“I am the truck, my truck is me” – Jonathan Gold.

Courtesy of: http://www.latimes.com/food/jonathan-gold/la-fo-goldbot-20161221-story.html

Lauren Gabbert’s City Of Gold (2015) documentary on the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold. Essentially, the documentary was a mix of Jonathan’s “love letter” to the city of Los Angeles and his colleagues, friends and family praising Gold as a person beyond a critic.

As someone who has visited L.A a couple of years ago, the film did change my perception of the city. From what I considered to be a complicated city, is what I perceive now as a postmodern city evolving from different centre points that expanded and eventually collided with the other centres.
The documentary was visually appealing in moments where Gold would experience writers block with s blank laptop screen, mid shots of navigating through L.A’s infamous traffic, and even capturing the melting pot aspect of the city; a wide shot of a Caucasian jogger next to an old Asian lady with her walker waiting for the light to turn green.

Before delving into food criticism, Gold was initially a music critic and was even present during Snoop Dogg’s recording of Doggystyle (1993). Besides being such an interesting dude, there were particular moment in the film that I found valuable in terms of being a writer. Gold constantly surrounds himself with books to read, he interacts with other writers and creatives, visits a restaurant at least 2-5 times before writing a review, and most importantly, never judges a book by its cover through an open mind (or palette) with everything; no matter how eccentric (or spicy) it may appear (or smell).