I would have pursued it further, but the Marlboro website requires you to sign up for entry. And ever since I’ve given up cigarettes, I find I don’t really have the energy to finish things I start.  But that didn’t stop me from looking back over my life and recalling the larger-than-life dreams I once held as a young person… back when anything was still possible, we learned all we needed about safety from a police parrot, and AYDS was just a diet candy!

Come on… let’s hold hands and take a walk down Memory Lane.  A rich, creamy, juicy peach and basil pizza awaits us, along with all kinds of “Gary Green’s dreams” that evaporated amidst more unpleasantness than NBC’s ill-conceived Emeril Lagasse sitcom.

Gary’s Biggest Dream Age 1 day – 10 years:  to become a cast member on The New Mickey Mouse Club - Not the version with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake; the version before that with Blair from The Facts of Life that no one remembers because it didn’t clear enough markets in syndication to make any long-lasting impression.  How I Thought This Would Happen: For reasons I still cannot understand, I believed that a guy with a bullhorn roamed neighborhoods in a slow-moving pick-up truck inviting any kids who “wanted to be stars” to “hop in the back!” Then, he’d whisk us all off to Hollywood. How it Played Out: I couldn’t sing.  I couldn’t dance.  I was quickly chased out of any pick-up truck I climbed into.  The only talent I demonstrated at that point in my life was impersonating Bob Barker and forcing the rest of my family members to come closest to guessing the actual retail price of the dog.

Gary’s Biggest Dream Age 11 years – 20 years:  to become a cast member on Dallas. Yes, I was now able to stay up past 8pm and quickly discovered the world of prime time television.  I said goodbye to Match Game, Tattletales and Hit Man and stepped up to the world of tv for adults!  How I Thought This Would Happen: I would be playing at the park and approached by an excited talent agent who would invite me to make a screen test and take me in his car to Hollywood.  I’d be successfully cast in the role of “loner street orphan” who’s taken in by the Ewings/Crew of The Love Boat/Fonz and The Happy Days gang… whichever show bid the highest for my talents… and be immediately embraced by the American viewing public.  How it Played Out:  The only time I’ve appeared on television during prime time hours was when I fired up the VHS copies of my two game show appearances when people came to my house for pizza and were given no other option but to watch.

Gary’s Biggest Dream Age 20 years – 30 years:  I was going to be the next Alfred Hitchcock.  How This Would Happen: I would watch a lot of Alfred Hitchcock movies.  I never really figured it out past that step.  How it Played Out: When I finally arrived in Hollywood, there were no multi-deal, multi-million dollar contracts waiting for me.  So I decided it best to “downsize my dream” from feature to director to screenwriter, then again to television drama writer, then again to situation comedy writer.  That last one worked out for a while, and then I became a game show producer.

Gary’s Biggest Dream Age 20 years – 30 years:  Hang on to a job.  How This Would Happen:  Say yes to anything, peruse Craigslist religiously, pray.  How it Played Out: If anyone hears of an opening on a game show, please send an e-mail to TvFoodAndDrink@gmail.com.  I’ll make you this pizza… for free! All you need to do is supply the crust, the cheese and the peaches.

I’ve also decided to give up on the idea of avoiding strange men offering me rides. Because there’s still time left to dream.

Peach and Basil Pizza

Pre-heat your oven and pizza stone to 500º F.

Pour balsamic vinegar into a small saucepan, bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until the vinegar has reduced to 1/4 cup. Set aside, and cool to room temperature.

Lightly brush your pizza dough with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Top the dough with mozzarella, peach slices, fresh basil and parmesan. Drizzle the pizza with balsamic reduction.  Bake in oven for approximately 10-12 minutes, turning once mid-way through. After removing, let cool for several minutes, slice and serve.

Underneath that deceptively simple asiago/mozzarella cheese canopy are hiding chunks of shiitake mushroom, aromatic fennel, tangy tomato, onion, and thick cuts of spicy salami.  I had complete confidence in all of these ingredients with the exception of the fennel.  I’d never used it in a pizza before, and I was worried its flavor might overwhelm.  No need to fear.  This pizza was all sorts of savory, rich, and meaty, with just pings here and there of fennel sweetness.

I snatched up this recipe from My Year on the Grill, who is in the opening weeks of his Pizza 2011 Project – 52 unique gourmet pizzas in 52 weeks.  If you’re looking for something other than the standard default pepperoni pie, this should be your first stop.   And if you see no need to deviate from the traditional, he’s also got a couple suggestions for how to gussy up the classics!

Ever heard a pizza talk?  This one had quite a bit to say (and no, for those of you who follow this blog regularly and might be wondering, it’s not Bond music in the background, but it’s close.  It’s Michael Giacchino’s soundtrack for The Incredibles).

Salami with Fennel and Asiago Pizza from Year on the Grill

For the sauce:

1 can (14 ounces) diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
4 shiitake mushroom buttons, cut into thin slivers
1/4 cup red wine
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup Pecorina Romano cheese
1/4 white onion, diced (I added this to Year on the Grill’s recipe)

Combine everything in a sauce pan and simmer for 30 minutes. Year on the Grill suggests then using hand mixer and blending to a thick paste, but I kept it as is – nice and chunky!

For the pizza:

1 stick salami of your choice. I used Columbus Brand Herb Salami
1 cup shredded Asiago cheese
1 cup mozzarella cheese
Pre-made pizza dough (or if you have the time to make your own, click here for a recipe)
Salt and pepper for seasoning, along with any additional spices of your choice
olive oil for brushing the pizza dough

Preheat oven and pizza stone (or heavy baking sheet) to 500 degrees for at least 30 minutes.

Cut the salami into slices about 1/2 inch thick, then cut these into quarters. I halved them and left it at that.

Cut the fennel bulb into thin slices, separate the rings

Grate the asiagio cheese

Roll your crust out on parchment paper to your personal preference. Brush Olive oil around the edges. Salt and pepper the crust. Top with your sauce, fennel, salami, and both your cheeses. Add any additional seasoning and bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes. If you notice the side closer to the rear of your oven browning faster, turn pizza midway through the cooking.

Pull your bubbly pie out of the oven, and watch it dance and sing as it cools. Give it close to ten minutes before you cut into it. Enjoy with someone you love!

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The footage is a masterful way to open the story.  Unfortunately, real-life bears, leopards and gazelle are notoriously temperamental when it comes to performing traditional movie duties like, say… delivering lines, hitting their marks and recounting their cocaine addictions to Mary Hart.  So, after these few fun first minutes, the live animals all but disappear, and we spend the next ninety minutes with stuffed tigers, rubber snakes on strings, and an alligator who’s head completely separates from the rest of his body whenever his jaw opens for the camera.  I choose to believe this particular alligator merely suffers from a herniated disc in its neck and just needs some good acupuncture.  I’m still working on an excuse for the fact that I could hear its motor.

Still, considering it’s nearly seventy years old, The Jungle Book is a pretty ambitious film. The human actors, once they arrive, do a fairly good job at moving the story along.  And even though most of the animals may be constructed from fiberglass and paint, they still demonstrate more charisma than my actual living cat does any day of the week.

Oh Z, what would become of you in the wild?

This pizza is really simple to make, and I recommend it to anyone who may be looking for an alternative to the traditional tomato sauce-heavy pies, of which I myself have recently tired. All you need to make this is the crust of your choice, about a 1/3 pound of Brie, a medium onion (I chose a Visalia), some honey, a few red pepper flakes, a bit of olive oil and, if on hand, some fresh basil and baby spinach, though I think this pizza would wholly satisfy even without the greens on top (but they help carry the visual a long way).  The Brie melts fantastically, pairs beautifully with the honey, which is in turn offset just a touch by the heat in the red pepper flakes.

A memorable meal with minial effort!

Honey, Brie and Onion Pizza

• 1 pizza crust, pre-bought or rolled out to 9 inches in diameter.
• 2 Tbsp honey
• 1 Tbsp olive oil for onions, additional 1 Tbsp olive oil for pizza dough
• 1-2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/3 pound Brie cheese, sliced (keep the rind on – it’s delicious!)
• 1/4 cup loosely packed baby spinach and basil, mixed close to a 50/50 ratio

Pre-heat your oven and pizza stone to 500º F. While slicing your onion, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a pan. Add onions to pan and let cook for approximately 5-10 minutes, stirring regularly with a spatula. Once onions have softened and browned, remove them from heat and let cool slightly.

Spread olive oil and honey generously across the top of your rolled-out pizza dough. Scatter red pepper flakes over the top, and then score the dough by poking small holes gently into it with a fork. Transfer to oven and let cook for approximately three minutes.

Remove pizza from oven. Add cheese and basil/spinach mixture. Top with sauteed onions and return to oven. Let cook for another 7-10 minutes or until edge of crust is golden brown. Remove from oven, cool and dig in!
“Jungle Boy” Mowgli is played in this film by Indian actor Sabu Dastagir, whose other most memorable credit is as Abu in the 1940 British film The Thief of Bagdad. Taken in by a family of wolves after his father is mauled to death by the tiger Shere Kahn, Mowgli grows to be a young man able to communicate with any animal in the jungle, most often in rhyming verse.  It worked so well for Mowgli in the film that I decided it would help me better exert my will over the cat, so I marched right up to Z and commanded, “Honorable feline, soul un-remitting… arise at this moment… and perform all my bidding!”

It didn’t work.
The human villains of the film are a trio of more-than-slightly buffonish local villiagers who follow Mowgli to a mysterious lost city where they discover a cavern filled with lost treasure. The threesome decides to rape the jungle of its precious, golden heart.  Mowgli works desperately to thwart them.  Since this film is aimed squarely at kids, correctly guess who wins and I’ll give you a coconut.
There’s a pretty amazing fire sequence near the picture’s end.  The very ahead of its time cinematography by W. Howard Greene and Lee Garmes (Gone With the Wind, Since You Went Away) makes the most of the color – vibrant jungles, serene lagoons and imposing ancient ruins are always just a few frames away.  They more than make up for the disastrously dated animal technology that would make the birds in “The Enchanted Tiki Room” smack their little feathered foreheads in embarrassmnet.  One final note… the film has fallen into public domain, so there are tons of pirated and murky prints floating around out there.  Best bet is to locate its next airing on TCM, curl up with your favorite wild animal, and let your eyes lose focus just a bit whenever one of the grips kick-starts the alligator and floats him into the shot.

If you enjoy your pizza with movies that include garroted high-wire performers, dancing elephants, nails through the forehead, performing poodles, women accidentally sawed in two, underwhelming freaks, and an ending that feels it was decided upon when the producers ran out of money, Berserk! is the movie for you!

This pizza came together as a result of MG’s prosciutto passion and my desire to break away from tomato sauce for a while. If you’re looking for something a little lighter and brighter than your typical pizza pie, this is definitely the way to go.

Make sure you go with a quality pizza crust if you aren’t making from scratch because its flavor is going to be more apparent without having to compete against a heavy sauce on top of it. You may even want to coat your crust or dough with a few tablespoons of honey along with the olive oil to bring up the sweet factor. The fontina cheese is creamy with just a hint of nuttiness, and it melts beautifully. The prosciutto and onions bring a bit of a salty bite to the party. And the introduction of the arugula in the last two minutes of cooking folds it nicely into the rest of the ingredients without extinguishing any of its peppery freshness.

Without the tomato sauce, this is a much cleaner, easy to execute pizza that makes a great summertime dinner or appetizer on the deck while you’re watching the sun set with a glass of chilled white wine… or in our case watching two hours of a lighting guy desperately trying to hide Joan Crawford’s neck.

Prosciutto Arugula Pizza with Fontina

• Prepared pizza dough
• 2 Tbsp olive oil for sauteed onions and prosciutto
• 1 Tbsp olive oil for pizza crust
• 1/2 large onioin, thinly sliced
• 3 oz. thinly sliced prosciutto
• 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes.
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1 1/2 cups shredded fontina cheese
• 2 cups packed coarsely chopped arugula
• 1/4 cup shaved parmesan cheese

Pre-heat oven to 500º F

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a skillet on medium heat.  Add onion, prosciutto and crushed red pepper. Cook, stirring often, until the onion begins to brown, approximately 3-5 minutes.

Roll out pizza dough and brush with 2 tablespoons oilve oil (and honey if desired).  Place crust in the oven and allow to cook approximately four minutes.

Open oven and top crust with the onion prosciutto mixture and shredded fontina.  Return to the oven for another seven minutes

Open oven again and top with tomatoes, arugula and shaved parmesan,  Return to the oven for up to another two minutes, but make sure not to let the arugula wilt. Alternatively, top with arugula, tomato and shaved parmesan once pizza has fully cooked and is removed from oven.

It’s pretty clear from this film that Joan Crawford was a woman who simply wanted to work.  It’s not really much of a movie worth watching with the sound up, but there is a reasonable amount of unintentional humor and plenty of entertaining animal acts on display.

Plus, any Oscar-winning actress who’s willing to deliver the line, “Presenting Phyllis Allen… and her intelligent poodles!” with not a shred of embarrassment is a winner in my book.

The Black Scorpion centers on a misunderstood prehistoric creature who is accidentally freed from his underground cave by a volcanic eruption and proceeds to roam all of Mexico in search of friendship and understanding.

Unfortunately, he is unable to find it, so instead he decides to slash his way through thousands of locals, demolish infrastructure, and create economic chaos in an attempt to weaken the peso.

Is it wrong to have a little sympathy for this guy?  True, his stinger is the size of a Beluga Airbus, but I think we could all benefit from a little understanding.  After all, think of everything The Black Scorpion’s missed out on these past 65 million years. He didn’t get to see that Garbage Pail Kids movie.  He never got to try Billy Beer.  He missed those Pepsi commercials with the little Jewish girl who sounds like Aretha Franklin. Don’t even tell him about Hands Across America!

It makes sense that The Black Scorpion’s probably a little frustrated for not being more up on recent culture. Shit, I go nuts when my DVR forgets to record Price is Right.
So he knocked a few trains off their tracks, and he pulled a couple phone repair guys off their polls and snapped ‘em in half.  Don’t tell me E.T. wasn’t planning the same exact path of destruction before he got trapped by that trio of brats and was forced to live in the bottom of a closet, eat obscene amounts of sugar, and dress in drag.
No… human beings were just not ready to embrace a predatory arthropod simply looking to make friends and live its best life.  So they lured him to a giant football stadium with a truck full of dead cattle and went after him with tanks, choppers and electric cables to the throat.
And in the end, as is often the case in these 1950′s stop-motion horror films (especially the ones that came out of Warner Brothers), the humans come out on top!

Sorry to see you go, Señor Black Scorpion, but on the bright side, the little niños will have dinner tonight!

Texas BBQ Chicken Pizza with Prosciutto

• 1 – 1 1/2 cups BBQ sauce
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups cubed or shredded chicken
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 2 cups gouda, 1/4 cup reserved
• 1 cup mozzarella, 1/4 cup reserved
• 1/2 cup diced bell pepper
• 2 tsp. diced pickled jalapeno pepper slices
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped prosciutto
• 1 tsp. fresh chopped basil
• 1 tsp. fresh chopped rosemary
• salt, oregano and pepper to taste
• 1 Tbsp. oilve oil

Preheat oven with pizza stone to 500°F. Evenly spread the olive oil over the top of your rolled-out pizza crust. Top with BBQ sauce and chopped onion, then both cheeses (reserving 1/4 cup of each, followed by bell peppers, jalapenos and prosciutto.

Top with both reserved cheeses, basil and rosemary. Add salt, pepper and oregano. Cook in oven for approximately 14 minutes (turning once mid-way), or until crust is golden brown. Gouda does not melt as smoothly as mozzarella so don’t be concerned if it still looks slightly un-melted. If the rest of the pie looks ready, remove it from the oven, let cool and enjoy!

ON-TV was what was known as a “scrambled UHF” service, the height of broadcast sophistication at the time.  During the day, the UHF station (channel 52 where I grew up) aired its regular programming grid of Hercules cartoons and William Bendix in Life of Riley reruns.  But at 7 in the evening, ON-TV would begin transmitting recent motion pictures over the air to the station, and the image would immediately scramble on home televisions, the sound cutting out entirely.  In order to watch the movies, a converter box with a single “on-off” knob had to be rented for a whopping nineteen dollars a month.

Nineteen dollars a month.  I was ushered into puberty for the price of nineteen dollars a month.

ON-TV gave me the first opportunity to see movies which my yet-to-hit-double-digit age would have prevented me from seeing in an actual theatre.  And unlike the networks, ON-TV played the films totally uncut and unedited, finally allowing me to obtain a meager grasp of understanding on the subject of sex.  Smokey and the Bandit, Silver Streak, Animal House, The Deep… to this day I can’t watch any of them without still experiencing a faint twitch of pre-adolescent Catholic guilt.

It was one regular school night at home when my parents and sister came together in the living room to watch a movie called  The Spy Who Loved Me, and my mother allowed me to watch with them.  No one in my family was particularly fond of James Bond, so I had no idea what to expect.  But this was the only movie playing on the only movie channel the family had, so it was automatically an event.

By the time the opening sequence –  featuring not one, but two love-making scenes and a ski chase down the side of an Austrian mountain – gave way to Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does it Better” and the film’s titles, accompanied by a bevy of naked women, swollen in all the right places, trampolining through the air and doing cartwheels on the tops of semi-automatic pistols, I was pretty sure I was watching the greatest motion picture ever produced.

I watched The Spy Who Loved Me every single time it played over the next four weeks. And ON-TV did not license a great deal of titles, so it played a lot.  Sometimes it was on early in the evening, sometimes it didn’t start until midnight.  On the weekends, when ON-TV broadcast all day, it might play once in the morning and again that same afternoon.  I was grateful not to be involved in sports or any other organized activities that would require my leaving the house for any extended period of time and result in my missing a screening.

Not only did I quickly commit the dialogue to memory, I also worked on both my British and Russian accents, and I transformed all my Star Wars action figures into sophisticated martini-drinking secret agents, female helicopter assassins, microfilm smugglers, super-sized villains who lived under the surface of the ocean, and a seven foot henchmen with steel teeth who could tear through the flesh of a man-eating shark.  Jaws was way more of a bad-ass than Darth Vader ever could ever even hope to be.

I tore the shades off my bedroom lamps and positioned them to create silhouettes of myself against the wall as I fired finger guns at unseen villains and tried to devise a method that would allow me to jump up and down on my bed in slow-motion.  It was clear to me that there was never going to be another film that impressed, awed and gripped me as much as this film had.

Finally, I worked up the nerve to corner my mom in the hallway bathroom and beg her to let me stay up until 3 am that Saturday night to watch the final airing of The Spy Who Loved Me.  She set down her hair curler, swayed her concerned head from one side to the other and asked, “If you like it that much, why don’t I just drive you to the video store and you can rent the others?”

I stared up at her.  She stared down at me.

I think she was waiting for me to take her up on the offer.  Or to thank her for being so generous.  Or to barrel down the hallway to my bedroom, slap on my shoes, and run out to the car.

But I couldn’t do any of those things.  I had momentarily exited my body, and I needed a moment to re-claim an ability to comprehend her words.  Once I did that, I pulled in my shoulders, balled my hands into finger fists, pushed them against my temples and screamed at her, “There’s MORE THAN ONE!!???”

By the end of the next month, Dr. No, The Man with the Golden Gun and every 007 film in between had run through our gargantuan RCA video cassette recorder (purchased for a mere $800).  I had slowly and reluctantly accepted Sean Connery in the role and given half a nod to George Lazenby who held up the franchise a single time with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, a movie I enjoy much more now but was bored to tears by as a child.

But there’s nothing like Roger Moore as James Bond.  Actually, there’s nothing like Roger Moore as James Bond specifically in The Spy Who Loved Me because while he more than redeems himself in nearly every one of his outings as 007, some of them don’t live up to the successful casting, production elements, stunt work, locations and score of Spy, a movie I proudly point to as having sparked the first inexhaustible obsession of many I’ve developed in my life.

Hula Heat Pizza

Here are links to recipes for homemade pizza crust and sauce.  You’ll need between 1 1/2 and 2 cups of sauce

• 3 Tbsp olive oil, separated
• 1/4 large white onion, sliced and spread into ringlets
• 5 slices center-cut bacon
• 2 cups shredded (or cubed as I did) mozzarella cheese
• 1 medium beefsteak tomato, sliced
• 1/4 -1/2 large bell pepper, diced
• 1 Tbsp pickled jalapeno slices, drained and diced
• 6-8 ounces crushed or cubed pineapple, drained if from the can
• 1/2 tsp black pepper (plus additional to taste)
• 1 tsp oregano
• 2 tsp red pepper flakes (1 to bake into the crust, the other to top the pizza)
• 1/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• Salt to taste

Pre-heat your oven and pizza stone to 500 degrees F.

Use 1 tablespoon of oil to grill your onions, until they are soft and brown.  Use the other tablespoon to fry your bacon.

Spread the final tablespoon of oil over your pizza crust.  Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes over the top, along with some salt and pepper to taste.  Slide the crust onto your pizza stone and let cook for 2-3 minutes, then pull it out.  If there are any bubbles in the crust, press them down lightly with the back of a spoon, but you don’t have to worry too much about them.  We’re about to weigh everything down with the toppings.

Spread your sauce out evenly over the crust, then add your grilled onions, followed by the tomatoes and the mozzarella.  On top the mozzarella, spread the pineapple, jalapeno, and bell pepper evenly.  Top with the rest of the red pepper flakes, black pepper and oregano.  Finally, sprinkle the shredded sharp cheddar over the top for added color.

Return the pizza to the oven and back for another 8-10 minutes or until cheese and your crust have both turned golden brown.  Remove, let cool, and enjoy!

Stage Fright clearly has nothing to offer you.  Stick with Psycho.

For months now, MG and I have regularly observed a Friday night tradition of homemade pizza and movie-watching at Chez Tv Food and Drink.  It’s become such a ritual that I generally start mentally nominating film contenders and potential pizza toppings as early as the Wednesday before.  All the necessary ingredients are in-house by Thursday night, and if the selected film can’t be found via DVR search or on the living room shelves, an expedition to local DVD retailers is commissioned until the required title is smoked out and bagged.

And all of that happens before I even get to the cleaning of the house.  The living room must be in perfect order.  Throw pillows appropriately placed.  Stray books, sneakers, and electronic gear stowed away.  Aquarium cleaned and filled.  Glass tabletops free of all smudges and rings.  Curtains opened so the lights from the balcony candles are able to reflect their charm into the window panes.  Ipod turned on to the “Cocktail Hour” playlist featuring over 500 of my favorite lounge tunes, exotica, and Bond soundtracks.

And my OCD goes double for the kitchen.  Countertops must be scrubbed down and free of any unnecessary appliances. Dirty dishes are washed, dried and put away.  Cutting boards set out along with all appropriate knives and the rolling pin for the pizza dough.  By the time MG arrives from work, I have the entirety of that night’s pizza built and ready to hit the oven.  Then together we count three, hoist up the pie via the slice of parchment paper underneath, and transport it onto the pizza stone, which has been heating in the oven at 500°F for no less than thirty minutes.  Once the oven door is kicked closed, I make our drinks and we head to the living room to discuss the day for the next 12-18 minutes until it’s time to slice up our dinner, kill the lights, and start our movie.

Pizza and a Movie night – hardly a new concept, though I don’t know if anyone in the history of Pizza and Movie Nights has taken it as seriously as I do.

There wasn’t more behind the decision to make Greek Pizza this past week beyond a half-full jar of kalamata olives taking up valuable refrigerator door space.  I had purchased them specifically to make a Mediterranean burger recipe that most certainly did not result in a resounding “Opa!” from me.  And since, aside from the green ones I toss into my martinis, I don’t use olives for anything, the kalamatas had to go!  They added a nice salty touch to this pizza, but I wouldn’t recommend more than a 1/4 cup, well-diced and spread evenly over the top.  They are a potent force, and too much can completely overrun the flavor of the pie.

Along with the feta cheese, spinach, tomatoes and fresh rosemary, I dressed the pizza up with chopped pancetta because I can’t imagine ever making a pizza that doesn’t include some form of meat product.  The sauce was my standard homemade habanero (recipe below), which, if you prefer less heat, can be made without the single pepper inclusion. Most of the sauces I found in what were claiming to be “authentic” Greek pizzas were for some reason, mayonnaise-based, something I had no interest in even giving a shot.

The movie selection had a little more thought behind it.  Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright is a mostly-forgotten film, and it’s not entirely undeserved.  Neither total thriller nor total mystery, swaying unevenly between light-heartedness and tense character conflicts, and with a performance from Marlene Dietrich that wipes co-stars Jane Wyman, Richard Todd and Michael Wilding immediately from all memory banks, this feels more like a re-charging of Hitchcock’s batteries on his way to helming the brilliant Strangers on a Train, which immediately followed this film.

Wyman plays Eve Gill, an aspiring acting student at England’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Artt who goes undercover as a maid working for famed actress-singer Charlotte Inwood (Dietrich) in an attempt to unmask her as true culprit in the murder of Inwood’s husband, for which Eve’s boyfriend (Todd) is currently under suspicion.

Despite its unevenness in tone and pacing, there are several memorable elements in Stage Fright.  Most notably is the wonderfully-shot flashback that occurs in the first twenty minutes of the film.  To say anything more would be giving away a vital plot point, but if you intend to see this movie and want to go in completely unbiased, stay away from any and all reviews, as this flashback is almost always the first thing mentioned, and often, lambasted.

Unfortunately, the debate over the merits of this flashback has overshadowed so many other satisfying “Hitchcockian” moments in the film, including a taut climax in the prop catacombs underneath a vacant theatre house, an innocent young boy scout tricked into taunting Charlotte with a bloodied kewpie doll, and a scene-stealing turn from horse-toothed character actress Joyce Grenfell as a shooting gallery attendant inviting one and all to “come and shoot some lovely ducks!”

And then… there is that musical number.

The Greek pizza definitely surpassed the film in terms of artistic success.  There was a nice balance between salty and tangy, crumbly and smooth, and each bite put a different ingredient – pancetta, feta, rosemary, olive – to the forefront.  By contrast, the movie we paired it with was repetitive and a little bland in places, while charming and enthralling in others.  Much like Dietrich’s musical number, there’s a bit of sleepy indifference that Stage Fright is never quite able to escape.

Greek Pizza

For homemade pizza dough, click here.  For homemade sauce with a bit of a habanero kick, click here. Otherwise, a 12-inch pizza crust and two cups of sauce should suffice.

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 cup fresh baby spinach
• 2 Roma tomatoes, sliced
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese, grated (or if you’re cutting the cheese into slices, as I did with the pie in these pics, you want just enough for a one-laer canopy over your sauce, spinach and tomatoes.  Don’t worry – there’s more cheese to come!!)
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup Kalamata olives, diced (their flavor is potent, so the amount you use is entirely up to you.  I went on the low end and found that it was more than enough for me)
• 3/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled fine
• 1/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese (this really isn’t necessary, but it adds some terrific color)
• 3/4 cup pancetta, chopped
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped

You could also add in 1/2 cup of sliced red onions and 1/2 cut of chopped oil-packed sun dried tomatoes.  Some chopped green bell peppers would add some great color as well.

Preheat your oven and pizza stone at 500°F for at least thirty minutes.  Spread the olive oil over the edges of your pizza dough to get that nice golden brown hue when it’s fully cooked.  Spread your sauce thinly and evenly, and then add your baby spinach and your tomatoes, followed by the mozzarella, cheddar, olives, feta and pancetta.  Top with black pepper, red pepper flakes and rosemary.  Cook for 11-14 minutes or until edges of the crust are crispy brown and the cheese is bubbly and slightly browned as well.

For the first time in over three years, I’m a non-working television producer.  As of today, I have been without a job for eight whole days.  Breaking it down, that’s 192 hours, which isn’t so bad.  Heck, I’ve slept more than 192 hours straight on several different occasions.

You can also think of it as 11,520 minutes, which starts to sound a little frightening… though not as frightening as 991,200 seconds.  Holy smokes!  I’ve been a non-working producer for 991,200 seconds?  It’s true what they say about life… it really passes you by before you know it.

You may have noticed that I’m using the term “non-working,” which I think is much nicer than “unemployed,” don’t you?  In fact, if we put our minds to it, we can put a much nicer spin on any unfortunate situation just by tinkering a bit with word choices.  Examples:  My show wasn’t “canceled.”  It just “concluded its run.”  My financial situation hasn’t “stagnated.”  It’s merely “awaiting an upcoming monetary installment.”  You’re not “old.”  You’re simply “well seasoned!”

I’m doing my best to stay in the moment, which is what everyone is telling me I need to do.  Actually, before they tell me to stay in the moment, they ask that question all “non-working” producers just love to hear: “So… now what?”

It’s like they think I keep thirty or forty fully developed careers on stand-by for just such an occasion.  “Well, let me take a look at my handy list here… oh!  Next up is ice cream man.  Perfect!  Summer is just around the corner.  Kids are out of school.  All I need is a little paper hat and a van that plays “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” and I’m right back in the game!

People also do their best to get you very excited about having potentially endless free time on your hands.  “Think of all the things you can do now!” they encourage brightly, “Re-decorate!  Write a novel! Run a marathon!”  Why in god’s name would I want to do any of those things?  Those sound worse than having to go to work every day.  Even if I was independently wealthy, I don’t think any of those things would interest me.

I appreciate all the words of encouragement, instructions on what to do when life gives me lemons, and the reminders that I’m only about thirty work years away from having to scoop up french fries and assemble Happy Meal boxes if I don’t play my cards right.

But for the next 991,200 seconds, I think I will focus on making pizza.

Have you listened to a steaming hot pizza pie just out of the oven recently? The way it sizzles and hisses as the cheese bubbles pop hyperactively from one end of the crust to the other? That aroma of tangy sweet and spicy sauce snaking its way through your kitchen? Even those charred little pockets of mozzarella left behind on the walls of your oven take on a fragrant reminder the next morning… man, I love pizza!

And that’s… what’s now.

So if you’re in the Hollywood area, you should definitely stop by and snag yourself a slice. And don’t worry about gaining weight. At Tv Food and Drink, your butt never looks “fat.” It merely looks “super existent.”

I went to my pizza guru for this recipe, My Year on the Grill, who recommends that you cover the sliced tomatoes, chicken and the sauce with the cheese, and let them melt down into the ingredient floors below.  he recommends Scamorza, but mozzarella of course works fine too.  Also, he grills the red onion rings before putting them on to the pizza, but MG is not a red onion fan, so I went with a light sprinkling of diced white onion (Year on the Grill uses the rings from one entire red onion).

• Crust of choice, premade or homemade
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper
• BBQ sauce of choice
• Scamorza Cheese slices
• cooked chicken… about 2 cups, shredded
• 1 red onion, sliced and separated into rings, grilled
• 3 Roma Tomatoes sliced thin

Preheat oven and pizza stone (or heavy baking sheet) to 500 degrees for at least 30 minutes.

Roll your crust out on parchment paper to your likeness.  Brush Olive oil around the edges. Salt and pepper the crust.

Layer the BBQ sauce to within 1/2 inch of the edge.  Top with Chicken, cheese slices onions and then more cheese
Bake for 10 minutes until the cheese starts to bubble.  Be sure to let cool sufficiently before cutting.

Mozzarella, Gorgonzola and Cheddar cheeses, andouille sausage and spinach with Alfredo sauce.

I feel badly for whoever is not eating this tonight.