have time for just one last question here yeah thank you guys for your contributions to this beautiful homage I was wondering since you guys seem to have a rich vast like history and of storytelling for San Francisco is there something in the water from Hatshachi with the imaginary where a lot of these like these storytellers for either through paintings or like Lucas films have set their imaginations into reality by coalescing these sort of what you were saying like the the space art sort of led to that exploration of Warner of a brawn even the the Golden Gate Bridge example where these artists came together are there other stories that you guys could share from local residents artists who've changed things well it's imagineered like sort of set a tone of coalescing what the future could look like and sort of well probably yeah but maybe not so much in painting I mean Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence further than get he changed America Allen Ginsberg's howl changed American poetry in 1956 or 57 the United States Supreme Court struck down the obscenity laws because of howl you know and I mean Lawrence further get he was a submarine commander in the Second World War I've known him for 50 years you know he was a great mentor and friend to me and he only opened that bookstore because he married a southern bell with a lot of money and he just decided he was going to do something different you know he and so there's a lot of visionary so that so I mean that just just think of what that grew into that grew into the hippie movement that grew into the environmental movement that grew into the summer of love that grew into you know San Francisco was a conservative city San Francisco had nothing but conservative mayors and and and crazy police chiefs and and were quite a bit different from that now you know so I believe that the city of San Francisco has had a had a profound effect on world culture that's unequaled by any other modern city I mean just look at that little area down there from the 1840s where you know when the city was first discovered in 1776 when it was first discovered by the Spaniards I mean Levi Strauss and and modern banking with you know with APG and ENI and all the things that that happened the television was invented in San Francisco the corner of green and get what's with the cross street which is a little Samsung yeah so we'll look at George Lucas did you know not necessary for the better if you've seen movies lately to some degree you know I don't I don't have nothing against that stuff I have all the other stuff just all the all the dramatic stuff no one would make Chinatown today or on the waterfront you know so I think it's just I think Chesley was one person who had an influence on a certain field in a city that has a habit of of influencing the world a disproportionate to its size you know I think it's extraordinary what has happened here that's I've been studying this now all my adult life and I'm just constantly amazed this is just one other chapter in my amazement and I don't even know why I'm sitting here I mean it's just was a weird thing that I got plucked to to to do this and I was knocked out by the opportunity well thank you so much we really appreciate it