Interview: Aaron Woolf, director of King Corn

The A.V. Club, Madison print edition, April 12, 2007 Link

Fields Of Green, Plates Of Beige

Corn products put the color in what Aaron Woolf calls “the big bad beige foods”—soda and chicken nuggets, for example. For their documentary King Corn, screening this weekend at the Wisconsin Film Festival, Woolf and friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis grew an acre of corn in Iowa, then tracked the product as it turned into some of the worst foods Americans eat, whether in the form of livestock feed or food coloring. Woolf spoke to The A.V. Club about the challenges and shocks of corn-centric filmmaking.

The A.V. Club: You moved from Baltimore to Iowa for college. What did you think of the cornfields then?

Aaron Woolf: I thought that those fields were so beautiful and otherworldly. To go from no knowledge of that landscape and that world to being awed and wowed by it, and then 10 years later to go back—we’ve denuded the prairie and created this very frightening landscape. It’s a massive swing in how you perceive those fields.

AVC: It must be hard to talk to a wider audience about all these ingredients that sound like gibberish on a food label, not to mention that it all connects back to corn.

AW: Oh my God, can you imagine? It was my job to go out and try to raise the money initially, and I went back to some of the people that had funded some of my previous stuff, and said, “Oh, there’s this incredible story, and we’re gonna make a film about agricultural subsidies and corn,” and you’d just watch their faces glaze over.

AVC: Do you find yourself trying to avoid foods that contain corn?

AW: Curt and Ian are always eating fast food throughout the film, I think partly to say that one of the great ironies is that you move to an area like the Iowa countryside, where so much of America’s food is grown, and it’s very hard to find anything to eat. You can’t eat any of the food grown in the fields, ’cause it’s all inedible until it’s processed, and the food in the restaurants is usually some re-packaged version of the commodity crops. It didn’t really change the way we ate too much, because that’s all we could eat. I think one of the scariest things that’s happening right now is that we’re growing into this two-food society. People who live on the coasts or in university towns have access to these co-ops and natural food markets and farmer’s markets and community-supported agriculture programs, and people who don’t don’t get fresh produce. They get all sorts of processed foods, and I think that’s the real tragedy.

AVC: So there’s no hope for a corn-free-food movement?

AW: Well, one of the things I also hope people take away from this film is that corn is not bad. Some corn does some things very well. It’s just that we shouldn’t be encouraging the over-production of corn year after year by subsidizing it this way, because that’s what makes the fast food so cheap. If a Happy Meal cost $4 or $5, then people might think, oh, I’ll get some broccoli tonight instead of eating McDonald’s.

Throw Out Those Catalogues

The A.V. Club, Madison print edition, Dec. 21 2006

By now it’s too late to order Christmas gifts from your major mail-order and Internet food vendors and get them shipped on time. The A.V. Club explains, item by item, why you’re better off doing your last-minute shopping here in Madison.

Twelve Coffees of Christmas ($39.95)
Tired of coffee that just tastes like coffee? How about coffees that have been forced to taste like twelve other things, including egg nog, gingerbread, candy cane, and chocolate cherry?
Where To Get It: Harryanddavid.com
Turnoff: By now it’s just too late to enjoy this along the proper timeline. Christmas is ruined! Also, flavored coffees are often disgusting. Maybe these ones aren’t, but you just never know until they’ve already got your money.
Local Alternative: Harry and David’s gift pack offers only about a pound of coffee for a price that could buy you three or four from any number of places around town. If you must have theme with that, Ancora Coffee Roasters’ (various locations, see ancora-coffee.com) Holiday Blend combines Rwandan and Kona coffees, with none of that flavoring nonsense.

Moose Munch Basket ($49.95)
Harry and David has slapped the name “Moose Munch” all over many of its products, including its caramel popcorn, popcorn balls, coffee, and more. The name is supposed to be endearing, but it really sounds like the stuff should come in a feedbag.
Where To Get It: Harryanddavid.com
Turnoff: While moose are majestic creatures, watching them eat is not appetizing.
Local Alternative: Clary’s Gourmet Popcorn (105 State St., 255-2994) is selling its usual popcorn treats with some moderate, non-appetite-disrupting themes (red-and-green popcorn, etc.). If you still crave some moose in your life, Clary’s has tins decorated with the critters.

Any Smithfield Ham (Various prices)
For generations, the ham purveyors of Smithfield, Virginia, have ham-ified the holidays, heaping up all the hulking ham you can stand to cram into your ham-hole. Ham!
Where To Get It: Smithfieldhams.com
Turnoff: Smithfield’s hams look huge, threatening, and often grotesque in the catalogue photos. If you dropped one of them into Starship Troopers, it’d get shot to bits in no time flat.
Local Alternative: The beast in you may awaken from a ham-induced coma for the much-classier bison and ostrich roast options at Artamos Specialty Meats & Deli (714 S. Whitney Way, 442-5929).

Peppermint Martini Tray ($99.95)
Not only does it come with peppermint martini mix, it also includes a “snowflake-themed bar towel,” peppermint truffles, peppermint bark, and a serving tray.
Where To Get It: Harryanddavid.com
Turnoff: Who wants to sip on a peppermint martini after taking the brats to get peppermint ice cream, adjusting the giant plastic candy canes in the front yard, and throwing away friends’ joke gifts of peppermint condoms? (Editor’s Note: The A.V. Club made up peppermint condoms on a whim, only to do an Internet search and find that peppermint condoms do indeed exist.)
Local Alternative: Go to any of Madison’s respectable local bars. Order a martini. Observe the simple flavors that have made the martini a worldwide favorite for decades. Notice how none of them are peppermint. — Scott Gordon

Going Overboard at Ravinia

(A.V. Club, Chicago print edition, June 29, 2006)

Click for legible jpeg.

Where wine is king

The A.V. Club, Madison print edition, Nov. 2 2006

How often do most people get to sample a formidable gauntlet of wines and eat lobster mashed potatoes out of a plastic cup (with a plastic fork that looks like fine silverware) while watching a mild-mannered chef competition from the metal bleachers inside the incongruously drafty Alliant Energy Center’s exhibition hall? The A.V. Club, for one, pounced on the chance to do just that on Friday, Oct. 20, when The Madison Food And Wine Show opened.

The show is like sample day at the supermarket, only bigger, fancier, and with booze—and all the excess and disorientation that implies. Food might be billed first, but wine is king. And even the people who aren’t selling wine here have a shrewd eye toward matching their products with wine. Not sure if you should pair that piece of havarti on a toothpick with that Dixie cup of cab-sav? Check your handy-dandy wine-and-cheese-pairing wheel, courtesy of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.

Food and beverage divination devices aren’t the only swag up for grabs at the show. When visitors first enter the hall, they pick up a commemorative Food And Wine Show wine glass, and sample wine after wine from it throughout the evening. Some people use it for the beer tastings too. (Capital Brewery and Redhook Ale Brewery are here with their fine brews, though the wine options far outnumber the beer options.)

At most of the wine booths, the idea is to keep the line moving and enjoy the stuff without getting too fussy about it. But for wine showoffs, there’s a smelling contest. Entrants sniff at little scented Q-Tips inside wine glasses and match what they smell to a list of flavors for a chance to win a set of glasses. Among the aromas is “cut hay.” Remarking that this is weird, The A.V. Club gets hit with a “gotcha!”—many wines have that aroma. Are the wine world’s many affluent, urban newbies also studying up on farm smells?

If anything, American wineries seem to keep such things at a pleasant distance in the minds of wine drinkers, with names that are often reminiscent of suburban streets—vague, pleasant, perhaps with a dignified nod to nature or history. White Winter Winery, Von Stiehl Winery, Cedar Creek Winery—replace “Winery” with “Lane,” “Circle,” or “Court” and you’ve got yourself a respectable subdivision. There are always exceptions, though, like Modesto, California’s Barefoot Wine. One of the men at Barefoot’s booth tells The A.V. Club that his decidedly unpretentious presentation (which includes fake palm trees) is aimed at just about any wine consumer, but the booth projects a very Jimmy-Buffet-goes-to-Mardi-Gras vibe. Especially when a woman puts on one of the booth’s free plastic beaded necklaces (complete with a Barefoot-logo medallion).

Forsaking the show’s reigning elegance entirely, though, is Oregon’s Bee Barf Honey. “That’s what it is!” one of the women at the Bee Barf booth says matter-of-factly. (“Bee Vomit” was an early candidate, but didn’t have the same alliterative snap.) The A.V. Club asks her if she feels out of place among so many dignified-sounding companies. She admits the atmosphere can get a bit “snooty,” and adds: “But you know what? We drink the wine. We’re not above it.”