- Criterion Collection
- Spend It All (1971) by Les Blank
If you’re looking for a gift for a foodie for the holidays, skip the restaurant gift certificates and the weird one-use kitchen tools, and go directly to the video section. Late in November, Criterion released a box set containing about ten hours of films by one of the best American filmmakers you never heard of, Les Blank (1935-2013). Yes, he made documentaries, but he wasn’t a killjoy. His subjects were mostly poor, but they were always out to have a good time with music, drink, and food.
Always For Pleasure (1978), about Mardi Gras, has notable performers (including the Neville Brothers) and lots of information about the Mardi Gras krewes, but more than that it captures all the vibrant enjoyment of life in New Orleans on Fat Tuesday. Same for In Heaven There is No Beer? (1984), about polka dancers, or Chulas Fronteras (1976), about Tex-Mex music. Other films abandoned the idea of even sticking to a single subculture—Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980) crosses cultures to depict love for the ingredient that’s essential in so many ethnic cuisines (and, not coincidentally, considered beyond the pale in more proper and stuffy ones), and Blank hilariously indulged one of his own erotic preferences in the endearing Gap-Toothed Women (1987). It’s no exaggeration to say that things like Anthony Bourdain’s TV shows, sardonically personal essays about places and culture, wouldn’t exist as they do without Blank having first swum against the tide of earnest seriousness in ethnographic documentary filmmaking.
