Same Time Next Year
In the last story I posted I referenced two Alfred Hitchcock movies that figured prominently two noteworthy venues which seem to be forever remembered as the places where those movies were shot. In the case of Bodega Bay, I’m guessing that movie (The Birds) may have been the best thing that ever happened to that little nothing of a burg. The movie was filmed 58 years ago and people are still going to that town and buying things in that general store and that cafe where Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor hung out. The impact was perhaps less so for the Mission San Juan Bautista since as one of the historic twenty one missions on the California coast, and the one named after the most famous Spanish Conquistador to have brought the Spanish culture to California, it was bound to be an important place for its own purposes having nothing to do with the movie Vertigo or its stars Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak.
I have another venue story that actually relates to Alfred Hitchcock. In 1999 we were selling our bank (Bankers Trust) to Deutsche Bank. I was on the Management Committee of the bank and was therefore one of the deciders of the deal, so nothing about it was outside of my understanding and agreement. I had been running the Private Banking business of Bankers Trust (by then including the Private Clients business of Alex. Brown) for six years and in the combination, without any serious consideration to the contrary, the decision was made that the regal nobleman (he was literally a “von”, so truly a member of royalty) would run the business. It was supposed to be a level playing field but from day one it was all him. While I did get asked to run the asset management business of the combined entity and did so for a year, it still felt funny giving over the business I had run for so long. We orchestrated a gathering for the two groups at a large estate on the north coast of Long Island where I was to hand over the baton to Mr. “von”. As we began, he spoke to the group first and said in his thick German accent that this venue was very meaningful to him since it was the location where Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest was filmed. It seems he was a big Hitchcock fan. When I went up I passed in front of the overhead projector and could not resist. I stuck out my stomach ala Alfred Hitchcock so that the shadow went up on the board and I said that was all I knew about Hitchcock. It was a great moment snatched from a very difficult moment.
This trip to Mendocino is being spent at a lovely seaside hotel called Heritage House. It is directly on the bluffs overlooking the crashing waves that come up into a little cove called Dark Gulch. It is a magnificent spot and a lovely view with large old cypress trees lining the bluffs and craggy rocks below in a constant battle with the waves that ceaselessly crash into them. The rooms are laid out as one and two room cottages spread out along the hillside. We have been given the cottage that is closest to the cove and actually overhangs one inlet of the cove and is right over the little beach. It is directly next to the cottage that was made famous in the 1978 Bernard Slade movie, Same Time Next Year. It really has a two-person cast with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn who play two married people who meet every year for a tryst at a hotel that looks exactly like the Heritage House (they call it the Sea Shadows Inn in the movie),. It is a heartfelt and funny movie that has been a favorite for many years.
When our friend Loretta suggested we spend a few days at the hotel to enjoy the wonders of Mendocino, it resonated immediately. We tried to come last fall and got flummoxed by COVID, so we have had a long time to consider the pleasures of coming here even though it is not exactly as the same time last year. Starting last year I tried to rent the movie on Netflix and Prime and have been unable to do so for all of these past six months. The first question I asked when we checked in was whether they had a copy of the movie we could borrow to watch it. No need. They have the movie running on a continuous loop on Channel 1 on every room TV. This hotel has been living off the movie fame since the movie came out in 1978 (I bet they wish they had used the hotel’s real name). Don’t get me wrong, this is a lovely spot by any standard, but I’ll bet their room rate and the occupancy rate is twice what it would be if they had not become famous thanks to the movie. In valuation terms, that would imply that this hotel is worth twice what it would otherwise be worth if the movie had not made it famous. That is actually an impressive amount of value creation.
We are sitting here on a sunny Mendocino afternoon in April and we are watching this wonderful movie about the changing lives and times of all of our lives. We have gone through the 50’s and early 60’s and just finished the late 60’s when Burstyn is a hippie going to Berkeley and Alda is a Beverley Hills business manager who has just lost his oldest son to a sniper’s bullet in Vietnam. From that to the early 70’s was a total role reversal with Burstyn building a successful catering business (grossing $500k their first year) and Alda wearing jeans and sporting a mustache while he plays cocktail piano in a singles bar in the Valley.
What I notice in the movie is two things. The people constantly evolve and the setting doesn’t change. Kim and I are not like Burstyn and Alda in any way, but yet here we are on this lovely bluff overlooking the rolling ocean. The cottages have been updated (why shouldn’t they with all that bonus revenue and the aging Baby Boomers like us are available with retirement dollars and a passion for Alda and Burstyn), but the trees, rocks and ocean are a constant that never change.
What I like most about this story, this movie and this place is that it does a wonderful job of putting our lives and relationship with the world into appropriate perspective. Beauty surrounds us in all its forms. Nature is always magnificent and unchanging. People are amazing and adaptable and the best part about them is the part that falls in love and struggles to keep it forefront in their minds. And stories, whether about people or places are what make the world go around. So, one of the things I will bring up at dinner to Kim, Frank and Loretta is that I believe, based on actually seeing this wonderful place, that we should all come back here the same time next year. Life is too special to not honor it every year and maybe every day.