FAQ

Drake Goodman (Matthew Modine) and his girlfriend Patty Palmer (Melanie Griffith) purchase a 19th century house in the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco as an investment because it has potential as a rental property. They are able to rent out one of the two downstairs apartments to the Watanabees—Toshio (Mako) and Mira (Nobu McCarthy). While Patty is waiting for the potential renter of the second unit to return his credit references, Drake interviews another potential renter, Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton). Carter smoothly wheedles his way around the provision of credit references but promises to put up payment for the first six months, which he agrees to wire transfer. While Drake is waiting for the wire transfer, Carter moves into the apartment in the middle of the night. The wire transfer never comes through, and Drake and Patty are stuck with trying to evict him. The landlords' nightmare now begins.

Pacific Heights is based on a screenplay written by Daniel Pyne.

Like the police officer tells Drake -- during the first incident where Drake shuts off the electricity and heat -- under California law Hayes has rights as their tenant. Also, there's a brief moment where the indifferent Hayes says "I signed a lease", which gives him the right to occupy the apartment. He also lays out some pretty convincing excuses to the police about the wire transfer of the security deposit and the six months rent he promised to pay Drake and Patty. The movie is set in the early 1990s and wire transfer was already an established way to move money around but it was also one that was flawed, making it easy for Hayes to claim he'd ordered the transfer when he hadn't. He also claims that Drake's bank is at fault, making his argument that much stronger.

Also, don't forget that Hayes is a brilliant con artist who has been playing games like these for years. Spurned by his rich family, possibly because of his trouble with the law and nefarious dealings, he made a career out of illegal activity and has learned how to flout and manipulate the law to his advantage. In his argument with his partner Greg (Luca Bercovici), Greg mentions another con job that Hayes previously pulled on another couple who were his landlords.

Plus, Hayes also seems to enjoy the trouble he causes: note the smirk that forms on his face when Drake is arrested after attacking him. Hayes looks quite pleased at how much trouble he caused Drake in that moment.

Changing a lock is a simple procedure; it can be done easily with a screwdriver. However, It was illegal for Hayes to do so without Drake and Patty's permission. The property belongs to them, and they retain the right to enter the apartment if they suspect anything. However, laws in most states do require a landlord to give at least 24 hours notice to a tenant before entering the apartment. Hayes simply changed the locks to keep them out, perhaps knowing they wouldn't forcefully enter the apartment without taking the proper legal steps to do so and because he knew it would be an additional annoyance to them.

Like Detective Baker (Carl Lumbly) suggests, he most likely sold them, trying to squeeze whatever money he could out of Patty and Drake before he put his full plan into motion. Hayes probably has a network of shady people to whom he can sell stolen property. Appliances like the microwave oven, the fridge, and range were all brand new and would have gone quickly. Other things like the cabinetry, lighting fixtures, sinks, and even the toilet might be harder to move, but no doubt Hayes knew the right people with whom to deal.

Tenants' laws protect a tenant from unfair practices, such as a landlord who believes they can willfully evict a tenant without proper cause or who enters a dwelling unannounced. (We see that happening in the 1st scene of the film although we don't know what Hayes has done to offend the landlord there.) Conversely, the laws also protect the rights of the landlord in order to prevent people such as Hayes from taking advantage of them. Unfortunately, Hayes, being the slick con-artist that he is, knows precisely how well-protected he is and also knows that Patty and Drake will have to hire a lawyer to evict him and that it's a process that can take months. Hiring a lawyer, like Patty and Drake do, has the downside of being a heavy expense they will have to incur until the eviction comes through. Plus, there's no guarantee that if Drake and Patty win the case that Hayes will hand over the money he owes them, which will require another hefty expense to take him to court again. There are many more factors involved, and the writers of the screenplay have taken a few liberties with how the laws work. However, in the interest of keeping the audience's attention, they have been simplified and even dramatized.

There's the obvious reason that his credit application was lost when the Watanabes moved in and that Patty and Drake never received it. If the detective had hand-delivered it to the couple or placed it more safely in their mailbox, a lot of trouble could easily have been avoided. However, there's also that scene between the detective and Patty early on where he was reluctant to fill out the application and wanted Patty to accept him as a tenant on his word alone. Patty and Drake might be new to the rental property ownership game, but Patty's a smart woman and insists that the detective fill out the application. Note how tense the cop seems when Patty says the application is a condition of candidacy for the apartment. The main reason he's uneasy is that he's going through a bitter divorce and has probably gone through a lot of legal red tape and proceedings in the process. Filling out the application was just one more source of tension for the cop who'd probably been filling out a lot of paperwork for his divorce. In the end, he realizes that Patty and Drake are just trying to protect themselves and agrees. They have their right to know if a prospective tenant will be able to pay the rent and any other expenses and if they will be a good resident that won't cause trouble, which is why landlords check a candidate's credit and ask for references. The cop probably could have saved himself much of the trouble if he'd mentioned that he was an SFPD detective, but he chose not to mention it at that moment. Also, it helps to move the plot along: if they'd rented to the detective and he had been a model tenant, we wouldn't have the story that follows.

No. The house is located in Potrero Hill on 19th Street at the corner of Texas St, southeast corner. Pacific Heights itself is an upscale neighborhood of San Francisco, however the producers chose to use the house in Potrero and pass it off as Pacific Heights, which is not entirely unbelievable. San Francisco is well-known for it's rows of Victorian-style houses and sloping streets so it's not too big a stretch.

Hayes/Danforth sneaks back into the house and beats Drake with a golf club then goes after Patty who is in the process of making repairs to the apartment he gutted before moving out. Holding a nail gun to her face, he accuses her of getting into his "private space" when she tracked him down at the Marriott Hotel in Century City and went through his room. Hearing Patty's cries, Drake makes his way downstairs and into the crawl space under the apartment where he can look up through a hole in the floor in order to see what is happening. When Danforth's leg gets near the hole, Drake grabs it, knocking Danforth off-balance. Patty pushes him, and he falls to the floor, impaling himself through the back on two projecting pipes. Unable to get up, Danforth dies. In the final scene some months later, Patty and Drake are showing the newly-repaired house to a couple interested in buying it. The woman asks Patty why they're selling it, since she really seems to have put her heart into the property. "No," Patty replies, "it was just an investment." As Patty and Drake go upstairs to pack, the prospective buyers discuss how they can afford the $900,000 to purchase the house.