The past few weeks epitomize crunch time for Carl’s Odyssey. Our UK correspondent, the illustrious illustrator Natalie Smith, turns in some stunning preliminary artwork for the book. My co-author Dorian Innes takes the reigns on marketing, setting up the Kickstarter campaign, getting the website up and running and connecting with bloggers who may take up the cause. I’m charged with editing the promotional video to get potential pledgers excited about the project.

The response so far has been very positive!

Miller, to me, is the archetypal “that guy” of contemporary cinema.  The casual moviegoer may not be able to place him right away, but the observant viewer will recognize Miller from brief but memorable roles in The Terminator, The Howling and Gremlins, while the most ardent cinephiles will know that Miller was a mainstay of Roger Corman’s early work and, decades later, would have his scene unceremoniously snipped from Quentin Tarantino’s indie opus, Pulp Fiction.  He also enjoyed cameos—and, sometimes, recurring roles—in damn near every hit sitcom or primetime melodrama from the last forty years of television, everything from Taxi to ER.

While coiling up my microphone cables after the first day’s interview, I can’t resist telling Dick that I credit him with getting me into this business—at least, in part.  It was during a childhood viewing of Explorers that I first realized, “Hey, I’ve seen that guy before.”  This would lead to the epiphany that movies don’t just magically appear on our televisions and theatre screens to entertain us; they are actually crafted by someone.

It’s only fitting that I would learn this lesson from a Joe Dante picture; after all, Dante has featured Dick Miller in all of his numerous films.  In fact, several years before today’s interview, I was shooting an interview with Dante, and gave him the same amount of credit for leading me down this questionable career path.  At age 10, I had seen Gremlins 2: The New Batch at the movie theatre.  There was a scene in which Hulk Hogan stands up in a theatre and threatens the gremlins who have melted the film right out of the projector.  However, when I saw the movie again on VHS, this scene had been replaced with footage of the gremlins shooting it out with John Wayne in a black-and-white TV western.  Once again, this clued me in to the fact that there was someone tinkering behind-the-scenes to create the movies I loved, and I wanted to learn all about how it was done.

But that’s a tangent.  Long story short, it was a thrill and a pleasure to meet Dick Miller, not only a gracious host and affable, humorous conversationalist, but an admirable actor who gladly exchanged name recognition and marquee status for unrivaled longevity in his profession and respect among his peers.

"Oh, sure, stick the short guy in the middle," gripes Dick. From L-R, producer/director Elijah Drenner, actor Dick Miller, director of photography Elle Schneider, and sound guy Dan Greene.

The inspiration for this simple, savory pasta salad comes from a picture of a similar concoction in a friend’s Facebook photo album.  I cook the spinach rigatoni just past al dente, drain the water, drizzle extra virgin olive oil and garlic olive oil over the warm pasta, dust it with fresh-cracked black pepper and sea salt, toss in a few handfuls of fresh baby spring greens and toss until the pasta is coated and the spring greens wilt.  Spoon the pasta mixture into serving dishes and top with avocado, either halved or sliced.  The smoothness of avocado, savoriness of sea salt and olive oil, and subtle bitterness of fresh spring greens (especially arugula) make for an irresistible summertime dish.  Approved!

Pity the poor restauranteurs of the world.  The dining public is fickle, unpredictable—a moving target.  And so, restaurants come and go.  Such is life.  But no such loss is as deeply felt as the loss of Gazzella.  A hidden gem embedded in a dead location, Gazzella’s unique charm is simultaneously its undoing.  Gazella specializes in upscale-yet-rustic Italian cuisine, handcrafted by the restaurant’s owner, architect and master chef—all one man—offered up at too-generous prices, served in the unforgettable ambience of a nearly-always-empty marble villa.  This recipe does not entice everybody.  Several ignorant reviewers on Yelp justify their low ratings by citing the “creepy” vibe of a less-than-bustling restaurant with a single chef and single waiter.  Perhaps they feel more at ease with the screeching din and bland palate of an Old Spaghetti Factory.  Obviously, this is the case more often than not, as evidenced by Gazzella’s demise.

I never would have even heard of Gazzella, hidden behind her curtains of ivy, had it not been for the restaurant’s feisty, gregarious daytime waitress, Linda.  While working in a documentary production house downtown, two of my colleagues were walking along Broadway on their way to grab burritos from SuperMex when Linda shouted at them from across the street.  ”If you guys every want to try some authentic Italian food for a change,” I imagine her saying, “stop in an see us sometime.”  That refreshing outburst of super-liminal advertising was enough to bring them back, with the rest of us in tow, the very next day.  The wonders held in that dish of carbonara I had never before tasted, and Linda would forever remember me as “that guy who finished everybody else’s desserts” (guilty).

I would return to Gazzella again, introducing my wife to what would become our own little slice of culinary paradise in a city overcrowded with Mexican, Thai and hamburger joints.  It was rare to find more than one other couple in the restaurant at the same time as us.  As with any underpopulated eatery with irresistible cuisine, we joked that it was probably just a front for a Mafia money laundering operation, but no Armani suits ever walked in on our watch.  Each of our sporadic visits to Gazzella felt like a sun-kissed vacation in compressed time, and we became such familiar faces in the place that Linda could accurately predict which dish I had a hankering for on that particular day, and she would introduce us to the restaurant’s refreshingly humble, unassuming owner/chef, Fred, who came to memorize our favorite dishes, as well.

To celebrate one of Karen’s birthdays, we invited a long list of friends to Gazzella for dinner one Friday night.  Unfortunately, very few people RSVP’d, resulting in our faux pas of suddenly overwhelming the typically quiet, single-server, single-chef restaurant with a flash mob of more than twenty hungry patrons.  More than a bit frazzled, the nighttime waiter, Tony, called me over to discuss our options.  Since they were unprepared to handle the sudden, unannounced influx of diners, Fred would prepare a limited menu of our personal favorite dishes for our friends to choose from, so he could feverishly cook in large batches and hopefully please everyone’s taste buds in a timely fashion.  Damned if he didn’t pull it off, and we made sure to tip generously for the trouble.

Jobs come and go, schedules change, and over the next couple of years, our visits to Gazzella would become more sporadic.  But we were always welcomed back with open arms and tempted by Fred’s latest dessert confections: warm caramel-apple tart with vanilla bean ice cream; fresh watermelon sorbetto; strawberry-rubarb cobbler drizzled with vanilla; chocolate bread pudding infused with hazelnut; velvety-smooth creme caramel; single-serving tiramisu mousse—the list goes on.

Our next-to-last visit to Gazzella was just short of magical.  A couple we’ve befriended had decided to try Gazzella based on Karen’s rave reviews, and at the last minute they invited us along.  Tony welcomed us back like family, dinner was delectable, Fred came out to greet us and proved more talkative than usual, filling us in on much of the history we’d often wondered about.  As it turns out, Fred was not Italian at all, but a Persian man madly in love with the flavors of Italy, thanks to a fateful trip to his college roommate’s home country.  The first time he tasted bruschetta, prepared by his host’s mother, the utter poetry of the mingling flavors nearly moved him to tears.

As Fred thanked us for coming and bid us adieu, in the adjoining corridor, classically trained hands began to tickle the ivories of Gazzella’s baby grand piano.  Effortlessly unique renditions of American standards and Stevie Wonder tunes drifted through the air.  The mystery man at the keys smiled between sips of red wine and assured us, “I love requests,” should there be anything we wanted to hear.  We walked over and chatted with him for a while, learning that he was a producer, composer and studio musician who had toured with the likes of pop icons Billy Idol and Fiona Apple.  To prove his credentials, he played us a lovely rendition of “Eyes Without A Face,” and explained that, wherever he may be in the world at any given time, he knows where there’s a piano for him to play.  We never caught his name (some light Googling leads me to believe he’s one Joe Simon), but my wife gave him a hug to thank him for the lovely musical accompaniment as the lights began to dim to tell us it was closing time.

We returned the next night with Karen’s mom.  Making up for lost time, I suppose.

When my brother and his wife flew into town for a brief vacation at the beginning of May, we knew we had to treat them to our favorite haunt.  I called Gazzella’s number, just to make sure they were open for dinner and could accommodate the four of us (being extra polite after our birthday fiasco), but the phone clicked over to a generic answering machine message.  I tried calling back again, and this time got, “You have reached Bliss 132… formerly Gazzella.”  My heart sank.  I made one last call, to Gazzella’s miniscule sister café in Belmont Shore—primarily a take-out location; hidden, once again, on a darkened side street—and asked the host if Gazzella’s downtown flagship restaurant had really closed its doors for good.  The finality of his response will haunt me for years: “It is no more.”

Losing a beloved restaurant is admittedly insignificant in this world of woe, but it feels more weighty than that.  It’s not simply the loss of a handful of favorite dishes than can never be reproduced; it’s the abrupt closing of a chapter of our lives that will never come back.  Food is one of the few consistently satisfying aspects of life, but finding that “sure thing” destination for good food is a rare encounter, indeed.  I will miss you Gazzella, and to Fred, Linda and Tony, wherever you may be, thank you for the years of understated friendship, and may you always eat well.