Stanley Tucci Go Home
There are certain actors and actresses that everyone likes. That can’t be said for all actors and actresses. I have always found it interesting that while Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner have drawn lots of controversy, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep have stayed above it all and are beloved by all. That’s all a little easier to understand with star-quality actors and actresses who get paparazzied to death on a daily basis. Those that are good at maintaining their composure and not giving in to the weaknesses of the flesh and ego always seem to do better. I suspect Tom Cruise’s Scientology leanings have had a lot to do with his mixed read, whereas Costner’s image seems more driven by some form of perceived arrogance. I will declare openly that I like all of those stars and many more and only occasionally scrunch my nose at a celebrity, sometimes on account of attitude or look, but more often based on indiscreet activities. For some reason I never took to Kirsten Dunst’s program and the likes of Lindsay Lohan always turned me off.
Character actors that don’t get star billing are interesting for a different reason. I am influenced by Kim, who put in her time auditioning and working as an actor in both film and stage. She has given me a strong sense of how difficult the road can be. Whenever the subject of some character actor comes up, her reaction is predictably based on her own experience. She always comments on how much they work. That seems to be her measure of success for these non-star quality journeyman actors. That survivability is a key measure to her and I get it. It must be hard to be an actor that has to work a day job to make ends meet.
Some of the character actors that I immediately think about and respect for their pure acting ability are Michael Shannon, John Turturro and Stanley Tucci. I seem to see them in so many things these days. They are rarely the central character, but often an important secondary character. But they each have between 100-170 acting credits to their name, so they are all three actors who have made their mark on the screen. We can probably all name a half dozen movies with each of them in the cast. In the case of Stanley Tucci, his notoriety has grown to the point of him getting his own series in 2021 called Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, where he went all around Italy in 14 episodes and did the Anthony Bourdain gig of showing the audience the local culture and flavor by preparing and tasting the local food. I only watched a few episodes, but it was pretty much what you would have expected. It got an 8.6/10.0 rating on IMDb and won two Emmies and I rarely meet someone who didn’t watch it or hasn’t at least heard of it.
My nephew Josh was a producer for Anthony Bourdain for many years right up to his death. In fact, he was on the episode being shot when Bourdain ended his life and suffered the trauma of being there and having been very close to the man and very engaged in the process of making a traveling food show. He has since done others and been asked to do even more since the formula for that style has been hard wired into his brain. While Bourdain did not start the whole foodie television thing, which is big enough now to support its own Food Network and more, he is clearly the spiritual hub of the genre. His legendary status has something to do with his ignoble beginnings as a heroin addict as well as his spectacular death at his own hand. But the one thing no one denies is that the man knew food and knew how to connect with people.
I’m guessing that was at the heart of Stanley Tucci’s Italian food odyssey. He is very recognizable and for one reason or another, seems to be very well liked in a “sensible” way. His role in The Devil Wears Prada does not make the IMDb “Known For” list, but it is the role I think about when I think about Tucci. He has that cosmopolitan, almost metrosexual air about him that makes him seem like the kind of guy who knows food. He is also quite Italian, not so much in the old Mafia gumba way, but more in the Milanese smooth dude modern way. From what I did see of the series, he was less a chef and more an aficionado of fine food, a gourmet of Italian cuisine in the least.
When I realized that the basis of his show was to check out the food scene in all the different notable parts of Italy, I made sure to watch the episode about Rome. I figured I would know the places he took the audience to, most likely in Trastevere. Not to be. Instead he went to some distant and unknown quarter of the City and did a show about the proprietors of the restaurants considered the true Roman cuisine. Rome has always been the seat of government more than an industrial city. That has been a hotly contested economic issue in the country for years, but the forces that want Rome to remain just a seat of power are greater than those that want it to be more economically independent. The result has always been a lower-middle class population of relatively unviable low-end workers (economically speaking) that do not work for the government. Their budgets are tight and somewhere along the way, they had no choice but to eat whatever was available, and that seemed to be offal, or all the stuff that a normal butcher might discard as unusable. Lips and tails, as they politely say. That is what these hip new restaurants that emphasize sustainability have chosen to offer.
Now Stanley will tell you that they do a wonderful job of making it all appetizing and that it’s really quite good, but it is still lips and tails and I, for one, was completely turned off by it. Authenticity and sustainability are wonderful things, but there are some principles of progress that I choose not to let go and discard. I do not need to go to a restaurant to eat offal and experience the hardships of Roman days gone by.
Instead, on our food tour we stuck to Trastevere and while it felt as hip and cool as I could take, it stuck to the basics of foods that have been popularized in the working class neighborhoods of Trastevere. We started with local suppli (I chose cacio e pepe) and what they called Trapizzino, which is focaccia filled with your choice of stuffing. Delicious. From there we went to a wine bar (Essenza) for a charcuterie and formaggio that included the best balsamic paste in Italy. The main dish was from Peppo al Cosimato, where we had our choice of pasta and pizza (Marguerite and Napolitano). The last stop was gelato from a local vendor and a lesson in identifying the good from the less good gelato (there is no bad gelato). To us it was a perfect Roman food tour in a traditional Roman setting as we all grew up knowing it.
All I can say is, Stanley Tucci, go home and stick to acting. We love you, but can do without the offal.