July 17, 2010

Excerpt from: Medium Raw, A Bloody Valentine To The World of Food and The People Who Cook

by Anthony Bourdain

Selling Out, cont'd

Suddenly they weren't so interested in "foreign" based shows anymore at Food Network. The executives who'd enthusiastically taken us on and supported our more self indulgent and racy endeavors, didn't seem to have the juice they'd once had. Or the interest. When we told them about what Adria had agreed to do, they were indifferent. "Does he talk English?" and "It's too smart for us" were both mentioned as factors in their eventual refusal to pony up for such an episode—or any episodes outside the U.S., it now seemed.

A sour-faced network lawyer became a regular participant at "creative" meetings—subtly setting the agenda and guiding their direction. As warning signs go, this should have been a red alert. The biggest show on the network at that time, it was explained, was something called "Unwrapped," involving stock footage of cotton candy and Mars Bars being made. Episodes cost about a tenth of what it cost to make our show—and rated, of course, much much higher. Those few occasions on A Cook's Tour where we'd filmed in America, it was pointed out, particularly when I was seen to put anything barbequed in my mouth, ratings skyrocketed. Why couldn't I confine my wanderings to my own country—to parking lot tailgate parties and chili cook offs? All this foreign stuff—what with people talkin' funny and eatin' strange food … didn't, it was explained in perfect lawyerese, fit their "current business model."

I knew there was no light at the end of the tunnel the day we were joined by a new hire—the lawyer and the (it would soon be revealed) outgoing execs stood up and said, "Say hello to Brook Johnson … who we're all delighted to have join us from … (some other network)."

Ms. Johnson was clearly not delighted to meet me or my partners. You could feel the air go out of the room the second she entered. It became instantly a place without hope or humor. There was a limp handshake as cabin pressure changed, a black hole of fun—all light, all possibility of joy was sucked into the vortex of this hunched and scowling apparition. The indifference bordering on naked hostility was palpable.

My partners and I left knowing that it was the end of us at Food Network.

Of course, the FN "business model" for which Ms. Johnson was apparently the vanguard turned out to be a spectacularly successful one. With each incremental dumbing down of their programming, ratings climbed proportionately. A purge of the chefs who'd built the network followed. Mario and Emeril and nearly anybody else who'd committed the sin of professionalism was either banished or exiled like Old Bolsheviks—seen as entirely unnecessary to the real business of "Food"—which was, they now recognized, actually about likable personalities, non-threatening images and making people feel better about themselves.

With every critical outrage; the humiliating, painful to watch Food Network Awards, the clumsily rigged-looking Next Food Network Star, the cheesily cheap-jack production values of Next Iron Chef America, every obvious, half-assed knock-off they slapped on the air would go on to ring up sky-high ratings and an ever larger audience of cherished males twenty-two to thirty-six (or whatever that prime car-buying demographic is). In service to this new, groin-level dynamic, even poor, loyal, Bobby Flay was banished from cooking anywhere near as well as he actually could—to face off with web-fingered yokels in head to head crab cake contests—to almost inevitably (and dubiously) lose.

If any further evidence is needed of the inevitability, the supremacy of the Food Network Model—the runaway locomotive of its success, the brutal genius of the Brook Johnson Five Year Plan—well, look at the landscape now: Gourmet Magazine folded and while the glossy magazine industry is in dire straits everywhere and distinguished, 180 year old newspapers are closing down across the country, Food Network Magazine, Everyday With Rachael Ray—and Paula Deen's branded magazines are booming, the Empire of Mediocrity successfully spreading its tentacles everywhere.

This, I have come to understand, is the way of the world. To resist is to stand against the hurricane. Bend (preferably at the hip, ass-cheeks proffered). Or break.

But, perhaps you need more visceral evidence of the Apocalypse:

Rachael Ray sent me a fruit basket. So I stopped saying mean things about her. It's that easy with me now. Really. An unsolicited gesture of kindness and I have a very hard time being mean. It would seem … ungrateful. Churlish. To be nasty to someone after they sent you a gift of fruit doesn't fit my somewhat distorted view of myself as secretly a gentleman. Rachael was shrewd about that.

Others have taken a more … confrontational approach.

So, it's the party following the Julia/Julie premier and I'm standing there by the end of the buffet sipping a martini with my wife and two friends when I feel somebody touching me. There's a hand under my jacket and running up my back and I instantly assume this must be somebody I know really well to touch me in this way—particularly in front of my wife. Ottavia has had a couple of years of mixed martial arts training by now—and the last time a female fan was demonstrative in this way, she leaned over, grabbed her wrist, and said something along the lines of "If you don't take your hands off my husband, I'm going to smash your fucking face in." (In fact, I remember that those were her words exactly. Also that this was not an idle threat.)

In that peculiar slow motion one experiences in car wrecks, in the brief second or so it took for me to turn, I recall that particularly frightening detail—my wife's expression, significant in that it was frozen into a rictus of a grin, paralyzed with a look I'd never seen before. What could be standing behind me that would put this unusual expression on my wife's face—make her freeze like that—a deer in the headlights?

I turned to find myself staring into the face of Sandra Lee.

Ordinarily by now, a woman's hand up my back, Ottavia would have been across the table with a flying tomahawk chop to the top of the skull—or a vicious elbow to the thorax—followed immediately by a left-right combination and a side kick to the jaw as her victim was on the way to the floor. But no. Such are the strange and terrible powers of television's Queen of Semi-Homemade that we, both of us, stood there liked hypnotized chickens. The fact that Sandra was standing next to New York's attorney general—and likely next governor, Andrew Cuomo (her boyfriend) added, I thought, an implied menace.

"You've been a bad boy," Sandra was saying, perhaps referring to casual comments I may or may not have made in which I may have suggested she was the "hellspawn of Betty Crocker and Charles Manson." The words "pure Evil," might have come up as well. It is alleged that the words "war crimes" might also have been used by me—in reference to some of Sandra's more notorious offerings—like her "Kwanzaa Cake." Right now? I have no contemporaneous recollection of those comments

Nor do I have any recollection of how I responded to the feel of Sandra's icy, predatory claws, working their way up my spine and around my hips—like some terrifying alien mandibles, probing for a soft spot before plunging deep into the soft goo of my kidneys or liver. Looking back, I imagine myself doing that Ralph Kramden thing: "Hominah hominah hominah …"

Actually … no. It was closer to Cape Fear. Gregory Peck and family mesmerized by the evil Robert Mitchum—standing there in the doorway—a barely veiled menace just skirting the boundaries of acceptable behavior, with every ticking second you're thinking, "Can I call the police … now? … How about … now?" Not crossing the line but letting you know, "I can come in any time I want."

She was probing below my kidney area now, looking my wife directly in the eyes while doing it too, and saying, "No love handles,"—not exactly true—but I don't think accurate meat grading was the point of the exercise. She was letting my wife—and by extension me—know that like Mitchum in Cape Fear, she could walk right into our living room at any time, and do to us whatever unholy and awful things she wished—and there was nothing we could do about it.

"Are your ears red, yet?" were her final words as she gave one of my lobes a tug. Then, having had her way with me, moved on. She'd made her point.

It's Sandra Lee's world. It's Rachael's world. Me? You? We're just living in it.

If this wasn't clear to me then, after Aunt Sandy had turned me inside out, left me shaken and husked, a shell of a man—like the remains of a lobster dinner, it became absolutely clear just last week:

When Scripps Howard, the parent company of Food Network, outbidding Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp, bought my network, the Travel Channel—for nearly a billion dollars.

I remember now, from a distance, my earlier, dumber self, watching Emeril, hawking toothpaste (and later, Rachael, endorsing Dunkin' Donuts and Ritz Crackers) and gaping, uncomprehending at the screen, wondering, "Why would anybody making the millions and millions of bucks these guys are making endorse some crap for a few million more? I mean … surely there's some embarrassment to putting your face next to Dunkin' Donuts—what with so many kids watching your shows—and Type 2 diabetes exploding like it is … Surely there's a line for these people, right?

Later, I asked exactly that question of my fellow chefs—backstage at Top Chef one evening, while waiting for the camera crew to set up for the next shot. I was talking with two chefs far more talented, far more creative—and more accomplished than I had ever been—guys with—unlike me—actual reputations to lose. Where does one draw the line, I asked of them? I mean … there they were, avidly comparing notes on which airlines gave you more free miles in return for "menu consultation," which products were offering what moneys—and at no point was either of them saying about any particular product: "Burger King … not ever … no WAY!" or, after considering the question for a moment, "Okay. Mmmm. Lemme think. Astro-Glide? No. I don't care how much money they're offering. I ain't endorsing that!" Like I said, I asked. Where. Exactly. Is the line for you guys?