Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to catch comedian John Early’s hilarious and heartbreaking new film, Maddie’s Secret, at the IFC Center, followed by a Q&A between him and Julio Torres. The alternatingly earnestly melodramatic and campy film follows Maddie, a dishwasher at food media behemoth Gourmaybe. But once she goes viral for making an eggplant smashburger, she becomes the company’s newest star. And immediately, this resurfaces long-suppressed traumas, which manifest themselves into an eating disorder.
Early said he was inspired by teen dramas like Dawson’s Creek and moralistic TV movies (he literally pulled many of the beats from 1986’s Kate’s Secret), and he both skewers them and holds them tenderly. But after working in food media through the rise of the Bon Appétit test kitchen and vertical video content, I often saw my own anxieties between laughs.
When we started Ravenous, a lot of people asked about our video strategy. Weren’t we going to do video content? Didn’t we want to film a podcast? Video has come to feel essential in food media, even if you’re not doing recipe development. Being in front of a camera is a real skill, but it’s not the one I’ve chosen to develop over my career. My main stance has been that it’s wrong to assume these talents are inherently transferable, or that being on TikTok is the ultimate goal for a writer.
But another truth is that I, and many of my colleagues, don’t always want to subject ourselves to the physical scrutiny that helps to trigger Maddie. Even working in food media has made me more self-conscious about my body, the ambient pressure to eat and eat well running up against that entrenched thought that the worst thing a woman can do is gain weight. I’ve been on video before, and I’ll probably do it again at some point, but the past few years have given me a new respect for anyone who has decided to make video their main form of food communication, whether that’s Ina Garten or Samin Nosrat or Keith Lee.
Anyway, Maddie’s Secret is in select theaters now, and it really does nail the goofiness of how food professionals talk about what we do. Did you know food was a form of storytelling???
🐦⬛ Bird Droppings
- ICYMI, I spoke to Truth in Advertising about whether restaurants using AI slop constitutes a violation of consumer protection laws.
- Ashok goes all in on the weird, and sometimes unsettlingly suggestive, world of promotional movie popcorn buckets.
- John Early also made a Maddie’s Secret perfume, with notes of chocolate milk, saffron, and toasted rice. Honestly, it sounds good!
- I love a hot take, and this might be one of the hottest I’ve seen in a while: Rooftop Bars Suck.
- An incredible story from Best Food Blog on a queer shepherd raising Navajo-Churro sheep, and other members of the queer Navajo community keeping traditional foodways alive.
- In Coyote, read about the queer baristas who are the backbone of the Bay Area’s coffee culture.
