It's a tired trope: the L.A. restaurant worker hawking his script in between serving the main course and dessert. But new to me was the writer/producer moving among tables, hawking his finished film like a Girl Scout selling Samoas.
That's precisely what Sheldon Cohn was doing Saturday afternoon at Factor's Deli in West L.A. Garbed in a Claussen-green T-Shirt bearing the name of his film, The Pickle Recipe, Cohn was handing out fliers and plastic pickle pens, and trying to goose attendance for that night's screening at the Laemmle theater in Encino, and for today's showing at the Beverly Hills Laemmle. A polished pitch this was was not; a charmingly schlubby appeal it surely was.
The indie flick sounds like fun: An event emcee's equipment is destroyed in an accident weeks before his daughter's bat mitzvah, at which she expects him to perform to perfection. He's got no money and fewer prospects until an uncle unencumbered by a moral core suggests he could sell his grandmother's secret dill pickle recipe, a transaction that would require him to steal it.
Hijinks, as if you couldn't surmise, ensue.
I know little else about the film, except that it has generated some festival buzz. But I do know that the personal delivery of this coming attraction was almost as satisfying as Factor's egg cream.
Photo: Ellen Alperstein
*Corrected spelling of producer's name
