From 2002 to 2003, director Matt Mahurin documented chef and cantankerous philosopher Kenny Shopsin in the final days of his eponymous eatery\u2019s original location.<\/p>\n
The resulting film, \u201cI Like Killing Flies,\u201d became a New York City cult classic, depicting Kenny, his wife Eve and their five kids as they made a new home for the local Bedford Street institution a few hundred feet away, on Carmine Street.<\/p>\n
The film, which was unavailable for years due to licensing complications, but is finally streamable as of this summer, captured the Shopsin clan and their world of pre-gentrified, very-early-2000s Greenwich Village. Many neighbors were restaurant regulars or at least cared about Shopsin’s and the social fabric of their community (and not pissing off Kenny) in a way that contrasts sharply with the neighborhood’s cleaned-up corporate landscape today.<\/p>\n
Kenny spends most of the film reaming customers with impossibly thick New York accents, cooking up mouthwatering, inspired dishes with abandon for city health department standards, and giving cynical sermons from the pulpit of his kitchen.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlies\u201d distributor ThinkFilm<\/a> exclusively licensed the movie to Netflix in 2004, when the company was a subscription DVD-by-mail service. Mahurin admits he once rented the film on Netflix and didn\u2019t return the DVD: \u201cI wanted my little Netflix white-and-red envelope.\u201d<\/p>\n When ThinkFilm went insolvent a few years later, \u201cFlies\u201d fell into a state of license limbo.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no way to get the film out into the world,\u201d Mahurin said. \u201c\u200aI’d get letters from people, \u2018My house burned down and this was my favorite film\u2019 and \u2018My son-of-a-b—- boyfriend took my copy and there’s none left. Do you have any?\u2019 It was killing me.\u201d<\/p>\n The rights eventually reverted back to him, and in 2021 he began collaborating with Oscilloscope Laboratories \u2014 the indie film company founded by late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch \u2014 to restore and rerelease the movie.<\/p>\n Now, the dream has been realized at last. \u201cI Like Killing Flies\u201d is freshly available to rent and download on a variety of streaming platforms, including Amazon, Google Play and YouTube. Oscilloscope<\/a> is selling DVDs and Blu-Rays of the film for around $30. In conjunction with the release, Manhattan’s Firehouse Cinema<\/a> will hold two special screenings of the documentary on Oct. 8 and 9.<\/p>\n The film’s title comes from an existential and geopolitical commentary Kenny offhandedly gives mid-shift to explain his theories on the root of all evil and why he has an electric bug-zapper in the kitchen. After a casually profound assessment of American foreign policy and the ouroboros of war breeding internal enemies, Kenny concludes: “Anyway, I like killing flies.”<\/p>\n In another scene \u2014 shortly after cuts of customers contentedly admitting they\u2019re not sure what they\u2019re eating and Kenny mixing a salad barehanded \u2014 Kenny explains how he recently created a barbecue banana split by pairing ice cream and bananas with pulled pork and coleslaw.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a friction that occurs when you put an ingredient in an improper dish,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a sexual friction caused by putting the wrong food in the wrong place. And sometimes it works. But not always.\u201d<\/p>\n Mahurin is ecstatic that \u201cFlies\u201d is at last widely available. If only Kenny were around to watch it again.<\/p>\n