I Like Killing Flies

[January 17th, 2007] [SHORT RUN] The Marxist philosopher Lennon famously described life as "what happens when you're making other plans." The Greenwich Village kitchen philosopher Kenny Shopsin has developed a similar postulation: "The way that I choose to function is to pick an arbitrary, stupid goal, become totally involved in it and pursue it with vigor. And what happens to you in that pursuit is your life.... Where the fuck is the marinara sauce?"

What happened to Kenny Shopsin was a restaurant (called Shopsin's, naturally) filled with decades of bric-a-brac and fusion dishes with names like Blisters on My Sisters. What happened when Shopsin, faced with a rent hike, had to transport his diner from one New York City corner to another—that's the subject of I Like Killing Flies, a slight but vital documentary by music-video director and restaurant regular Matt Mahurin. The film uses the 2002 move as a pivotal event that allows Shopsin to examine the world—tiny, arbitrary and delightful—he has erected around himself. The capriciousness is especially flavorful: Shopsin's is an establishment that doggedly refuses to seat parties of five or larger. As another customer, New Yorker scribe Calvin Trillin, explained in a magazine profile of the diner, "Pretending to be a party of three that happened to have come in with a party of two is a very bad idea."

It might be equally foolhardy to try to write a recipe for a character as unique as Shopsin, but if you started with Woody Allen's existential humor, tossed in 150 pounds and topped it off with a short temper, you'd be very nearly there. The cook's chief physical feature is a pair of thick lips that look designed for snarling—which he does, often, both at his long-suffering family and his bewildered patrons. Of the latter he declares, "They have to prove it to me that they're OK to feed." But Shopsin is also breathtakingly funny (the movie's title comes from his rant comparing counterterrorism policies to pest control), genuinely perceptive and habitually generous with his wisdom. I Like Killing Flies presents an intimate portrait of a truculent man who has, somehow, found meaning in making other people's lives more delectable. "Some people play a role in helping people feel better," a Shopsin's customer observes. "And sometimes they do it just by being themselves." Sometimes they even do it in a documentary.

—AARON MESH.