News Articles Continued...

One man's version of dinner and a movie For Joseph Hanna

Glouchester Daily Times . Greg Cook . March 8,2003

"Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" was about Jim Carrey's on set-diet of grilled chicken, fish and steamed vegetables. "Gettysburg" was all about hardy meat and potato sorts of meals. "Selena" brings back memories of Jennifer Lopez's favorite breakfast: thin, little European style pancakes. "I look at movies and I remember what they ate," says Hanna, who runs Hanna Brothers "Extreme Motion Picture Catering" with his brother Jim. "A lot of times, I'll forget their names, but I'll remember what they were eating every day."

"Stuck on You," the comedy filmed in Rockport this week, involves a lot of New England seafood, as far as Hanna is concerned. Not that that's the only thing Hanna's crew of five have prepared for "Stuck on You" stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, writers and directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly, and the rest of the 250-person cast and crew. Yesterday's lunch selections included Manhattan clam chowder, roast yellow squash, sauteed mushrooms, steamed carrots and asparagus, yellow rice with peas, baked beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, baked penne parmesan, grilled rosemary breast of chicken, fillet mignon, horse radish-encrusted salmon, steamed snow crab legs and drawn butter. Hanna accommodates those seeking to put on weight, those seeking to lose weight, vegetarians, vegans and steak-and-potatoes folks. The cast and crew eat buffet-style in a mess hall set up at Spiran Hall on School Street. Sometimes, Hanna's crew brings food down to movie sets.

If diners are looking for something that's not on the menu, all they have to do is ask. "We give them what they want," Hanna says in a raspy voice. Hanna was busy at the grill in one of his "hot trucks" yesterday morning. He wore a long sleeve, green, knit shirt, black apron, black pants featuring a red hot pepper motif and boots. A black baseball cap covered his close-cropped black hair. A small goatee decorated his chin. Hanna is the guy who ran away with the circus.

The 38-year-old got into catering for television and film productions about two decades back while running a restaurant in south Florida. People making the "B.L. Stryker" television movies hired him to feed the cast and crew. He entered the business full-time when he began feeding folks working on the 1980s television hit "Miami Vice." He's fed people working on some 200 movies over the past 18 years. These days, the Hanna brothers live in Louisville, Ky., where 31-year-old Jim studied finance at the University of Louisville. ("Live" may not be the right word; Joseph Hanna is only home about seven weeks each year.) Jim went on to play professional football in New Orleans and Atlanta in the early 1990s before joining his brother Joseph's business in 1996.

Hollywood catering dictates long hours. Often, they work from 1 or 1:30 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. preparing breakfast, lunch and occasionally dinner for cast and crew and producers. Hanna is lucky if he gets six hours of sleep a night at the Sandy Bay Motor Inn in Rockport. They work out of a hot truck and cold truck and trailer. A pickup truck parked nearby hauls the trailer. Hanna has four such fleets so that he can feed four film productions at once. The Hanna crew drives them to sets across the country. He has also fed casts and crews in Panama, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico (his vehicles transported by barge to the islands) and Canada. Hanna's travels have made him familiar with people's eating habits from region to region. Here, he says, we eat a lot of potatoes and enjoy hot mayonnaise in crab cakes or seafood casseroles, which people wouldn't stomach on the West Coast. Does the food make the movie? Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep were both nominated for Academy Awards for their performances in "Adaptation," which was catered by the Hanna brothers. Cage and Street ate lots of the brothers' steamed vegetables, grilled chicken and fruit. "I don't feel responsible for a movie's success or failure," Hanna says, "but I do feel responsible for the atmosphere of the people."