Sunday, March 16, 2008
Killing Flies, Cursing, and Slinging Hash
Kenny Shopsin is a volatile, obnoxious restaurant owner in Greenwich Village. I Like Killing Flies is a documentary about him and his restaurant. He has hundreds of items on his menu and is notorious for throwing his customers out for rules of his like never allowing to seat five at a table.
The food is unique. Folks go in and order turkey sloppy joe salads, dishes like "the blisters on my sisters" of which a customer is not sure what it is. "There's a friction that's caused by putting the wrong food in the wrong place. And sometimes it works, but not always" says Shopsin. He and his wife would taste leftover food to see if anything was wrong with it. In the film, the place always seems to be full, mainly with regulars, but sometimes brave tourists, and noted New Yorkers. For instance, Calvin Trillin wrote a big piece about the diner in The New Yorker and appears briefly in the film.
Most of the interviews were done with a lavalier mike with two fingers to the side of the frame. The central drama or conflict (besides stream of vitriol expounded by Shopsin at every turn to his family, employee Jose and anyone else around) was that Shopsin needed to move his restaurant to another location after being embedded in his current location for decades.
Basically this little film is trifle, but an entertaining one, despite the fact it is pretty easy to get tired of Shopsin's rotten attitude towards darned near everybody and everything. Like Joe Gould's Secret, Killing Flies is another story of the unique folk who inhabit various corners of Manhattan.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:57 PM
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