I saw the headline and immediately wondered if it was the person who did the food for Hannibal. Part of the disturbing affect of the show is that whenever I would see one of the dishes, I would think "That's horrifying. But it looks so good..."
In the "Alive" film from 1993 about the Uruguayan Rugby team they started ratting the buttocks out of starvation when their plane crashed on top of a mountain. They couldnt ID which bodies where whom by that point so they chose the meatiest behind among the initial group who died in the plane crash.
"A sandwich is when two prisoners take along a third, weaker prisoner on an escape. Someone they reckon can last maybe one or two days and then die. And when he does, they eat him."
I've read recently that Gulags are being repressed again in local Russian history (they were mostly just abandoned and ignored post-Soviet) and are in need of a sort of cultural-come-back.
We know every detail about the Holocaust but not the Gulags. The revival of Stalin in Russia is very real and very weird.
Same type of genre, but perhaps you've already seen it, is "The Way Back". Colin Farrell is particularly good in it. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1023114/
As math consultant to "A Beautiful Mind", I started when perhaps a dozen people were working pre-production. I enjoyed how the catering improved as the production grew. I also learned to take in the best spirit being the butt of jokes as the obvious "outsider". Everyone meant well, but dined on me for entertainment.
First day of actual shooting, I taught my classes in New York then drove down to Princeton. Arriving in a blur, I noticed the catering had jumped another league, as I grabbed a snack.
"You're eating props!"
Months later, I was mountain biking on a day off. Cell phone rang, they realized they needed me on set after all. As it turned out, after props had me make some fake cigs as a gag for Russell Crowe with a "Dingos will eat your baby" warning, Ron and Akiva realized I was good at Photoshop. They had some work to do overnight, too late to dare ask the art department.
Everything happens at a glacial pace on a film, plenty of time to get home, shower, and drive over. Outdoor shoot, a dozen production assistants ringing the property with secret service headsets, to find people quickly. They chat when nothing is happening. A woman recognizes me, "Dave is on set" standard announcement. She asks about my mountain biking, somehow knows. I explain. It goes out over the radio:
I'd follow up: why did they need a math consultant on or off set? What kinds of things did they want a math consultant for? What kinds of things could they use math help with that they didn't realize they needed a consultant for?
I know pretty much everyone else who has worked as a math consultant on a Hollywood movie. I worked more hours than everyone else combined. Fine with me, you couldn't tear me away.
Ron Howard hired Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott to consult on Apollo 13. He finds reality more interesting than anyone's imagination, he wanted to get textures right, verisimilitude. I was hired at first with a short list of specific goals, such as the problem Nash writes on his calculus blackboard. I know too many mathematicians who claim to have solved the Good Will Hunting blackboard while it was onscreen; we wanted everything we did to survive "freeze framing the DVD".
A film is like joining the circus. Once you're in, you can be asked to do anything if there's a way you can help.
After watching art make 200 panels digit by digit for the Pentagon scence, supposed to be random enough to pass as encryption, I wrote a C program overnight to generate similar panels with a simple settings file they could play with. My childhood anti-drug literature included photographs of spider webs under various influences; the storyboard artists used this to draw the "Mad Shack" scenes, as seen in the film. For the writer Akiva Goldsman, I'd make strange phone calls for example to the CIA to discuss terminology.
I was a go-between to strong go players for the game sequences. I proposed a go consultant but they said I'd do. After one rehearsal where no one could act and position stones at once, Ron Howard said to just act, we'll fix it in second unit. We break for lunch, I pronounce "This is why we don't have a go consultant. A go consultant would commit ritual suicide right now." Russell Crowe responds they'll put my phone number in the credits. Then everyone in the room recites verbatim their most scathing reviews ever, to enormous peels of laughter.
Day to day, the props department always wanted more scribbled paper, or a blackboard needed scrawling. The actors were entitled to ask me anything before scenes; I'd often be around hours for a one minute conversation. There's a Time magazine cover with Nash as one of four faces. Held in an actor's hand one can barely make out the backgrounds on Blu Ray, but Russell Crowe wouldn't pose for that still photograph till he'd found me to confirm that the blackboard was my writing.
Facing a writer's strike, and with second unit costing a fraction of first unit, there were body doubles whenever Russell Crowe's face didn't show. I wrote all the math, so I was his hand double for everything. He got the idea of making his fingers longer with acrylic nails, so I had acrylic nails for six months. I loathed them but it certainly established my loyalty. Try having your friends in a bar tell strangers about this; I'd admit I was a Barbra Streisand impersonator and that they'd believe.
I had my nails done at the same shop in New Jersey that Edie Falco used on The Sopranos. The woman who'd promised to do the work was on a cruise in the Caribbean, so she phoned in. She asked me if I was doing anything else for the film besides being a hand double. I said I was also Russell's love double (a story he later enjoyed):
I spend a lot of time looking at the equations they toss up on the board on TV shows. It's kind of funny how much work is put into drawing things that almost look like real integrals or partial differential equations, but rarely do the equations or diagrams make sense in the context of the show.
> The term "Freshman 15" is an expression commonly used in the United States that refers to an amount (somewhat arbitrarily set at 15 pounds (7 kg), and originally just 10 lbs (5 kg)[1]) of weight gained during a student's first year at college [sic].
> After a long intermission working as a sculptor and creating giant food replicas for restaurants
OK I’ve eaten in thousands of restaurants, from McD’s to Michelin-starred places in Paris, and humbly admit I have never seen a giant food replica in any of them.
It would appear I have not been spending my time wisely.
Am only speculating here, but perhaps the replicas are being used to take photos for advertisements. I’m thinking of the Big Mac and Quarterpounder adverts plastered on billboards and 18 wheelers.
They always looked perfectly made to me. Now I’m thinking it’s because they were crafted out of marzipan.
They generally start as the real thing. Then the food stylist will poke and prod and pin every little bit in place, super glue sesame seeds where needed, air brush some extra color here and there and even add a clear coat to make things glisten.
Different methods will be used if the product must be edible, of course.
[..] "I was asked for one episode to get Norton grapes, but Norton grapes are not in season, they're only grown in Virginia in one area, and they're very specific in their looks: a big, round, dark, purple, grape," Poon says. "In the script it calls for Hannibal to peel the grape to reveal that the grape is the same color as inside. I called everywhere, couldn't find them to save my life, and I hesitate to tell you, I even learned that Norton grapes are not the same color inside as they are outside."
But, Poon says, it wasn't in her interest to go back to writer and explain that Norton grapes aren't the same color inside and out. "The whole scene hinges on that. So in my little mind, I justified it. I thought, well Hannibal lies about everything — he's telling you it's jelly when it's made from the bones of young women — so he'd lie about Norton grapes too." And Poon knew she would have to create these nonexistent grapes from scratch. "So I peeled and dipped grapes in food coloring, hung them all around my kitchen studio, dripping dye, and then once they were semi dry, because of course grapes won't dry, they're juicy, I dipped them in wax and dusted them with corn starch." That night she got a phone call from the producer asking about the grapes. He said the plan sounded fine, but she should also have a backup grape made a second way by 8:30 a.m.[..]
26 comments
[ 151 ms ] story [ 630 ms ] threadIn the "Alive" film from 1993 about the Uruguayan Rugby team they started ratting the buttocks out of starvation when their plane crashed on top of a mountain. They couldnt ID which bodies where whom by that point so they chose the meatiest behind among the initial group who died in the plane crash.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106246/
That was a chistmas dinner convo topic, not sure why I felt to re-share.
"A sandwich is when two prisoners take along a third, weaker prisoner on an escape. Someone they reckon can last maybe one or two days and then die. And when he does, they eat him."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089240/?ref_=tt_ch
I've read recently that Gulags are being repressed again in local Russian history (they were mostly just abandoned and ignored post-Soviet) and are in need of a sort of cultural-come-back.
We know every detail about the Holocaust but not the Gulags. The revival of Stalin in Russia is very real and very weird.
First day of actual shooting, I taught my classes in New York then drove down to Princeton. Arriving in a blur, I noticed the catering had jumped another league, as I grabbed a snack.
"You're eating props!"
Months later, I was mountain biking on a day off. Cell phone rang, they realized they needed me on set after all. As it turned out, after props had me make some fake cigs as a gag for Russell Crowe with a "Dingos will eat your baby" warning, Ron and Akiva realized I was good at Photoshop. They had some work to do overnight, too late to dare ask the art department.
Everything happens at a glacial pace on a film, plenty of time to get home, shower, and drive over. Outdoor shoot, a dozen production assistants ringing the property with secret service headsets, to find people quickly. They chat when nothing is happening. A woman recognizes me, "Dave is on set" standard announcement. She asks about my mountain biking, somehow knows. I explain. It goes out over the radio:
"Dave gained a freshman fifteen on the film!"
Can I ask why they needed a math consultant on set? Needed some convincing chalk on the blackboard?
Ron Howard hired Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott to consult on Apollo 13. He finds reality more interesting than anyone's imagination, he wanted to get textures right, verisimilitude. I was hired at first with a short list of specific goals, such as the problem Nash writes on his calculus blackboard. I know too many mathematicians who claim to have solved the Good Will Hunting blackboard while it was onscreen; we wanted everything we did to survive "freeze framing the DVD".
A film is like joining the circus. Once you're in, you can be asked to do anything if there's a way you can help.
After watching art make 200 panels digit by digit for the Pentagon scence, supposed to be random enough to pass as encryption, I wrote a C program overnight to generate similar panels with a simple settings file they could play with. My childhood anti-drug literature included photographs of spider webs under various influences; the storyboard artists used this to draw the "Mad Shack" scenes, as seen in the film. For the writer Akiva Goldsman, I'd make strange phone calls for example to the CIA to discuss terminology.
I was a go-between to strong go players for the game sequences. I proposed a go consultant but they said I'd do. After one rehearsal where no one could act and position stones at once, Ron Howard said to just act, we'll fix it in second unit. We break for lunch, I pronounce "This is why we don't have a go consultant. A go consultant would commit ritual suicide right now." Russell Crowe responds they'll put my phone number in the credits. Then everyone in the room recites verbatim their most scathing reviews ever, to enormous peels of laughter.
Day to day, the props department always wanted more scribbled paper, or a blackboard needed scrawling. The actors were entitled to ask me anything before scenes; I'd often be around hours for a one minute conversation. There's a Time magazine cover with Nash as one of four faces. Held in an actor's hand one can barely make out the backgrounds on Blu Ray, but Russell Crowe wouldn't pose for that still photograph till he'd found me to confirm that the blackboard was my writing.
Facing a writer's strike, and with second unit costing a fraction of first unit, there were body doubles whenever Russell Crowe's face didn't show. I wrote all the math, so I was his hand double for everything. He got the idea of making his fingers longer with acrylic nails, so I had acrylic nails for six months. I loathed them but it certainly established my loyalty. Try having your friends in a bar tell strangers about this; I'd admit I was a Barbra Streisand impersonator and that they'd believe.
I had my nails done at the same shop in New Jersey that Edie Falco used on The Sopranos. The woman who'd promised to do the work was on a cruise in the Caribbean, so she phoned in. She asked me if I was doing anything else for the film besides being a hand double. I said I was also Russell's love double (a story he later enjoyed):
"Will you be needing an extension for that too?"
Anyway, fun read. Thanks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freshman_15
OK I’ve eaten in thousands of restaurants, from McD’s to Michelin-starred places in Paris, and humbly admit I have never seen a giant food replica in any of them.
It would appear I have not been spending my time wisely.
They always looked perfectly made to me. Now I’m thinking it’s because they were crafted out of marzipan.
Different methods will be used if the product must be edible, of course.
For some reason the TVDB kept reverting my "cooking" tag for that show...
[..] "I was asked for one episode to get Norton grapes, but Norton grapes are not in season, they're only grown in Virginia in one area, and they're very specific in their looks: a big, round, dark, purple, grape," Poon says. "In the script it calls for Hannibal to peel the grape to reveal that the grape is the same color as inside. I called everywhere, couldn't find them to save my life, and I hesitate to tell you, I even learned that Norton grapes are not the same color inside as they are outside."
But, Poon says, it wasn't in her interest to go back to writer and explain that Norton grapes aren't the same color inside and out. "The whole scene hinges on that. So in my little mind, I justified it. I thought, well Hannibal lies about everything — he's telling you it's jelly when it's made from the bones of young women — so he'd lie about Norton grapes too." And Poon knew she would have to create these nonexistent grapes from scratch. "So I peeled and dipped grapes in food coloring, hung them all around my kitchen studio, dripping dye, and then once they were semi dry, because of course grapes won't dry, they're juicy, I dipped them in wax and dusted them with corn starch." That night she got a phone call from the producer asking about the grapes. He said the plan sounded fine, but she should also have a backup grape made a second way by 8:30 a.m.[..]