Actresses Don't Eat

Steam potatoz. Cook onion, tomato, chilies, eggplant in olive oil for 8m. 

Add potatoz n spoon of Italian salad dressing. Eat with toast, rice or hard grits.

Tried this rack of lamb using a recipe book. Disaster! Too much work. Chaayi! 

Find recipe online. Good luck. I'll stick to menus. Restaurants do a better job.

I’m always hungry something that used to bug mama. She swore that I had uninvited guests: worms that ate my food leaving my stomach empty once again.  I eat because I’m alive. That is why I would like to see food in movies.  

Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn’t do food, beautiful well-laid tables with gleaming cutlery and rainbow place settings yes, but no food. I think it is in the contract of those electricity pole actresses with the clause, no food in the script. Remaining thin is the only way they can keep getting work.

I cannot imagine a world without food. Maybe it has everything to do with mama, who swore her child (me) would never go hungry, ‘as long as I’m still alive.’ That is what she said. You better believe it. Being a mother is incredible, isn’t it?

Living in Toronto exposed me to world cinema through the Toronto International Film Festival. Movies from other countries confirmed that it is possible to have food in movies.

That is why I enjoy Japanese, Chinese and Indian movies. I also follow a Japanese blog because of pretty sushi pictures, including sushi arranged in a little boat.

Food in movies also opens a little window to other human beings like me, because they drink sake or eat eel in a certain context, food is left outside temples for a reason, there is food and drink in little home shrines, festivals have special food, and certain food denotes rough times.

I’m found in Nigeria these days, Yoruba movies in particular and directors mean business. Actors literally eat amala, pepper soup, chicken, fish, rice, bush meat and gari. I think gari is bad news, that the family is going through a bad patch.

Hollywood actresses should remember that when they find themselves in co-productions, where money to make the movie is raised from two or more countries. Scripts in foreign movies require them to eat, mess up the lipstick and floss later.

They cannot sit at the table and watch other people eat like Julia Roberts’ character, in Notting Hill. In fact, her character admitted that she has been hungry for ten years.

We need Food Directors in movies.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.