Off the Menu - The Last Days of Chasen's [VHS]

ISBN 10: 0767020510 ISBN 13: 9780767020510

Publisher: New Video Group

Synopsis

The original Chasen s restaurant served Hollywood royalty for over fifty years and this enticing documentary celebrates the restaurant s glory days and the bittersweet moments leading up to its climactic final course. Paying tribute to this legendary hau

About this title

Reviews

Chasen's restaurant closed on April 1, 1996, ending more than 50 years of culinary service in Hollywood. This historic tribute is disjointed but full of sentiment. Technically, Off the Menu is excellent, with appealing music, smooth photography, and a good balance among its principal elements--interviews with numerous staff and longtime customers, shots of the glitterati at table, and footage of the restaurant's final festivities. This is Chasen's wake, showing its nearest and dearest eating, drinking, and being merry in honor of the about-to-be- deceased. We see the action out front, with staff greeting and serving movie superstars, producers, and even U.S. Presidents; in the kitchens, cooking, cleaning, and preparing for banquets; and even off limits, in the lavatories. Some scenes and dialog are in poor taste for general audiences, such as a shot of two men at urinals (with backs to the camera, of course), references to illicit sex, and gratuitously used expletives. It is overreaching to call this a docudrama, since that implies more story than one gets here, but it does document Chasen's heyday as well as its friends and "family" and its demise. Recommended for specialized collections only.
-Sheila S. Intner, Simmons Coll. GSLIS, Boston
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Video Group
• ISBN 10: 0767020510
• ISBN 13: 9780767020510
• Binding: VHS Tape