How it’s New York: The Tribeca Fest is based in New York City
How it’s Irish: Ireland, Canada and The UK are represented at the Fest
Fathers, Sons, Legends And Thunderstorms: First Week Highlights
The Tribeca Fest and Film Festival have returned for the 20th anniversary edition after being all virtual last year. It’s not the same as it was in 2019, which makes the fest better in certain ways but will definitely have many people wanting some of what’s missing to be back for 2022. For starters, the fest may only be referred to as The Tribeca Fest going forward since it now encompasses not just movies, but television, games and VR experiences among the offerings. Normally held in April/May, the later start this year was advantageous for all the outdoor screenings going on across the five boroughs. That’s a welcome addition, giving access to dozens and dozens of films, shorts and talks to movie fans. A lot of the content, however, is online, taking away the excitement and drama of waiting in queues to get into venues, sitting in an auditorium with your fellow audience members for a post-screening talkback, seeing celebrities on red carpets and just the buzzy frenetic energy that you can’t have when your fest is going on in year two of a pandemic.
There is the opportunity to drop in at a screening at certain venues, as I did Saturday night, catching The World Premiere of Wolfgang at Brookfield Place. Director David Gelb (Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Chef’s Table) takes on food again in his latest documentary with chef, restaurateur, impresario and mogul Wolfgang Puck as his subject.
Before the movie Gelb explained that he was drawn to telling Puck’s story because as a teenager he’d had a memorable dining experience at the legendary Spago, the restaurant Puck and his first wife Barbara Lazaroff launched in California in the 1980s, starting a food and dining revolution. Their idea of having an open kitchen at Spago was transformative, not only changing the restaurant experience but also making celebrities out of chefs. They also helped to usher in an era of rethinking what’s on our plates. The simple foods his mother had made when he was a boy in Austria served as a guide decades later: the influential California cuisine emphasized fresh food, from produce to meats and fish, with some Hollywood flourishes like the smoked salmon and caviar pizza that took off after he made it special for Joan Collins. It’s a moving portrait by Gelb as he shows the Puck we know from his lively, funny talk show appearances and the Oscar after parties, but also the intense workaholic driven to prove his abusive, critical stepfather wrong, achieving tremendous success, but at the expense of his family.
At the Q&A after, Puck was there to take questions from the audience. Many people wanted to know what his favourite meal is. Ever curious, he said, “I hope I haven’t eaten my best meal yet.” For him, what’s far more meaningful is who he’s cooking and dining with: “What makes the meal is sharing.” The documentary will make you want to immediately book a reservation at one of Puck’s restaurants or at least in the meantime to go buy a Wolfgang Puck frozen pizza.
Wolfgang will be available on Disney+ June 25th.
Like the postal service, inclement weather doesn’t stop the fest, except wisely in the case of lighting, as was the case Monday night. But before the screening of Bernstein’s Wall (directed by Douglas Tirola, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon) prematurely came to an end, I came as close as I probably ever will to Fran Lebowitz, who presented the documentary about long-time New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein. She was introduced to music as a child by Bernstein via the program Young People’s Concerts, that aired on television. To her he represented everything a child would want of a conductor: “he was handsome and he explained the music, although not so much that I understood the music.” She advised the crowd to watch the old concerts and that if anyone had children, they needed to watch. “If they don’t like the concerts, give them away.”
Bernstein’s youth paralleled Puck’s: he too grew up in a household from which he was eager to flee. As he explained in archival interviews, his father had come from a small village in Russia and had little use for music. He was, as Bernstein put it, “an authoritarian tyrant”. Music was his salvation. If not for the upright piano the family inherited from his aunt when he was 10, he would have become a tradesman like his father. When the piano arrived, “I touched it and that was it. I immediately screamed for piano lessons.”
We only got a glimpse of Bernstein’s extraordinary achievements before the rain out was called. At 25 he became a conductor for the New York Philharmonic, and did so in spite of his age, not being foreign-born (he was the youngest conductor of the Philharmonic ever and he was the first American-born conductor to lead an orchestra in the US) and he was Jewish, all of which were strikes against him, as he recognized at the time. He faced pressure to change his name but after “a sleepless night”, he realized he simply could not do it. The documentary also delves into the struggles Bernstein had with his sexuality, before, during and after his long-time marriage. To watch the documentary and learn about his decades conducting, his activism and more, you can watch Bernstein’s Wall and many other films and shorts from home.
For all things Tribeca, go to https://tribecafilm.com/
