Alice Waters - Film

Film

In addition to food and advocacy, Waters’ other passions include film. Chez Panisse was named for “Honore Panisse”, a favorite character in the “Marius”, “Fanny”, and “Cesar” trilogy of Marcel Pagnol films, which chronicles the lives of working-class citizens in 1930s Marseilles. In the films, Honore Panisse is a kind, older man who agrees to marry Fanny, a younger woman who is pregnant with another man’s child. He is Waters’ favorite character because of his kindness and generosity, qualities she wanted to emulate when opening her restaurant. Waters named her daughter after Fanny.

In 1984 Waters opened a small breakfast café in Berkeley. Café Fanny is named after the heroine of Pagnol's films - a love story involving the whole community, centered around a little standup café. Waters wanted to evoke their spirit: an ideal reality where life and work were inseparable and the daily pace left time for the afternoon anisette or the restorative game of petanque, where eating together nourished the spirit as well as the body-since the food was raised, harvested, hunted, fished and gathered by people sustaining and sustained by each other and by the earth itself. The café closed in March 2012. (http://cafefanny.com/history.html)

In 1980, Werner Herzog asked Waters to cook his shoe for the film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. She prepared the shoe in the Chez Panisse kitchen, braising it in duck fat, herbs, and spices. In turn, many people in the film industry are friends of Waters and of Chez Panisse. Francis Ford Coppola, Philip Kaufman, and others are notable restaurant patrons, and often attend events at the restaurant.