All You Can Eat
06-May-2014
One of the sharpest satirical shorts in awhile, an American portrait of gluttony, tragedy, and cheap entertainment. Guised as a character study, it begins with a large man in a hotel room in Wilmington, North Carolina. Randy Stormberg, host of a TV show called "All You Can Eat" (a fake show in the vein of countless other Food Network shows showcasing small town diners, etc) is frustrated with his career scarfing down burgers. But the show must go on, causing battles with the director/producer, "I told you I wasn't trying to get too many bite shots in." Randy is played brilliantly by Matt Warzel. Off-camera, he's a grumpy mess; on-screen though, a ball of excitement, yelling superlatives after every bite, "That's the money shot! That's on point. So good." In addition to being a smart character piece, "All You Can Eat," digs into the fabrications of TV production. There's a great scene where a pre-teen 'actress' is prompted to respond to the food at Winnie's Tavern. Without getting the first bite down, the producer prods: "Can you say it really lives up to the hype?" "Definitely." "I mean, can you actually say it." "Oh. Oh. Oh…It really lives up to the hype, you know." This small scale engineering is more funny than offensive, but it gets a little murkier when an on-set extra breaks some troubling news of an in-progress tragedy happening across the state. For my money, it's one of the best scenes of the year. Written, Directed and Edited by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik. A tremendous feat of rough around the edges comedy & fine point satire. -KA.