Welcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline's spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. Today we hear from DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus about Kings of Pastry, which opens this week in New York.
The husband-wife filmmaking team of DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus have been on hand to witness more than a few historic dramas over the years, perhaps none more famous than that of the charismatic Clinton campaign engineers profiled in their Oscar-nominated 1993 documentary The War Room. Scale that intensity and those stakes down to one guy in a kitchen, however, and you wind up with something like their new film Kings of Pastry, about chef Jacquy Pfeiffer's pursuit of one of France's most hallowed culinary distinctions: that of M.O.F., or Best Craftsman in France.
Pfeiffer's grueling three-day journey through the M.O.F. contest -- a competition of will, precision and a devastating amount of butter -- is chronicled both in and out of the kitchen, the culmination of a lifelong dream that literally haunts his sleep. Movieline caught up with the duo at their office in New York, where we spoke about the pinnacle of pastry, standing out from the glut of competition docs and the epistemological milestone that is nonfiction cinema.
I read that you knew as soon as you met your subject Jacquy, you knew you wanted to make a film about him. How did you know?
CH: I think the thing that really tipped us over was that we went to the school, which was really such an exquisite, fascinating school filled with beautiful pastries and sculptures and things. But the thing that hooked us was when we went out to lunch with him that day, and then he started describing to us that scene that's in the film -- how his girlfriend woke him up every night to tell him that the competition was going to be canceled, so he wouldn't have nightmares and dream about it. We just realized the stress this guy is going through and how much this competition means to him. It's really important.
That's kind of what you look for in a film: somebody who's really, really passionate and caught up in what they do, and they're going to take some really high risks for themselves. That seemed like what Jacquy was up to. It's kind of the same for a lot of our films; for The War Room, it was people trying to elect the president. It's a big moment in people's lives.
DP: You want someone about to turn a corner and go into the woods, which is where most of our films are made -- in the woods.
And the idea of them taking a risk is kind of compounded by their letting you tag along with them.
DP: We're taking a risk! It's an unsalable film at that point. Who's going to buy a film where you don't even have a script or anything describing what you want to do? "I think this is a good story." There are a million good stories! Why would anybody pay you to do that?
You had no deal or financing in place for this before you went to shoot?
DP: All our films are like that.
So how do you get yourself out of the woods?
DP: That's what the filming is about -- to try to find your way out of those woods, the "woods" being a lot of stories. You get out of it by finding a good story, which you don't do until you start editing what you've seen. You don't find it when you're filming because you hardly know what to film. You're just watching, but you've made a couple important decisions. One is on your main character, and it's hard to say why. But it's like James Carville [in The War Room]. We didn't know who he was, even, but he was a our main character.
CH: He was no more famous than Jacquy is within his world.
DP: It's the same with most people. It was the same with Dylan, when I finally met Dylan. We sat in a bar downtown, and I knew he was a good character to film. I don't know why, exactly. It's like who you marry. I mean... why?
Chris, don't you have pastry chefs in your family?
CH: I have pastry chefs in my family background in that my grandfather, kind of like these chefs, apprenticed in Europe and then came to the United States and opened these two high-end pastry stores in New York City. But he died before I was born. His shops were there, but I never got to know him as a person. My real big influence was my grandmother, who was this amazing Hungarian chef who would cook in a way that -- when I grew up in the '50s and '60s -- didn't happen much anymore. I grew up in the fast-food generation: TV dinners, cakes out of boxes, that whole thing. So to still have this European tradition of fine cooking was something that I really cherish. I always thought it was strange that I would get these amazing cakes and everybody else would have these things out of a box. I never really thought about it until later, but that was my reality.
DP: And your grandmother had that marvelous store.
CH: My other grandmother did.
DP: A chocolate store, which you hardly see anymore. But I kind of remember them from my early days in the Midwest, when you could still get phosphates at the drugstore counter.
CH: There were still a few in the '60s and '70s -- these very fancy bakery/sandwich/pastry shops. It was very beautiful. There was marble and etched glass, very pretty.
What kind of advantage is that as a filmmaker? That background or experience?
DP: You like doing it!
CH: I don't think its any advantage other than I appreciated fine pastry! I think what you're really looking is an interesting character and story -- and holding on to it. I mean, this story had a lot of twists and turns, and that makes it very difficult. You want your film to go one way with your characters, and then life intervenes and you have to go another way. You have to decide to kind of hold on and keep filming and hope that you get a story out of real life. Fortunately this one had twists and turns that worked to its advantage.
The competition documentary has been in vogue for a while now. How, if at all, did you want to differentiate Kings of Pastry from that genre or tradition?
CH: I think the ones we're up against, most obviously, are all the cooking reality shows. I think what interested us about this competition was that it wasn't like your prefabricated TV competition, or even the competitions that are really big or team efforts or things like that. This is an individual competition where someone is going through something themselves, and it's up to one person. It's more like the Olympics in that way. Also, the MOF competition and contest has such a cultural and historical meaning behind it that's so far beyond what these competitions are about. It's really something that was created to really elevate the idea of craftsmanship in France.
I think that kind of idea of honoring and recognizing craftsmanship is really coming back here, in a sense. We've lost our sense of how to do things well in artisan fields, whether it's building, art forms, culinary or whatever. You just see a huge push in that type of thing. I thought that the idea behind the competition was really unique and different from most competition shows. But of course, most of our stories, if they're not a competition, then we're looking for some beginning-middle-end drama in somebody's life, just as a story vehicle.
DP: The usual competition film comes off the Disney standard: You have a winner. Winning is the graceful exit, and everybody is smiling at the camera. We were once going to do a thing on golf, and because we couldn't pick the winner in advance, it scared everybody. If you couldn't pick the inner, you felt like you couldn't do the film right. I don't think that should matter at all. What you're really looking for is character -- the ability of character to shape its own world. If character is born out, whether the character wins or loses is almost immaterial. In fact, losing may form more character -- or give you more indication of character -- than winning. So I think we're not looking for the same thing in competition that a lot of documentary filmmakers might be.
CH: Well, I think the idea of competition gives people the opportunity to watch others perform at the highest level under pressure, which is fascinating. I guess this one was especially interesting because it's not just a competition, but an exam at the same time. More than one person can win the title. And winning the title is kind of a unique thing because they wear their title forever, ad everyone knows they're the best. With that comes a huge responsibility; people who've won say the real contest begins afterward, because for the rest of their life they have to prove continually that they're the best. It's huge pressure they're putting themselves thorough. I suppose there's a parallel in sports, say, when you're defending your title. But there's an age cutoff; here you're expected to make the best cream puff until you die.
KINGS OF PASTRY Theatrical Trailer from Pennebaker Hegedus Films on Vimeo.
Do you watch food competition shows on TV? Are you foodies?
DP: No.
CH: Well, we're foodies, but I don't watch a lot of food shows.
DP: Our son has a little show that he put together on the Internet called Working-Class Foodies. They go around to pick stuff up at farm sales, and then they cook it. They've been doing it for about a year now.
CH: We don't watch a lot of Top Chef or anything. I mean, I've seen them, but a little goes a long way.
What was the process of getting access to the MOF contest like? I don't presume they allow too many cameras in the kitchen.
CH: No, we were actually the first people ever allowed to watch it, let alone film it. Nobody had been let in at all. So it was a very big decision on their part and one of the reasons we decided to shoot it ourselves. We couldn't get any access [at first] because it was August in France, and nobody works in August. In September, Jacquy was going to start practicing in Alsace, so we had to make the decision to go on our own. Shooting it ourselves with our own equipment made that easier to do. But we continually tried to make phone calls and get in touch with the right person.
Finally, right before the competition in Lyon, we sat down with the head, who met us and gave us the ground rules. But the ground rules were that in the three -day competition, after every day, they would decide whether wanted us in there the next day. If we behaved well! So it was small -- just me and Penne and we flew Nick Doob over, whom we've collaborated with on several films. There were three different kitchens we'd all kind of move between. We couldn't have any lights, we couldn't have any booms, we couldn't have any radio mics. We found out in Chicago that the radio mics would upset their electronic pastry scales. The frequencies would throw them off.So we knew ahead of time we wouldn't be able to do that. So every day they said, "OK, you can go." But then for the last day they said, "We're really worried that you'll bump somebody" -- and cost them their chance at this lifetime dream they have -- "so you'll stand in a box that's three feet square, and that's where you'll film from." So the third day was very limited.
The penalty box!
CH: Exactly! We didn't have high-quality equipment -- we were just shooting with DV cameras -- so we're handholding them for hours and hours, which, with the long zoom on the end of the table, is very exhausting.
DP: When we walk up to a gate that says no entry, just the two of us, we don't look like were going to make a movie -- especially a movie that's going to run in theaters. So that sort of puts people off. It put James and George off in The War Room. They think, "Oh, they're going to do something, but it's some kind of goofy home movie." And it is kind of goofy home movie. In a way, that's what makes it work. When people let you in, the important thing is -- if you've picked the right moment and the right person, you're going to see whatever it is happen before your eyes. Whereas most documentaries that are made, people tell you what happened. They remember how it happened, or show photos of how it happened. But we're going to watch it happen.
That's a fantastic thing that's new to the century, really. It never existed before in time; usually writers and painters had to tell you about it in their own way. Now you can see it for yourself, and seeing is such a part of the way people expand their lives -- what they know and understand. It's really a crucial kind of adjunct, and in a form, it's writing itself.