Pasta Cleaner, Esquire
In line with my enjoyment of livin’ la vida et cetera, I have recently scored a volunteer post as a Production Assistant for an independent South Asian-focused film being shot in the Bay Area. “Production Assistant” is basically a euphemism for Director’s Bitch. There are about six of us, and we fill in for any number of tasks that may be required: cleaning up the set, moving furniture around, procuring wardrobe changes, running out to get food, etc. Being the token brown female in the group, I have been generally profiled into suitable menial tasks such as ironing saris and helping the cook. I happily comply, figuring that no experience is a wasted experience, especially if it provides an opportunity for a good story.
“The cook” is also a volunteer — an extremely kind, if somewhat frazzled woman in her 50′s with a New York accent and a rather pronounced propensity for clumsiness. For the past several days, when not cooking, she had been running around the set looking quite jittery and muttering to herself about how unhappy she was about the budget constraints for the food, and the wastefulness and ingratitude of crew members. Yesterday, I was asked to help her prepare some pasta for our group of about 20.
She asked me to throw the pasta in the pot while she scurried around serving tea and making preparations for the pasta sauce. I threw the four large bags of pasta into the pot, and it came to a decent boil about 10-12 minutes later. Meanwhile, we chatted about what had brought us to that set. She mentioned that she had experimented with different careers, traveled, met lots of people, but was essentially still broke, unsettled, and searching for the right path, and I welcomed her to the club. But, I pointed out, we were both still approaching life with openness and willing to dabble in new things and encounter new people, and that had to count for something.
For whatever reason, the family in whose home we were shooting didn’t seem to have any appropriately sized strainer, so the cook pondered an alternative method to drain the pasta: she would lift up the pot, and I would slide a plate over it to filter out the water into the sink. That seemed straightforward enough, so I lifted up the plate in preparation for the filtration.
The next thing I knew, the boiling water had scalded my thighs, and the pasta was all over the crusty kitchen floor, and the cook was alternating gaping at both, with her arms still outstretched in flummoxed petrification.
