Above is the last supper enjoyed by the Emperor of Rome, Gaius Julius Caesar. Sort of.

I love the high-energy style of filming food that we have seen ont’ telly recently, and fancied a little leap in the direction of that particular bandwagon. This is my own spin on the work done by those crafty Frenchmen… with the idea of making something a little more organic and foodie perhaps.

Ingredients:

  • 152 hrs spent in my shed making rigs.
  • 22,000 elastic bands.
  • 16 visits to B&Q.
  • Milk of the ever wonderful Penny Markham.
  • 6 pints of lightly fingered blue tack.
  • A dusting of fancy fingered Rob Morris, food stylist to the stars. Thank you thank you sir.
  • 1 very happy butcher for all the lamb chops I bought.
  • A most attractive wife to cook prawns into the night.
  • 12 oz. Joe McNally lovely editor man.
  • 1 James ever clever never late Heaphy on after effects.
  • 1 kindest man in the world Paul Harrison, salon colourist.
  • Sellotape.
N.B. No Chris Griffiths’s were harmed in the making of this film.

A really simple one. Guess who…

Ingredients:

  • 3 Cardboards
  • Flowery things.
  • Milk of the ever wonderful Penny Markham.
  • 1 tin of tuna.
  • 2 slices of sandwich bread.
  • Lettuce and stuff.

Here is the first of my Last Supper clips…

Ingredients:

  • 1 generous spoonful of Lard.
  • 4 scoops Frilly lace
  • 1 dealer-baggy of finest Corsican fingernail filth.
  • The exceptional Kindness of Georgie Besterman fabulous food stylist who was our cookie.
  • Milk of the ever wonderful Penny Markham.
  • Salt and pepper to taste.
Many thanks must go to Joseph Wolfenden-Williams for plumbing the bowels of joy and sadness to bring us his ‘cooks hands’.

Special effects devices we built for ‘Julius Caesar’.

lamb-cage

LAMB CAGE. This allowed the lamb chop to always register in exactly the same place as it cooked.

bean-hats

BEAN TOP FLINGER. The shot was meant to look like graduation hats flying at a university, and it did!

juicer

JUICER. Obvs.

Julius Caesar was knifed 23 times by members of his senate. It was a carefully planned mutiny and execution, orchestrated to prevent history from appointing any single senator as a scapegoat or martyr to his murder.

But the act itself must have been brutal and emotionally charged… a vicious and dramatic action committed by otherwise mild-mannered thinking men. In a blindly link-less homage to that thought I decided to make Caesars Last Supper film with many of my own slashing edits and cuts; for a fast paced, high octane and (if possible in film about a plate of dinner), emotional journey.

My Jimi Hendrix’s Last Supper film is going to be a little thing, a single shot with just a tiny dose of Hendrix in it. What appealed to me was the soundtrack; a piece of non-typical Hendrix just the right shape and size to fit a Tuna Sandwich.

Interesting Hendrix facts…
As a child he was inseparable from a broom-handle that he carried around as a pretend guitar. His social worker advised that leaving the boy Hendrix without a guitar might result in psychological damage.

Hendrix first made it big in England in 1966, not in the U.S.

His newly formed band played their first gig in London to an audience that included John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. Gasps of ‘Jesus’, ‘shit’ and ‘damn’ were uttered.

In London he lived in the same building as Handel and listened to his music; two musical geniuses living in a foreign country separated by 250 years.

In the first film of the series; about Napoleon’s meal, there are a couple of things I will do.
I want the food images to feel visceral and grubby. Napoleon was a dirty fighter, a revolutionary and an egotist. I love the idea of portraying his last meal as something dirty; filth amongst the lace and frills of the time, the last meal of a soldier who cares nothing for the pomp and chatter of political life.

I also intend to illustrate one of Napoleons quotes within the film, and to make it much more important than the meal itself. Napoleon said “If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing”. He is having a pop at politicians I think, with a phrase more meaningful now than ever. I want to make it so that when you watch the film, you read the quote more than look at the food.

He is also (dubiously) credited with coming up with the longest palindrome known to man, after his banishment to the Island of Elba.

Elba

Last Supper: uncertain. He loved fried trout, Liver dumplings and Onion Pie.

Last Supper: It is believed he ate a last meal of spaghetti or fettuccine, but there is no proof.

Last Supper: Four scoops of ice cream and six chocolate chip cookies as a midnight snack.

Last Supper: Unknown. Favourite meal: filet of roast deer stuffed with pate de foie gras served with truffle sauce.

Last Supper: Unknown.

Last Supper: Unknown.

Last Supper: Mushroom & asparagus omelete, Dover sole, and vegetable tempura.

Do famous quotes become distorted perhaps, refined and rehashed over the years; the words becoming immortal and shaping a personality the person may never have had?

Who knows?