Pizza Verdi

Monday evening, I had the pleasure of attending the screening of a few new short films. The audience had the opportunity to chat with film maker Gary Nadeau in a Q&A afterward about his work Pizza Verdi, which I found to be the most interesting film.

Before I say anything else, take a moment to watch it. It's less than 8 minutes and totally worth it.:

After the lights in the theater came up, hands across the auditorium shot up to compliment Mr. Nadeau on his work, and ask him about his process. As I sat there though, I wondered if any one would ask the question that seemed to me, to be the HOT PINK ELEPHANT in the room.

They didn't, so I raised my hand.

"Mr. Nadeau, 'the twist' of this film relies heavily on stereotypes of race and class. How much of your choices were intentional to emphasize this?"

Of course he skated around the question. Everything just happened to be unintentional... He's actually acquainted with the male actor in the film, whose apartment this is in real life. When he visited the apartment one day, he just had to make a film there... He shot it in black and white because the paintings on the wall were so colorful that they were also visually distracting... The actress was singing opera because she happened to be an opera singer...

And all of these things may very well be true...

HOWEVER, let's be real about the audience's perception of this film that has no back story on how it was made.

Sydnie's thought process watching the movie:

A black man wearing a fitted cap, polo shirt, chains around his neck and carrying a pizza box enters an open apartment door asking "Hello?" Must be the pizza delivery guy. Apartment is somebody's New York City penthouse with hella nice things: paintings, statues, electronics.  Why does he think he can just take somebody's watch and money? O...K... Pizza guy is a thief? Now he's just gonna eat the pizza he's supposed to be delivering?

Where is the sound of opera coming from? Oh, there's a white woman in the apartment, singing and dancing around freely. It must be her apartment. 

But, we know how it ends.

Had the actor been dressed in a suit, looking corporate when he walked in the door, maybe I would have thought it was his apartment. But he wasn't. He was looking extra hip-hop, if you will. And sorry, but upon first look, the "hip hop" look without a recognizable face (i.e. a Russel Simmons, Jay-Z or a number of black male hip hop celebrities dressed similarly at the BET Awards the other night) doesn't signal that one might own that kind of New York apartment, with all those things inside.

Conversely, with out knowing anything about her, the white woman who is prancing freely around the apartment I can accept with out question as the apartment's owner just because she is white, and singing opera - which can signal a certain level of education, culture, exposure and ultimately money.

I realize that my initial thought process is a total racist and class-ist line of thinking. It relies on a series of assumptions about people just because they look or act a certain way.

And Mr. Nadeau knows that. Even if he, as a middle-aged white man, didn't want to admit it in a room full young educated black people (as someone pointed out later on in the evening).

He said he spent 6 months editing this film, although it only took him 3 days to shoot it. His choices were not that unintentional.

What do you think?