Visions of 'The Bear' + Elaine Stritch

summertime sickness

Covid nabbed me again last week, so I’ve had loads of time to moan/groan, watch Season 3 of The Bear and order too many burritos.

I won’t spoil The Bear — I hope you haven’t watched yet, it’s summertime and we should all be out sipping Arnold Palmers and peeking at strangers’ knees and elbows. But I will say that I loved it, and it’s a mystery how there can be 10,000 shows and yet so few that tug on my insides like this one does.

Making a TV series about food sounds like a puzzle with no pieces — you’re trying to tell stories that involve taste and smell to people who can only see and hear! The Bear solves this in a few ways — for instance, it casts actors with the most insanely beautiful eyes that’ll wreck you with a glance:

You are now hypnotized, good luck going on with your day.

It also amplifies sound, more so in S3 than ever. The Bear’s soundtrack sprinkles in a bit of everything, with one foot firmly in 1993. One minute I’m looking at pretty pastries, and the next my brain has zoomed back to when I used to gorge on The Real World and dream up the fastest route outta my hometown. The Replacements, Counting Crows *and* The Sundays? Look closely at one of those fancy restaurant plates, and you’ll see my reflection.

In 2009 I fell in love with a very different culinary TV series, Food Party. Created by Thu Tran, each 15-minute episode showed Thu in her “kitchen,” which was made entirely by hand. She’d talk to hand-sewn animals while grabbing papier-mâché vegetables out of a cardboard refrigerator, and it was just the kind of psychedelic Martha Stewart I wanted to sidle up with.

Does it really have anything in common with The Bear? Not really, except it was sensory overload and you got the feeling the only reason it had even made it to the air was because some exec knew enough to leave the creative people alone.

But I’d say there is a pretty direct thread from Food Party to Fantasmas, the dreamy new HBO series from the prismatic mind of Julio Torres. It’s impossible to describe without some sort of drug metaphor or reference to a ‘70s children’s TV character, so I won’t try.

company / stritch

My Isolation Viewing also included Original Cast Album: Company, the 1970 short documentary by D.A. Pennebaker that should’ve been a rad TV series. It’s on Criterion, but you can also see the whole shebang on YouTube:

With Stephen Sondheim leading the way in a robust turtleneck, the toothy cast struggles to record songs in his hit Broadway show. They belt out tunes into the night, until a tired-but-feisty Elaine Stritch is hanging on by a thread.

Immediately after watching, I rented the 2014 documentary about Stritch, Shoot Me. It’ll make you wanna throw on a fur, waltz down Madison Avenue and shout at anyone who dares to get in your way.

Stritch died a few months after this doc was released. We see her soldier through health problems, but she never feels sorry for herself.

"Everybody’s got a sack of rocks!” she says, which is so true.

In 2019, Documentary Now! parodied /paid tribute to Pennebaker’s film and Stritch. Original Cast Album: Co-Op stars John Mulaney, Paula Pell, Richard Kind, Renée Elise Goldsberry, James Urbaniak and others. See it after you watch the original:

More sickbed self-pleasure:

• Michael Stipe talked to Jesse Thorn (Bullseye) about art and life.

• The Royal Tenenbaums is on Criterion, so I watched it for the first time in a bunch of years. When Anjelica Huston made that film, she was three years older than I am now.

• I also rewatched Before Midnight, which was on The Roku Channel but has since been removed. If Hawke/Delpy started a new trilogy — and they should! — they’d be in their early 70s when making the third one. Get on it, Linklater.

Hey, I moved studios! Now instead of writing things in a windowless closet, I have a much larger room with a sunny view. Before I left the old place, I had to take down all the chapters from my book-in-progress. If you’re an agent or editor, I will gladly give you the entire stack.

OK, gotta motor. Stay healthy, wear a hat, nickname a pigeon, etc.

once more from the top,
vera gorman

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