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# Weekend Words: Garlic
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-garlic/
- Published: 2013-04-14T15:20:12.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:35:28.000Z
- Description: Weekend Words was saddened this week by the news of the death of filmmaker Les Blank. While his best-known movie is probably Burden of Dreams (1982), a behind-the-scenes look at the epic struggles undertaken by visionary German director Werner Herzog in the making of Fitzcarraldo, for the most part
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![Giuseppe Arcimboldo. "Summer" (1563). Oil on panel, 67 x 51 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. (Image via Web Gallery of Art) Click to enlarge.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/04/garlic1.jpg)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo. “Summer” (1563). Oil on panel, 67 x 51 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. (Click to enlarge) (Image via Web Gallery of Art)

Weekend Words was saddened this week by the news of the death of filmmaker [Les Blank](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/movies/les-blank-documentary-filmmaker-dies-at-77.html?pagewanted=all&%5Fr=0&ref=hyperallergic.com). While his best-known movie is probably *Burden of Dreams* (1982), a behind-the-scenes look at the epic struggles undertaken by visionary German director Werner Herzog in the making of *Fitzcarraldo*, for the most part Blank’s work celebrated the music and food of America’s vanishing subcultures.

No movie does this better than [*Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers*](http://www.lesblank.com/?portfolio=garlic-is-as-good-as-ten-mothers-1980&ref=hyperallergic.com), which was described by [Vincent Canby](http://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/11/movies/a-les-blank-trio-from-garlic-to-tattoos.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) of *The New York Times* as “‘so good – and funny – that it doesn’t even offend someone who takes a dim view of baked whole garlic and who doesn’t exactly long to munch chocolate-covered garlic cloves.”

> “Garlick maketh a man wynke, drynke, and stynke.”  
>  
> **—Thomas Nash**

> “What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.”  
>  
> **—Augustus Saint-Gaudens**

> “Do not eat garlic or onions; for their smell will reveal that you are a peasant.”  
>  
> **—Cervantes, *Don Quixote***

> “Most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.”  
>  
> **—William Shakespeare, *A Midsummer Night’s Dream***

> “Dago, wop, guinea, garlic-breath, pizza-slingin’, spaghetti-bendin’, Vic Damone, Perry Como, Luciano Pavarotti, Sole Mio, nonsingin’ motherfucker.”  
>  
> **—Mookie (Spike Lee) insults Pino (John Turturro) in Lee’s *Do the Right Thing.***

> “Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.”  
>  
> **—Cyril Connolly**

> “There’s no doubt that after you eat a lot of garlic, you just kind of feel like you are floating, you feel ultra-confident, you feel capable of going out and whipping your weight in wildcats.”  
>  
> **— Off-screen voice heard in Les Blank’s *Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers***