AFI Dallas: Director Christopher Taylor Starts a Food Fight!

by JE Smith (as seen on Pop Syndicate.com)

You are what you eat.

Christopher Taylor has made inroads in the film industry as a hard-working cinematographer, shooting such films as Every Breath, Nobody’s Baby, the Ben Affleck vehicle Glory Daze, Live Nude Girls, and Kiss of a Stranger. He also directed several episodes of the gritty drama The District starring Craig T. Nelson. Now, for his feature directorial debut, he moves in another direction: documentary. Food Fight is an impassioned plea for the American people to take a good hard look at what we’re eating: most of it is crap, and the government is actively subsidizing said crap, leading to a nation that has gone, in just one generation, from literally starving in the days of the Depression, to being overwhelmingly obese. Sound heavy? It’s not—Food Fight is an exceptionally light-footed documentary that commands attention without preaching. It’s a very assured directorial debut from this talented filmmaker. My thanks to Mr. Taylor for taking the time for this e-interview.

Q: What was the origin of the project?

A: Producer Mark Rossen gave me Jeremiah Tower’s book, California Dish, which is a very personal view by Jeremiah of his own life and career shaping what we now call “California Cuisine.” There were a lot of interesting themes in the book, but I was really struck by the whole notion of California Cuisine, how it developed, why it is the foundation of how we cook now all across America, and how it is the basis of a healthy delicious consumer-friendly food chain. Now we call it “local, seasonal, sustainable food.”

And I was also interested in the fact that what started as an elite haute cuisine development quickly became a grass-roots political movement that has important ramifications for health care and quality-of-life issues. And interestingly, there are a lot of “unintended consequences” to the story of food in our country, and I wanted to tell that part of the story with a sense of humor and irony.

Q: What was the budget and how was the film financed?

A: It’s a crazy story. I am a wine lover, and I have been collecting wine for almost 20 years. When I was looking around to do a small film about food in California, I realized that I had a lot of equity locked up in my wine collection. If I put that wine up for sale I could get going a year ahead of time without all the grant writing and pitch meetings and the all-around in-general-begging for money that is part of financing a low budget documentary. So I sold my wine collection. (I definitely had seller’s remorse the next day).

Q: The subject is quite broad: how did you decide on a focus, particularly the emphasis on Alice Waters and Chez Panisse? How did you shape the story?

A: Deciding on a focus was one of the challenges of making this film. I actually started with a narrowly focused story about California Cuisine and how that developed. That’s how I started with Alice Waters — her restaurant was the Plymouth Rock of that movement. As I started to look around from there, almost everybody important to food in California either had worked for Alice or was open about being influenced by the cooking at Chez Panisse. So it was obvious that the center of the story had to be in Berkeley, where the restaurant is located. But the more I learned about the story of food in California, the more I realized how political that story is, and how deeply it affects all of us. And so I started wondering what happened to taste and flavor, why you can’t get a good tomato at the supermarket any more, and why we’re getting fat as a country. All these questions are inter-related, and trying to draw a net around all of them and still be entertaining is what drives me to finish the film.

As far as shaping the story, in an unscripted documentary, the shaping happens in the editing room; that is basically where the script for the film is written. And that is what we have been doing for the last 6 months. We pursued many lines of inquiry to shape a story that is broad in subject matter, and in the end the themes that mattered most to me were themes of taste, health, and choice as they relate to food. The other important element for me was tone — I wanted to tell a story that was accessible and entertaining.

Q: How did you find/select farmers to interview?

A: We started by asking the various chefs we interviewed where they got their produce. So Bob Cannard’s name came up quickly from Chez Panisse. We also interviewed farmers in Southern California, people I met at the local farmer’s market in Santa Monica. After that I opened up the search a little bit. I spoke with members of the National Family Farm Coalition, Grist.org, the Environmental Working Group, Growing Power, the Community Food Security Coalition, and Local Harvest. I spoke with farmers all over the country, and in the film we have interviews in North Carolina, Wisconsin, New York, and California. They were all happy to talk to me, as they are passionate people who care about growing delicious food for their neighbors. Every farmer I spoke with was enthusiastic about helping to get the story out, that the government is not helping small farmers grow delicious healthy food. Most of them laugh when I asked them about support from the Department of Agriculture, but sometimes the response was not laughter; it was anger. The government is really into helping big agribusiness get bigger and wealthier, and it actively promotes big farmers in getting bigger, at the expense of small family farms. This is official government policy, and it is not good news for us eaters.

Q: Earl Butz (who died very recently) was obviously a key figure in this story. Did you make any attempt to interview him?

A: By the time we developed the story line about food politics, Earl Butz was already very sick. So he was not available. But he did give a revealing last interview in King Corn.

Q: Who did the excellent animations in the first half of the film?

A: I am really proud of the animation work done by illustrator and animator Mark Fearing in the film.  His sensibility really fit the ironic tone we were going for. It’s kind of a crazy idea to have the history of American farm policy explained by a 90-second animation, but Mark really pulled that off. Please check out his website (www.markfearing.com).

Q: You have a lot of wonderful/wonky stock footage—what are the resources for documentarians in finding and using this kind of material?

A: From the earliest conception of the film, I wanted to be able to use stock footage to make story points with irony and humor. And I hope the audience agrees with you, because there are some really great 1950’s and 1960’s commercials in the film. When I look at some of those ads, I cannot believe that people really fell for the marketing of the big food companies, that Twinkies are healthy between-meal snacks, that TV dinners are “sexy,” that you can get taste and flavor from a push-button spray bottle.

I also want to give a big thanks to our editor, Miranda Yousef; not only was she a great editor in every facet of that demanding job, but she also took advantage of the Internet Archive, which allowed us to have access to material that is public domain. She sourced some incredible clips from there. This was a huge help to us both creatively and financially. With the help of our archivist, Jennifer Raikes, we also licensed material from the Library of Congress, CBS, BBC, ABC, the Footage Farm, the Harvey Richards Collection, and WNET. The rest of the archival material was not cheap though; it was one of the single biggest expenses in our film.

And we found one alarming trend, and that is that many of the biggest newspapers (NY Times, Chicago Tribune, etc) have hired a company called PARS to handle archival licensing, and they are a nightmare to deal with. The fees that they are charging are ridiculously high, and basically out of the reach of all but the biggest budgeted documentaries. Every documentary filmmaker and everyone in the audience should be concerned that a few companies like PARS are trying to limit our access to our shared cultural heritage.

Q: What was the timeframe of the shooting?

A: We began shooting in spring of 2006, but the research actually started in the fall of 2005. So I have been on this project for almost 3 years.

Q: How did your experience as a cinematographer inform your decisions as a documentarian and director?

A: That is a great question because the two jobs are tied together in the way I approach a project, how I’m going to shoot that project, and where I put the camera to tell the story. On Food Fight, I wanted to show how beautiful the world of food really is, how seductive it is, how sensual good food can be. So I wanted the film to have a pretty look, not forced, but a natural attractiveness. That is a very reachable goal even on a low budget if you know how to use available light to your advantage.

Originally I thought I would shoot everything as well as direct the film, but that ended up not working for me. Too much distraction from the main job. And I also realized that I could get some great collaboration from the DP position, and that is what Pete Fuszard brought to the project. He is a great cameraman and has a great eye, and when I wanted a certain energy in the kitchen footage or a certain naturally lit beauty shot out in Alice Water’s backyard garden, he was all over that.

One thing that really helped in editorial was that if we needed a pick-up shot, an insert, or another little sequence, I could just pick up my camera and get it. And I did that pretty consistently at the end of 2007.

Q: Documentaries that are one-sided are often dismissed, and there isn’t a huge amount of material here representing the opposing viewpoint — do you have any fears that the film will be seen as a propaganda tract?

A: Actually, I see it as an anti-propaganda documentary.

Your question raises a much bigger and more important point: there is no place to have a real dialogue about food in our country. Most people get their food information from TV commercials. Food companies spend almost $13 billion per year to get their message out, and a lot of that is spent in commercials aimed directly at children. And one of the points I am making in Food Fight is that those commercials are misleading at best, often ridiculously so.

Because there is no place to go to get facts about food, it’s left to filmmakers to get the story out. And I hope the audience responds to the issues I am trying to raise. What struck me as I did my research was how many times I told myself “Wow, I did not know that!” There are a lot of surprises in the world of food, in government policy about food, and about who is really making money at the expense of the average American food consumer. When I ask people what happened to tomatoes, they always reply, “You’re right, you can’t get a good tomato anymore.” That simple statement reflects a lot of hidden agendas and unfortunate consequences about how food is grown commercially in this country.

I think that there will be more information coming out in 2008 about food and the deleterious effects of decisions that are made for us by politicians who are hoping we are not paying attention. We will be seeing in the next year a situation probably similar to the mid-60’s when the country just started to wake up to the hazards of smoking. There will be some skeptics at first, but eventually hard facts will take the day. I hope Food Fight can be part of that debate. And I respect the audience’s ability to recognize what is true and what is propaganda.

Q: The version we were sent was a rough cut: is this the final narration or a temp track? Also is the music final? I know that licensing popular songs can be quite expensive, and you have some good ones in there.

A: You are right that licensing popular songs is very expensive, and for us mostly it is a deal breaker. We have licensed Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers” because it really is an anthem for the political side of the Chez Panisse “local, seasonal, organic” food movement. That song has such great passion and energy that I had to use it. The other development is that our composer, Scott Harper (an Emmy Award winner for a National Geographic documentary) has composed such great music for the film that we are really excited about the music fits our story. His material was not in the cut that you watched, and the film is greatly enhanced by his work.

The VO has been rewritten and re-recorded. The tone is much better, more ironic and funnier, and Golden Globe nominee Justin Kirk (“Weeds,” “Angels in America”) gives a fantastic performance.  His voice has added a wonderful character to the film.

Q: What was the most challenging aspect of making Food Fight?

A: I would have to say that making a film without any guaranteed buyer is definitely not for the faint of heart, especially when you are self-financing it. But you get to make the film you want to make, and to be able to do that without the usual interference from outside influences is by far the best part of this process. And I am hopeful that I can find outlets for the film whether or not they fall in the traditional models of theatrical, broadcast, and DVD.

One thing that helped lessen the challenge of making the film was the partnership with Alan Siegel, the executive producer, Miranda Yousef, the editor, and the other creative contributors who have been helping us for two years. We really have a small but talented group on this film and I am very grateful to them for their hard work.

Q: What was your main goal in making this project?

A: The goal is to seduce and inform.  I really want to wake people up about food in this country, to get them to share the “I did not know that” aspect of the food world, and to get them to realize that each and every one of us has power to affect change for the good. And the other takeaway is that this is a delicious revolution, we not only get healthier but also we get to eat great tasting food. It seems like a win-win scenario to me.