I HAVE SEEN THE BEST MINDS OF MY GENERATION BECOME FOOD WRITERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: An Interview With Jonathan Reynolds

On its face, the plot centers on a first-act fantasy that a black tour-guide named LaWanda at Stonewall Jackson’s house would ask a white couple to adopt her as their slave. But after the interval, the tables turn. The first act reveals itself as a play-within-a-play. The characters turn out to be members of a progressive theatre troupe, headed by a couple named Gaby and Oz, written by a playwright named Joe, who are rehearsing a production and making changes along the way to opening night that transform its meaning entirely. In its second act, it becomes clear Stonewall Jackson’s House had as its target not black-white relations, nor the “welfare is modern slavery” debate, but the contemporary theatre establishment, who in the words of the play, “don’t like controversy, unless they agree with it.”

The Shavian approach is intentional, since Reynolds counts the author of Major Barbara and Pygmalion among his inspirations. “When I grew up, the theater meant people like Shaw and Tennessee Williams,” he told The Idler at the time of his play’s New York premiere. “I always liked hearing ideas in wonderfully put forth speeches. They placed large issues before all of us. They were very thoughtful, smart, and made one think. Unfortunately, all that has vanished.”

In what seemed like a case of Oscar Wilde’s notion of life imitating art, Reynolds’ original leading lady quit the show in protest over the notion that a black person should be depicted on stage asking to go into slavery. This was not totally unexpected. Norman Mailer, who had helped develop the play in a workshop some ten years before it reached the stage, warned Reynolds not to go forward, telling him “you’d be lynched.”

Nevertheless, at first it seemed Reynolds’ had dodged a bullet meant for him. Stonewall Jackson’s House was produced with support from Norman Lear and Wynn Handman, through a project called the “Humor Hatchery.” Reviews were positive, especially in the black press. And Newsweek’s Jack Kroll praised Reynolds’ show as “the funniest and most outrageous play of the season, a withering fusillade of satire aimed at our comfortably congealed political orthodoxies.” With Kroll’s support, Reynolds was even seen as a serious contender for a Pulitzer prize. There was talk of a move to a larger house, even a movie version.

But it was not to be. In an unusual move, the Pulitzer committee decided not to award any prize at all, for any play, for the entire year. The Pulitzer was given out the following year, however. It went to Paula Vogel, an Ivy-League theatre professor, for her lesbian drama How I Learned To Drive. Reynolds -- author some half-dozen plays, whose Hollywood resume includes Eddie Murphy’s The Distinguished Gentleman, who began his theatrical career in the Broadway cast of Rosencrantz and Guldenstern Are Dead, who worked on the David Frost Show and Dick Cavett Show, who has been romantically linked to award-winning Broadway designer Heidi Landesman – has not had a new play produced since.

Where Shaw once wrote music criticism, Reynolds now scribbles about food for the Sunday New York Times Magazine (alternating weeks with Molly O’Neill). Unlike Shaw, however, Reynolds does not actually write reviews. That task is performed at The Times by the equally accomplished William Grimes, holder of a doctorate in Russian literature, and author of the definitive history of the cocktail Straight Up Or On The Rocks. (In a curious journalistic coincidence, then-Broadway correspondent Grimes had written the Times’ profile of Reynolds for the premiere of Stonewall Jackson’s House.)

In his new role, Reynolds finds himself in the literary tradition of Marcel Proust, finding in food the key to the recovery of lost times. The Idler caught up with him recently by telephone to discuss impressions of his new career.

IDLER: When you moved from Los Angeles to New York, was food a factor?

REYNOLDS: I moved to New York to pursue the theatre more. I didn’t realize the theatre was like it is now. My memory was that it moved a little faster. Doing something serious for Broadway now is impossible unless it has the imprimatur of success in England.

IDLER: How did you go from writing plays to writing about food?

JONATHAN REYNOLDS: I still consider playwriting my profession. I have a play that has been waiting for the right director at Lincoln Center for over a year, about an over-the-hill comedy writer who gets involved with a younger woman he uses as a front to sell a show. It takes a bite out of the television business.

Yet, as entertainment, restaurants have taken the place of theatre as what you do when you go out at night, and the internet has become the nighttime entertainment that has taken the place of what theatre used to be. All the Broadway musicals that are running now are glorified versions of Las Vegas floor shows.

IDLER: Is that what brought you to writing about food at the New York Times Magazine?

REYNOLDS: The New York Times Magazine kind of fell into my lap. It allows me to go beyond food, because they don’t want just recipes or the history of the tomato -- though I gave them the history of the tomato with additional information that you wouldn’t find in other food columns – to try and make food relate to the world around us. I don’t write just about restaurants, because not everybody can afford restaurant prices, which are just insane. And eating in restaurants is not very good for you because the food is very fatty and unhealthy.

IDLER: And how did The Times come to choose you?

REYNOLDS: Frank Rich, who is a friend of mine, said they wanted to do something new with the magazine. They wanted someone who was not a foodie, but who was an enthusiast. I had to beat out some other people.

IDLER: Are you now a staff writer?

REYNOLDS: No, I am a freelancer, not on staff, and make an every-other-week appearance.

IDLER: How do you get ideas for your columns?

REYNOLDS: For instance, a couple of the kids had been to Shea Stadium and complained that the food there is really rotten. So I went to five different ballparks and compared the food. They were right, the food at Shea was really terrible. And I love junk food. The ballpark food was really great in San Francisco and Baltimore. In those parks you can get Bar-B-Que, Starbucks, crab cakes in Camden Yards, and sushi and steamed soybeans in San Francisco. They had really thought it out, they were trying to appeal to different ethnicities among those attending the ballgames.

Another story was about how my father and I wound up in Paris together by accident, and he took me and my girlfriend to Maxims, and then he made a pass at my girlfriend while I was in the bathroom.

IDLER: Do you find it possible to combine personal expression with food writing?

REYNOLDS: I’m writing about food because it is something I know about, that I feel passionately about, and that I really like. Everybody can relate food to their lives, they eat it everyday, and use it every day.

IDLER: But is it really as gratifying as writing for the theater?

REYNOLDS: Well, you don’t go to the theatre everyday. It doesn’t obsess anyone anymore the way food does. And I can say something different about it.

IDLER: Do you cook as well as eat?

REYNOLDS: I cook, but not as much as I ought to. I’m a gifted amateur. I never went to cooking school, though I visited one once for a screenplay. I don’t know all the Escoffier ways of doing dishes. But I’m not a critic.

IDLER: Are you a foodie?

REYNOLDS: I’m not a foodie. A foodie is someone who is in the profession. I’m just an enthusiast. From about the age of 20 I’ve been enthusiastic. When I went to England in 1965 to study at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, my father put me on the SS France in New York saying, “Go with God -- and see if you can get laid.” I didn’t get laid, but they served five meals a day on the ship and I put on 10 pounds. It opened my eyes.

IDLER: Did you like the food in England?

REYNOLDS: English food was wretched then. It isn’t now, by the way. But the minute I would get to the Continent, I would rediscover dining.

IDLER: Which food magazines do you read?

REYNOLDS: The one I like best is Cook’s Illustrated. It has no ads. It is obsessed with getting one recipe right. By the time they do the research, the recipe is right.

IDLER: Who is the biggest influence on your food writing?

REYNOLDS: Julia Child is the biggest influence. She revolutionized American food. This place was sort of scorched earth before she came along, right then in the 1960s. Then it became much more international. Nowadays, I don’t know how all these newspaper sections keep up with this stuff, they have to keep finding new recipes from Myanmar.

IDLER: Do you have any favorite films?

REYNOLDS: The only movies I watch anymore are comedies like Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber. The medium no longer interests me, and the movies themselves are not very interesting. The independent movies seem like bad off-Broadway plays, and the big movies are just collections of bad special effects. I’m a lot happier that they don’t interest me, because it means I have a lot more time.

One of the reasons I don’t want to do them anymore is that they don’t have anything to teach anyone anymore. They were once an art form that had something to impart, they were clever, witty, and reflected the sensibility of the people who were making them. Writing about food is more interesting now than the movies are.

IDLER: Is writing about food a symptom of a midlife crisis?

REYNOLDS: I had my midlife crisis about 10 years ago! I was in psychoanalysis when I was in the fifth grade. My mother was in analysis and it was a bizarre experience, I had to lie down on a couch once a week for two years. The analyst would grow impatient with me because I didn’t know the rules -- at the age of ten.

IDLER: Do you go to theatre anymore?

REYNOLDS: I go to off-Broadway and I go to Broadway openings whenever there is something that looks interesting. Those usually cost a fortune and flop. What is unfortunate about the theatre can be seen in the Tony Awards show. Rosie O’Donnell was the host. Here’s a television talk-show star who began in the theatre. Now theatre is seen as just a launching pad for movies or TV. Twenty years ago it was the prestigious performing art. Now it is not. Actors drop out of plays with a snap of the fingers if they have a TV series.

IDLER: What does that signify?

REYNOLDS: There is a loss of challenging pieces onstage. They are neither artistically nor intellectually inventive. Theatre has become too expensive for the big commercial theatres, and even not-for-profit theatres have tremendous overheads. And there are the stagehands and musicians unions, equity, marketing, all keeping ticket prices sohigh.

IDLER: What does that mean?

REYNOLDS: Well, if you are going out to dinner with friends, and then pay sixty bucks a ticket to see four people on stage off-Broadway… The general feeling is that theatre is going to have to appeal to many more people.

IDLER: Are you saying that theatre has become too lowbrow?

REYNOLDS: Theatre was an elitist institution in America for a long time, and I’m prepared to say it. I’m in favor of it. Of course, it depends what the rules are. If you are excluding people because of an accident of birth, I’m not an elitist. But if it is a matter of intellect and education, I think there should be things that really do lead the country. Right now the big cultural icons are the Barbra Streisands – really lowbrow.

IDLER: But isn’t what you are advocating a form of discrimination?

REYNOLDS: The old elitism of achievement is the true meaning of discrimination, meaning not prejudiced because of race, sex, height and so on, but to make judgements about quality, not to be mean-spirited or bigoted, but to be discerning.

IDLER: Aren’t you afraid of offending people?

REYNOLDS: Look, I wrote a column saying that Alice Waters cooks her turkey too long. She is one of the food saints. Hers was tough, I cooked it her way. I backed it up with a recipe for a different way of cooking turkey. I didn’t insult her that much, her little veggies, her tiny zucchinis. I got two or three letters. They loved it at the paper, they liked that someone would take her on.

IDLER: Are there any other sacred cows you’ve challenged?

REYNOLDS: Foam in restaurants. That’s a crock. Or putting a lot of fruit on meat, I hate that. Overly precious. Too many restaurants and home cooks are too elaborate, making sauces they sweat over for days, dishes rareified like Emperor Nero’s. I like to take on the pretentiousness of that.

IDLER: Any other pet peeves?

REYNOLDS: This vegan business where you cut out everything that has even come close to an animal. The PETA people drive me nuts. They threaten lives and throw pig’s blood on your mink. I know plenty of people who think killing animals to eat them is a terrible thing to do. I can understand how someone is horrified by a steer being slaughtered. From a health point of view I understand it, but even Dr. Weil says you should cut back but not completely eliminate meat.

IDLER: Do you consider yourself old-fashioned?

REYNOLDS: Its very old-fashioned, but I still like Julia Child, and I do like Alice Waters.

IDLER: What about Martha Stewart?

REYNOLDS: I think Martha Stewart is irrelevant in terms of really good cooking. She’s pretty middlebrow.

IDLER: What do you like?

REYNOLDS: I like rather simple but brilliant food. I have said that the three great cuisines of the world are French, Chinese and Junk. The French lost their way for a while with Nouvelle Cuisine, that stuff was pretty rotten, but now it is better. I think every cuisine has something good in it. I love certain kinds of Mexican food, and I like Soul Food as long as it doesn’t get too authentic, but I’m not too crazy about Eastern European food. I was in Germany for two months, in Berlin, and that’s really boring cuisine. After two or three days of their native food, it got oppressive, although I think Viennese pastry is good.