Secrets of a Mysterious Trade

“Do you smoke?,” a member of the audience at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute asked Sissy Spacek.

She demurred.

“I was smoking those herbal cigarettes,” she said of her chain-smoking “In the Bedroom” role. “Not the good ones,” she added to laughter from the audience.

Following a screening of the movie, which is nominated for five Academy Awards, Spacek and director Todd Field fielded questions from the audience Monday night. Mostly, the crowd of aspiring actors wanted tricks of the trade.

“I was hoping she could tell me her secrets,” said Matthew Jaworski, a 26-year-old student at the institute. Asked about improvisation, Field recalled the genesis of a moment that wasn’t in the script. Spacek stopped during a scene in which she confronts Marisa Tomei and told the director: “I shouldn’t just slap her, I should backhand her. It’s more dismissive.”

Field made the change, and the scene had to be done half a dozen times, he said. “God bless Marisa,” Spacek added.

Spacek talked about how set design helps shape character, recounting how, on the 1973 movie “Badlands,” trinkets and petticoats filled drawers that would never be opened. “It was almost the Stanislavsky method of set design,” she said. “I would learn about the character going on the set.”

She starts “with the most obvious” when preparing for a role, she said. “I don’t have a set way. Each character dictates the process.”

Field cautioned that what makes a movie work can’t be contained in dictums. “Films are mysterious creatures. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t.”

After the talk, there were roses (red and white) for Spacek and Field. This, after all, was the stage.

“I’ve only seen the movie twice,” Spacek joked. “If I’m going to keep talking about it, I’m going to have to see it again.”

What’s Cookin’

There are far too many chefs in Joe Miller’s kitchen. It’s Monday night, and the modest white-tiled room is crowded with white jackets and the sound of French. The five chefs stand side-by-side, elbows touching, looking at passing diners from the open kitchen. A woman walks by and they all look up from their work. “We’re so excited!” she exclaims. “It’s like the Super Bowl!”

A moment passes and Miller, the restaurant owner and head chef, shouts out to a nearby table: “Later, we’re going to do the ‘full monty’!”

He has invited four of his colleagues, all of whom once hailed from the famous French restaurant L’Orangerie, to create a French five-course meal at his restaurant, Joe’s Restaurant in Venice. Those lucky enough to get a reservation this evening paid $85 per person for the gastronomic event.

Jean-Francois Meteigner of La Cachette has commandeered a spot in one corner where he prepares perfect plates of buttery terrine of foie gras as well as spoonfuls of egg and caviar. Miller keeps an eye on the stove where he has prepared his mushroom soup with Parmesan froth. Conny Anderson of the Four Seasons Hotel periodically stops work on his Petaluma squab to pose for pictures. Peter Roelent of the Four Oaks Cafe stays focused on creating a perfect mouthful: deviled scallops wrapped in applewood bacon. It’s too early in the evening for the chocolate cake with saffron mousseline and orange gelee created by Ludovic Lefebvre of L’Orangerie, but the chef generously describes the dessert as having “five different textures of chocolate.”

Miller, who worked at L’Orangerie in 1983, has been hosting this evening annually for the past four years to build camaraderie among his colleagues, he said. But that camaraderie can be fragile. While Miller’s colleagues work well independently in the kitchen, they rarely exchange recipes or techniques, he said.

At one point, the discussion turned to foam because Miller’s Parmesan froth for the mushroom soup didn’t turn out as well as he had hoped. One chef--Miller wouldn’t name names--noted that at his restaurant “we do those all the time,” but when asked for a how-to, the chef replied, “I’m not going to tell you.”

“I think we all have our own levels and boundaries that we don’t cross,” Miller said. “It’s not like it used to be where the chef hides out back and does his secret terrine or secret sauce. But when you work with a chef, you learn what he’ll teach you and then that’s it.”

After the diners left and the chefs sat down for their own meal and cigars, the conversation wasn’t about food but about running a restaurant.

“We have a lot more fun discussing that,” Miller said.