Edward Riche's Blog, page 5

wine in food

Mentioned in an interview over at my publisher's website that my favourite wines are from Burgundy but that they have become expensive.  Most that are fit to drink are much too dear to put in the pot (when cooking small game, hare or birds, nothing else will do). When I'm preparing something au vin or bourguignon  I sometimes use a Canadian wine made from pinot noir grapes.  Canadian pinots have improved  tremendously over the past few year.  Jeremy Bonia, the wine director at Raymond's Restaurant  http://raymondsrestaurant.com/ here in St. John's, put me on to a particularly good value, the Pelle Island Reserve.  The wine reminds me of village wines from around Gevrey.  It's not as fine, not as complex  as those wines (it has cherry and choke cherry but nothing like mushrooms or meat juices), though it is a near equal in having a very silky mouth feel and it comes at a price that I can pour it in with the braise and it's good enough to drink alongside.

grapes from Gevrey Villages courtesy Bill Nanson

If it bends …

[image error]

Cartoon above is by the great Kliban and testifies once again that comedy and satire, in particular, ain't pretty.  I once interviewed for a writing gig on a Canadian television show, a sitcom the producers imagined be an entirely good-natured affair.  They wanted the characters to be decent people, the stories redemptive.  I said such was not possible, that happy, well-adjusted people did not comedy make and didn't get the job.  The show went on to get produced and ran for many years with fewer and fewer viewers, staying on the air for many reasons other than it being fit to watch.

No one really understands what makes something funny.  One theory I've heard says the laughs come from incongruities, from the calamitous collision of what's expected and some beastly improbability. Boudu, the bum, becomes the perfect bourgeois, your mother farts and so on. [image error]

But the outrage must be rooted in truth.   Homer Simpson, an expert in the arena had it right.

I've had questions from a few early readers of Easy to Like about  the veracity of the book.  The things that people sense are real, the movie titles ("there just had to be a movie called "Total Conquest"") or the matou de gethsamane grape for instance, are  fabrications.  The things that people find absurd and improbable, the private wire taps in Hollywood, the feral zebras at San Simeon, the management non-speak, are real.   The ludicrous "360 degree management","branding pyramids" and "everyone, every way" are verbatim from the CBC executive suites. And, yes, a few years back, someone was, like my protagonist, invited into those same executive suites on the basis of  his dubious Tinseltown credentials.

Of course there is nothing so unfunny as explaining a joke or, as I'm doing here, theorizing how comedy works.  Woody Allen had great fun with Alan Alda's character's tiresome analysis in one of my favorite of Mr. Konigsberg's films, "Crimes and Misdemeanors", a picture that was as Old Testament serious as it was funny.

 

 

First Notice New Book

satire with taste

Published Saturday September 3rd, 2011

Edward Riche delivers a whip-smart satire on taste, TV and terroir.


F6


Mike Landry

Telegraph-Journal

Satire is not something I find particularly easy to like. It is often too cute and outrageous, two things I cannot stand outside of musicals – and I don't particularly like those either. That's why I must applaud Edward Riche – his new satire wasn't just easy to like, it was finish-the-bottle-and-order-another delicious.

Enlarge Photo

What made Easy to Like work was it wasn't just about cliché character foibles or an examination of the ludicrous bureaucracy of our society. Riche is writing about something more complicated, the fickle and subjective role of taste in society.

"If you liked something, it couldn't be very good, could it? It would be enough, just enough to satisfy. … If one cared deeply for something, was truly devoted to its beauty, one saw only its potentiality, its possibility of perfection. Surrounded by only those examples that, at best, strove for the absolute expression, you came to wear, in joyous agony, in masochistic ecstasy, the failures as trophies."

Riche deftly handles both sides of the argument – one: people like what they like; two: knowledge and a social agenda can change taste. He does this with the delightfully devilish screenwriter/wannabe vinter Elliot Johnson. Johnson prides himself on crafting a wine straight from his Californian plot of soil without bells, whistles or perfecting science no matter the financial loss. But he has no problem funding his noble venture by proudly penning Hollywood schlock.

Johnson's opinion on wine is also juxtaposed with his denial of his own roots. Although he's originally from Newfoundland, we don't find this out until circumstances strand him in Toronto again more than 50 pages in. Elliot isn't even his first name, he changed it for Hollywood.

Johnson's contrarian morals come to head when, again through convenient circumstances – remember, this is a satire, so Riche is allowed a few moments of disbelief – he winds up vice-president of English programming at CBC in Toronto. Not only is he torn away from his vineyard when it needs him the most, but he finds himself successfully reshaping the CBC by giving viewers exactly what they want.

And here's where Riche truly succeeds with his satire. Easy to Like isn't a story about a character growing as a person, and nor is it about watching the spectacle of a man as his absurd convictions cause havoc and mayhem. This is a whip-smart, careful look at what "liking" something really means. Which, just like in grade-school crushes, complicates everything from fine wine to a prime-time Canadian comedy TV shows.

"I'm just saying … I don't know …" Johnson fumbles to explain. "You can chase taste all you want, you'll never catch it."

 

Mike Landry is the Telegraph-Journal's arts and culture editor. He can be reached at landry.michael@telegraphjournal.com.

Bayou Bayman

courtesy of Michael Winter

Take Me Home

My Heroes

The play really connected with the audience.  You never know how these things will go.  Opening night was truly exhilarating, the terrific cast earning a standing O and a bunch of curtain calls.  Those four men, shown below, in costume, on Renate Pohl's brilliant set, are my heroes.

Brian Marler, Brad Hodder, Robert Joy, Aiden Flynn

Not pictured is the show's director, Charlie Tomlinson, the mastermind behind this gang.  He was part of the development process of this play from the beginning, two and half years ago.  The best clarets from my cellar are his just reward.
Here is an interview I did on CBC the morning after.  The man asking the questions is another champion, Mack Furlong, with whom I worked on The Great Eastern

http://www.cbc.ca/wam/episodes/2011/0...

Addendum:  The Men received that standing ovation every night of the sold out run.  They're good.

Hail Hail

I've referenced a play I was writing, "Hail", on this site.  It opens at the LSPU Hall this coming Thursday May 26, 2011.  The director, Charlie Tomlinson, and the cast Aiden Flynn, Brad Hodder, Robert Joy and Brian Marler have done a terrific job.   I'm blessed to have such talent give the piece it's first public interpretation.  Those men have found things in the script that I did not know were there. It's been a wonder to watch them work. Their talent and effort has been matched by set and lighting designer Renate Pohl.

The poster was done by my oldest friend, Gerry Porter.  He is also responsible for the design of this site.

show

Coming Soon

From House of Anansi Fall 2011

Negligence

I haven't been posting for the very good reason that I was too busy with projects and then the very bad reason that I was in France … dans le Sud.

Bonnard