The Crier

What is “The Delicious”?

Hint: It doesn’t really matter

Alex Dziadosz · Amused · Mar 22, 2007

People love Scott Prendergast’s pantsuit. Nearly every week, the burgeoning filmmaker gets e-mails about it from fans as far away as Spain who identify with it, claim it illustrates their life story, and offer awkward confessions (one, Prendergast said, claimed to take his pants off when alone in elevators).

Sure, it’s a nice suit — bright red and tailor-made, it’s something Yves Saint-Laurent might have coughed up in the ’70s. And it must breathe well, because Prendergast can be seen dancing in it on his website, while snipping the air with scissors and mumbling nonsense. But the true spur to its (and Prendergast’s) rise to international celebrity is its role in the whimsical short film, “The Delicious.”

Over the past four years, the short’s popularity has snowballed in a rush that’s included more than forty film screenings, an appearance on the Sundance channel and inclusion on McSweeney’s quarterly “Wholphin” DVD. The pantsuit, the film’s main thematic thrust, has become a brightly colored cult symbol of idiosyncratic behavior and social alienation in the vein of Furthur, and Randall McMurphy’s hair.

“The Delicious” could be any number of things — a meditation on modern lifestyles, an indictment of bureaucracy, an allegory for drug use.

It’s probably best to watch the film for yourself, as it could be any number of things — a meditation on modern lifestyles, an indictment of bureaucracy, an allegory for drug use. Much of its allure is in its narrative elasticity.

In an interview, Prendergast claimed the film is about nothing more than being a weirdo. “People see it and they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m a weirdo, I’m a weirdo!’ Then they identify a little too closely,” he said. “I’ll probably get killed someday by some fan of the movie, but whatever.”

Not that Prendergast doesn’t tend toward the eccentric. He played a homicidal albino in his breakthrough short, “Anna is Being Stalked,” which was featured in the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. And the narrative to “Saragossa,” a Fox SearchLab-funded short about “blood and love and the sky,” fluctuates between characters including a dying adulterer, a hotel maid and a plastic bear. Much of his work treads a fine line between inspired and insane.

“I think its mostly just stuff that occurred to me out of nowhere,” he said.

Part of this impulsiveness may come from his background in improvisational performance — a skill he picked up in a theater class at his Portland, Oregon high school. He continued acting at Columbia University, eventually working his way to the Groundlings improv troupe in Los Angeles, which has graduated Will Ferrell, Phil Hartman and Conan O’Brien among others. For two years, he performed in Unman, a one-man show in New York City.

In 1998, Anthony Bregman (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) saw one of Prendergast’s shows and persuaded him to try short film. They made “Group Therapy” that afternoon for about $50.

Prendergast was an easy convert to the new medium. “You’re doing improv and at the end of every night the show’s over and you have nothing in your hands to show for it,” he said. “I started making films, and when it’s over you can be like, ‘Look: This is what I made.’ ”

A swath of shorts (all viewable on his production company’s website) followed “Group Therapy,” all exhibiting Prendergast’s characteristic quirkiness.

While shooting The Delicious, Prendergast was struck with the inspiration for his first full-length film, “Kabluey:” A man takes a job as an oversized blue mascot while helping his sister-in-law tend her children while her husband is in Iraq.

“My friends were like, ‘What the fuck is with you and costumes? Get some therapy,’ ” he said.

Much of Prendergast’s work treads a fine line between inspired and insane.

Prendergast, whose own brother served in Iraq, based the narrative in part on his own experiences. The film went into pre-production in December 2006 and was shot in Austin, Texas last summer.

For a first-time director, he’s been unusually lucky: “I went to this production company and was like, ‘Oh I’m going to write, direct, and star in this movie.’ They were like, ‘Yeah, you’re completely unknown, how the fuck do you think you’re going to do that?’ ”

The production company, Whitewater Films, told him he would need a big name in the female lead. To lure a star, they assumed that he would have to drop either his role as director or lead actor. But in a stroke of serendipity, Lisa Kudrow — herself a Groundlings alumnus and “Delicious” fan — agreed to take the part as offered.

After running the screenings circuit, “Kabluey” should make it to theaters some time next year.

In the meantime, Prendergast is working on several other projects, including another feature-length script with a part for Kudrow. The pantsuit might even make a comeback. Scripts to two sequels to “The Delicious,” which would expand the spectrum of pantsuit hues to six, currently lie unmade. But Prendergast is wary of toying with the film’s tauntingly open ending.

“That film has been more successful than anything I’ve ever done,” he said. “I’m afraid if I make a sequel people will think it sucks.”