A VIEW TO A KILL

STERLING’S MOVIE WALK

Hello again, SF Movie Walk fans!  Although the early 007 films would rerun on TV when I was growing up, the first James Bond film I saw in the cinema was Roger Moore’s seventh (and final) outing as Bond, A View to a Kill, a large part of which takes place in San Francisco because the psychotic industrialist Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) has an evil plan to flood Silicon Valley using the San Andreas and Hayward Faults.

I thought it would be fun to do a walk that covers the predominant locations shot in the city, especially the film’s use of two bridges in separate major action sequences: the obligatory Golden Gate, but also the less iconic Lefty O’Doul drawbridge.  This turned out to be the longest single-day movie walk I’ve ever done (I later learned to break extensive walks for Bullitt and Time After Time into two separate days), but it was a lot of fun.  The best time to take this walk?  Around May 1 to commemorate Grace Jones’s memorable villain May Day.
Enjoy!

Mile 0. Bond hot tubs with a sexy Russian agent here, before stealing her high-tech audio cassette.
From the film
Mile 1.08 - Bond saves Stacy Sutton (Tanya Roberts) from a fiery demise here at City Hall. 
From the film
Mile 1.96. So close but not quite.
Mile 3.46 - Bond uses Lefty O’Doul Bridge to elude SFPD by escaping to . . . China Basin? 
Mile 3.56 - Concrete counterweights for drawbridge which crush police captain's car.
From the film
Mile 4.49 - Bond's boss
Mile 5.29 - Bond begins (geographically incoherent) fire truck chase here at Market & Bush. 
From the film
Mile 5.56 - Bond has a close call with 2 cable cars here on California.
Mile 5.72 - Transamerica Building, where Bond almost gets an aerial wedgie.
From the film
Mile 5.99 - Jackson & Battery, where sad sack police captain gets into 2nd auto accident. 
Mile 6.37 - Looking out to the East Bay, home of the Dunismere Historic Estate in Oakland, location for Stacy Sutton's home. 
Mile 6.56 - Zorin (Christopher Walken) plots to flood Silicon Valley to get a monopoly on microchip technology.
Mile 7.27 - Before coming to San Francisco, Bond goes to Paris and is in a foot chase with MayDay (Grace Jones) on the Eiffel Tower.
Mile 7.87 - Bond finds CIA Agent Chuck Lee with the dumbest spy code imaginable (“Do you have any soft-shell crabs?”) to use at Fisherman's Wharf
From the film
Mile 7.89 - Bond & Lee hatch a plan while walking along this pier.
From the film
Mile 10.12 - Approaching the climax of the film (and the hike).
Mile 12.23 - Almost there!
Mile 13.25 - Finished! Zorin takes his final plunge after he and Bond battle on top of the North tower. RIP blimpy boy.
From the film
From the film
From the film
The route

REMEMBERING HAL WILLNERCFI SELECTS: LET’S DANCE