SUDDENLY I SEE
Do you agree with me that THE best part of a movie is the visual montage moment? Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s the part of the film when a really great song plays while the lead character goes through some type of massive personal growth. At the beginning of the song, she has a bad haircut and cannot properly cook an egg BUT by the end of the song, she is strutting down Fifth Avenue in a sassy dress with great new haircut and has mastered the art of making classic French cooking, surpassing Julia Child with her beef bourguignon.
If I was teaching a film class, I would cite these two wonderful films as perfect case studies of the visual montage: Baby Boom and The Devil Wears Prada. (Other great examples include: Tootsie, About Last Night, Karate Kid, Can’t Buy Me Love…I could go on.)
Baby Boom
The song: “Coming Around Again” by Carly Simon
It starts with Diane Keaton’s character, power executive JC Wyatt, being left a toddler named Elizabeth via a distant cousin’s will, with JC possessing not a whit of motherly skills. She struggles fastening diapers and even tries to coat check sweet cherubic Elizabeth at The Four Seasons when she has an important business meeting BUT, by the time the song is over, JC has mastered the art of mothering, gotten Elizabeth into a fancy NYC private school and decides to leave her high stress career for a simple life in the country, all in the name of maternal love. This movie is so good that it even provides you with a second song montage when she begins her baby apple sauce empire, growing it from one jar to millions in sales per her old “tiger lady” ways. This ditty is more of a 80’s David Foster instrumental sax kinda number.
Devil Wears Prada
The song: “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall
It starts with Andrea (played by Anne Hathaway) walking into the Conde Nast building in a terribly un-chic Ann Taylor pantsuit with an outdated haircut, no makeup and bad eyebrows and by the end of the song, she knows how flawlessly handle her hideous boss Miranda (a brilliant Meryl Streep) and has undergone the perfect Vogue makeover. It is during this song that Andrea has her “AHA!” moment and realizes this is what she wants to be when she grows up.
Well, if I had to pick a part of my life that is my movie/song montage moment, it would absolutely be my time working at DM Cuisine, specifically under the guidance of Chef and Owner Daniel Mattrocce and my tune playing in the backround would DEFINITELY be Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out!”
When I arrived at DM Cuisine, I was very young and very green. I had only taken the job at DM to help pay the bills and pass time before I was sure to earn a cast spot on SNL. I never saw this job as anything more than yet another stopping point along my career journey and knew VERY little about catering or fine dining in general. I didn’t know the difference between poached or baked salmon, what caviar tasted like and absoutley no idea where the dessert fork went.
Daniel was the consummate professional and perfectionist. He had studied fine pastry in Paris and worked at The Plaza during the time when working at The Plaza was a really big deal. He never took shortcuts, and he worked harder than anyone I had ever met. When he wasn’t in his kitchen whites, he was impeccably dressed, donning signature fancy bow ties and dining at the best restaurants in the city. He lived on one of the toniest blocks in Manhattan and had the most dreamy country estate that he had spent years decorating to perfection.
Daniel didn’t speak to me for the first three months I worked at DM. If he did, he was curt and distracted. He had no real interest in getting close to me as I’m sure I was one of many who came and went, promising to bring him big business but ultimately disappointing him.
About three months in, Daniel asked me to accompany him on a trip to visit with a client. Daniel was much more comfortable in the kitchen and while clients loved him, he preferred the company of a good chicken stock or a hearty lump of phyllo dough than a face-to-face with Manhattan’s elite.
I was so nervous on our cab ride from the East Village to the Upper East Side. This was before cell phones so you actually had to talk to the person sitting next to you, rather than pass the trip by Googling, “Is Chita Rivera her real name?”
Small talk also was not Daniel’s thing, which only made me fill the cab with nervous chatter. I asked him lots of questions and he replied with one-word answers. His one request was that I take notes while we met with the client. “You are just here to observe,” he reminded me before saying not one more word.
When we arrived to the Park Avenue apartment, which at the time was the largest private residence I had ever seen in Manhattan, he turned into Mr. Rainbows and Sunshine, smiling and almost singing “hellooooooo” to the doorman, “We’re here to see Mrs. XXXX.” Think big!
I stood behind him as we were escorted into a living room so large that you could land a 747 on the coffee table and watched him greet the housekeeper and the Mrs. XXXX’s Assistant with total admiration and respect, even making a little joke about the last time he was here and his failed Croquembouche (a word I would need to look up after when we left. I looked up a lot of words and phrases that year…including samovar, French service, Tart Tatine and langoustine).
In walks Mrs. XXXX and WOW was she fancy. She loved Daniel and greeted him as if he was the single most important meeting of her day, and since I’m not really sure she worked, maybe he was? She barley even said hello to me, so naturally, I became increasingly self-conscious of my clothes and demeanor, particularly my (gulp) Ann Taylor pantsuit.
When they started to talk business, I reached into my purse and pulled out a large yellow legal pad that I grabbed from the office. DEATH stares from Daniel as I started to jotter down words like “Atkins, Lavender Lemonade and Chilean Sea Bass.” Not sure why the evil stares, but I kept writing. The meeting went on and when they air kissed goodbye, Daniel didn’t say a word to me the whole elevator ride down. Once out of the lobby and onto the street, he announced we would be making one stop. We walked and walked and walked and walked, him not saying a word, me not asking where we were going.
When we arrived at Bergdorf Goodman’s I was excited and confused, were we going shopping? Were we getting facials? Was he dropping me off so I could apply for a job?
I was VERY impressed with how well he knew his way around the store, ushering us up to the 7th floor very quickly with a “this ain’t my first rodeo” attitude. This was my first visit to the 7th floor of Bergdorf’s, which houses the finest in home furnishings, tabletop design, stationary, children’s layettes and an exquisite café filled with Ladies Who Lunch. Straight to the stationary counter we went. He was greeted with familiar hellos by every sales person on the floor some even calling him by name, some kissing him on both cheeks. He asked for help with leather bound notebooks and I nearly died to see the price tag that came attached to the one he chose.
Purchase made and less than 10 minutes later, we were back on the elevator and onto the street, Daniel hailing a cab to take us back to the Lower East Side. Once in the cab somewhere between 49th and 48th street (ironically outside the entrance of Christie’s), he handed me the bag from Bergdorf’s containing the hunter green leather Smythson notebook. “This is what you use when you take notes on a client visit.” I was both reprimanded and rewarded, a common theme in our relationship.
This passing of the fancy notebook marked the beginning of Daniel letting me in. After many months of feeling me “out,” though my various of ups and downs and mistakes (including booking a party on the wrong day and other calendar mix-ups, making so many rental mistakes that a special sales rep was specifically assigned to me at the rental company in order to proof check my orders like a school teacher marking a term paper, and again, failing to know SO many of the fancy foods we were serving). This gesture meant that without saying it, he was ready to invest both the time and money to make me good at this. It would be up to me whether or not I would take him up on the opportunity to learn how to be a caterer or squander it away until something shinier came along.
And little by little it worked.
With Daniel I had to work, I mean REALLY work. He was the first person that didn’t allow me to get away with murder just by being charming; he let me get all Sicilian and quit but then reconsider when cooler heads prevailed (I actually did quit twice and came back both times). He was my Officer and I was his Gentleman. (I think that’s the right ranking?)
Slowly but surely, I found myself wanting to be better for Daniel and myself. And by being better for him and his business by default, I was staring to fall in love with the concept of a hard days’ work, business hours that had no start or stop time and the TA DA! The reward for doing a job well. I could make people happy in the same way a good performer makes an audience happy, except this show could be dreamed, planned and executed by me. I didn’t have to wait for it; it was there for me to create.
He showed me that nothing about this business was going to be easy in the same way nothing about becoming an actress was going to be easy, but I was actually really really good at this and he both encouraged and discouraged me every step of the way.
Before his eyes, he watched me trade one dream in for another and commit to this new dream, the one I didn’t ask for. I was going to become a caterer. Period.
As I got better at my job, so did our relationship. Daniel and I became close, and I mean, really close. I loved him, deeply. I would often fantasize about caring for him when he got older as a thank you for helping me find my true calling, my way. And I know he cared about me but not sure he ever loved me in the way I was hoping, and of course that broke my heart a little but that’s life. Or maybe he loved me knowing I would eventually leave him, which is exactly what happened.
Because as with any great mentor, if they do their job well, and well is the only thing he knew how to do, there comes a time when the wings they helped you strengthen can’t help but start to flap and at this moment in my story (or if you will, at this passage of music in the song medley in the montage of my life if we’re being filmic), when my hair was perfect and I knew the difference between poached and baked salmon, I made the most difficult professional decisions I’ve ever made to date, and flew away from Daniel.
We didn’t talk for many years. I reached out a few times to no response and then thankfully one day, years down the road, he agreed to meet me for lunch.
I sat across the table from him, older, more accomplished, with such a deeper understanding of why he would not let me get so close back then, of the sacrifices he endured to have the success that he did. I started by saying sorry, that I was sorry if I hurt him by leaving, sorry I didn’t realize how much that could hurt (I had since been burnt badly by two employees who left me to do their own thing).
And his response was so elegant and so perfectly Daniel. “There was nothing I could ever do to stop you from becoming what you needed to be.” There he was teaching me yet another lesson, to drop the bitterness. As a business owner. Colleague to colleague.
Daniel taught me that people will leave, people will hurt you, people will move on, but if you’ve done your job well and by well I mean, helped them find their wings, then proud is all you can feel when it’s their turn to fly.
From Tiny Hot Dogs…A Memoir In Small Bites
