Goffstown native's short animated film is a funny love letter to the Bedford Village Inn

Feb. 25—Griffin Hansen has been dishing up laughs this month on YouTube thanks to his memories from four summers working banquets in Bedford.

On Feb. 14, the Goffstown native's animated short film "The Ten Commandments of Banquet Serving" went up on Youtube, a comic valentine to Hansen's work as at the Bedford Village Inn.

The playful skewering of the hazards of helping frantic mothers, frazzled wedding planners and confused elderly guests comes from a place of great affection.

"I loved that job," said Hansen, who plans to graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design in June and follow through on a lifelong plan to work in animation.

Hansen wrote and directed and voiced some of the characters in his independent film, an exaggerated guide for those who might be considering work in the food-service industry. "Ten Commandments" is the tale of a "lowly, little banquet servicer trying to survive a wedding from hell."

"Banquet servers are like a buffer. Sometimes we have to be the referee, sometimes we have to be the people at the side of the wrestling ring who give people water and let them spit in the bucket. It's all over the place," Hansen said .

His first season at the inn was in 2019, and he did his final summer stint in 2022.

"I got to eat a lot of wedding cake, so that was a highlight," he said.

But the best part of the job was his co-workers.

"Since it's your fellow servers who you spend the most time with, you end up sometimes having more fun at the wedding than the guests."

Melissa Samaras, the inn's sales and marketing director,

said colleagues got a kick out of watching "Ten Commandments," with its overdramatized moments, when it first was released.

"We were chuckling," Samaras said. "It's funny to see it from a banquet person's perspective. We enjoyed it."

Fritz and the 'Car Talk' guy

For his film, released through Caralis Productions and Gruppetstudios, Hansen drew together fellow college students, Granite State friends and a couple of New England icons.

Granite State storyteller Fritz Wetherbee (from WMUR television's "New Hampshire Chronicle") does a turn as Fritzy, an an elderly guest who think it's his mission to be his table's comic relief.

Another highlight is Ray Magliozzi (of National Public Radio's "Car Talk" fame) as the father of the bride. He's way more interested in the appetizers than the nuptials. Can he get some more of those bacon-wrapped scallops, please?

Convincing Magliozzi, known for the years he and his late brother Tom offered auto-repair advice and wisecracking commentary about life in general, to lend his signature Boston accent to "Ten Commandments" wasn't easy. But Hansen, who never missed an episode of "Car Talk" growing up, was persistent.

"I tried through the 'Car Talk' website, but to no avail, and eventually ended up calling his son by mistake. I tried the 'Car Talk' website again and got in contact with the show's producer, Doug Berman. By this point, Magliozzi and Berman knew who I was and were amused by all the silly hoops I was jumping through," he said.

In the end, Magliozzi agreed to be a part of the project — with one condition. It comes in the form of a disclaimer in the closing credits: "Ray Magliozzi of 'Car Talk' appears solely due only to the colossal pain in the ass Griffin Hansen made of himself until (Magliozzi) finally agreed to do it".

"It was in our contract, literally a legally binding agreement," Hansen said.

Hansen pays Magliozzi back with his own warning in the film's opening sequence: "The following film contains characters speaking in a Boston accent. Viewer discretion is advised."

A momzilla's scream

The cartoon's main character is "Jim," who delivers the do's and don'ts of being a banquet server. He's voiced by Hansen's childhood friend Michael Poliquin, whose first acting gig was as the Big Bad Wolf in kindergarten in Goffstown. He's now studying acting at Salem State University in Massachusetts, where he is an ROTC cadet and member of the Massachusetts National Guard.

"Our friendship solidified when he saw me walking home one day and offered me a ride, under the condition that I run some personal errands with him. He's been family ever since," Poliquin teased.

In voicing the mother of the bride, Hansen channels all the shrill mothers of the brides who were two seconds away from a meltdown, worried about everything that could possibly go wrong.

Although neither of his grandmothers ever screamed like this momzilla, Hansen's delivery is a mix of their accents.

"One was from Raymond and one was from Revere, Mass. The voice is both squished together," he said.

To see Hansen's work, go to @thetencommandmentssofbs on Instagram or youtube.com/user/Gruppetstudios.

jweekes@unionleader,com