Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

Year 14, Day 218 - 8/6/22 - Movie #4,218

BEFORE: Anthony Bourdain and Emeril Lagasse carry over from "Wolfgang" - both men were seen in archive footage yesterday in a montage of some of the TV-stars who have become famous by following in the footsteps of Wolfgang Puck.  This is somewhat ironic because Bourdain totally dissed Emeril in his book and his first TV show, but he later reconciled with him on his second show.  

Yes, I'm THAT familiar with Bourdain's career, except I didn't watch any of his latest travel/food show on CNN, because by that time I'd seen through his mystique and I'd grown tired of it.  When this documentary was released last summer, I was working at an AMC and I made a few friends among the teens and twenty-somethings that worked there, but I bonded with one in particular, who was looking forward to this film being released, and also "Dune". I felt it was my duty as his friend to warn him about the David Lynch version of "Dune", but we disagreed about Bourdain, he was a big fan and by that time, I was so over Bourdain that I couldn't bring myself to get excited about the doc. (I'll explain this further below.) So I boycotted it, but I did promise my friend that I would watch it someday, and today is someday.  

This will wrap up "Chef Week" here at the Movie Year, it's been a good addition to the doc topic line-up, all things considered.  I'm glad I was able to work these four films in, it's a relief to have them off the board, and now I don't have to do this again.  

        

THE PLOT: A documentary about Anthony Bourdain and his career as a chef, writer and host, revered and renowned for his authentic approach to food, culture and travel. 

AFTER: OK, my first beef today is with CNN, which played the version of "Roadrunner" that I watched and burned to DVD.  The running time of "Roadrunner" is 1 hour and 57 minutes, and CNN aired the film a few months ago in a 2-hour timeslot, which was FILLED with commercials.  I get it, you have to pay the bills, but something had to give, to fit an 117-minute movie and at least 30 minutes of ads into a 2-hour slot, logically, mathematically, something had to be cut.  So what did I miss?  This morning I had to find the film online (HBO Max) in its unedited form, and it turns out, I missed quite a lot because CNN cut the HELL out of this movie.  Either air the movie or don't air the movie, but for God's sake, don't just cut things out of the film at random just to squeeze it into your time available. That should be illegal - and any director who allows a TV station to make edits to their movie this way should either sue them or have their head examined.  When I saw that John Lurie was listed in the IMDB credits but I hadn't seen him in the version I watched, I knew something was up.  

I'm going to pause here and skip through the film on HBO Max to see what I missed...  Jeezus, they cut out Bourdain in France, being bothered by a mime?  That's reality show GOLD right there - so CNN killed the film, it's death by a thousand (literal) cuts.  CNN, who was the third network to finance Bourdain's travels around the world with the show "Parts Unknown", and this is how they treat their (former) talent?  Jeezus again, the man is dead and you're still treating him like a damn commodity, somebody you can control, silence, keep under wraps - eff you, CNN.  First you cancel CNN+ so I can't see the Dionne Warwick documentary, and now this?  They also cut out a scene from Bourdain's travels in Haiti, where he encountered a number of poor, hungry people and tried to donate the food left over from his shoot to people on the street, and chaos ensued (this kind of echoed a scene in "We Feed People" where José Andrés chastised one of his workers for giving out food in a disorganized fashion).  There's a bit of a message here, but you won't get that message if you watch the hacked-up version on CNN. Let's just chop out the footage of the starving people and cut right to Bourdain and his young daughter, sure, why not?  Kiss my ass, CNN.  

Now, the rest of my issues today are with Mr. Bourdain himself - and maybe some of the things I'm going to say won't be popular, or P.C., but they represent how I feel.  Mental illness, drug abuse, suicide, these are very complicated problems, often they don't have simple solutions, and attempts to "fix" these issues often have mixed results and unintended consequences.  I know that avoiding the problems (editing them out of your life, the CNN solution) is not the answer, so I'm going to talk about them, even if somebody out there doesn't like my comments or my ideas or my feelings.  I just watched the scene with Bourdain and Josh Homme (another one that CNN edited out) and there was an interesting comment - "Nothing feels better than going home, and nothing feels better than leaving home."  Yes, that's true, and it's part of the paradox that was Anthony Bourdain - why couldn't he just, you know, be happy?  He mentions days out grilling in his backyard, cooking for his wife and daughter, and being ridiculously happy, why couldn't he just stop traveling and DO THAT?  That just wasn't in his nature, part of his deal was that he ultimately had to self-sabotage everything, maybe in a way everybody does, to some degree. 

Let me back up for a moment, because Bourdain was another one of those people, like Julia Child, Wolfgang Puck, Betty White, Rita Moreno, Jerry Lewis, George Carlin, Rick James and Dick Gregory, who kept advancing, changing careers, failing upward until he was deemed a success. (Meanwhile, his personal heroes were Ernest Hemingway, Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson, and those are a few big red flags right there...). He started as a mid-level cook at a NYC brasserie called Les Halles, and decided to write a memoir about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans at a NYC brasserie, and the book was a hit.  People were shocked (and also NOT shocked) when they learned that restaurants recycle the uneaten bread, the reason why you shouldn't order fish on Sundays, and the fact that the cooking staff from all the restaurants get together after the restaurants close and eat and get drunk and do drugs and god knows what else.  But he was telling his truth, and that was refreshing.  

"Kitchen Confidential" was a best seller, and then came "A Cook's Tour" as a book and a TV show - for my money, that was one of the most brilliant TV shows I ever watched, a guy who'd never traveled much being given a chance to tour other countries, with a TV network paying all the expenses.  That's the dream, right?  That's like winning the damn lottery, and he won that lottery THREE times. But spending so much time on the road torpedoed his first marriage, and then eventually the second one, too.  There's always going to be a disconnect when one half of a couple is on the road and the other isn't, it's the rock-star conundrum - one person goes out to tour and make the money, the other stays at home, and an imbalance is created.  Bourdain also got used to spending time alone, and that takes a toll, too.  Everything has an expiration date, sure, but there's no reason to hurry things along.  Bourdain was traveling, staying at nice hotels around the world, but dining alone - eventually this can lead to a desire to burn down one's life to the ground and start over.  We've all been there, when it's time to make a decision about quitting a job or ending a relationship or making some other kind of change, but then there are grown-up ways to do those things, and also very childish ways.  

After "A Cook's Tour", and all his issues with the Food Network, Bourdain moved on to the Travel Channel, and his second show, "No Reservations" - I watched every damn episode, but then he started having issues with his overlords at the Travel Channel.  Hmm, what's the common factor there?  I think he would have had issues with ANY network that tried to tell him what to do or what to say. By the time CNN offered him a multi-million dollar deal for "Parts Unknown", I was done.  I remember when my favorite band, ZZ Top, signed a multi-million dollar deal with a new record label, and then their music started to suck. It happens - people get rich sometimes and they stop trying, they forget what it's like to struggle and they start phoning it in.  

OK, I'm dancing all around it, but it's time to talk about mental illness, depression and such. It's hard for me to diagnose long-distance, of course, but maybe Bourdain was a bit like my constantly rebooting DVR, he somehow got the wrong mental software downloaded into his brain, and so life became a struggle, and traveling around the world became both a solution and part of the problem. Being in a relationship, same thing, it was his foundation in one way but also perceived as the anchor that was holding him back.  Starting a new relationship offered temporary relief, but eventually became its own problem.  Suddenly the guy who'd burned down two marriages had to experience what it was like to be the one left behind, rather than the one doing the leaving, and maybe he couldn't handle it.  Before stepping out with a new lover, that actress worked her way into Bourdain's crew, directing an episode here, getting that particular cameraman fired, and all that is a form of poison when you start mixing business with relationships. 

Suicide is the ultimate "Fuck you" move - besides being the ultimate expression of self-harm, it's also a terrible thing for a person to do to their friends and family, who then have to deal with the pain and the loss.  What a dick move. Get help, get therapy, try yoga, get a new hobby, watch some cartoons, do whatever it takes to not kill yourself during one of those down moments.  Maybe it's not that easy, but then maybe it is, I don't know, I'm not a mental health professional.  But I've had my down moments, too, especially over the last couple of years - if you haven't been depressed during the Trump years and the pandemic, man, you just weren't paying attention. I lost one job and I had to find a new tribe and a new purpose and I'm still constantly anxious about money and work and self-worth and my parents' health issues, but giving up just isn't an option, and I wonder why Bourdain did, leaving two ex-wives, an ex-girlfriend, a daughter and many friends to feel that pain and loss. 

Plus, that defines him now - his legacy is that of someone who got consumed by darkness at the end, and I'm not sure that's accurate, only everyone who talks about Bourdain in this film kind of confirms, yeah, that's who he was.  He had an addictive personality, but was also always joking about killing himself or blowing things up or harming others, and so there wasn't just a warning sign, there was like a highway's worth of warning signs.  So maybe he's proof that you can't run away forever, but as Jim Steinman once wrote, there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start. Part of me wanted to believe that maybe he didn't mean to kill himself, perhaps he was just indulging in some auto-erotic asphyxiation, trying to get a better orgasm by choking himself. But I wasn't there, I don't know the details, so we may never know - and somehow in our society it's better to be perceived as a depressive mental patient than a kinky thrill-seeker, I guess. 

Look, I don't have all the answers, I never said that I did, even though I often act like I do. These issues of what it all means, how to get and stay happy, how to feel satisfied whether you're stuck at home or traveling around the world, whether you're alone or with someone who unexplicably cares about you, it's all very complicated.  But we owe it to ourselves to keep trying to solve the puzzle of our own lives, every day, keep trying new things or finding new solutions, and if one road is blocked, try a different one.  Or take a day for yourself once in a while, do something silly or pointless that makes you feel good, just don't overdo it, all things in moderation and balance.  And when absolutely necessary, if you have to burn your life to the ground and start again, try to deal with that as best you can - but if you're just a mid-level cook at a struggling restaurant or the equvialent of that, honestly, that's OK too.  At the end of the day, I don't know if life is better experienced as a constant journey, a sequence of going places, or by staying in one place and trying to be happy there.  Are you defined by where you go and what you do there, or is life ultimately nothing but a series of bad decisions that all sort of made sense at the time?

Please, for God's sake, for all that you consider holy, do NOT watch the hacked-up version on CNN, watch the film on HBO Max, with no edits, the way the director intended.  Why someone with an agenda had to cut John Lurie and Josh Homme out of this film to make it safe for TV, I honestly have no idea.  You can only take out so many little Jenga pieces before the entire tower collapses.  I guess the big controversy here was that the director used computer "deepfake" simulations of Bourdain's voice - because who the HELL reads all their e-mails out loud? - but I don't care about that, the bigger travesty is shredding the film, and therefore any sense of continuous narrative, for airing on TV. 

Also starring Christopher Bourdain, Ottavia Bourdain, David Chang, Helen M. Cho, David Choe, Christopher Collins, Morgan Fallon, Josh Homme (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Philippe Lajaunie, Todd Liebler, John Lurie, Alison Mosshart, Doug Quint, Karen Rinaldi, Eric Ripert, Joel Rose, Lydia Tenaglia, Tom Vitale, Kim Witherspoon, 

with archive footage of Christiane Amanpour (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Asia Argento, Cate Blanchett (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), David Bowie (last seen in "Jagged"), Marlon Brando (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Charles Bronson (last seen in "The Sandpiper"), Anderson Cooper (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Bradley Cooper (last seen in "All About Steve"), Christopher Doyle, Adam Driver (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Bengt Ekerot (last seen in "The Seventh Seal"), Terry Gilliam (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Ernest Hemingway (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), David Letterman (also carrying over from "Wolfgang"), Trevor Noah (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Iggy Pop (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Nancy Putkoski, Keith Richards (last seen in "Count Me In"), Lance Robertson, Martin Sheen (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Michael Steed, Max von Sydow (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Hunter S. Thompson (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Harvey Weinstein, Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Spielberg"), Tracy Westmoreland, Zach Zamboni. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 jiu-jitsu matches

Wolfgang

Year 14, Day 217 - 8/5/22 - Movie #4,217

BEFORE: I'm fighting with the cable company AGAIN, it's the company whose name rhymes with "rectum". I've got an older DVR and I can't upgrade it, because it's full of movies that I PAID FOR but haven't had a chance to watch yet, because I've got a system, and they don't understand that. And they persist in downloading NEW software updates to my OLD (three years old) DVR, which causes it to crash and reboot, over and over.  So now I'm trying to get them to reinstall the old software, which worked and didn't crash, and they say they can't do that.  OK, well, how about you download all these saved movies from my current DVR drive to another drive, and let me have a new box with those movies THAT I PAID FOR on it?  Nope, they can't do that either.  Well, here's an idea, since they KNOW that my DVR can't handle the new software, what about just opting me out from the update, and NOT downloading the new software to it that causes it to crash repeatedly?   Nope, that's not an option either.  It's so simple, just DON'T send me the update, and they can't handle that. "Oh, we want everybody to have the best, most upgraded software..."  Great, only it's like putting the wrong gas in your car, you just know the engine can't handle it, but sure, let's do it anyway.  Idiots.  

Their only proposed solution is to give me a new, empty DVR and I then lose access to about 65 movies that I PAID FOR with my monthly cable bills, and many of those movies are not currently running on any channel, so then I'd have to go and watch them on another service, maybe iTunes or YouTube, which would cost me money, so no, you can NOT upgrade my DVR, not unless you figure out a way to transfer all those movies over to the new drive.  I'll cancel my service completely before I let that happen.  The best advice from the service technician was to try and clear some of the movies off the DVR, put them on VHS or DVD, and then turn in the box.  Well, yeah, that's a constant process for me, but not every channel allows me to make dubs like that, plus the new DVR won't allow me to dub movies to DVD at all, AND how do you expect me to do that when the DVR keeps crashing?  Thanks for the non-helpful advice, buddy, go take a long walk off a short pier while you're at it.  I realize that all equipment has a lifespan, and someday my DVR will die and need to be replaced, but there's no need to hurry the process along by downloading new software to it that it can't handle.  This is why I avoid updates on my phone and computer, too, it's a scammy process that eventually leads to me needing a new phone or new computer, so no thanks.  I want to be the one who decides when I upgrade my hardware, not a software incompatibility problem.  OK, rant over. 

Julia Child carries over from "Julia". 

THE PLOT: An intimate portrait of the life and work of the original "celebrity chef", Wolfgang Puck. 

AFTER: At first glance, Wolfgang Puck appears to be a very happy guy - but when he starts talking about his early days getting into cooking, he mentions that he hated his stepfather.  Wolfie grew up in a poor-ish family in Austria, and his stepfather always made him feel like he was never good enough, that he'd never amount to anything, that if he started working in the restaurant industry he'd be sure to fail, and he'd come home a month later, admitting defeat.  In other words, his stepfather was German. Oh, I know that level of mind-fuckery very well, I had two German grandmothers, plus a Polish grandfather and another half-German one (from Alsace, so possibly French).  Actually, one grandmother was half-German and half-Irish, so she was the nicer one - the full German grandmother gave me that same treatment when I was a teen, and she moved into my parents' house.  I was lazy, I needed a haircut, I was doing well in school but somehow I was still never going to amount to anything - so I feel you, Wolfgang.

I don't know if this all goes back to Germany losing World Wars I AND II or what, because my grandmother left Bavaria before Hitler took over - Wolfgang Puck was born in 1949, so post WWII but by then the national resentment was probably twice as bad, and they took it out on their children.  But for some Germans and Austrians, there was a hidden motivating effect, Puck was twice as determined to succeed as a chef JUST to prove his stepfather wrong.  And he didn't just stay away for a month, he didn't return home for YEARS, that'll show 'em.  He was doing well working in Provence, Monaco and Paris, but even if he weren't, he'd probably rather live in a rundown flat or on the street rather than go home and give his stepfather the satisfaction of being proven right.  

But then Puck came to the United States, and spent two years in Indianapolis - though this doc makes it seem like he headed straight for L.A., where he became chef at a French restaurant named Ma Maison, at a time when people didn't care who cooked their food, they only sort of cared who owned which restaurant.  That seems silly, don't you pick a barber or a doctor based on their abilities, not by who owns the barber shop or the hospital?  Wolfgang first changed the menu at Ma Maison, then he went and changed the whole industry by becoming the first celebrity chef.  But he still wanted to own his own restaurant, so when the owner of Ma Maison offered him part ownership of the restaurant but less pay, he hit the road and opened up Spago instead in 1982.  

There's no mention here about Wolfgang's first wife, but his second wife was his business partner at Spago - funny, I thought you shouldn't mix business with pleasure, but it seemed to work for them, for a while, anyway.  After 15 years of success they moved Spago to Beverly Hills and then opened up other restaurants all over the world, so they must have been absolutely raking it in.  Nothing gold can stay, Puck was jetsetting around the world and hosting Oscar parties, and he and Barbara split up in 2003.  I wonder, did she get half the restaurant empire, or just the money?  The documentary doesn't say.  Puck issues the same refrain I've heard many times in these documentaries, from Frank Zappa to Luciano Pavarotti, all these guys wish they hadn't worked so hard and that they'd spent more time with their kids, been better fathers.  Puck sort of has an excuse here, because he didn't have a child until he was 40 and a success, and of course it takes time and effort to run a restaurant empire, but still, if his stepfather was so shitty he really should have figured out a way to be a more hands-on father.

Wolfgang's been around so long that we've all gotten used to him as the elder statesmen of chefs - it's a bit weird to see footage of him when he was in his 30's and 40's and realize that he was young once, too.  Kind of like seeing that glamorous nude photo of Julia Child...shudder...  And as this documentary shows, he appeared on nearly every talk show in history, doing cooking segments of one kind or another.  Julia Child might have been one of the first chefs to host a TV cooking show, but Wolfgang was really the first one to be on every talk show, every channel.  A familiar face, a household name, and who knows, there might not even have been a Food Network if he hadn't been so high-profile.  Julia gave way to Wolfgang, who gave way to Emeril, Rachael and so on.  

And there might not have ever been smoked salmon pizza if Puck's restaurant hadn't run out of bread on the night when Joan Collins showed up, and he invented the dish to satisfy her.  He maybe didn't single-handedly invent California cuisine, but he sure popularized it.  Mixing the fresh local produce with French cooking techniques might have been genius, but why did it take so long for this Austrian to finally put some damn weiner schnitzel on his menu?  To me that should have been a no-brainer from the start. French cooking gets all the good press, but to me German cooking is where it's at. Three years ago we were at the buffet at the Paris Hotel in Vegas, and there were five food stations, representing different regions in France - Brittany, Provence, Normandy, Burgundy and Alsace.  Just genius - but my favorite was the Alsatian food. 

Another casino-related story, in February 2017 we visited Wolfgang Puck's American Grille at the Borgata in Atlantic City (an apparent casualty of the pandemic, it re-opened without Puck as the American Bar & Grille...).  I enjoyed New England clam chowder, a roast half-chicken and a chocolate peanut butter tart for dessert.  But this story is about the guy at the table next to us, who we came to call "Twitchy" for obvious reasons.  My wife had noticed him earlier at the Borgata, because they're both smokers, and she kind of notices the other people who step outside for cigarettes when she does. At his table he was acting, well, very twitchy, and talking to himself, wondering out loud how soon his pizza would arrive, he had left something in his car, and he asked us to watch his stuff while he ran to his car - who DOES that?  We never answered him, we pretended not to notice him, but he acted as if we'd agreed to watch his coat and bag, so he stepped out.  Dude, we never agreed.  So the waiter came over to us and saw Twitchy's coat and bag, but in a public place you're not supposed to leave a bag unattended, and an unattended bag is something of a security risk. We told the waiter about this twitchy guy who might have said he was heading to his car in the garage, but the waiter really wanted to turn the table, so he picked up the coat and bag and took them to lost and found - we tried, Twitchy, we did, but the waiter didn't want to hear it.  Within minutes, a couple was seated at Twitchy's table and we just sat and waited for the fireworks that were sure to happen when he returned.  I think we told the couple what had happened before they arrived, and when Twitchy came back, the waiter had his pizza boxed up and ready to go, and sent him on his way.  I guess the moral is that the biggest sin at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant is taking up space without actually being present, they'll pack up your stuff and your food and kick you out.  Good to know. 

Anyway, Wolfgang Puck's getting older and he's got some regrets, sure, but he's still crushing it on the restaurant scene.  Like Julia Child and so many of this year's documentary subjects, he's reinvented himself a couple times over, but he's also looking forward and not back, while still wondering how much "forward" he's got left in him.  Well, he's on wife number three and got two more kids out of the deal, so there's a second chance to be a better father, I guess. I'm still not sure if being rich and famous makes that easier or harder, though. 

Also starring Wolfgang Puck (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Evan Funke, Barbara Lazaroff, Byron Lazaroff-Puck, Laurie Ochoa, Michael Ovitz, Mark Peel, Christine Puck, Gelila Assefa Puck, Ruth Reichl (also carrying over from "Julia"), Nancy Silverton, Patrick Terrail, 

with archive footage of Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Eating Raoul"), Anthony Bourdain, Michael Caine (last seen in "The Eagle Has Landed"), Johnny Carson (also carrying over from "Julia"), Charles Gibson (ditto), Emeril Lagasse (ditto), David Letterman (ditto), Rachael Ray (ditto), Joan Collins, Sean Connery (last seen in "Spielberg"), Tom Cruise (ditto), Katie Couric (last seen in "The Go-Go's), Billy Crystal (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Tony Curtis (ditto), Arsenio Hall (ditto), Shirley MacLaine (ditto), Sidney Poitier (ditto), Giada De Laurentiis, Angie Dickinson (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Paul Newman (ditto), Craig Ferguson (last seen in "We Feed People"), Bobby Flay (ditto), Martha Stewart (ditto), Guy Fieri, Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Tom Hanks (last seen in "A Hologram for the King"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "Margot at the Wedding"), Kelly LeBrock, Joan Lunden, Dick Martin (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Bette Midler (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Joan Rivers (ditto), Jamie Oliver (last seen in "This Must Be the Place"), Sean Penn (ditto), Vincent Price (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Gordon Ramsay, Julia Roberts (last seen in "Ben Is Back"), Al Roker (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Diane Sawyer (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Aftermath"), Steven Seagal (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Curtis Stone, Orson Welles (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool") and the voices of Tom Brokaw (also last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Robin Leach

RATING: 6 out of 10 frozen pizzas

Julia (2021)

Year 14, Day 215 - 8/3/22 - Movie #4,216

BEFORE: Welcome back, it's Chef's Week here at the Movie Year, a special foursome of movies devoted to famous chefs - two living, two not so much.  I don't think I've covered any chefs before in past versions of the Rock & Doc Block, I'll have to check.  This was a last-minute addition, I saw a way to put three docs about chefs together, but I didn't see the way to work them into this year's chain, I tried very hard, it was just not possible.  Then the fourth film came my way, and based on the credits listed on the IMDB, I suddenly saw the way - that's how things tend to work out for me, quite often.  

Chef is something of a unique title, we've grown accustomed to adding it quite liberally to the names of people who cook our food in restaurants, to the point where it feels a little weird to NOT say "Chef José Andrés", as if the word is part of his name.  But we don't do that for other jobs, like you don't talk about your friend by callng him "Accountant Frank Smith", not unless you know two guys named Frank Smith, I guess, and you need to distinguish him from "Barber Frank Smith".  The only other people we do this for are the President and maybe the Supreme Court Justices.  Oh, and doctors.  I can get doctors, but why are chefs so special?  

José Andrés carries over from "We Feed People". I left out the word "chef" because maybe there's more to him than just being defined by his profession, maybe he's a complex guy and I don't want to belittle or pigeonhole him. 

THE PLOT: The story of the legendary cookbook author and television superstar who changed the way Americans think about food, television and even about women. 

AFTER: Yes, there's more to the story of Julia Child then you may be aware of, because your memories of her probably started whenever you first watched her TV show, and she'd lived a whole life by then, being a TV star was her second, no wait, third profession.  That's a bit of a running theme this year, whether you want to be the next Betty White or Rita Moreno or Rick James or Sparks Brothers, keep at it, but also keep re-inventing yourself until you land on something really good or successful.  Dick Gregory started out as a comic but ended up as a civil rights activist and healthy lifestyle advocate, while Jacques Cousteau was a free-diving fanatic who became an inventor and a filmmaker. Mel Brooks and Jerry Lewis started doing funny voices in clubs, and look how far they went from there. Robert Evans, Rita Moreno and Bob Einstein also possessed this power of longevity - hey, remind me about all this the next time I watch a documentary about a dead celebrity, which will probably be on Saturday. 

Julia never cooked when growing up, she was born into a wealthy family in California, her mother was the daughter of a lieutentant governor of Massachusetts, while her father was a land manager who invented foreclosure or something. Julia attended a polytechnic junior high and then played sports at Smith College - she was a big girl, after all. After a short stint as an advertising copywriter, she tried to enlist in the Women's Army Corps when World War II broke out, but she was too tall, so she worked as a typist for the OSS, which later became the CIA. She worked her way to become a researcher for the head of the agency, but she was NOT a spy as rumors have suggested. Instead she kept track of the names of German officers on index cards, and later helped develop a shark repellent when too many underwater explosives were being set off by sharks.  Yeah, right - and actress Hedy Lamarr helped a guidance system for torpedoes that became Bluetooth, sure...

Julia (McWilliams at the time) met her future husband, Paul Child, when they were both stationed in Sri Lanka (Ceylon at the time).  He also worked for the OSS as a mapmaker, and after the war ended, they got married in Pennsylvania, and moved to Washington DC before the State Department assigned him to Paris, and there he introduced Julia to fine French cuisine, and that's when her life got a lot more interesting.  One meal at La Couronne in Rouen, France, consisting of fine wine, oysters and sole meuniere was enough to spark her inspiration, and she wanted to learn everything about French cuisine, graduated from the Cordon Bleu cooking school and joined a women's cooking club, where she met Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, who were working on a French cookbook for Americans.  Child offered them insight into the American palette and sensibility, plus she was a darn good typist - and anyone who can keep track of a multitude of Nazi officers can probably also keep track of the many ingredients necessary for a recipe.

It took a decade of traveling around Europe, tasting food and translating recipes, to put the cookbook together - nice work if you can get it, huh?  But the first U.S. publisher rejected the manuscript for "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" because it was a giant 726-page encyclopedia-sized book, and it was felt that most Americans would find that too large, too much of a challenge, meanwhile in post-war America people were cooking with instant mashed potatoes, mixing powdered drinks and discovering this thing called "fast food", so why would they want to cook in a much more difficult and time-consuming manner, as the French chefs do?  But the women authors persisted, and the second publisher printed the book and created a best-seller - known for its helpful illustrations and attention to details, that book is STILL in print, after 60 years. Along with what was essentially the first best-selling cookbook in America came the invention of the book tour, with Julia and her co-authors traveling across the U.S. to speak about the book and pimp more copies in every city.  It's hard to imagine a time when authors didn't go out on tours to promote their books, right? 

It's also hard to imagine a time before the Food Network and the Cooking Channel, but before Julia came along, chefs didn't appear on TV, certainly not female ones - all of this came about because Julia and Paul Child lived in Cambridge, MA and she was scheduled to appear on a PBS show about books to promote her cookbook.  The Public Broadcasting System at the time was pretty much used for hurricane warnings and college professors ranting about Shakespeare's works, this was pre-Sesame Street, pre-Great Performances, pre-Nova and whatever the hell else people watch on PBS.  I only check the listings because the PBS station in NYC runs one semi-obscure "indie" film every Saturday night, and it might be one that I've seen but aired on Netflix or a cable channel that runs that signal that prevents me from dubbing it to DVD. (PBS does NOT run that signal, so gotcha!). Oh, and I recently discovered "American Masters", that's my new favorite PBS show, they aired the Sammy Davis Jr. and the Rita Moreno docs just when I needed to see them - thanks, PBS, there may be a little something extra for you this year when pledge week rolls around.

Anyway, that appearance on the book review show was a success, because Julia made the host an omelet, right there on camera, and he loved it.  Then somebody at the station put two and two together and thought, "Hey, what if there was just a show with this crazy lady cooking something delicious, there's nothing else like that on television!"  Fast forward sixty years and then somehow you get four people forced to cook with pig intestines on "Chopped", you can all see how we got there, right?  Child's cooking show was produced quite cheaply, in a demonstration (fake) kitchen somewhere in the Boston area, with the cameras and lights held together with chewing gum and string, no scripts, and no editing - Julia's "mistakes" had to be left in the show, and thus began the process of having the finished dish prepared beforehand, which is common practice now just to save time. That line where a TV chef says, "OK, this meat needs to marinate for 17 hours, but I have another roast right here that I started marinating yesterday..."  Yeah, she invented that. 

"The French Chef" ran on PBS stations around the U.S. for 10 years, it was like the "I Love Lucy" of cooking shows, because just as Lucille Ball went on to produce "The Lucy Show", "Here's Lucy" and "Life with Lucy", Julia had "Julia Child & Company", "Dinner at Julia's", "Baking with Julia" and at the age of 87, co-hosted "Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home" with Jacques Pepin. Plus she appeared on darn near every talk show made during the 1980's and 1990's, which is very considerate of her, as if she knew someday someone would need to link a bunch of documentaries together based on those talk-show bookings. 

It wasn't all butter and sugar, though her husband became her greatest supporter, always ready to chop onions or wash dishes - hey, everyone who retires from the intelligence agencies needs to keep busy, right?  The couple had no children, and Julia Child was an advocate for Planned Parenthood - perhaps she felt that she couldn't accomplish as much as she did if she had to raise children, or who knows, maybe she felt that kids would kill the great romance she had going.  If you watch this documentary you WILL see a glamour shot of a nude Julia Child in their Paris apartment, don't say I didn't warn you.  But she was young and needed the money...

By the 1990's, Julia's cooking shows were based in her home, though sadly her husband had to live in a nursing home after he suffered a series of strokes in 1989.  He passed away in 1994, but Julia kept living in their house until she moved to a retirement community in 2001 and donated her house to Smith College, and her kitchen to the Smithsonian.  Julia herself passed on in August 2004, two days before her 92nd birthday.  OK, maybe she didn't win the EGOT but she had three Emmys, a Peabody, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, France's Legion of Honor, a fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and she's in the National Women's Hall of Fame. Not bad for her third career...

Also starring Paul Bogaards, André Cointreau, Susy Davidson, Barbara Fairchild, Jane Friedman, Ina Garten, Charles Gibson, Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch, Russell Morash, Sara Moulton, Jacques Pepin, Alex Pirie, Alex Prud'homme, Ruth Reichl, Cecile Richards, Marcus Samuelsson, Francois Simon, Jean-Francois Thibault, Stephanie Vachon, Anne WIllan, Dorothy ZInberg

with archive footage of Julia Child (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Paul Child, Dan Aykroyd (last seen in 'Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road") Simone Beck, Dick Cavett (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Jay Leno (ditto), Phil Donahue (last seen in "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed"), Jacqueline Kennedy (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), John F. Kennedy (ditto), Emeril Lagasse, David Letterman (also carrying over from "We Feed People"), Rachael Ray (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Fred Rogers (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Tom Snyder (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream")

RATING: 6 out of 10 ways to cook a whole chicken

We Feed People

Year 14, Day 213 - 8/1/22 - Movie #4,215

BEFORE: OK, I'm not exactly sure how many films I'll watch in August, but I've got 41 films to get me to October, so maybe I'll watch 20 of them in August and 21 in September?  I may have to start the horror films a little early this year, because we're planning for a week's vacation in October, and I may lose a couple days to New York Comic-Con, plus I hope the theater will be open again before then, so yeah, it could be a busy month. If I move four October films into September, that cuts down October's movies to 19, plus 8 days off makes 27, plus 3 days for NYCC makes 30, and October has 31 days, so yeah, I think I can swing it. It's all kind of coming together, my plan to wrap up Movie Year 14 - who knows, I may have to revise it, but at least there is a plan, one that prevents me from adding any more documentaries to the Summer Rock & Doc Block. 

Anyway, here are the links that should get me to the end of August - José Andrés, Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse, Oprah Winfrey, Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Al Sharpton, Stephen Colbert, Deon Cole, DeWanda Wise, Chris Pratt, Taika Waititi, Toby Jones, Penelope Wilton, Denzel Washington, Isabel Arraiza and Corey Stoll. Yep, that's only 17 people to link 21 films, I'm that good.  David Letterman carries over from "The Super Bob Einstein Movie". 

THE PLOT: A chronicle of how Chef José Andrés and his nonprofit rebuild nations in the wake of disaster, providing healthy food to those affected. 

AFTER: Today's film comes with a personal story, I worked at the gala NYC premiere for this film, back in early May. Because it was produced by National Geographic, it was a big deal, extra security was hired for the theater where I work, there was a big outdoor set-up for the celebrities to arrive and check in, tents, a yellow carpet, and there was extra personnel to check people in, run things and do a lot of the things the usual theater staff does - I'd had a bad cold the week before, so I was fine with being relegated to outdoor tasks, like monitoring the ADA ramps and keeping the sidewalk traffic moving safely.  It's not challenging work, but on the days with big premieres these things still need to be done, and it's kind of all hands on deck, no complaining allowed.  I like the outdoor work because then I can watch the celebrities arrive, and since my wife and I watch so much Food Network, I recognized so many people - Ted Allen, Gail Simmons, Marcus Samuelson, Rachael Ray - from a fair distance away, but still, I was a bit star-struck.  Director Ron Howard and chef José Andrés spoke after the film, with the conversation moderated by Padma Lakshmi from "Top Chef" (again, I watched a bit from afar, like the back of the theater).

I worked late, supervising the tent breakdown, maybe got home at midnight or 1 am, and my wife was out the same night, at a co-worker's funeral.  But the next day, she texted me that after interacting with everyone at the funeral she took a COVID test, and it came up positive - so I ran to the nearest walk-in clinic and got a test myself, and I was positive, too.  Since I had felt sick the week before maybe I gave it to her, or maybe she caught it at the funeral and gave it to me, we don't really know.  I called in sick and didn't go to work for two weeks, until I tested negative, but man, was I glad I worked outside that day.  I didn't want to be the guy who gave COVID to half of the stars of Food Network, or even Ron Howard.  I had to report my status to the school that runs the theater, and they wanted to know which of my co-workers I'd interacted with the night before, and thankfully all those interactions were outside, talking with other masked people.  

I greatly admire the work that's been done by World Central Kitchen - Chef Andrés felt so strongly about fighting hunger caused by disasters that he went ahead and DID it, he didn't let not knowing exactly how to do it at first stop him.  Then he assembled a team of like-minded individuals, people willing to dedicate themselves to doing whatever it takes to feed people due to a mixture of kindness, dedication and not having something else to do with their time, or finding themselves at a personal crossroads, and figuring that this was at the very least a positive way to take action.  Anybody who's been out of work for any length of time might recognize that feeling - taking a job because, well, it's something to do, and maybe I can make a positive change in one little corner of the world.  

The film follows Chef Andres through several disasters, like when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, and President Useless thought he could fix things somehow by throwing rolls of paper towels into a crowd (really?) while Chef Andrés was figuring out a way to make sandwiches while waiting for the paella to be done.  Which person was ultimately more helpful?  From there, Andrés moved on to a volcanic eruption in Guatemala, and then a couple years later he was delivering meals to the Navajo nation at the start of the pandemic, then figuring out how to get restaurant kitchens in major U.S. population centers opened again to help make meals for city-dwellers.  I'm awestruck, I'm envious and ashamed - envious of people who have such a clear mission and direction in their lives, and ashamed that I haven't done more for charity over the years.  

I tried doing volunteer work for City Harvest, but they just sent me around the Union Square Farmer's Market in Manhattan with a bag to see if I could collect unsold produce at the end of a day - I wasn't good at it, I hated feeling like a beggar and so I didn't keep doing it, I figured I could just mail in a contribution to the charity and probably accomplish more in the long run.  Meanwhile my father, who worked a trucking job five days a week when I was young chose to spend his weekends hauling loads of furniture for Catholic charities to restock their donation centers. I helped him with that a few times when I was a teen, but my heart wasn't really in that either.  Again, mea culpa, I feel like I could have, should have done more.  I used to donate blood regularly but then I got busy, so I haven't done that in years either.  

Hey, I kept people safe outside the screening of "We Feed People", that's something, isn't it? They couldn't have a gala premiere and spread their message if they were worried about people tripping on the ramps outside, or if fans were bothering the celebrity chefs who had come to attend the event.  No need to thank me, I got paid for my services and then of course took two weeks off so I wouldn't give anybody COVID.  Really, I'm a giver, but nobody wanted me to give them COVID, so Food Network stars, you're welcome.  If you can get over the feeling of inadequacy that this film may cause, it's important stuff - they should make more documentaries about people doing charity work, because it is uplifting. 

Also starring José Andrés, Carlota Andrés, Inés Andrés, Patricia Fernandez de la Cruz, Sam Bloch, Robert Egger, Nate Mook, Kyle Pounders, Trevor Riggen, Carole Sugarman, Maisie Wilhelm, Richard Wolffe, 

with archive footage of Ferran Adria, Joe Biden (last seen in "Becoming"), Bill Clinton (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Craig Ferguson (last seen in "The Ugly Truth"), Bobby Flay, Martha Stewart (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Donald Trump (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Melania Trump (ditto)

RATING: 7 out of 10 distribution centers on the Ukraine-Poland border