Movie Trivia

Filming locations (city and county) are listed on the STST website. 

Some locations have great history:

- The Geddes mansion was filmed at the Filoli Estate. The name of the estate, "Filoli" stands for "Fight, Love, Live." Check out the Filoli Center for photos of the mansion as well as its historical origins.
- Visit the V. Sattui Winery and read about Northern California wineries while you're there.

Travel trivia:

- Here's the trip Hilary and Victor took from San Francisco to Mendocino. The route is approximately 153 miles (247 km) and should take about 3½ hours (depending on who was driving the heap ... can you say "70 miles an hour?"). See purple line.

- North of San Francisco, in Marin County, Hilary handed the wheel to Victor.

They were on 101 northbound and there was a Cost Plus (on Redwood Drive) to their right (dark (1) marks the spot.)  The map below also indicates the city of  Woodside, where the Filoli Estate is located.

- The statue of "Father Time and the Maiden" in Mendocino is carved from a single block of redwood.

- There are nearly a dozen leukemias; Hilary's name for it, "adult onset leukemia" is somewhat general. From his description, Victor seems to have had Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (see oncologychannel site). I deduced this by eliminating the most unlikely possibilities.

- Carpaccio is an appetizer consisting of very thin slices of raw beef served with a vinaigrette or a mustard sauce. (Webster's)

- The concoction that Hilary blended for Victor is a Hollywood fantasy. The Chinese herbal medicine prescriptions for Leukemia (40031) all list a ground powder with nary a mention of snake. While it is true that the snake may have been very expensive, it is considered a delicacy in Asian culture, rather than a medicine. And if she were preparing snake for medicinal purposes, it would have been brewed for many hours, as traditional Chinese medicines are normally cooked, not blended.

Ever wonder about the impressionists in Victor's thesis?

- Here's some information about Gustav Klimt.

- Some works of Klimt and Rosetti, includes one of Elisabeth Sidal.

- The Full Rosetti Archive, a comprehensive site about poet and impressionist Dante Gabriel Rosetti. The foreword to a book, written by Rosetti's brother, which contains fascinating insight about Rosetti's life and works. Despite his grief over Elisabeth Sidal's untimely and "accidental" death, the undaunted Rosetti continued to enjoy the company of, and paint beautiful women: Fanny Cornforth ("the Beloved"), and Alexa Wilding ("the Blessed Damozel"). 

- Peter Schmidt's Haas-Lilienthal House built in 1886 is a castle, now a museum in San Francisco, open to the public.

- Hiss & Weeks were a famous New York architectural firm; I don't know what they built in San Francisco in 1910, do you?

This is the Chinese character for strength.
This is the character for heart.
This sort of means fortitude.

I have not yet found the single character that means "strength of heart", that looks like her tatoo, unless the tatooist used artistic license to draw a small "heart" inside the "strength" character. I thought I saw a single stroke inside the "strength", though. I need help here. Click on the character if you want to hear it spoken.

- In the original ending of the movie, Hilary gets together with Gordon (who was a plumber?),  but test audiences balked at that idea.  This original ending apparently still exists in print, as it was viewed by a fan (who? my memory fails)  on network TV recently (2000).