Newly available on discovery+, and coming hot on the heels of its Best of Fests screening at IDFA, is Scott Gawlik’s feature doc Set!, about the competitive world of table setting in which the perfectionism of the participants is no different from that of an artist or even a filmmaker like Gawlik himself, he tells Business Doc Europe.
Fold the napkin. Put this fork here, that spoon there. Make sure the tablecloth looks neat and that the glasses are gleaming. Welcome to the competitive world of table setting. This is the subject of Scott Gawlik’s crowd pleasing feature doc, Set!
The film, first served up at Hot Docs!, is sold by Vesna Cudic at Met Film Sales. It was screening at IDFA last week and is now available exclusively on discovery+.
Gawlik admits how, before he came across the Orange County Fair table setting competition, he wasn’t somebody who paid much attention to such particulars. When he has a meal at home, his girlfriend will generally throw a fork and napkin at him and say ‘eat,’ and he will do as instructed.
“I would say my relationship with setting the table was null and void,” confesses the Emmy-nominated producer and boss of LA-based Crazy Cow Productions. “I never had any opinions about table setting. To be completely honest , I still don’t have a relationship with table setting.”
He had gone to the fair just to have some beers and a laugh, not to discover a subject for a new documentary. It just so happened that it was a boiling day. He wanted to get out of the heat and went into a room with air conditioning. And, lo and behold, there in front of him were all these beautifully arranged tables bedecked with colourful ribbons.
Gawlik is a fan of Christopher Guest films like Best In Show which satirises competitors with strange hobbies like dog grooming. However, he insists that his perspective toward the subjects in Set! is one of affection and curiosity. He is not trying to make fun of them.
“When I first stumbled on this table setting contest, to me it seemed odd…and [I thought] it would just be a fun comedy. When I discovered how people prepared for their tables, I thought, man, this is hilarious and fun. But as soon as I dived in a little bit deeper and learned about the individuals’ motivations, I realised that these people spent six months setting their table.”
Their perfectionism, he discovered, was no different from that of an artist or even a filmmaker like himself. (“If someone came along and made fun of me because of my passion and enthusiasm, it wouldn’t work, would it?”)
The participants also came from a huge range of social and economic backgrounds. The film may be set Orange County, a very affluent part of California, but one of the protagonists, Tim, is on food stamps. He can’t get a job and has to “build his table settings with things that he found or made. We’re talking dollars and rummaging at his parents’ places for glassware.” He spent under $100 on his table but was up against rivals who had spent thousands of dollars.
“Anywhere you go, there is obviously class struggle,” the director notes.
Not that he delves too darkly into the socioeconomics behind the documentary. One reason why audiences have warmed to Set! is that it is accessible and fun, and it focuses on a number of winning personalities. This isn’t one of those dark documentaries about war, starvation and environmental disaster. The director himself describes it as “nice exhale…”
A major difference that his film has made to his own day-to-day life is that he “definitely judges others now.” When he goes to restaurants or to friends’ houses for dinner parties, he often spots flaws in the arrangements of the cutlery and glasses. “But judge not others lest you be judged yourself,” he strikes a biblical note.
“The whole point of setting the table is to make things easy,” Gawlik shares the wisdom he has learned in the course of completing Set! “A common mistake is to put the silverware on top of the napkin, right. In a perfect table setting, you’re supposed to be able to pick up the napkin, put it on your lap and nothing disrupts it.”
Gawlik has a thriving business making commercials and working on TV projects like Dave Attell: Road Work (Comedy Central), Todd Glass: Act Happy (Netflix), A Little Help With Carol Burnett (Netflix) and Nick Dipaolo: Another Senseless Killing. Before Set!, he didn’t know much about film festivals. “Basically, I was like driving through the fog without headlights.”
The director pays tribute to his sales agent Met Film Sales. “We signed with them and got a publicist. They said what are your goals with this film. I said my goal was, because I self-funded it, to get my money back!”
Now, Gawlik has succeeded in that aim and is looking to move beyond the knives and forks. What are his future projects? The director falls strangely silent at this point. “I’ve lots of things cooking,” he eventually replies. Table setting may be a highly competitive world but, he suggests, the world of documentary making is even more ferocious. That is why he doesn’t want to share his ideas in public. He is worried someone might filch them. “I am like a dog protecting his yard…”
