For foodies everywhere, or anyone living in or near Chicago, Charlie Trotter was synonymous with high-end fine dining. In the new documentary “Love, Charlie” (subtitled: “The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter”) from first-time feature director Rebecca Halpern, we get an intimate and thorough examination of a complex, intense, and complicated man whose fiery passion catapulted him to the top of the food world and eventually led to multiple personal and professional ebbs.
Low ‘Q’ Score
Trotter also wrote or co-wrote 14 best-selling books and, at one time, had a short-lived PBS TV show. It was short-lived because, unlike all of the above-mentioned chefs, he was sorely lacking in “Q” score, a vague and largely nebulous measuring stick used by advertisers and marketers to gauge product and celebrity “likability.”
The first post-opening credit scene captures Trotter getting ready for an interview stating off the cuff “I hate people,” followed by “Be sure not to use that.”
Trotter was the prototypical “tortured artist” type: a guy who poured every ounce of his being into his creativity, often (make that regularly) at the detriment of his personal life and the psyche of his employees. Never is this made clearer than through interviews with Trotter’s first wife, Lisa Erlich.
Erlich met Trotter in 1981 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where they quickly established a deep, yet initially platonic relationship which eventually blossomed into love, resulting in a 1986 marriage. She beams when recounting their early days and his talent at writing voluminous, hand-written letters and their trips to Europe to check out world-famous dining establishments.
As the film progresses, Erlich’s description of the state of their coupling, after the opening of Trotter’s eponymous Chicago restaurant in 1987, quickly deteriorated when he made it clear, without hesitation, that the business was his true love and that she had transitioned, effectively, into an afterthought. The couple divorced in 1990.
Unbiased Storytelling
These are many immensely effective conflicting examples of the behavior and mindset of Trotter that makes “Love, Charlie” such an immediate, thought-provoking, human interest production. Halpern pulls off here what very few of her peers are ever able to achieve: She is completely even-keel and totally unbiased regarding the depiction of her subject.As a filmmaker, Halpern presents the life of a man who was highly contradictory in almost everything he did, yet she never praises or damns him along the way. Her inclusion of “inside baseball” foodie jargon is fittingly apropos, but not too egg-headed or exclusionary enough to insult or put down general audiences; everyone will get the gist of the message.
Immediately after the “I hate people” comment at the start is another clip where Trotter, angrily addressing a line cook prepping a plate, screams, “I will kill your whole family if you don’t get this right! I need this perfect!” This bellicose tirade hits the viewer like a two-by-four upside the head and is deliberately presented out of context.
Trotter Was Self-Aware
The acting gig shows that Trotter was amiable enough to go along with (though perhaps not in denigrating his own reputation specifically), the image of tyrannical chefs in general. He was in on the joke and showed great amounts of self-awareness and gravitas in the process. He never presented himself as an angel and was innately aware of his own personal shortcomings. Trotter remained pure and true to himself throughout his entire existence.Comparing the ultimate fates of Trotter to that of Bourdin would be easy to do, as they were both driven, iconoclast rebels, yet the latter exited by choice while the former did so only accidentally after falling prey to depression and drink, and was no longer considered to be the top dog of his craft.
Both of these men departed this mortal coil far too soon.
