This is not a typical movie review because this is not a typical movie.\u00a0 And even more unusual, this is a PBS production, which normally would repel me as wolfsbane does Dracula. \u00a0But not this time.\u00a0 This movie is a celebration of one of the great American institutions, the hot dog.<\/p>\n
A guy named Rick Sebak from Pittsburgh makes documentaries about Americana and this particular one travels around the United States looking at the multitude of ways that people make and enjoy hot dogs.\u00a0 Of course, he goes to Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York to discuss the reputed birthplace of the hot dog and while there he highlights the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest at Nathan\u2019s, a truly disgusting spectacle.\u00a0 Then he visits several hot dog lovers in Manhattan who try to pick between their favorite hot dog and papaya juice restaurants.\u00a0 From there he goes to Chicago and listens to the Windy City residents declare their variety of hot dog to be the adult version of this American food.\u00a0 And afterwards he brings us to Georgia, the Carolinas, Ohio, New Jersey and even Alaska where reindeer hot dogs are the standard.<\/p>\n
Along the way you\u2019ll meet the mom and pop shops and the industrial scale restaurants and the owners, cooks, waiters and customers who swear by the goodness and special character of whichever local variant they enjoy.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be boiled, roasted, deep fried or encased in a corn dog.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be covered in relish, sauerkraut, onions, coleslaw, peppers or baked beans.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be slathered in yellow mustard, brown mustard, ketchup, barbecue sauce or horse radish.\u00a0 They can be with or without skin and in Las Vegas you can even get one that\u2019s half a pound and sixteen inches long.<\/p>\n
This movie was made in 1999 and what struck me was that the people were from all walks of life and all ethnicities but they all agreed that the hot dog was the American food.\u00a0 Not German American because it was brought here from Frankfurt or even just white Americans.\u00a0 Every place they went all kinds of people loved the hot dogs and shared space enjoying them.\u00a0 I was struck that the scene where the hot dogs were being sold at the Cleveland Indians game probably couldn\u2019t get on PBS anymore because they consider the team name racist.<\/p>\n
So, this show is a bit of Americana from before the woke movement would declare hot dogs some form of exploitation of everyone involved.\u00a0 The movie highlighted the manufacturing of hot dogs and almost glories in the mystery meat status of its ingredients and the unappetizing appearance of the meat paste that makes them up.\u00a0 And the bizarre sight of hot dogs being shot at high speed out of a machine that strips the temporary skins that the dogs wear while being cooked adds to their allure as a product of industrial age melting pot America.<\/p>\n
Of course, all those mom and pop shops and even the big restaurants have now been driven out of business by COVID and the rioters.\u00a0 And the various ethnicities are at each other\u2019s throats.\u00a0 And the millennials are all vegan and wouldn\u2019t touch a hot dog if they were starving.\u00a0 But this movie hearkens back to a happier time in America and celebrates the real diversity, hot dog diversity.\u00a0 It celebrates the local cultures that all can embrace and enhance something as simple and wonderful as the hot dog.\u00a0 You can probably rent this from a local library that carries PBS videos.\u00a0 I rented it from Netflix DVD.\u00a0 I\u2019ll probably buy a DVD just because I like watching it with my kids and grandkids who have enjoyed it over the years when I had an old VHS copy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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