Movie Director (and Prague Expat) Albert Hughes’s Top Mushrooming Tip
Known for movies like Menace II Society, Dead Presidents and From Hell, director Albert Hughes — one half of the Hughes Brothers — now lives in Prague and, in a sure sign that he’s gone native, is a keen mushroom-hunter.
Hughes shared a clever mushrooming tip on a recent episode of the podcast The Movies That Made Me, co-hosted by Gremlins director Joe Dante and A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson:
I went to Germany because my pastime recently — in the last 10, 15 years — is mushroom-picking. Porcinis and whatnot. And I don’t do it here because it’s a national pastime. I go over the border to Germany where it’s not a national pastime.
At the time of writing, of course, travelling to Germany to pick mushrooms isn’t really an option because of COVID-19 coronavirus restrictions. But maybe next year…
The interview, presumably carried out over the summer (2020), also touches on the Czech Republic’s handling of the pandemic — which at that point had seemed pretty good. Hughes was already starting to get nervous, however.
Jump forward to the 4:37 mark for the Prague-related section of the interview:
Hughes’s mushroom revelations were a double shock for PraguePig.com, who not only didn’t know that he was a mushroomer but also didn’t even know that he’d moved to Prague in 2002. (Had I known, I’d definitely have included him in my contentious Prague’s 10 Most Famous Expats article.)
