BEFORE: Normally at the start of a new month I would give you the links that are going to get me all the way through that month, but I just don't have them this time, and it's Deadpool's fault. I want to see the new movie "Deadpool & Wolverine", and I know there will be a bunch of cameos, so I'm not looking them up, I'm not looking at the cast list on the IMDB, I would prefer to be surprised, if possible. And it's not really possible, because I know they're THERE, the internet is buzzing about them and I try to look away as soon as I can. Anyway I'm not going to be able to get to the theater until next week, so here's the linking that's going to get me there:
Angela Lansbury, Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Jackman. That's it, that's all I got - but I can do a few films with Anthony Hopkins and hold out for a few days, then I'll really have to get my ass into a movie theater seat, I haven't been out to the movies since "Asteroid City" last year (or was it "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"?). Liza Minnelli carries over again from "Sid & Judy", because when you think of Liza, you naturally think about her love of hot dogs, right? I'm tying everything together, the whole Doc Block, with hot dogs, because the connections are still everywhere.
THE PLOT: A Coney Island-inspired documentary portrait of the life and times of the original Nathan's Famous hot dog stand, opened in 1916 by the filmmaker's grandparents, Nathan and Ida Handwerker, interweaving archival footage, family photos and home movies.
AFTER: Maybe I should have worked harder to get THIS movie to land on July 4, because that is the date of the annual Hot Dog Eating Championship at Nathan's flagship hot-dog stand at Coney Island. I never miss it - I never GO there on July 4, that would be ridiculous, it's always like 125 degrees hot that day with a unrelenting sun and also thousands of people turn out because they all suddenly remember that 30 or so contenders are going to be stuffing hot dogs down their throats. Also they forget that the event is televised on ESPN and really, there's no need to go in person, you'll get a better view of things in your own living room, just like the Macy's fireworks and the Super Bowl and really, any rock concert.
But I've been to Coney Island several times, and that Nathan's stand is always crowded - maybe not "July 4 Hot Dog Eating Contest" crowded, but it's always busy there. It's like people all suddenly remember that they like hot dogs when they get there, and also they forget how hot dogs are made, even though we have a prominent saying about that, how you never ever want to see how the sausage is made, because if you knew, you wouldn't eat it. BUT WE KNOW, because there's a saying about it, so how can you not know that they grind up the worst cuts of meat and stuff them inside an intestine? "Oh, I like the snap when I bite into it!" Yeah, that snap once transported poop inside an animal, but sure, you go ahead and enjoy that snap, while I buy the cheapest hot dogs I can at the store and avoid paying extra for the "natural" casing.
Let me get this year's hot dog eating contest results out of the way, then I can focus on the documentary. Joey "Jaws" Chestnut was not allowed to compete this year, because he signed an endorsement deal with a rival hot dog manufacturer, and worse, it was Impossible Foods, a vegan hot dog maker to boot. Nathan's has such a lock on this event, through the sham organization now known as Major League Eating (formerly the International Federation of Competitive Eating) that his endorsement of a rival brand was enough to disqualify him, despite the fact that Chestnut has won the event many, many times before, and there's no dispute that he is THE BEST in the world at eating hot dogs (I can eat four, max, in 10 minutes, I think). Without him competing, it just wasn't a valid event this year, not in my book anyway - would it be a valid boxing match if the current heavyweight champion were not allowed to defend his title? If Billie Jean King were the #1 seed in tennis and was not allowed to play at Wimbledon, then whoever won the next event could not truly consider themselves a champion, because they did not beat the best opponent to win. So whoever won this year, and I promise you that I've already forgotten his name (Patrick Bertoletti, I had to look it up) can not in good conscience declare himself a champion, because he "only" ate 58 hot dogs in 10 minutes, and I know for a fact that Joey can easily eat 70 on a bad day.
I kept hoping that there would be some last-minute reprieve of the ban, that these crazy kids who eat too many dogs and the even crazier people who hold the contest could come to some kind of resolution on this point, but at some point I realized that would be like Lance Armstrong being allowed to be in another Tour de France, or Pete Rose getting elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame - it's not impossible because nothing is in sports, but it became extremely, extremely unlikely. No athlete is bigger than their sport (except maybe Babe Ruth, he was bigger than anything else) and so I tuned in and watched people stuff hot dogs down their throats, but my heart just wasn't in it this time. Our NYC Mayor, Eric Adams, tried to broker a peace deal between Chestnut and MLE, but like literally every other endeavor he's taken on since getting elected, he was completely useless in getting something done. In fact when Eric Adams got involved, that's when I KNEW that the negotiations would break down. The stupidest thing that MLE could do would be to keep this ban in place, like they did for Kobayashi, the previous hot dog eating champion. All he wanted to do was to compete in other eating events in his native Japan AND also compete in the MLE events in the U.S., and this also was not allowed. Kobayashi, of course, is a natural, he was born with a stomach lower than the average human's, which of course allows him to eat more before getting full. Until this event once again becomes a showdown between Kobayashi and Chestnut, the event is a complete sham. There, I said it.
Of course, there is more to Nathan's than the one day annual eating contest (and I"ll drop the subject now, because once I start talking about it, I'm likely to keep going...) but in that event, you see some of the business strategy of Nathan's - we'll give away a few dozen dogs to competitive eaters, and the crowd that we'll draw to the hot dog stand will buy ten times as many. And considering what I now know about Nathan Handwerker, if he were still alive he'd probably want to charge Joey Chestnut for those 70 dogs, I mean, just giving them away to the MLE competitors has to eat into the profit margin at some point, right? The current marketing strategy, of course, calls that a "loss leader", you give away a few dozen and then you sell a few hundred more than you would have. To really understand Nathan's, though, you have do dive back through the mists of time to a point where there was just ONE Nathan's stand, and yes, it was the one at Coney Island (which isn't even an island at all, but that's another story. It's only an island in the sense that it's part of Brooklyn, which is part of Long Island, look at a map if you don't believe me.)
The whole story is filmed and narrated by Lloyd Handwerker, grandson of Nathan Handwerker, who grew up in Poland, near the Ukraine border, as one of 13 children of a poor Jewish shoemaker. There was never enough food in his household, particularly meat, and his father had to beg for food, but he had to commute to the next town to do it, and that commuting (you guessed it) ate into the profits of his non-lucrative begging scam. One day Nathan went begging with his father on Take Your Child to Work day and when they got to a bakery, his father asked if there were any jobs there, and the baker said yes, but rather than the FATHER taking the job there, which would have made some sense, young Nathan took an apprenticeship at the bakery, he slept at the bakery so he could wake up at midnight and make the dough for the morning's bread, then he'd deliver the rolls around town, and he found he was really good at selling rolls (put a pin in that factoid for a minute). After two years working at the bakery he'd saved up some money and he bought as much meat as he could and went back to his family, only to find that they were dead because it took him TWO YEARS to deliver some food. OK, lesson learned, bring home meat sooner.
Nathan kept working through his teens, but when he reached the age of twenty, there was pressure on him to join the army and die in World War I, which nobody knew about yet, except for Nathan, who just had a feeling. So he casually took a train to Belgium and promised to enlist as soon as he got back to Poland, then he jumped aboard a migrant ship and headed for America, because he knew America would never be stupid enough to get caught up in World War I. Also it's a big place, America, much bigger than Poland, plenty of places to hide, especially out west in Montana or Wyoming. But he only got as far as New York City, like a lot of people who landed at Ellis Island and then found they had no money to travel any further. So since he knew the bakery business and he was GREAT at selling rolls, Nathan found a job at Feltman's, a German bakery in Coney Island that also sold (you guessed it) hot dogs for 10 cents each.
Nathan loved working at Feltman's, he could eat a couple of free hot dogs each day, and he fell in mutual acceptance with a young woman who also worked there, Ida, and they met cute when Ida was accused of taking $2.00 from the till, or something like that. Together they scraped together $300 but instead of buying a house they opened up a hot dog stand right across from Feltman's and charged only 5 cents each. Yeah, there's that American spirit, don't worry, Nathan, you'll fit right in in America. Ida came up with the secret recipe for the new hot dogs (umm, yeah, probably better if you don't ask) and even though it probably cost them 4 cents to make each hot dog, they still sold them for 5 cents, and figured they'd just make up for it with volume, volume, volume. They were right, and this was a much better plan than buying the hot dogs from Feltman's and selling them at a loss.
I kid, but there is a reason that Nathan's hot dogs stood out - most hot dogs (and probably Feltman's) were made from the WORST cuts of pork. Snouts, tails, organs, whatever was left over after you take out the hams and the chops and the loins. But Handwerker was Jewish, and pork isn't kosher, so instead he used beef for his hot dogs - beef snouts, beef tails, beef organs, but hey, they're kosher! (Actually, they weren't, they were "kosher-style" according to the fine print, which just meant they weren't pig or horse meat, but rabbis were NOT involved in supervising the production. Hmm....). And allegedly Ida dropped in a little bit of pastrami here and there, and that was the secret - you could hardly taste the ass - so before long they were hiring more workers to grill the dogs and Feltman's was struggling, and things only got better when somebody finally invented mustard. Who couldn't afford a nickel for a hot dog, even during the Great Depression? So Nathan's grew and put Feltman's out of business, because that's America - undercut your competitor and the world will beat a path to your door.
Time went by and Nathan had two sons, Murray and Sol. Many other family members worked at Nathan's in one capacity or another, but the story is mainly about Murray and Sol, each had a choice to make in life, stay in the family business and be driven miserable by working with their father, or strike out on their own and be miserable and disowned, but at least then they wouldn't have to work with their father. Murray chose the first path, and Sol chose the second. And the movie can't really go into great detail about the rivalry between the two sons, because by the time Sol's son, Lloyd, made this movie, everybody was too old to remember what they were all fighting about, they just knew it had something to do with hot dogs.
Murray rose in the business, but felt that the company needed to expand, because if one stand at Coney Island was successful, wouldn't it make sense to have two stores, three stores, a hundred stores? (Again, that's America for you). But Nathan did not like this line of thinking at all, he wanted to stay with just the one location, because he felt he couldn't supervise two stores at once, plus he knew everyone in the Coney Island store and how to make their lives miserable, and he lived for that. Retiring would be out of the question for the same reason, who would he drive crazy? But Murray persisted and so the company opened another location in Oceanside, NY (which is still there) and another giant one in Times Square (which, umm, is not). The company also rented office space in a skyscraper near the new Times Square location, and that could NOT have been cheap. Murray's clashes with his father about expanding the company eventually led to Nathan being forced to retire against his will and move to Florida, which at the time every New Yorker over the age of 70 was legally required to do.
As the documentary details, the Times Square location was a colossal failure - Murray built a very classy steakhouse on the basement level, and it turned out that absolutely nobody in NYC wanted to walk through a hot dog restaurant to get to a steakhouse. Or maybe they did, but then they remembered how much they loved hot dogs and then forgot all about the steak. Or maybe the failure of that location was linked to the general decline of the Times Square area, which was a booming, hopping place to be in the Judy Garland days, but remember that the whole area needed to be saved by Marvin Hamlisch and "A Chorus Line" in 1973 - so those years in-between were very grim indeed, that's when porno theaters and crime took over. Well, at least the perverts and muggers could have a couple hot dogs after a hard day's work, at least until that branch closed.
Sol, the other son, remember him? After 10 years as a Vice President at Nathan's, he wanted to do something completely different with his life, so he opened up Snacktime, a fast-food restaurant chain that served (you guessed it) hot dogs. Among other things, I'm sure - but the focus was probably hot dogs - he opened Snacktime in 1963 and it closed in 1977. The hot dogs were FREE on day one, this probably gave his father Nathan a heart attack - but that's the baller move you make when you open a new business, and over 29,000 hot dogs were consumed on day one. Hey, the first one is always free, right? Just not the second one. The Snacktime restaurant was at 267 West 34th St., and I know that's on the corner of 8th Ave., right across from the Tick Tock Diner and the New Yorker Hotel. I think it's an empty lot at the moment, but somebody's building something.
Anyway, this is all part of fast food history now, Nathan Handwerker died in 1974, his son Murray took the company public and then sold it to private investors in 1987 and they franchised it, which meant by the year 2001 there were more than 1,400 stores around the world, and the hot dogs can now be found in grocery stores, and it's the official hot dog brand of both Major League Baseball AND Major League Eating. Remember, Nathan wanted to keep just the one location in Coney Island running, that was enough for him. Instead the company grew larger than he ever could have imagined, however something got lost along the way, I think. The company was successful at first because it sold hot dogs cheaper than the other places, but now a hot dog at Nathan's will cost you $5.99. And that's in person, not delivery, before tax and with no tip. SIX DOLLARS for a hot dog, when I can get a slice of pizza for $1.50? Fuhgeddaboutit! I can buy a pack of 8 hot dogs in the grocery store for $3 if the brand is on sale, even with a pack of rolls I can still have 8 hot dogs at home for the price of ONE at the restaurant.
A Nathan's chili cheese dog is now $8, chili cheese fries are $7 - these prices have more than doubled in the last decade, and inflation is partly to blame, but I'm sure that NYC rising rents and just plain greed are also in the mix. The Nathan's restaurants also serve burgers now and cheesesteak sandwiches too, but when you see how much THOSE cost, you may change your mind. Things are tough all over, I get it, but I used to eat Gray's Papaya dogs after I got out of college and they were just 50 cents each at the time. Those hot dogs got more expensive, too, but not by as much, they go for $3.25 now, which I still maintain is too much for a HOT DOG, remember that they're still made from snouts and assholes and the other parts that couldn't be used elsewhere. Why does everyone seem to keep forgetting this?
Look, I don't want to sound like an old fogey by complaining about how things were cheaper and better back in my day, so I'll stop. I will just never pay $6 for a hot dog, that's all, unless it's a pack of 8 at the grocery, and even then, $6 is a bit too much. I'm glad that Nathan's is doing well, like I understand Mr. Handwerker's argument about not letting the business expand out of his control, but this is the way of American industry, you need to grow, grow, grow your business until there are hundreds of locations and a couple bad promotional moves will cause you to file for bankruptcy, like Red Lobster did. Yeah, there's really nothing more American than THAT.
NITPICK POINT: One of the burnouts who served up hot dogs at Nathan's in the 1970's talks about the time that Jackie Kennedy came in to buy a hot dog, and she sat in the back so she wouldn't be noticed. He says, "Well, considering what year it was, she wasn't Jackie KENNEDY because JFK died, and she wasn't yet Jackie ONASSIS, so I guess she was just Jackie." No, that's not how it works, she took the last name Kennedy when she married JFK and she didn't go back to Bouvier, so she was still Jackie KENNEDY. Why did this guy have so much trouble understanding this?
Also starring Nathan Handwerker, Lloyd Handwerker, Ida Handwerker, Dotty Handwerker, Joe Handwerker, Minnie Handwerker, Murray Handwerker, Sidney Handwerker, Sol Handwerker, Steve Handwerker, Dewey Albert, Maria Argano, Paul Berlly, Gregory Bitetzakis, Jimmy Bologna, Hy Brown, Johnny "Blackie" Casillo, Jay Cohen, Jack Dreitzer, Leah Dreitzer, Eddie Furst, Paul Georgoulakos, Claire Kamiel, Max Kamiel, Matt Kennedy, Bob Levine, Morty Matz, Larry Moyer, Johnny Pao, Larry Rocco, Izzy Rodriguez, Jose Santiago, Hyman Schuchman, Lena Schuchman, Joe Scianmetta, Sol Seiderman, Al Shalik, Hyman Silverglad, Anna Singer, Frank Soto, Morris Sunshine, Richard Trautstein, Felix Vasquez,
with archive footage of Lucille Ball (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Jacqueline Kennedy (ditto), Anne Bancroft (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Sid Caesar (ditto), Jerry Lewis (ditto), Al Capone (last seen in "The Strange Name Movie"), Jimmy Durante (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Albert Einstein (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Henry Fonda (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Jackie Gleason (last seen in 'Mike Wallace Is Here"), Robert F. Kennedy (ditto), Buddy Hackett (last heard in "The Little Mermaid"), Angela Lansbury (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Liberace (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Walter Matthau (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Marilyn Monroe (last seen in "Stan Lee"), George Reeves (last seen in "The Flash"), Babe Ruth (last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays!"), Chuck Scarborough (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Andy Warhol (last seen in "Keith Haring: Street Art Boy")
RATING: 6 out of 10 mustard packets (which replaced the communal "mustard bowls" with spreading sticks that were falsely rumored to be contaminated with LSD by hippies in the late 1960's)
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