Celebrity Settings

Aub Zam Zam Becomes Woody Allen Set

Ye olde Zam Zam.
Ye olde Zam Zam. Photo: eventseekr

Charming, old timey, Arabian Nights-themed bar Aub Zam Zam (1633 Haight Street) caught the eye of his location scouts, and yesterday morning Woody Allen and his whole film gang were shooting inside the bar. As Uppercasing reports, a bunch of the furniture got hauled out, and Cate Blanchett was spotted around, but security has been tight and we still don’t even know the title of this New York-to-San Francisco flick Woody’s making. It will nonetheless be fun to see the old dive get a spruce-up from Allen’s longtime production designer Santo Loquasto, and to see all the other locations they use. (S.F.’s starring role in Contagion was not, alas, all that we’d hoped.) Sidebar: Famed “martini nazi” Bruno Mooshei is long gone, but back in 1991, Herb Caen wrote of Zam Zam, “[It’s] a place that time forgot — its curving bar filled with worshipers sitting in silent contemplation of the silver bullet in its graceful stemmed glass. You expect perhaps Charles Boyer whispering to Hedy Lamarr, ‘Take me to zuh Cazbah.’” [Uppercasing]

Aub Zam Zam Becomes Woody Allen Set