There are few things I love more than dinner and a movie. As a filmmaker with restaurant owner parents, my motto is to taste everything, watch everything. And why not? I am, and always have been, enriched and inspired by the unexplored and the unfamiliar. But lately I've been noticing that I might not be exploring things with quite as much abandon in my own kitchen - I rely mostly on basic salt, some spices, some greens. What more could I need? Well... a lot, apparently.
So I thought it would be fun to explore the limits of my well-loved kitchen staples while experimenting with conventions of cinema that are not, normally, a part of my work as a filmmaker. And my first thought was of fifty little salt shakers, dancing in unison, filmed in black and white stop-motion. And who better to turn to for inspiration than legendary film director Busby Berkeley? His kaleidoscopic, geometric and subtly scandalous dance sequences thrilled a laughter-hungry audience during the Great Depression, and long after the hankering for the elaborate musical films of the 30s and 40s dwindled, the beauty of his choreography remained fresh.
I built a little set, stocked up on saltshakers and tried something new. And you want to know what I learned? Yes, sea salt is wonderful, but there is fleur de sel and sel de mer, coarse gray salt and purple rock salt, applewood smoked and Himalayan pink, Hawaiian black lava and bamboo jade green. Salt that smells like smoke, salt that smells like eggs, salt up to my ears, salt all over my legs! I also learned that you can shoot for twelve hours and have just forty seconds of footage and still call that a good day.
Next week, you'll see me hammer, grind and splash over thirty kinds of spices, set to a Bollywood soundtrack. You'll see cardamom, lavendar, and Madagascar vanilla, sprinkled with a little star anise and Ceylon cinnamon. The week after, I'll be pitting lettuce against radish in a classic Hollywood Western shootout. I'm not going to decide which is the hero and which is the villain until I've tasted them both.
Working title? The Good, The Beet and The Leafy.
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