Ray Pride

There's only one thing a claustrophobic, crummy-looking, average-sounding documentary made for a couple grand needs in the over-full movie world of the twenty-first century: a great character.

Or "charactuh," in the case of Kenny Shopsin, the profane, loquacious, inventive, self-taught Greenwich Village chef-restaurateur at the lively center of Matt Mahurin's terrific, terrific, hilarious, even inspirational "I Like Killing Flies." The Shopsin's breakfast-lunch menu has almost 900 items (www.shopsins.com has a downloadable PDF of the entire meshugah), and Shopsin cooks them all. When the restaurant was supposedly relocating once more to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, this spring, Shopsin made a predicable comment to New York magazine: "Why don't you make something fucking up. That's what you're going to do anyway." Regular Mahurin, a gifted photographer and illustrator, set out to not make up a version of Shopsin, instead capturing him in the summer of 2002 just before a relocation after thirty-two years in the same Morton Street location.

Regular customers love the food, ranging from traditional Jewish fare and other comfort foods to inedible-sounding experiments, but it's the crude, loving way Shopsin has with the language that makes him a brilliant subject, as the affable family man complains about "bustin' my fuckin' hump," or saying that if you're missing one ingredient in a new dish, it's like "putting your dick in the wrong hole. There's a certain friction, a sexual friction that's created when you put an ingredient in a dish that's not supposed to go there." Shopsin, gray-haired and big-bellied, could be taken for a Santa sort until he dubs himself a "fat, old, nasty Jew," which parallels his choice of other colorful eccentricities such as refusing to serve parties of five or more, not allowing hesitation, not serving the same dish twice to the same table, not permitting suits or cell phones and refusing to do takeout. Mahurin came from shooting videos with million-dollar budgets, and with "I Like Killing Flies," he's so unpretentious, you often see the button mike poking into the frame like one more pesky insect. Working at a Rube Goldberg stove in the tiniest of custom kitchens--"uglier than a whore's ass," Shopsin says--he still manages to turn out memorable culinary marvels all by his lonesome in what Mahurin calls "a gastronomic dictatorship." (His charming, post-hippie wife Eve and his sons often work the tables.)

"Growing up in the fast-food banality of suburbia," Mahurin writes of his garrulous friend, whom he says did not repeat himself once in forty hours of footage, "I had no idea one could approach scrambling eggs with the same attention to detail a painter or sculptor gives to their work. Kenny's kitchen had all the markings of an artist's studio. Even the décor seemed to be an outward expression of what was being worked out in the jam-packed head of its proprietor." New to Manhattan, he continues, "Little did I know one of my deepest connections [with creativity] would be with a glorified short order cook... in regards to his process, his absolute focus, his relentless struggle, and ultimately, his satisfaction with the actual making of the product."

And shockingly, a series of fast-cuts of Shopsin's dishes, such as mac-and-cheese pancakes, looks stomach-rumblingly luscious even in the lo-fi look of "I Like Killing Flies." "Big Night" is one of my favorite films ever simply for getting the kitchen life right, but I may be in love with this film because it has the intelligence and courtesy to move right up in the face of a wickedly articulate, if crass, man, unconcerned about providing lots of context (which you can get from a Calvin Trillin New Yorker profile that's online). I mean, can you not adore a chef who, with his wife, tastes dishes that come back unfinished to figure out what might have been wrong with the food?

"I Like Killing Flies" opens Friday for a week at Facets.

(2006-09-19)

Also by Ray Pride

Threeness Abounds
Novelist James Ellroy is one of the politest of interviewees, even when he's telling a story off the record that breaks your heart
(2006-09-12)

Tip of the Week
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(2006-09-12)

Truth, Justice and the American Way
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Tip of the Week
In the run-up to the fall release of Pedro Almodovar's latest, "Volver," Sony Pictures Classics has restored and re-released seven of his films, all being shown at the Music Box
(2006-09-05)

Mirror Mirror
(2006-08-29)

The Grand Illusion
(2006-08-29)

Tip of the Week
(2006-08-29)

Snaky Horror Picture Show
(2006-08-22)

Tip of the Week
(2006-08-22)

Conversations about one thing
(2006-08-15)

Tip of the Week
(2006-08-15)

Tip of the Week
(2006-08-08)

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