Taste by Stanley Tucci

Author:Stanley Tucci
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2021-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

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Doing a cooking show, or making a documentary about food for television, requires very particular talents, energies, and skill sets, which I have been learning slowly over many years. Making a fictional narrative film in which food is the center is another kettle of fish completely, and it was doing so (at times clumsily) that altered my life significantly.

I began writing what would eventually become the film Big Night over thirty years ago. I had always wanted to write a script that would be more in keeping with the tone and structure of a “foreign film.” By this I mean a film that was primarily character driven, eschewed stereotypes, and ended somewhat ambiguously. When I lived on the Upper West Side in Manhattan during the 1980s, I was often unemployed for lengthy periods of time. In order to maintain sanity, instead of sitting at home and waiting for the phone to ring, I would exercise, visit museums, attend the theater (affordable standing-room tickets only), or go to the cinema. Unlike today, there were many independently owned cinemas that showed foreign and independent films. One afternoon, in a little cinema on Sixty-Eighth Street and Broadway, which sadly is no longer there, after completing my daily workout, I ate an inexpensive, very unhealthy meal of something or other at the adjacent coffee shop (also no longer there), grabbed a cup of joe to go, paid my few dollars, and sat in a half-empty theater to watch the glorious Babette’s Feast.

If you haven’t seen the film, I can only suggest that you do, especially if you’re a “foodie.” Not to spoil it, but to this day I vividly remember hearing the audience moan with never-to-be-realized pleasure as each dish was served in the climactic dinner scene. There is no doubt that the sounds that emanated from the cinema during Babette’s Feast were echoed only in cinemas in the Times Square area that showed films of a very different ilk. (Or so I have been told.) At any rate, the subtle brilliance of the film and the communal experience of enjoying it stayed with me for many years afterward and eventually became something of an inspiration for Big Night.

Any number of experiences can inspire or influence what anyone creates, but perhaps the primary inspiration for Big Night was an Italian restaurant in Miami that I had been to while filming early in my career that was owned by two immigrant brothers, one of whom would often sing as he served you. Although I cannot remember the brothers’ names, or the name of the restaurant, I remember them as very charming raconteurs and the food they made was delicious. During the same trip I also happened to meet a Corsican by the name of Pascal, who affected the air of a wannabe mafioso and owned another very successful Italian restaurant. This handsome, blue-eyed, foul-mouthed restaurateur became the template for the character of Pascal, played so perfectly in Big Night by Ian Holm. The brothers of

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