Guest blog: sharing a flat with the director of a wing film
A post by my former apartment-mate, Peter Kononczuk (a Briton with Polish roots):
Sharing an apartment with a man on a mission can be tricky. And Matt Reynolds had found his mission.
After seven hours or so at his day job, reporting on the Polish financial world for the Reuters news agency, Reynolds (we called each other by our surnames) would march into our Warsaw Flat, throw off his coat and set about his real work: making a chicken wing documentary.
“I need to be online in five minutes!” he would say, ordering me off the computer. “It’s work, baby. Important.”
It’s hard to argue with a flatmate who hears destiny calling. I would reluctantly log off and hand over the apartment’s only computer – Reynolds’s Reuters laptop – with internet access.
Quirky, individualistic, or downright strange to outsiders, Reynolds’s big project made perfect sense to him. This was a chance to combine his love of spicy American chicken wings with his ambition to become a filmmaker and to head off for a road adventure.
Amid the flurry of writing scripts and cross-continental dealmaking, socializing took a back seat. When I had visitors around, Reynolds, often shirtless and sprawled out on our living room couch, his head propped up by a bulky, graying duvet, would look up and say,” Hi, nice to meet you. Don’t mind me,” and continue typing on the laptop – now balanced on his stomach.
In the last three months we shared an apartment, I saw more movies than in the previous three years. Most nights Reynolds sought inspiration in his favorite directors. I must have seen the Big Lebowski six times.
Meanwhile, Reynolds looked more and more like the long-haird layabout hero of his favourite film. For a Halloween fancy dress party, I spent hours calling professional costume rental shops. Reynolds put on a bathrobe and slippers. People stared as we trudged to a nightclub. There were more stares inside the club, latently hostile from men, inquisitive from women.
“Guess who I am,” Reynolds, sipping a beer, asked a girl.
“No idea,” she replied.
“Jeff Lebowski,” he said. The girl’s face was blank. But then she smiled. A man who arrives at a downtown club on a busy Saturday night wearing just a bathrobe is either unhinged or ultraconfident. Reynolds got the benefit of the doubt.
Sometimes we would argue. About differences in British and American culture, about women, about films and food.
“People tour France New York State
“It’s not the same,” I told him. “French cuisine and American chicken wings are in different leagues.”
Reynolds glared. “I don’t see the difference. Unless you’re a French food snob. Or anti-American. Food that tastes good is food that tastes good.”
Reynolds was usually the first to offer a truce when we were in danger of needling each other too far, which was often. But mostly sharing an apartment was fun. Our wing parties were a hit. Rather they were Reynolds’s parties, a chance to fine-tune his chicken wing expertise ahead of his movie.
I chopped up pieces of chicken with a cleaver. Reynolds stirred huge, borrowed pots of sizzling superheated oil. Smoke belched out of the kitchen, causing arriving guests to splutter.
Vodka flowed. Stories were recounted in at least five languages. Poles told jokes to Americans. A Hawaiian flirted with a Czech.
“The Reuters job is killing his soul,” I told a girl with beautiful bright eyes who had asked about the movie. “So it’s more than a film about food. It’s about a journey from repentance to redemption.”
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.
Posted by: joann | August 31, 2007 at 02:23 AM