Hollywood people know how to tell a good story. So for this special Hollywood edition, I asked Mariel Hemingway, Ali Landry, A. O. Scott, and other industry players to delve into their kitchens, choose one very special object, and describe what it evokes. Like the proverbial madeleine, these totems proved to unlock childhood memories, surface revealing anecdotes, and symbolize important relationships. As you read these monologues, imagine them as scenes from a movie, with tracking shots that move from kitchen to kitchen as each character shares a tale of family, food, and memory.
Laurie David: Producer of An Inconvenient Truth and coauthor of The Family Dinner “My kitchen table has more emotional significance attached to it than any other item in my house. Honey-colored, custom-made to fit into its nook, big enough for 12 and, if you really squish (we are often squished), 14. Around it, I raised kids from ‘I only eat noodles’ to ‘More kale, please.’ We played hundreds of games around it, including poker with a former vice president. We laughed with comedians both professional and amateur, spilled milk, and wiped up crumbs, crayon marks, and tears. We’ve celebrated birthdays, Shabbat, and long, quiet Sunday brunches. This table saw me through marriage and then a divorce and set the scene for post-divorce dinners with my ex. It has been, always will be, my anchor, the place where true nourishment happens.”
Mariel Hemingway: Actress, Manhattan, and author of Mariel’s Kitchen “My object is a Vitamix. I think I was a chemist in another life. I love to mix, blend, and create concoctions. I love puréed soups, shakes, smoothies, sauces, dressings, and frothy foods. My Vitamix helps me to be a creator!”
“I always know that if I can blend something, I can make something soft and smooth and homey. I always loved creamy, soft, smooth foods as a kid—puddings and puréed veggies. Perhaps it has more to do with not wanting to grow up, wanting to be placated by pablum.”
“I think food is one of the greatest gifts we have on earth. I honor and respect food as though it were sacred. It provides everyone with a sense of satisfaction and often love. If eaten with relish and ceremony, food can be healing.”
David MacKenzie: Director of Perfect Sense “I’m going to choose an enormous Arts and Crafts chest. My wife and I went to a salvage yard in Glasgow, Scotland, about a year ago and we saw it there. It must have come from one of those grand old homes with a big scullery kitchen and servants. It had cans of paint in it and was pretty beaten up. It is 10 feet tall with glass doors, and it’s made of solid hardwood.”
“It sat in our front hallway for eight months. We really didn’t have a place for it in our kitchen, so it forced our hand to do building work, which then completely spiraled and it ended up costing me a lot of money. We changed and reconfigured the kitchen—and as a result, the house—to fit this bloody thing in. It’s been driving me insane for a year. ”
“We keep everything in it—plates, cups, glasses, utensils, stationery for the kids. On the top are the domestic appliances that we never use. The drawers have deep-red felt lining which we tried to take out but couldn’t. I started to sand the outside but got halfway through and stopped. So it has all these layers of paint on it: blue, white, and an undercoat. I like the textures.”
“The other thing that gives it a lot of character is that it bows in the middle. It’s not exactly straight. So I live my life in constant fear that the cupboard is going to snap in two or that my children are going to lean on it and it’s going to fall on top of them. As a result, there is constant dramatic tension in our kitchen.”
Anna Chlumsky: Actress, Veep “My father is a chef. He has equipped my kitchen ever since I moved into my first apartment in college. About three years ago, I put a KitchenAid Mixmaster on my Christmas list. I never expected to get it. But I did.”
“Because it is so big, and my father lives in Chicago, he shipped it. So on New Year’s Eve, before my husband and I went out, we received this big box. We were so excited that we opened it up and got it right out. It’s race-car red. We made whipped cream and got strawberries and Champagne and had our own New Year’s festivity. We do that every year now.”
“When I was growing up, my dad made sure that I could cook. It was really important to him that I learn those skills. When I was in high school, he would give me a knife and say, ‘Chop this, and don’t stop chopping until I say so.’ Even as a younger kid, I would prep in the kitchen even though I was totally spoiled with good food. My dad would make me anything!”
“I have made really simple things for my dad. I put together a Caprese salad one day, but I have yet to make an actual meal for my father. That will be the next stepping stone.”
Oren Moverman: Director of Rampart “My kitchen has recently been stripped of the past. I have a child who has been diagnosed with celiac disease, so we had to make our house gluten-free. Everything in the kitchen has been replaced. It’s looking toward the future, not the past.”
“But there is one thing that remains: It’s a cup. We are really good at breaking things—glasses, plates—we specialize in that. But the cup has survived. It’s one of those completely uninteresting cheesy ones with flowers on it that tries to look artistic but isn’t. I take a lot of comfort in this cup. It’s the go-to cup for a late-in-the-day Turkish coffee. I got it a year after I came to this country from Israel in 1989. It’s my immigrant cup.”
“I try not to stay in the past too much. But in the films I’ve made, the past looms large in every character’s story. The past is just a bitter cup of memories. I can’t get more symbolic than that.”
Ali Landry: Host of upcoming Hollywood Moms Night and actress, Bella “My object is my grandmother’s rolling pin. I’m from Lousiana, and everything there is all about food. My grandmother lived with us, and she baked everything from scratch. No one can touch any of my grandmother’s dishes.”
“My favorite were cookies called gâteaux sec. They were vanilla cookies with a homemade chocolate sauce that would dry up on the top so that it was crispy. They were delicious. We would sit at the kitchen table and she would make the dough from scratch, take out the rolling pin, and roll it out. We would have to cut the cookie shape out with a coffee cup, the same coffee cup she probably had had for 50 years.”
“I have the best memories of my grandmother with that rolling pin. Every single Friday, my grandmother and my aunts would go to my mom’s beauty salon, which was right next to my house, and they would get their hair done. And then my grandmother would cook the meal for the day.”
“My grandmother passed the rolling pin on to me. It has a beautiful patina to it and she had it forever. If it could talk, I’m sure it would tell us some very interesting things.”
A. O. Scott: Film critic, The New York Times “Troy, Ohio, where my father grew up, was for much of the 20th century home to the Hobart factory that made KitchenAid appliances. My grandparents did not work for the company, but it was the source of the town’s prosperity, and the machines in their kitchen were an expression of local pride.”
“The emblematic KitchenAid product—for me, at least—is the tabletop mixer. Its sleek, rounded design evokes a midcentury airplane or automobile, with curves that simultaneously convey power, comfort, and a voluptuous sexuality.”
“The brand still exists, though Hobart is no longer the parent company, and the factory is long gone from Troy, as is my family. I’m not much for automation when I cook. But I do cherish my blue-and-white mixer, with 10 speeds and a steel lever to raise and lower the bowl. A wedding present more than 20 years ago, it’s a link between generations and a symbol of American culinary ingenuity.”
“My paternal grandfather would have scoffed at the word foodie, but in his own way he was a forerunner of the species. He mail-ordered chili powder from Texas, ate sweet corn and tomatoes only in season (and usually from his own garden), and would travel across the country every Thanksgiving, to wherever we were living, with a farm-raised Ohio turkey and a country ham to cook for his children and grandchildren.”
“He used the meat-grinding attachment on the forehead of his mixer to make breakfast sausage. I can’t say I’ve done that. I use the flat paddle for mashed potatoes or cookie dough and the whisk attachment to stiffen egg whites. I could do any of that just as easily with hand tools, but I prefer to drag the bulky old machine onto the counter and listen to the rough industrial music of its motor. It takes me back.”
And finally, since I asked all these people to share their stories and personal memories about one of their kitchen objects, I thought it was only fair to add an object, and a story, of mine.
When I flip an egg, I think of my grandmother. That’s because for the past 25 years, I’ve been using her 1930s spatula. It has a teardrop wooden handle and a thin metal blade. The blade is punched through with an Art Deco design. It is beautiful, flexible, and strong. I’ve carried it around with me from kitchen to kitchen since college.
My grandmother was from Colorado and I grew up in New York, so during my childhood I only saw her about once a year. Grandma Alice had a powerful presence. She was vivacious, sharp-tongued, and larger than life. People gravitated toward her.
She was also totally unsentimental, as was her eldest daughter, my aunt—so when Alice died, my aunt decided to throw away all of her things. I’m the opposite: Objects hold memory and history for me. I believe that the past is not really past; it lives on in the present. So when I spied the spatula on a dusty shelf, I grabbed it. I’ve held onto it, literally, ever since.
Adam Harrison Levy is a documentary filmmaker, a contributing writer for Design Observer, and a teacher at New York’s School of Visual Arts. His most recent story for Gourmet Live featured the award-winning Battenkill Valley Creamery.