U.S. Studio Execs in Love With French Food

By Dom Serafini

I don’t know if it is still the case today, but years ago, the then-presidents of the U.S. studios’ International Distribution divisions loved French cuisine, which is something that I could never understand. Not because I’m Italian, and as it is known, there is a rivalry between French and Italian cuisines, but simply because I don’t appreciate French food.

I mean, I like French onion soup (soupe a l’oignon), which is hard to find in France these days, snails (l’escargots), and vitel tonné (vitello tonnato) because, after all, it is originally from Piedmont, Italy, but that’s it! I don’t appreciate lamb brain (cervelle d’agneau), roast pigeon (pigeon rôti), raw meat (viandre crueviande crue), kidneys (rognon de veau), or those dishes that are highly processed and look like painted pictures of the kind they used to serve at the MIPCOM Man of the Year (later known as Personality of the Year, and now discontinued) awards at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes.

Despite my antipathy towards French food, I love Mexican, Japanese, Turkish, Vietnamese, Brazilian, and Thai food. And I make it a point not to eat at Italian restaurants outside of Italy.

So, it puzzled me greatly when those U.S. studio presidents — like Larry Gershman at MGM, Bruce Gordon at Paramount, Colin Davis at MCA (now NBCUniversal), Bill Saunders at Fox, and Michael Solomon at Warner Bros. — would marvel at the very sight of French food.

Modern French cuisine was developed in the year 1533, when cooks from Florence, Italy transformed Medieval French cuisine into its what it is now. But even with its Italian origins, I still don’t consider it Italian.

While English Canadians don’t really appreciate French food, the British tend to salivate over French dishes, and our own Mike Reynolds, a Brit who contributes to VideoAge from Los Angeles, and was married to a French woman, was a bit worried about the food that would be served at the French Olympics. But on May 2, 2024, in VideoAge’s Water Cooler, Reynolds wrote a piece titled “Feeding TV Folks of Concern to France,” in which he praised French cuisine and outlined the virtues of the Olympic menu.

But according to The Wall Street Journal, Britain’s Olympic team ran “into issues with both the quality and quantity of the food in the Olympic Village.” Norway, too, had problems with the French food, while the Italians solved the problem by bringing their own chef (David Oldani) to cook traditional Italian meals at Casa Italiana, the country’s Olympic retreat.