Marlon, Oscar, and a Nice Piece of Veal

It’s not easy writing about the relationship between food and Oscar, nor is it easy writing about the theme of food in a nominated or Academy Award-winning film.

Not easy because the task is so overwhelming, the choices, the ideas, the possibilities endless. Just think about it for a moment.

Imagine writing a piece about the relationship of chocolate in movies. Do you write about “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” (1971), or do you choose a more bohemian path and write about “Like Water for Chocolate,” of 1993? Should I go the cutesy route ala Billy Crystal when he hosted the Oscars and come up with silly names of dishes related to this year’s nominated films? Something like “The Aviator” Aioli on Asparagus, or Ray Charles’ favorite Ravioli?

Food in movies. It’s overwhelming I tell you, overwhelming.

But then I began to make things a bit easier by narrowing it down to a story about my own personal relationship to a film, a film that has food as a theme, a film that forever touched my life and my writing. It is a sort of three-way relationship if you will; my intensely personal connection to a film, my connection to food, and the connection of food in that specific movie. I want you to feel that same personal connection to a film, to taste the film through the images of food so to speak.

I turned my thought process to that annual television event that we call the Academy Awards.

I suppose I have a macabre sense of drama when it comes to the Oscars. My favorite part of the show is when the screen flashes photos of dearly departed Academy members who left the silver screen for the last time in the past year.

Giant pictures of their faces and subtitles outlining their achievement in film flash on the screen during a serious moment of the Oscar show.

Many of us don’t know the name Winston C. Hoch. But every time we rent a video of John Ford’s “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” starring John Wayne, we see the beauty of the Western plain in all its Technicolor glory. Mr. Hoch won the 1949 Academy Award for Best Cinematography for John Ford’s “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” filmed in panoramic Technicolor. Mr. Hoch is one of many past Oscar winners whose achievements a younger generation may not even be aware of until that one night each year when those short film clips and their legacy is honored.

Dear Jack Lemmon died on June 27, 2001. Yet it wasn’t until the Academy Awards ceremony of 2002 that we could all cry together as we watched a composition of clips from Mr. Lemmon’s classic performances in such far-reaching film roles as the alcoholic Joe Clay in 1962’s “Days of Wine and Roses,” or his comedic triumph as Max Goldman’s (Walter Matthau), neighbor in 1993’s “Grumpy Old Men.”

That’s the part of the Oscar telecast that touches me most. It’s not Whoopi or Billy making not-so-funny comments about nominees who are sitting in the audience. I groan along with you at those feeble attempts at humor.

I tend to prefer the more serious moments of the Oscar show when the tradition and history of achievement in film is showcased. I want to be reminded of a movie made by a special person who brought a character, or a place, or a costume, to life and made it forever a part of the history of movies and a part of our culture.

And when the names role this year for those who passed on, Marlon Brando will be one of the stars we will remember.

It’s the spring of 1972 and I’m sitting next to my Mother, Janet Ross, in the Elsinore Theater in Salem, Oregon, waiting for the music and credits to start rolling for what will become a haunting experience. I’m here with my mother, my father Edgar and sister Elizabeth to see Mario Puzo’s mob novel, “The Godfather,” come to life on the screen starring Marlon Brando.

When you are a 15 year old boy, regardless of whether it’s 2005 or back in 1972, you are reluctant to go to the movies with your parents and older sister. However, in order to get into The Godfather back then, I had to be accompanied by my parents to get through the door. I can’t remember if this was a rule of the theater or a rule of the Ross household, movies didn’t follow a strict ratings code back then like they do today, but that’s the way it was – the family ruled in this case.

In 1972, America had not yet broken ground on what we know today as the “Megaplex” – that extension of glass, pipes and steel frames jutting off the corner of the local shopping mall like some sort of infected boil. Crammed with up to 36 screens and serving $15.00 buckets of popcorn, “butter flavor” extra, most of us have never experienced watching a motion picture in a classic theater. The Elsinore in Salem has been restored to her past glory. The dank smell of weathered carpet is gone, the chandeliers dusted and the velvet ropes are back to a vibrant, ruby red. She stands today as one of the grande dame motion picture theaters built when silent pictures first started to emerge in the early 1900’s.

In the infant days of the motion picture business, patrons entered ornate palaces decorated with gilt and crystal chandeliers. Heavy drapes made from crimson red velvet and finished with gold brocade hung across the stage. A gentleman dressed in white tie, tails and spats sat at the upright piano, ready to tinkle the ivories at the precise moment the curtain was pulled back and the black and white image of Charlie Chaplin waddled onto the screen. It was, as they say, the birth of the motion pictures industry in America.

The Elsinore was one of two movie theaters in Salem, just around the corner from the smaller yet no less fancier “Capitol Theater,” so named because Salem is the capital city of Oregon. The Elsinore was looked upon as the more exclusive venue for watching movies because the serious films, like “The Godfather,” tended to be run there. And The Elsinore had a feature that The Captiol didn’t: a special section where the rich people sat, or at least that’s what we thought.

I’m not sure why they called it a “loge” seat, but it was larger, wider and covered with extra thick and plush velvet. Taking up the front four rows or so of the upper balcony, we never could afford to pay the extra 50cents it took to sit in a “loge” seat. Sadly, I never experienced the extra pleasure of watching a movie next to one of Salem’s movers and shakers.

Another difference between The Elsinore and one of today’s movie madhouses is that back then the food wasn’t as good as it is today. You think I tricked you don’t you? It’s true. In 1972 we couldn’t walk in and order a pint of unfiltered Hefeweizen or a glass of oaky Chardonnay before going in to see a movie. We didn’t have the pleasure of noshing on a fruit and cheese plate or a bento of sushi. The fare at The Elsinore in 1972 was far less than gourmet.

It was a rule then, as it is now, that you were not allowed to bring your own food into the theater. Like a $10 glass of orange juice served by room service at The Ritz-Carlton, theaters have a “racket” going when it comes to concessions. The markup is ridiculous. Can you honestly pay $6.50 for a box of JuJubes? Maybe the mob has the handle on theater popcorn.

But the ushers who worked at The Elsinore, most of them my age at the time, didn’t enforce the rules so there we sat, waiting for the music to begin, each with a brown paper bag of treats that my mother had brought from home, fresh popcorn, Good’n Plenty, Junior Mints and jawbreakers.

There weren’t advertising blotters thrown on the screen back then. There weren’t “you guessed it” trivia games before the show. You listened to some canned music before the movie started. The lights went down, down, down and layer after layer of huge curtains parted before your eyes. There might be a short cartoon or documentary film shown first. You might have been shown one coming feature, but unlike today you most certainly weren’t shown reel after reel of other Miramax produced, Sony released, “films by,” before the main attraction started to roll.

And then it began. It was so dark, so black I couldn’t see my finger in front of me. I knew my mother was on my right, but who was sitting to my left?

A dark, moody, wailing horn started to sound: Dahh—dahh dahh-dahh—dah dah dah. Dahh—dahh dahh-dahhh—dah dah dah.

It was a sound that would become the unmistakable symbol of one of America’s greatest Academy Award winning films. The sound of the struggle of a proud and loving Italian-American family and their fight to live in a world of great achievement yet one of horrific violence and death.

I had never been nor seen a violent movie in the true sense of the word. I think the most shocking violence I had scene on film prior to “The Godfather” was watching blood thirsty crows peck at Tippi Hedren’s head in Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller “The Birds.” You see, unlike today, in the 1970’s real-life blood, guts and torture were relegated to “smoker” films shown at fraternity parties.

“The Godfather” opened innocently enough with the scene of a large, New York Italian family at the wedding of the daughter of “Don” Vito Corleone, The Godfather himself, played by Marlon Brando.

During the wedding, various men come into the home office of the Godfather to ask for his help, and his mercy. In comes singer Johnny Fontane, the godson of Don Corleone and a Hollywood wannabe. He begs the Godfather to help him get a role in producer Jack Woltz’s (note: this is NOT an Italian name) new movie. The Godfather gives in and tells Johnny he’s going to “Make the producer an offer he can’t refuse.”

Cut to the scene of Corleone family lawyer Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) in Los Angeles meeting with Woltz to convince the Hollywood big shot to put Johnny Fontane in his movie. Woltz shows Tom his $600K racehorse, “Khartoum, Khartoum.”

After a day of negotiating that ends with dinner and wine, Woltz shouts that he’ll never give Johnny the part since it was Johnny who stole Woltz’s female protégé.

And then it happened. The one scene in a movie that I will never, ever forget. The scene that my Mother will never forget, and the scene that other members of the audience on that night in 1972 in Salem, Oregon, sitting in The Elsinore theater will never forget.

It is the next morning and we see a view of Woltz’s Hollywood estate. Woltz awakens and reaches down to see what that warm liquid is on his hand.

At the moment, the precise moment, that the bed cover was pulled back, I grabbed my mother, mother grabbed me. But then the most, the most very amazing sound came out of our mouths as the guttural screams of Woltz shout out from the screen when he realizes Khartoum’s head is in his bed.

We laughed. We laughed out loud. We laughed at the surprise, the horror, of that blood-soaked head of a horse that was swimming in blood and gore at the foot of the bed. While I was sure the other movie goers in the audience thought we were making fun of the scene, that we actually thought this horrific sight was funny, we didn’t think it was funny. We were really scared and we reacted by laughing.

At least it was too dark for us to see their reaction. We immediately shut-up, and I can distinctly remember that we didn’t make a sound, a peep, for the rest of the film. I was rapt with anticipation for what was to come.

Yet that anticipation, or more likely anxiety over what violence lay ahead, was offset by the wonderful scenes of food and cooking that permeate the entire movie. One moment I would be shocked by the vision of the decapitation of a horse and the next scene would show a lovely, fat Italian gangster showing how to make tomato sauce for pasta. You’d see Don Corleone shopping for fresh oranges one moment, only to be gunned down in a flurry of bullets and mayhem as he falls on the produce stand.

In fact, food and cooking are a major theme throughout The Godfather. And that only makes natural sense doesn’t it? Food and cooking bind families together. Even in the face of the attempted murder of Don Corleone, the family plots for retribution against the other families while making pasta and sipping jug red wine out of tiny water glasses. There are over 60 different scenes in The Godfather that either feature or depict food, wine and cooking.

While my favorite character in The Godfather is Don Corleone, how can you not come to love Clemenza played by Richard Castellano.

Clemenza was not related to the Corleone’s by blood, but he was a loyal Captain in the family’s army. Here was a huge, fat man with a puffy face who dressed in the best wool overcoat, felt fedora on top of his large head. A devoted family man, one always wonders if his wife and kids knew that when he left home for “work,” in the morning he was actually going off to kill another man, while holding a little pink box filled with sweet cannoli.

But it is hard to convict Clemenza in your mind when those same hands that strangle a man to death are the tender, fat little fingers that so tenderly break sausage into the pasta sauce.

One of my favorite food scenes is when the men are nervously sitting in the Corleone kitchen awaiting word of the fate of Don Corleone after he has been shot. Clemenza lovingly calls Michael Corleone, (who by the end of the film has become the new Godfather), over to make authentic Italian red sauce.

CLEMENZA; “Mike. Mikey; telephone.”

MICHAEL hurries into the house.

DON'S KITCHEN (WINTER 1945) Clemenza is in the kitchen, cooking over an enormous pot. He points to the kitchen wall phone which is hanging off the hook.

CLEMENZA; “Some dame.”

MICHAEL picks it up and dialog follows with Michael and his wife Kay (Diane Keaton).

CLEMENZA is getting ready to build a tomato sauce for all the men stationed around the house.

CLEMENZA; “How come you don't tell that nice girl you love her...here, learn something... you may have to feed fifty guys some day. You start with olive oil...fry some garlic, see. And then fry some sausage...or meat balls if you like...then you throw in the tomatoes, the tomato paste...some basil; and a little red wine...that's my trick.”

Simple food. Beautiful.

My next favorite scene with food is not quite as pleasant as Clemenza teaching Mikey to make a nice tomato sauce.

The Corleone’s have planned revenge on their rival Sollozzo. Michael Corleone has even more personal revenge for an Irish New York Policman named McCluskey who blackened his eyes and roughed him up outside the hospital where Don Corleone was recuperating from his gunshot wounds. Are you keeping up with all this bloody revenge?

The Corleone’s plan for Michael to meet with Sollozzo and McCluskey at a nice Italian restaurant for dinner under the guise of bringing the New York crime families together and ending the violence. Yeah right, by now nobody in the Elsinore Theater was believing that was going to happen. But we didn’t know really WHAT was going to happen. Yee Gods, we had already seen a horse’s head cut off!

Isn’t it nice how a little wine, a little bread, a napkin tucked under your shirt collar, can set the mood for a nice little dinner?

LUNA AZURA RESTAURANT. The car pulls up in front of a little family restaurant in the Bronx: There is no one on the street. Michael gets out, and opens the door. Sollozzo and McCluskey get out.

They enter the restaurant and sit around a small round table near the center of the room. There are empty booths along the side walls; with a handful of customers and a couple of waiters. It is very quiet.

MCCLUSKEY; “Is the Italian food good here?”

SOLLOZZO; “Try the veal; it's the finest in New York.”

The waiter brings a bottle of wine to the table. They watch him silently as he uncorks it and pours three glasses. Then, when he leaves, Sollozzo turns to McCluskey;

SOLLOZZO; “I am going to talk Italian to Mike.”

MCCLUSKEY; “Sure, you two go right ahead; I'll concentrate on my veal and my spaghetti.”

SOLLOZZO and Michael talk in Italian as the waiter brings food, then Michael goes into the bathroom.

Unknown to Sollozzo and McCluskey, Michael returns from the bathroom with a gun hidden in his coat. Without warning, Micahel shoves the table away from him with his left hand, and with his right hand puts the gun right against Sollozzo’s head, just touching his temple. He pulls the trigger, and we see part of Sollozzo’s head blown away, and a spray of blood. The waiter looks in amazement; his white jacket is splattered with blood.

McCLUSKEY, is frozen with a piece of veal suspended on his fork in front of his gaping mouth.

MICHAEL fires; catching McCluskey in his throat. Michael shoots again, this time into McCluskey’s skull.

Simple, yet ugly and brutal. The floor and walls are splattered with a combination of flesh, blood, red wine, veal and spaghetti.

We left the Elsinore theater that night in 1972 and I don’t think a word was said in the car during the drive back home. As the days passed, my mother and I began to joke about the “laugh” at the Elsinore and the horror and fright we experienced at the sight of that horses head in the bed.

Every year much press is given to the victuals that will be served up at the annual Academy Awards Governor’s ball which fetes all the nominees and winners. It’s really become quite a bore to watch another year of segments on “Entertainment Tonight” and “Extra,” watching Wolfgang Puck make “Smoked Salmon Pizza,” and “Chocolate ‘Oscars’ gilded in edible Gold Leaf.”

But I am obligated, as I do every year, to give you a peek at what will be served at The Governor’s Ball. Ooh, I can almost hear Mary Hart coo “ next and only on Entertainment Tonight, what the star’s will eat tonight for dinner.”

77 th Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball February 27, 2005

Hors d’Oeuvres
Roasted New Potatoes with Caviar and Crème Fraîche
Smoked Salmon Pizza with Caviar
Kobe Beef Burgers with Gorgonzola and Caramelized Onions
Mini Vietnamese Spring Rolls
Samosas with Tamarind Glaze

Pre Set Antipasti Platter
Smoked Salmon Oscar
Chino Farms Chopped Vegetable Salad
Asparagus with Prosciutto di Parma
Marinated Mushrooms with Balsamic and Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Truffled Artichokes
Bruschetta with Goat Cheese and Roasted Peppers
Bruschetta with Marinated Tomatoes and Basil

Served Amuse (Demi Tasse with Demi Spoon)

Chilled Potato Leek Soup with Iranian Osetra Caviar

Entrée
Duo Plate:
Slow Braised Kobe Beef Shortribs with Wild Mushroom Crust
And Kabocha Squash Puree
And
Sweet Maine Lobster “En Croute” with Black Winter Truffles from Perigord

Dessert
“The Oscar I Love”
Toasted Almond and Espresso Cream Torte with Jivara Milk Chocolate Mousse

Chef Puck always has a plethora of donated, high-quality fresh ingredients with which to assemble the plates. But does “Sweet Main Lobster” have any type of connection to any of the movies this year? Good food yes, but one can seriously use a food theme at the Governor’s ball as it relates to great movies.

Naturally, the theme of my Oscar night dinner this year revolves around the foods of Sicily, homeland of the Corleone family depicted in “The Godfather.”

Sicily is the most southern region of Italy and its cuisine features an abundance of fresh seafood and produce, lots of fresh seasonal tomatoes and garlic.

If you are planning on an Oscar party you want to plan on dishes that can be prepared in advance with just a bit of last minute cooking and presentation. That way you can watch the self-anointed media queen Star Jones slurp and fawn over the stars, telling them they are her “home-girl” and that they look marvelous in a gown any normal person would not be caught dead wearing. Now back to the food.

I love the world of food in 2005. Why? Because when it comes to making a platter of antipasto to start our Oscar party all we have to do is go to the market. You don’t need to waste any time roasting red peppers under the broiler and then peeling the skin, marinating them in herbed olive oil, and on and on. Bottled, roasted red peppers, pickled garlic, Italian breads and cheese are all at your fingertips, prepared and of good quality in many grocery stores.

Most of the foods that go into your antipasto can be placed on a serving platter ahead of time and then covered and refrigerated until the party begins. Just remember to bring the trays out about one hour before cocktails start to shake so that the meats, cheeses and olives come to room temperature. All you need to do is pour some olive oil, butter and balsamic vinegar into little glass dishes for guests to dip into and it’s time to pop the champagne corks just as the Supporting Actress Oscar is presented.

It may sound mundane, but one of the most popular pastas in Sicily is plain old spaghetti. But you shouldn’t think of spaghetti as dried noodles drowned in bottled sauce. Tomato sauce with meat is the traditional sauce for spaghetti, but spaghetti is even better when dressed with a simple pan sauce made after roasting a nice veal chop. Add some white wine to the pan, a few capers, maybe a pat or two of sweet butter, and there you have it, a tangy little sauce for your spaghetti.

Fresh tomato sauce is easy to make at home and if you don’t like the taste of store bought tomatoes in February, any imported, canned Italian tomatoes will do just fine. It only takes about 30 minutes to go from ingredients to a thick, pureed tomato sauce that works not only on spaghetti but as a sauce for any grilled meat or even pizza sauce.

In honor of the Don, the Godfather himself, we need to have a good chunk of meat. In this case “a nice piece of veal,” as the “boys” would call it. I’ve stuffed a veal chop with a savory mixture of spinach, toasted pine nuts for texture and both ricotta and Asiago cheeses. The stuffing oozes out of the warm chop when you cut into it.

Now we must finish our meal just before the Oscar is presented for best picture. So, as an ode to the Corleone family and those sweet cannoli that played such an important role in one of the more violent scenes in The Godfather, I am offering you “Corleone Cannoli.”

Cannoli are Sicily’s most famous dessert. Basically cannoli are sweet cookies shaped into a tube and the ends are dipped in chocolate and chopped nuts. Inside is some type of sweetened cream – in my recipe sweet Italian mascarpone cheese studded with cherries that have been soaked in cherry brandy.

In 1972 “The Godfather” shared the best picture category with other nominees: “Cabaret,” “The Immigrants,” “Sounder,” and “Deliverance.”

“The Godfather” was a film about a mafia family, “Cabaret” was a musical with Liza Minelli and Joel Grey, and “Deliverance” was a searing drama about modern man’s lack of understanding about the land, nature and the depths that must be plumbed to survive.

It’s really a bit ironic when you think about it, isn’t it? Ironic because eternal rebel Marlon Brando will be one of those “who left us this past year” during this year’s Oscar telecast. And ironic that 33 years after I saw “The Godfather,” I have found my art in writing about food, often stories about food in movies. Funny how things like that happen isn’t it? It makes you wonder.

Wonder about the power of film on all of our lives.

Think about it for a moment, about your personal connection to a film. It may be a connection through a simple plate of spaghetti or a little pink box holding some sweet cannoli. “Grazie Godfather.”