Don’t Play With Your Food at eternallycool.net

Oedipus performed by vegetables

Not really Roman, but it too eternally cool to be true. So, here we embrace the whole of our classical heritage:

In 2005, filmmaker Jason Wishnow released an eight and one-half minute film version of the Greek tragedy, Oedipus, in which the only actors are vegetables. Aeschylus rolled over in his grave as the ill-fated and potato-headed Oedipus won the hearts of film festival organizers around the world.

Oedipus played by vegetables

What would induce such an undertaking? In talking to Ish Magazine, Wishnow explained his motivations:

I figured the Oedipus story was always kind of funny, you know…incest, patricide, eye-gouging…I always thought vegetables offered another one of those ways that [the story of] Oedipus had not been told, but [had] been begging to be done for thousands of years (*grins*)

But really I have not been able to come up with a legitimately funny answer to this question after two years, and I still do not have the right sound bite quality answer to this question. The embarrassing thing is I guess I just thought it would be a funny way to tell the story.

Oedipus played by vegetables

In the same interview, Wishnow also explained the casting of the film:

…since Oedipus has to poke out his eyes…He needed to be a potato. The mum is supposed to be a real tomato – that goes without saying…and then, when the potato and the tomato have sex, obviously their offspring is a cherry tomato.

I was generally trying to go with vegetables you might find more commonly in European cuisine, so it would be appropriate to have potatoes and that kind of stuff. Even though halfway through the production we had this total catastrophe where I walked into the studio one morning after looking at vegetables on the internet until 3am, and I read that the potato and the tomato are both new world vegetables, so they come from the Americas. And I had one of those directing panic attacks. I thought, “Oh my God, I am going to have to recast the entire movie!” But everyone was like, “We are halfway through the film. We are going to keep going.” So, yup. I got over it.

Oedipus played by vegetables