Backstage with Julia Page 4

  —Virgil, Eclogues

  My first assignment as a member of the Julia team was to assist her on Good Morning America, ABC television's morning news and variety show. Once a month, Julia spent two days at GMA's New York City studios. Mondays were for prepping, and Tuesday mornings she appeared live for a cooking spot that ran two and a half or three and a half minutes. When the show went off the air at nine o'clock, she taped four or five segments of the same length for later airing.

  Good Morning America was Julia's first contractual commitment with commercial television. Her primary loyalty would always remain with public television, but she felt snubbed when New York public television failed to air her series Julia Child & More Company. Astutely aware of the importance of "being out there," she wanted exposure in the city. As she put it, "If you're not on in New York, you ain't nowhere." So Good Morning America became her "somewhere" network home.

  Several weeks before my first day on the Julia job, she called to give me my instructions.

  "Meet us at the studios Monday at 6:00 a.m. sharp. Liz, Sara, and Paul will be there. We'll do a lovely pear tart for the live show." She then described what she would make for the taped shows and, almost as an afterthought, added, "That evening we'll be doing a demonstration for a school called De Gustibus." De Gustibus is now housed in a fully equipped kitchen on the eighth floor of Macy's, but in those days it operated in an auditorium, with all the limitations we'd faced at the RISD auditorium in Providence. "Very jolly people," Julia told me. "I think we'll make paella and a nice sabayon for dessert. Everyone's supposed to get a taste, and I think those dishes will go around nicely."

  "How many people do they expect to attend?"

  "About three hundred."

  I was glad we were on the phone so she couldn't see my it's-never-gonna-happen expression. "That's a lot of people to feed. What kind of stove and equipment do they have?"

  "No stove. Not much equipment. I've asked for two electric woks and a hot plate."

  If it had been anyone other than Julia, my response would have been, What? Are you crazy? As it was, I mustered just enough confidence to say, "That should work."

  "Sara will be our executive chef for the TV, but she can't be at the demonstration, so you're in charge. Can you find a good, reliable person in New York to help out?"

  The answer came to me immediately. "My good friend Mary Higgins is the assistant food editor at Ladies' Home Journal. I'm sure she'd love to do it."

  "That's wonderful. I think we should ask her to buy the shrimp for the paella. Oh, and dearie . . ."

  "Will you bring six perfect pears to the television set with you?"

  I really wished she hadn't said perfect. Were perfect pears the same thing to me as they were to Julia? Certainly I'd bought my share of pears, but when Julia Child asks not just for pears but for "perfect pears," they cease to be produce. They are an aptitude test, graduate exams, the law boards. I knew I could spot perfection in pears, but would they be at the right stage of ripeness and still unblemished on the day they had to appear on television?

  I took no chances. Every day for a week before the show, I bought pears—firm, unblemished Bartlett pears. I stored some in a bowl on the counter —my usual ripening method—and some in paper bags, a system I had read about in a cooking magazine. I needed them to be ripe but not too ripe, and I wondered what I would do if they all turned to brown blobs of mush by the time I needed them or, equally disastrous, did not ripen at all in time for the show. I thought about an incident when Philip was an undergraduate and had to evaluate the effects that environmental changes had on Venus flytraps. He had waited too long to buy the plants and there was not enough time to assess the consequences of long exposure to sun and heat. To speed the process he put the plants in the oven, but he wound up killing them all. I rejected the oven as a ripening option.

  The counter did the trick, and the night before the show, I stayed at the upper Park Avenue apartment of my college roommate, Jane Andrews, and kept my perfect, precious fruit in my room lest one of her two children mistake them for a late night snack.

  Early the next morning, cradling my pears, I prepared to leave Jane's. After assuring me that I would have no trouble finding a taxi at that early hour, she gave me some sound advice.

  "This is a valuable experience," she told me. "Notice everything and write it down." Unfortunately, I did not heed her counsel; after all, it was Jane who in college had suggested that we climb out the dorm window after curfew to go get a pizza. And in eighth grade it was she who'd suggested that we skip school and go see Marjorie Morningstar. On both occasions she'd assured me, "It will be just fine." It wasn't!

  Out on the early-morning street, which was quiet for New York, I worried a taxi into appearing immediately and gave the driver the West Side address of the Good Morning America studios, across town. I checked the address several times during the ride to be sure I had it right. When he pulled up to the very ordinary-looking side door across the street from Café des Artistes, I checked it again. Yep. That was it.

  I walked up the few steps and knocked. A uniformed guard immediately opened the door.

  "I'm Nancy Barr," I said, and then, just to be sure he didn't think I was one of the groupies who regularly hangs around outside the studio hoping for autographs, I told him I was with Julia. But he didn't need more than my name. "They're expecting you," he said, stepping back to let me pass.

  Walking me the few steps across the narrow foyer, he led me into a small room. "This is the greenroom. You can wait here and I'll call someone to escort you into the studio." In no time at all, a young woman, perhaps a production assistant or an intern, arrived and led me down a short corridor, through a heavy door, and into the dimly lit studio.

  Stepping over the jumble of heavy cables on the floor and peering though the army of cameras standing quietly, I saw the Good Morning America living room set that I had seen so many times on television. The studio itself was immense, and the suite of comfortable living room furniture arranged in one corner of that enormous space seemed dollhouse-like with all the production equipment hovering around it.

  "They're in the kitchen," my guide informed me, and led me all the way through the studio to a hallway behind it. There were two kitchens at the Good Morning America studios. What television viewers saw was a small on-set kitchen that sat on a slightly raised platform behind the set's living room. Off the short hallway behind the studio was a staff kitchen, so small it could have been mistaken for a glorified utility closet had it not been for the four-burner electric stove, refrigerator, single sink, and about two feet of counter space. We could work on the set's kitchen before the show started at seven and again after nine when it went off the air. All other times, we would have to crowd ourselves into the dimensionally challenged room.

  My pears and I entered the room where our team was assembled and nibbling on an assortment of items selected from what I discovered was a large buffet set up behind the studio. Paul was reading the newspaper and working his way down a banana. He ate one every single morning, claiming it was good for the constitution. Since he lived into his nineties, I have no reason to doubt him. Liz was sitting on a stool by the phone, also reading a paper, and I wondered if she traveled with her own seating.

  "Well, here she is!" Julia hooted enthusiastically, exhibiting that most wonderful way she had of making people feel so happy that they had arrived.

  "I am," I said just as enthusiastically. I saw that there was already a large pile of pears on the counter, and I added my every-bit-as-good-looking crop to them, glad to have the perfect-pear mission accomplished.

  "Thank you," was all Julia said, "they're perfect." It would be some months before I understood that even if my pears had failed to pass muster, that would not have meant that I did too. Julia saw cooking as an ongoing learning experience—if you fumbled here and there, if your pears were lousy, she'd definitely let you know, but it would not cost you your job or diminish your competence in
her eyes as long as you were willing to learn.

  "Now here, meet Sonya," Julia said, directing my attention to her producer, Sonya Selby-Wright. Sonya was in her mid-forties, British, and had been producing for GMA for four years, during which time she developed a particular talent for producing food spots. She was blond and fair-complexioned and appeared to be a delicate, fragile person, but, as I would soon discover, she was an effective, insightful producer who had the ability to draw out Julia's natural ability for making instruction entertaining. Julia had a very strong-willed personality, and over the years I would see that she always did her best work with someone who was strong enough to take charge. Russ Morash was a genius at producing and directing her, with no equal, but Sonya was very good.

  Me and Sonya on the set of Good Morning America.

  My first day of work at Good Morning America was my initiation to what it took to produce a television food spot. Sonya, Sara, and Julia introduced me to the smoke and mirrors of television cooking—the swap or swap-out, a crucial component of the short cooking segment. On a half-hour-long cooking show, depending on the recipe, it is possible to demonstrate a dish from start to finish. Rachael Ray does this on her Food Network program 30 Minute Meals. But unless it is the simplest of recipes or a single technique, this is not possible in the two or three minutes that morning television allots the talent. Therefore, the swap. A typical breakdown for a rice pilaf, for example, would begin with the talent mincing onions, carrots, and celery for a mirepoix. She'd then put the vegetables into a saucepan with melted butter, stir them around a bit, and explain that they must be sautéed slowly until translucent. There wouldn't be enough time to show the transition from raw to translucent, so she switches from that pan to an identical one sitting on the stove with an already cooked mirepoix and pours in a cup of rice. After a few seconds of sautéing the rice, the talent pours in stock, adds seasonings, and covers the pan. The pilaf then needs fifteen minutes to cook, fifteen minutes morning television can't provide, so the talent swaps to an identical pan containing perfectly cooked rice that is also on the stove. She uncovers it, shows the audience what the pilaf looks like fully cooked, perhaps transfers it to a serving dish or a plate that holds meat and vegetables, and in Julia's case says, "Bon appétit." Some recipes require several swaps, and it takes careful planning to know where the switches are most effective so that viewers get a good, clear idea of what is happening and can confidently say to themselves, "I can do that!" or, better yet, "I want to do that!"

  Julia was a master at breaking recipes down into the necessary steps to entice the audience into trying them. She hated what she called "dump TV"—a cooking spot in which the talent dumps the unidentifiable contents of several bowls into a pan and then proclaims it will look like the dazzling finished dish all nicely decorated with hibiscus blooms that sits on the counter. She wanted to show the steps, explain the techniques, produce sizzling sounds, and create some steam. Consequently, her demonstrations usually involved a number of swaps, which she carefully spelled out in her scripts.

  Sample of detailed Julia script for Good Morning America.

  Sample of detailed Julia script for Good Morning America.

  Sonya introduced me to blocking, which is planning where the equipment and food will sit on the set when the spot was on air. I had no idea such a thing was necessary but soon realized that blocking is as vital a step in food television as it is in theater and movies, and one that Sonya worked on with the diligence of any Broadway stage director. Before the show went on the air, we brought all the food and equipment to the set and walked through what the talent would do with it. We decided where the items should be laid out, put them there, pretended to cook them, and then laid them out again until we decided where they best worked. Then we drew pictures of the layout and took everything away, transferring then to carefully marked trays. Nothing could stay on the kitchen set during the first two and a half hours of the show. In the brief time of a commercial break, we would have to return everything to the set, and we couldn't bring it there. Union rules demanded that stagehands move the items from the prep kitchen to the set, hence our need to mark the trays as to the position. The blocking and rehearsal meant that when the spot was on the air the talent would not have to move repeatedly back and forth, making it difficult for the cameras and audience to focus on the food. It thwarted any need to reach awkwardly over a hot stove or across the host's midsection to pick something up. It also ensured that tall items would not block shorter ones from the camera's view.

  Every time I watched another morning show's production and saw a chef zigzagging around the set or I struggled to see an unidentifiable object hidden behind a tall bottle of wine or olive oil, I thought about how Sonya's diligent blocking never would have allowed it to happen.

  From seven until shortly after eight-thirty, while the show was on the air, we crowded into the prep kitchen, working over and around each other under a sign on the wall that said, "Clean up after yourself. Your mother doesn't work here." When the kitchen monitor alerted us to the commercial break, several stagehands picked up the marked trays and carried them to the set. Sonya, Sara, and I followed right behind them and moved the items from the trays to their designated places, obsessively checking to be sure that everything was there and exactly where it should be. There is no wiggle room in live television: if something is missing, the talent has to wing it. Winging it was never a problem for Julia; she was truly unflappable. On one of our earliest shows, Julia sautéed veal cutlets and made a lovely pan sauce for them. Joan Lunden was by her side, and the spot ended—as always, unless it was oysters, which Joan wouldn't touch—with tasting the finished dish and making appropriate appreciative sounds. Julia put the veal on a plate, napped it with the sauce, and handed it to Joan. Joan looked down, turned to the right and then the left, and then glanced back at Julia. Somehow, in spite of all our careful blocking and obsessive planning, we had forgotten to put a fork and knife on the set. As I stood on the sidelines, wondering in horror if I could crawl under the camera's line of vision and pass utensils up to them, Julia picked up the large wooden spoon she had used to stir the sauce and told Joan, "This will work." Joan struggled a bit to cut the veal, managed to remove a small piece, and ate it with the spoon, which was considerably larger than her mouth. Neither she nor Julia behaved as though it were anything unusual.

  Once the live shows were off the air, we began our prep for the next day's tapings. Stagehands set up several long tables in the studio and we went to work dirtying more dishes and preparing more food than I had ever seen in one place before. Taped segments involve so much more preparation than live ones, since no matter how wrong live segments may go, they will happen once only. With taped segments, the director or producer can ask for a retake, so we needed enough food for at least three backups—three for every swap. The same rice pilaf recipe that needed two cups of rice to make the swap in a live segment required eight cups to allow for backups in a taped segment.

  And that's just one recipe. We were doing five or six. That meant a lot of food, a lot of equipment, nonstop work, and always more cafeteria trays and little glass bowls than we could seem to muster up. And if we weren't going out for lunch, Julia always insisted that we stop at noon and sit down together for a "nice, proper meal" with carefully prepared food—and wine! Using whatever food we didn't need for the tapings, we'd prepare handsome meals to which Julia often invited guests—cookbook authors and teachers, several family members, her editor, Judith Jones, and, to the delight of all of us, her dear friend and colleague Jim Beard. The work it took to ready the food for shows and prepare a sit-down lunch for eight to twelve people was a bit staggering. In fact, Julia often looked over the mounds of food and nonstop chopping, peeling, and mixing and pronounced with obvious glee, "We're a regular sweatshop." But those meals were what food was about for Julia. It was not a vehicle to stardom or something to fill the pages of a cookbook. It was about the joys of sitting down at a table, sharing
, and communicating. The fame she achieved was firmly rooted in the passion she felt about dining well with good friends.

  In a letter Julia wrote after my first day, she acknowledged the incredible amount of work Sarah and I had accomplished, writing, "I don't see how you two did it." She should have said "how we did it" because she was right in there cooking and sweating with us. In fact, everyone cooked, except for Liz, who was always at the ready if we needed her. Paul did whatever we needed of him, and even Sonya helped, although her knife skills were limited—and positively worrisome, since she was prone to gashing a finger or two. We also had two or three stagehands who willingly peeled onions, washed vegetables, trimmed herbs, and cleaned up after us. For the most part, it was the first time any of them had touched food they weren't about to eat. Later on, Julia hired another skilled assistant to help with the preparations and asked that the construction crew build a portable butcher-block work counter in the center of the room. The counter cramped our movements, but at least we had an ample work surface.

  On my inaugural day of work with Julia, we left the studio at noon with the preparations for Tuesday's shows sitting on and tucked into every available space of the prep kitchen. Following Julia's instructions, we labeled everything with clearly marked Post-it notes: "DO NOT TOUCH!" The studio's night staff was notorious for hungry raids on the kitchen. My thoughts then turned to the upcoming De Gustibus demonstration and paella for three hundred in two electric woks; Julia's turned to lunch.

  "Perhaps they can take us all across the street at Café des Artistes," she mused. Before we could say "roast duck and a good Chablis" we were savoring them. While the gregarious Hungarian restaurant owner, George Lang, stood by our table and talked about the current culinary scene in New York, I began inventing concerns about the De Gustibus demonstration. Had I given my friend Mary the right address? Would she remember the shrimp? Had buying the shrimp become a "pear thing" for her? Would we leave Café des Artistes in time to finish the prep for the demonstration? Julia, on the other hand, was savoring duck and trading gossip with George.