ATTITUDE - Film #3 in director Rob Nilsson’s 9 @ Night film cycle.

Thursday February 5, 2026 | 6:30 - 8:30pm

at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

Tickets: $10 GA / $6 TLM members | Register via Humanitix

$50 / $35 (TLM members) full series tickets available at this link.

Spoddy is an impossible small time auto thief who alienates everyone. Then he is diagnosed with AIDS. Stunned, and in denial, he confronts his girlfriend, sister of two tough partners in crime. She rages at him. Where did he get it? Spoddy rages back. “I spread what I want." The bottom is about to fall out of his life.

9 interconnected feature films, spun from the world of the Tenderloin and featuring TL denizens inhabiting their characters and improvising the scripts, are framed by the poetic vision and prolific practice of iconoclast director Rob Nilsson. His ambitious 9 @ Night cycle achieves an deep exploration of the human condition and stands as a rich chronicle of the Tenderloin–the physical place, its people, their existential struggles, sorrows and joys.

Independently produced, the series is an epic feat of cinema in terms of both craft & concept. 9 @ Night is the fruit of Nilsson’s nearly 2-decade collaboration with the Tenderloin yGroup, an acting workshop embedded in the neighborhood and operating with Nilsson’s creative method of “Direct Action,” which he describes as “a cinema of the moment which lives off the land to discover the relationship between what we think we want and what is actually there.” The films and the process that created them (as well as their life after completion) are a tremendous synthesis of art-making, community, and the culture of the Tenderloin both real and imagined.

The Tenderloin Museum is proud to present the 9 @ Night series in its entirety, screened salon-style with Nilsson (and guests) in-person, offering a rare opportunity to see the complete film cycle in “the land” where it was forged. For lovers of San Francisco on-screen, gritty filmic realism, character driven dramas, consider 9 @ Night an essential opus in the canon of Tenderloin-alia! 

ATTITUDE is the third film in the 9 @ Night cycle. While completists will be rewarded with narrative and visual resonance across the films, each movie can be enjoyed independently. Read more about the series here, and visit RobNilssonArtForms.com to explore the filmmakers full oeuvre.

About ATTITUDE / 9 @ Night:

• Winner: San Francisco Film Critic's Circle Marlon Riggs Award for courage and innovation in the cinema, 2008.

“If pressed, many cinephiles would admit a magnetic attraction to truly magnum opuses: whether crafted by Tarr, Rohmer, Rivette or Syberberg, the mere existence of such titanic features or multi-film cycles suggests an important artistic event. There’s nothing quite like the exhilaration of discovering a huge project that in cinematic terms reaches for the extra-wide narrative/cinematic embrace of THE BROTHER’S KARAMAZOV, Proust, even INFINITE JEST. But does anyone work with that kind of scope in contemporary American cinema? Meet Rob Nilsson, who with very little self-promotional zeal has spend the last dozen- plus years creating a fascinating collection of exquisitely shot digital features under the umbrella of 9 @ Night… a sprawling black and white tapestry of separate but overlapping feature narratives that encompass a broad character scroll of homeless, hustling and bourgeois types in San Francisco and environs.” – Dennis Harvey, Film Comment, Sept./Oct. Issue, 2008

• Praise from Ray Carney and the Academy Foundation:

https://harvardfilmarchive.org/programs/9-night-the-films-of-rob-nilsson-2/

• World Premiere: Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2003.

• The World Premiere marathon screening of all the 9 @ Night Films took place at the Harvard Film Archive in 2007.

"Rob Nilsson's latest entry into his nine-film saga is called "Attitude" and it bristles with it. The film and the ones that preceded it stemmed from his workshop with homeless and street people, professional actors and all-comers in San Francisco's Tenderloin District. They make up the cast and they are mesmerizing performers, with faces, stresses and strains that cannot be faked. Characters appear as dominant in one film, then fade away into bit parts to emerge large in others later. Ninety percent of the actor's I've ever met could study and learn from these performances. Shot in an edgy, black-and-white mode, reminiscent of John Cassavettes and his relentless pursuit of character revelations and human truth, this film hooked me from 'go'. Days later, I could still feel the barb of it in my neck. See it." – Peter Coyote, Actor, Author, Political Activist

"Wow. ATTITUDE really burned itself into my brain. Some kind of white hot hyper real hallucinogenic fever dream. There has for sure never been another film like it. Not in this country. Holy shit. When can we choose some dates?" – Matthew Seig, Manager, Pioneer Theatre

"Spoddy can be seen as the transmutation, in the post-AIDS age, of the photographer Mel Hurley in Heat and Sunlight, still touched by a need for character transcendence but remaining defiant at the thought of social injustice and the lack of personal commitment, which somehow reflects Nilsson’s own attitude as the most independent of American filmmakers." - Senses of Cinema, Stephen Teo, May, 2003

Directed by:

• Rob Nilsson

Story by:

• Rob Nilsson

Improvised by the Cast:

• Michael Disend – Spoddy

• Marion Christian – Big E

• Vernon Medearis – Blackie

• Robert Viharo – Modisco

• Mira Larkin – Francesca

• John Hunsaker – Chuckles

• David Fine – Salowitz

• Paige Olson – St. Tre

• Cory DuVal – Bid

• Hernan Peña – Assault Victim

• Bruce Marovich – Qually

• Brian Danker – Sgt. Danker

• Scott Cooper – Rails

• Edwin Johnson – Johnny

• Maria Mastroyannis – Mapel

• Teddy Weiler – Phil

•  Marianne Heath – Jane

•  Irit Levi – Lulu

• Adan J. Faudoa – Butch

• Chie Uchida – Chie

• Kaori Nakata – Kaori

• Keith Hemmerling – Guitar Man

•  Dean Adams – Henry

• Johnny Holiday – Homeless Old Man

• Pat Wallace – Lily Jo

• Kevin Woodruff – Lil F

• Anya Luchitskaia – Anya

• David Dror – Smoke Shop Owner

• Ernest Alcorn

• Gary Belanoff – Landfill Homeless Man #3

• Armand Blasi – Landfill Homeless Man #4

• Charles Gilbert – Landfill Homeless Man #2

• Shawn Gilfeather – Landfill Homeless Man #1

• Matt Gonzalez – Matty

• Roy Jackson – Henchman

• Stephen Maul – Craig

• Brette McCabe – Lou

Cinematography:

• Mickey Freeman

Specialty Camera:

• John Behrens

Makeup Artists:

• Maria Mastroyannis

• Terry Forgette

Production Manager:

• Mira Larkin

Sound:

• Alex Putney

Sound Designer:

• Al Nelson

Editor:

• Chikara Motomura

Music:

• Les Hemstock

Associate Producer:

• Catalina Castillo

Producer:

• Terry Forgette

• Jon Sajetowski

Executive Producer:

• Carol Richards

• David Richards

Okunrin Meta - David Schickele