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Picasso Would Have Made a Glorious Waiter
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Picasso Would Have Made a Glorious Waiter
IDFA 1995

Picasso Would Have Made a Glorious Waiter

Jonathan Schell
United States
1994
35 min
Festival history
IDFA Special Jury Award for Feature-Length Documentary

Every year hundreds of young people move to New York, dreaming of a career as a ballet dancer, film director or actor. To pay for their studies and to support themselves most of them are forced to take all sorts of jobs in the catering industry. Film director Jonathan Schell and his brother and producer Adam worked for years as a waiter and a cook at the prestigious catering firm Glorious Food in New York. In that period Picasso would have made a glorious waiter was shot. This film gives a good idea of how this hectic catering company works. We are introduced to some of the 'stars' employed by Glorious Food. The maintenance man is actually a concert pianist, one of the waitresses hopes to capitalise on her striking resemblance to Rita Hayworth and the 'percolation supervisor', the person making coffee, dreams of a life as a performance artist. The film starts off with staggering images of laid tables and running waiters, alternated with images of some of the more spectacular locations where Glorious Food does the catering. From the Metropolitan Museum to the Lincoln Center or The New York Public Library, nothing is too much for these glorious waiters.

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