Cineplex Magazine March 2012

SPOTLIGHT
from a
Waiter
he thing with making a movie about
waiters is, you’re bound to have a lot of
chefs in the kitchen.
Joe Dinicol, star of the Canadian
comedy Servitude — about one waiter’s
crazy last night on the job — confirms
that “a good 90 to 95 percent” of
the film’s cast had waiting experience, as did writer
Mike Sparaga and director Warren P. Sonoda.
“It’s really the only thing we’re qualified to do other than
acting, if we’re at all qualified to do that in the first place,”
says the 28-year-old Stratford, Ontario, native. He’s been
acting since he played Antony and Cleopatra’s son at the
Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1993; he’s also waited or
bussed tables at many restaurants in that time, including
Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel and Mildred’s Temple Kitchen.
But, says Dinicol, the cast’s waiting experience only made
Servitude a better film. “It brought up a lot of stories and
memories and creativity because we all had ideas about
what to put in,” he says. “If someone had an idea, we tried it.
If it worked, great. If not, no one was too precious about it.”
Dinicol’s big contribution was the snap. “I was shooting a
scene with Aaron Ashmore [who plays a customer] and he’s
giving me a hard time, and he sort of snapped his fingers.
And I was like, ‘Okay, we have to stop. We haven’t done the
snapping fingers thing.’ I mean, I’ve been snapped at so
many times in a restaurant I can’t even count. And I looked
at Mike Sparaga and I was like, ‘Dude, we almost didn’t put
in someone snapping their fingers at you.’”
Dinicol is in the midst of his longest stretch without
waiting tables. “Almost two years, knock on wood,” he says.
“I always assume I’ll be back there.”
And that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“I actually quite liked it,” he says. “On a good day you
get to talk to people and charm them and entertain them,
satiate them and bring them food. On a good day it can be
a very, very good job…. Unfortunately, some people go to a
restaurant and they aren’t really there to enjoy themselves.
They’re there because they think they deserve to be there
or because they can just afford it.” —Marni WeiSz
14 | Cineplex Magazine | march 2012
Servitude
hits theatres
march 30 th
PHOTO BY JOHN BREGAR