Garlic is Better than Ten Mothers: 1980, dir. Les Blank.
and
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe: 1980, dir. Les Blank.
Both seen at Alamo Downtown (Jan. 5) as part of Alamo’s “Ultimate Garlic Experience.”
The Alamo Drafthouse chain of theaters in Austin always seems to be offering the Ultimate Experience of something or other. They have a portable movie screen and have shown movies in bowling alleys, lakes, the middle of the woods, and other wonderfully bizarre locations. When they do have Ultimate Experiences in a theater, the evenings include themed meals, silly contests, appearances from the director or a star in the film … you get the idea. Sometimes I wonder if Tim League, founder of the Alamo franchise, is related to William Castle, and I mean that as a compliment.
Last night I went to the Ultimate Garlic Experience at Alamo Downtown. Two short documentaries from Les Blank were shown, Garlic is Better than Ten Mothers and Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Since Les Blank’s movies are not available on DVD, and are difficult to find on VHS, that alone seemed like a good reason to attend.
As an added attraction, the admission price included a garlic-laden meal, with the following courses (swiped from the menu they gave me):
Amuse bouche: Rosemary pickled garlic-stuffed olives
Appetizer: Garlic-cured salmon with ciabatta crostini, goat and cream cheeses and garlic chives
Salad: Mixed field greens with carrot and radish in roast garlic vinaigrette
Entree: Chicken breast in a garlic-orange-basil glaze with jasmine rice and broccolli
Dessert: Roasted garlic chocolate truffle in toasted coconut with chantilly cream
There was also a small liqueur served with dessert although I have no idea what it was.
(It probably goes to show what a dining prole I am that this is the first meal ever where I had an amuse bouche. What can I say, they don’t offer ’em at Shady Grove or Chez Gaufres.)
The minute I walked into Alamo Downtown, even from the bottom floor, I could detect the smell of garlic. Entering the theater, I noticed two men in chef’s uniforms stationed on the side aisles, each at a station equipped for sauteeing. Throughout the evening, until the first movie ended, these guys sauteed a whole lot of garlic. I’d hear a whump noise and look over and flames would be leaping from both stations at the same time. Everyone’s eyes were burning to some extent (depending on how close to the saute pans they were) by the time the first movie was over.
I got to the theater early because I thought they might start serving the meal before the movies started. This is the one teeny complaint I have about dining experiences at Alamo. I like to see what I am eating. I wish they could have found a way to start serving the food earlier, although it makes sense logistically that they waited until everyone was there and it was 7 pm, which was the listed start time for the movie.
On the other hand, if you are eating in the dark of a movie theater, no one will notice if your table manners are not tip-top, I suppose. (Not that mine weren’t.)
At 7 pm, Tim League appeared to introduce the films and outline the general plan for the evening. The movies are not that long, so they padded the event a bit. He began by soliciting audience members for a garlic-peeling contest. This turned out to be more fun than it sounds, especially because some audience members really got involved and were screaming and chanting and clapping. The winner was decorated with a rope of garlic and the runners-up received bottles of mouthwash.
The contest was followed by a short group of food-related trailers … well, it was more like trailers for movies with food-ish titles: Meatballs 2, a Menudo movie, The Munchies (I hadn’t heard of it either), Kentucky Fried Movie (who was it they enlisted to play Samuel L. Bronkowicz?), and a movie that gave me flashbacks later that night, The Apple Dumpling Gang.
(Quick diversion: The Apple Dumpling Gang, a 1975 Disney live-action film, was one of the first movies my family ever taped with our first VCR when we got it back in 1980. My dad adored that movie, as he’s always been a huge fan of Tim Conway and Don Knotts. I bet I’ve seen it a dozen times, or at least been in earshot of it. I realized later in the evening that my brain has retained large chunks of that movie by heart. Imagine my surprise. Also, I forgot that Slim Pickens was in it. Urrrrgh, the dialogue. I’d really like to stuff all this back in my subconscious and not have to hear it in my head anymore, thank you.)
After the food-related trailers and a few current trailers for upcoming Alamo events, Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers started. I think we were into the salad course by then.
Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers is a documentary about, you guessed it, garlic. We see all kinds of cooks from all kinds of backgrounds as they use garlic to prepare the tastiest-looking dishes, many of them sharing personal stories about their family’s use of garlic, or bits of history about garlic use in Europe and America. The film also shows an annual tribute to garlic done at the restaurant Chez Panisse, and an outdoor garlic festival with a belly dancer who incorporates a braid of garlic into her performance (kismet, you should totally try this), and people wearing garlic in interesting ways, and so forth.
At one point I did wonder if Les Blank made this documentary just so he had an excuse to travel around sampling all of the food shown in the movie, because it all looked mighty yummy. Brisket stuffed with garlic, baby pigs stuffed with garlic, fish rubbed with garlic, soup infused with garlic-rich pesto, a giant bowl of mushrooms sauteed with garlic and topped with eggplant rounds … it’s a good thing I ate before I started writing this, because just thinking about the movie is making me hungry again.
And you can imagine how it would feel (if you like garlic) to watch all of this food while someone is sauteeing garlic continually nearby. It’s a good thing they served food with this movie or the audience would have stampeded the kitchen.
Lively music, much of it from the Louisiana Playboys, accompanies the luscious images of food. Looking over Blank’s filmography, I notice that it includes Yum! Yum! Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking and J’ai ete au bal (The Cajun and Zydeco Music of Louisiana). Obviously food and music are favorite topics for Blank’s films. He went to school in New Orleans, so this makes sense.
Blank also interviews German director Werner Herzog to ask why he didn’t include anything about garlic in his movie Nosferatu, and includes some vampire experts who discuss the efficacy of garlic in driving out all kinds of vampirism.
There’s also some discussion about what will happen to garlic as people move more and more towards using processed and convenience foods. Will they stop using whole fresh cloves and switch to garlic powder and salt, or prepeeled cloves?
I have to confess that I grew up in a household where I never ever saw a fresh garlic clove. Maybe I saw some garlic in a braid once, but it would have been for decorative purposes only. I didn’t see anyone cook with fresh garlic until I was in graduate school. For someone who grew up in close proximity to New Orleans to confess this is a real shame. My maternal grandmother pretends to be allergic to garlic because she hates it so much, so we often had garlic-free holiday meals (I think my great-aunt puts extra garlic in her stuffed mirlitons just to spite her sister). I have never seen my mom use fresh garlic in her life—she uses garlic powder whenever it’s necessary, which usually meant on garlic bread.
Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers was a fun movie, about an hour long. By the time it ended, we had all finished our entrees. After a short break, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe started and dessert was served.
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a very short film (about 20 minutes) with a self-explanatory title. The story is that Werner Herzog was trying to encourage a friend of his to make a movie, and declared that if the friend would actually completed a film, Herzog would eat his shoe. The friend was Errol Morris (whose documentary The Fog of War won an Oscar last year). At a showing of Morris’s first completed film, Gates of Heaven, Herzog appeared in public to eat one of his shoes.
It’s an amusing little tale. We see Herzog taking off his boots at Chez Panisse and preparing to cook them. He stuffs them with garlic and onions, laces them up, and boils them in a big pot with help from restaurant owner Alice Waters. He buys another pair of shoes. While all of this is going on, he talks to Les Blank about the media and the effect that a film of his little bet would have. Would it inspire other people to make films? Was it necessary for him as a director to stage publicity stunts like this, and why?
The actual eating of the shoe is a bit anticlimatic. Despite the onion and garlic, the shoes looked extremely unappetizing. Compare this with the rich and gorgeous food in Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers. It’s a good thing Alamo showed this film last, because it certainly didn’t inspire hunger.
All in all, I had a good entertaining evening. The food was very good. It was prepared by the new chef for the Alamo on S. Lamar, which is opening in March. I particularly liked the chicken and broccolli. The dessert didn’t taste like garlic at all, and I was sorry my boyfriend wasn’t there to have some, because he likes chocolate-and-coconut desserts. However, he is not very fond of garlic and believes it should be used moderately as a seasoning only.
In fact, when I came home after seeing this movie and gave him a kiss, he jumped away from me. “Aaaaagh!” Apparently I reeked (his words) of garlic. I had to go into the garage to change and leave my clothes there, an act of shame usually reserved for visits to titty bars. The Ultimate Garlic Experience had left its mark.
One result of the evening is that I’d like to see more Les Blank films. First of all, I always like movies about food. I’m also interested in documentaries related to New Orleans, because I grew up in the area. I checked the Vulcan Video site and it appears the 29th Street store has some of his movies in VHS format.
But another, more surprising result, is that I thought of a very good idea for a short and small documentary film while I was watching Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers, and was further motivated by Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. My little brother is getting into filmmaking now so I might see if I can enlist him to help me. Or at the least, if I can’t pull a documentary together, I could use the material for a good essay or two. I feel quite inspired. I think Werner Herzog would be pleased to hear it. Or maybe he’d just tell me to get off my butt and do it, already.