Angel's Bread and Butter

"They can't close the bakeshop because it's their bread and butter," says Ian,  as he laughs at how witty his own pun was. The rest of us in the circle just laughed at how funny he found his own joke to be. He was talking about the plot of the film, Angel's Bread, which he just saw at the Norris Theater in USC. 

Angel's Bread is one of my earlier works, about a struggling cellist who finds inspiration by working in a bakeshop assisting a woman 13 years older than he is. It's a cute little movie about music, pastries, and a May-December affair (which apparently is a term people don't use anymore. According to a friend of mine, the correct modern word to employ is "cougar-ing"). Cougar-ing it is then. 

I find it quite interesting how well Angel's Bread played in this audience. To be perfectly honest, of the two films I screened, I had more faith in How To Eat Bacon as a movie because I thought it was better crafted. When I directed AB I was younger and less experienced. If anything AB made BACON a better film (in my humble opinion) because I learned so much from it. Angel's Bread is also more commercial and formula in concept and execution. 

However people kept coming up to me after the screening saying how much they enjoyed AB--some saying more than BACON, in fact. The consensus is that they had a great time watching it. I guess part of the reason is that BACON is a movie that is very taste-specific. While smartly written (I didn't write it), clever in concept, and visually appealing, its comedy leans towards absurd if not irreverent, and so, of course, it will not appeal to everyone. 

Meanwhile AB is just easy, breezy, and fun as a story. Just goes to show that really sometimes a formula is a formula because it works. People like them. And that just because something is mainstream it shouldn't be discounted.  In fact to use Ian's words, I shouldn't close the "bakeshop" for movies like AB just yet (or even at all), because movies like these just might become my bread and butter in the future.