‘Dead Celebrity’ chef and author Frank DeCaro says his series’s latest incarnation is about spreading the love for deceased entertainers through their favorite foods — with a holiday twist.  

The Protagonist does not shy away from dark and morbid content, which is why my ears perked when I heard about comedic entertainer Frank DeCaro’s Dead Celebrity Cookbook series.

DeCaro emphasizes, however, the series is more about promoting great performers than capitalizing on their deaths, a shock-value title or even the very recipes themselves.

DeCaro said he’s regularly frustrated at the younger generation’s lack of awareness about some of entertainment’s greatest deceased stars. He sees his project as a “spoonful of sugar” in making sure certain important names are remembered well after their time.

“I wanted to be able to pass along some pop culture history and so that was part of it,” he said, of the series’s origin. “You need to know who these people are — if Lady Gaga can know who Liberace is, so can you.”

“If a show meant a lot to me, I’d slip in a recipe,” he explained. “Even if it only had one deceased star.”

I asked DeCaro if including a recently deceased performer ever struck him as taboo or if his books garnered any negative reactions for their grimness.

“Once they go, I want to get them in the book,” he added, emphasizing it’s never “too soon,” especially since his series is all about paying tribute. The reactions from readers have been overwhelmingly positive as well. “Joey Arias was so happy I included Klaus Nomi,” he said. “Everyone in the book is someone I admire.”

Following the success of the original Dead Celebrity Cookbook, DeCaro is releasing The Dead Celebrity Cookbook Presents Christmas in Tinseltown: Celebrity Recipes from Six Feet Under the Mistletoe just in time for the holidays.

The holiday edition will feature recipes from stars who have passed, like Dick Clark, Robert Mitchum and several recipes from Miracle on 34th Street actors. DeCaro said the film was a jackpot in terms of celebrity recipes.

As evidence this book is largely about paying homage to entertainment greats and little else, DeCaro concedes some of the recipes are actually downright disastrous. A few of the recipes’ names are even a giveaway to this end, such as Lucille Ball’s “Chinese-y thing.” (Just because you’re a great entertainer, doesn’t mean you’re a great cook or culinary innovator.)

“The recipe I always make fun of is Isabel Sanford’s Boston Chicken,” said DeCaro. The recipe’s sauce calls for Russian dressing, onion soup mix, pineapple and apricot jam.

“We call it Chicken a la Barf,” said DeCaro. He assured me it didn’t change his love for Isabel Sanford.

If anything, hopefully DeCaro’s book can humanize these stars a bit for readers too.

“There’s a recipe in the new book that’s just downright creepy,” added DeCaro, describing something like jelly consomme flakes in avocado. He made a retching noise over the phone as he described the recipe, and I was right there with him.

“But I love me some Bea Arthur,” he continued. “Even if you don’t try that recipe, you certainly need to watch the bootleg Star Wars holiday special.”

Of course the series also has its major culinary successes. One consistent favorite is Katharine Hepburn’s brownies from the original book.

“You don’t really want to eat Elvis’s peanut-butter-bacon-whatever,” DeCaro pointed out, “but people always say ‘make those [brownies] again.’”

Check out Frank DeCaro’s books for yourself: www.deadcelebritycookbook.com

It seems Belzer, in his own right, has accrued a respectable, dedicated following of conspiracy theorists. Still, I found myself not wanting to take this seriously, waiting for the punchline to fly out of Belzer’s mouth, conditioned to expect wry one-liners from the slight, brazen actor. “This is a publicity stunt right?” I thought at least once. Law & Order: SVU has after all, in my mind, been suffering immensely in recent years.

Jokes aside, I was surprised to find Belzer was completely serious about the whole thing. Belzer loves — lives even — a “good” conspiracy. This would come as no surprise to someone familiar with his literary repertoire — his first book UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Believe was published 12 years ago.    

Crowd members were there to hear him read from his latest novel, however, Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country’s Most Controversial Cover-Ups. Actually, what this crowd really wanted was to be heard as they spouted off their own favorite — or most contentious — conspiracy theories. People are inclined to trust “good-cop” Belzer and want to open up to him, evidenced by bookstore personnel literally dragging audience members away after they had their books signed. 

“But what about….” they would trail off, shooed away by employees.

“Tell us you’re running for president!” shouted one audience member.

At one point, Belzer put the whole event on pause to help a crying child locate its mother elsewhere in the store. “Let’s put a bullet in that parent’s head,” he said, returning to the crowd, to offset the nurturing gesture.

It’s way more fun to see a seasoned actor and stand-up comic read from his book than your average author, who isn’t sure how to publicly appeal to his audience. Belzer knew what the people wanted, and , a renaissance man, he delivered. He only read from the book’s introductory “warning,” before opening up the forum.

Only one brief mention of Belzer’s Law & Order career was made (“Is it a conspiracy you and Ice-T don’t get more screen time?”), which he laughed off with grace, preferring to get back to the subject at hand. (In case you were wondering, real-life Belzer is essentially Detective Munch, but with the limelight he’s always craved.)

“Is there one big grand conspiracy in the world?” said Belzer, of a question he’s often asked. “I don’t think there is. Sometimes dark forces have a common interest and come together to do a big thing. Every once in awhile the bad guys have to take care of a thing.”

It seems Belzer feels he has a unique duty to expose the conspiracies he does. “I wish I could be writing joke books,” he said. “But I believe everything is a conspiracy until you prove it’s not a conspiracy. People are ready for no BS anymore.”

“Thank you for exposing these conspiracies,” one elderly audience member responded.

Richard Belzer is currently writing three more books about conspiracies, “not to brag,” he says.

By Alissa Fleck 

This Year's NY Tropfest - photo by Tropfest

It’s become a park staple by now— every Monday throughout the summer a classic movie is shown in front of Bryant Park’s iconic lawn. From Psycho to Wizard of Oz to Indiana Jones, the midtown cinematic summer series continues to provide us a big screen to see the Alfred Hitchcocks, the George Lucases, and the Humphrey Bogarts of Hollywood. And we don’t complain. I, personally, love it. I go almost every Monday.

This weekend, though, was a refreshing new taste of cinema. Instead of the classics that made what movies are today, the park teamed up with Hugh Jackman (who is as good a host as he is an actor) to deliver terse, snappy, identifiable short films to a Saturday-evening crowd.

The quirky Australian-based Tropfest, self-dubbed “the world’s largest short film festival,” had its inaugural New York edition this weekend, and served as a spot for casual and fervent moviegoers as well as the fest’s star-studded judge panel.

And as far as someone who has attended prior Tropfests before, this year’s debut was a success.

“I was planning (on coming), because I’m from Sydney,” said Nicole… from Sydney. “I had been to one in Sydney, and (in New York) there’s a lot of people… but it’s the same kind of vibe.”

“She invited me,” echoed Luke, speaking about his Australian companion. “I had no idea what it was but I came and was pleasantly surprised, I really enjoyed it.”

“Looking for the strength of the idea, rather than slickness or technical merit,” the festival prides itself in giving opportunities to aspiring and news filmmakers. It “whittles” a pool of hundreds of entries down to eight, and awards $20,000 to the film the celebrity panel —this Tropfest featured Bridemaids’s Rose Byrne, 30 Rock’s Judah Friedlander, Dark Horse’s Ted Hope, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Scott Foundas— deems best at the end of the night. According to Jackman’s preface, and the festival’s site, there are only a few restrictions regarding film production. The only rules are that films cannot exceed seven minutes and must include a TSI— the Tropfest Signature Item.

(This year’s New York TSI, fittingly, was a bagel. All films, oddly enough, had a bagel make a cameo at one point in the film (see above: quirky).)

It turns out, over 10,000 people, a packed house by Bryant Park standards, were interested enough to attend the fest and take a peak at the country’s eight best short films. It seems they weren’t disappointed.

“It was a spur of the moment thing for me, and I’m glad I came,” said Mike, who thought Elvis: The Lonely Hunter of Circle Beach should have won. “I enjoyed the films immensely, and yeah I’ll definitely be coming back for next year.

The fest’s raconteurs used their formatting freedom and time restrictions as a prompt for some interesting narration and ideas. Despite an anacoluthic Killer Bagels from Outerspace, films were hilarious (Elvis), intense (Elevator), uplifting (Emptys), and extremely clever (The Break-Up Tour).

photo by Syrenmuse

One NY Press writer is a bit confounded that The Break-Up Tour didn’t win the grand prize.

After all eight contestants were shown —and this after a segment that showed the best movies from prior Tropfests— the judging panel gave first-place prize to Emptys, which is a quick dive into the world of the country’s impecunious bottle collectors.

Tropfest will make its rounds around the globe throughout before returning to New York with 16 finalists next year, stopping in Las Vegas, Arabia, New Zealand, China, India, Paris, and it’s home, Australia. And while it continues to grow, it will also become smaller.

TropfestMicro is a new branch of the fest, and is a competition featuring super-short, 70-second films.

P.S. If you’re interested in entering next year’s New York contest, the TSI is “bridge”, with no distinction between the game, and the traffic-bearing structure.

–Nick Gallinelli