After The Fall – Souffle?

Take a look at this.. no kidding..

Here’s how you start a business.

You get an idea.

Then you go to some smart rich guys.

Nick Nicholas was a smart rich guy.  He was then the Chairman and CEO of Time/Warner. You don’t get much smarter or richer than that.

I got a meeting with him and explained an idea I had – give great journalists small video cameras and teach them to shoot and cut.

This was 1990.

20 year ago.

Nicholas listened, and to my delight and astonishment, he reached into his desk, took out a checkbook and wrote me a check for $100,000.  “Let’s get started” he said.

The next thing he did was send me to meet a few of the  top photographers at Time Magazine.

PF Bentley was one of them.

Nicholas understood that the notion of professional photographer at a place like Time Magazine was drawing to a close. He wanted to see if I could transit their skills and experience into video.

The video part was easy.  Finding a niche for them in a world in which everyone has a video camera and going to Cambodia is no longer so unusual was harder.

Now, it’s time for the historical analogy.

The French Revolution in 1798 was also a period when an entire economic structure got burned to the ground.  It was particularly bad for the nobility, who used to represent about 95% of the wealth of France while constituting only 5% of the population.  They lost their heads -and their massive agricultural estates.

But it was also bad for the people who used to work for them.  They also lost their jobs and their homes.

One class of people who were really in trouble were the people who used to run the kitchens for the nobility. If you were a noble living in Versailles at the time of Louis XIV, it was party, party, party all the time. And the meals were sumptuous.  Incredible, really. Eating in France was akin to watching the superbowl in Ohio.

The Revolution meant that the vast staffs of these massive dining affairs were out on the street.  No more party. No more lavish dinners.  The 9-course banquet every night was dead – along with the guy who paid for it.

Bereft and unemployed, the best of the chefs came up with a very radical idea.  Why not cook fantastic meals for….the peasantry. Or at least the aspiring bourgeois?

This was an almost unthinkable idea.  Soil you hands preparing fine foods for… the peasants?  Would they even know what you were offering them? Would they pay for it?

But a few took a shot.

They started an entirely new concept in France, and later the rest of the world- The Restaurant.

It worked.

Prior to 1789 there had been inns that served grub, but no fine dining.

After 1789 the world of eating (for us peasants) would never be the same.

Now we come to PF Bentley, and people like him.

While any idiot can operate a video camera, any idiot can make an omelette

Then there are the Jean Georges and the PF Bentleys.

In an earlier era, Jean Georges Vongerichten or Alain Ducasse might have been employed by a  noble family.  PF Bentley might have been employed by a Time Magazine.

Both the nobles and Time Magazine have lost their heads.

Jean Georges found a very lucrative living selling his skills to the general public packages as a restaurant.

I am wondering of the most talented, like PF Bentley might not find their fortune selling their very impressive skills to the bourgeois as well.

While any idiot can operate a video camera, I am wondering if there isn’t a market for a kind of ‘fine arts’ in the world ‘personal documentaries’.  As video becomes more and more ubiquitous, I am wondering if the rich and near-rich wouldn’t spend a lot for ‘home videos’ that are closer to feature films.

You think it’s crazy?

So too did the unemployed chefs of 1789.

I am not so sure….