When Jack was a trucker riding up and down the California highways delivering goods for K-Mart, he always kept his head and drove steadily even when thick fog, known in California as tule fog made the journey treacherous.

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The first time I went backpacking, I feasted on semi-raw hot dogs cooked over a driftwood fire (we'd forgotten to bring the stove) and sipped tea laced with ashes as chilly Northern California winds blew the fog in.

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Pointed toward his 18-acre compound in Marin County, California, Sean Parker rips through the night fog on the Golden Gate Bridge in a stealthy Audi S6 that masks a Lamborghini engine, one pale hand on the wheel, the other toggling through thousands of songs uploaded on the car's sound system.

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The ensuing chases and reversals permit Alton and the director, Anthony Mann, to etch postwar California in a vivid pulp chiaroscuro the action is lit by flame and shrouded in fog.

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