Copious Notes

Filmmaker John Corey and Lost in the Fog owner Harry Aleo filming the documentary "Lost in the Fog." Photo courtesy of John Corey.

Click the play button to hear John Corey talk about Lost in the Fog:

[podcast]http://copiousnotes.bloginky.com/files/2009/04/090430corey-fogpodcast.mp3[/podcast]

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Living in San Francisco’s Noe Valley District, John Corey always thought there was a story in the crotchety octogenarian who would antagonize the liberal neighborhood by sticking pictures of Ronald Reagan in his storefront window.

“I wanted to do something on him,” said Corey, then a producer for San Francisco’s CBS affiliate. “But I was waiting for something meaningful to happen in his life.”

Then the cantankerous neighbor, Harry Aleo, bought a horse named Lost in the Fog. Corey read about it in The San Francisco Chronicle.

The story “said it looked like he was on the Derby track,” Corey said of the horse.

That was rare for a horse at Golden Gate Fields, considered minor league horse racing compared to Southern California and Kentucky.

Corey sensed an opportunity to film a neighborhood character in whom he had long been interested and a horse possibly headed to the greatest race in the world. Soon, the filmmaker, who didn’t think of himself as much of a gambler, was all in on the Lost in the Fog story.

The resulting documentary, Lost in the Fog, opens Friday at The Kentucky Theatre.

Unlike most documentarians, Corey didn’t know how the story would end when he left his secure job to follow the horse full-time.

“I’ll be damned if I didn’t make a huge bet on this horse,” Corey said.

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