Doc Stories 2024: "Suburban Fury"

Image courtesy SFFILM

I remember a trivia question—maybe it was Trivial Pursuit, maybe not, doesn't matter—that was something to the effect of, "Which US president served but was never elected?" It was a tricky question, but the answer was Gerald Ford. Probably around that same time, I learned that Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon was controversial, to say the least. None of this squared with Chevy Chase's impression of a fumbling Ford back in the early days of SNL.

All this to say that the attempted assassination of Ford in San Francisco in 1975 was quite possibly the last thing I ever learned about the 38th president. And yet, it's the main topic of Robinson Devor's documentary, Suburban Fury.

Or maybe the main topic of the movie is Sarah Jane Moore. I'm not quite sure, to be honest.

This isn't your ordinary documentary, and that's fine. I love a good form/variation approach to art. Sarah Jane Moore is/was a creature of San Francisco, after all. By the doc's telling, it's hard to say exactly what brought her here and from where. But nevertheless, she arrived.

There's a quiet, menacing, dull drone sound to the first hour of the movie that I have to assume maintains throughout (I unfortunately had to leave the movie early to take care of our aging dogs). And though I love the Vogue theater, it's old-fashioned and I'm getting old, so I gradually became more and more uncomfortable in my seat. Still, I was into this story.

It involves, in no particular order: Danville, San Quentin, a prisoners union, the FBI, Patty Hearst, the SLA, "Popeye" Jackson, Oakland, Union Square ... I mean, with a lineup like that, what's not to like?

The film is quick to point out that Moore stipulated that her participation in the movie hinged on hers being the only interviews. That's intriguing, right? What is she afraid of others saying? Yes, her truth is her truth. But why did she do it? For whom? Was it because of the pardon? Was it some deeper-state nonsense?

More interesting to me than any of that, more than it all going down in Union Square, is that a divorced suburban mom pulled the trigger. Ford lived, of course. He wasn't even struck by Moore's bullets.

​I do want to know more about her, her motivations, her incentives, her accomplices, her truth.