How the OC Fair inspired ‘Set!,’ a film about competitive table

When filmmaker Scott Gawlik and a few friends walked into the OC Fair in 2018, the plan for the day was simple.

"We just went to drink some beers and hang out," he says. "You have a big beer in your hand and you wander through the fair."

Hours later, Gawlik left the fairgrounds with the idea that would become his debut feature documentary. He would make a film, he had decided, on the unusual and very entertaining world of – this is not a joke! – competitive table-setting.

"Set!" is a new documentary set in the world of competitive table setting at the OC Fair. The only man featured in the film, Tim Wyckoff has been setting tables competitively for 30 years. (Photo by Jon Salmon/Crazycow Productions)

Director Scott Gawlik, kneeling, with the competitors and judges who are featured in his new documentary, "Set!" which focuses on the 2019 table-setting competition at the OC Fair. They are seen here after its premiere at at the Newport Beach Film Festival on Oct. 23, 2021. It debuts on Discover+ on Nov. 12, 2021. (Photo courtesy of Scott Gawlik and Crazycow Productions)

Crystal Young of San Dimas won Best of Show in 2018 at the OC Fair with her table in the theme Free Your Inner Farmer. She's now featured in the new documentary "Set!" which was shot during the 2019 competition. (Photo by Lilly Nguyen, Orange County Register)

Janet Lew of Laguna Hills is seen here in the OC Fair's 2018 table-setting competition. She is featured in the new documentary "Set!" which was shot during the 2019 competition. Here she is measuring the distance of her cutlery and flatware on the table. (Photo by Lilly Nguyen, Orange County Register)

Hilarie Moore adjusts her plastic centerpiece for her table setting with the theme of In The Sand at the OC Fair in 2018. She won in her theme division that year. She's now featured in the new documentary "Set!" which was filmed at the 2019 fair. (Photo by Lilly Nguyen, Orange County Register)

Contestant Crystal Young and her entry Good Food=Good Mood are seen in 2018 in the table setting at the OC Fair. She's now featured in the new documentary "Set!" which was filmed at the fair i 2019. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Though mother and daughter Christel and Marie Schoenfelder have always competed against each other in past table-setting competitions, in 2019 they decided to join forces for the first time in 20 years. They are now featured in the new documentary "Set!" which was filmed at the 2019 OC Fair. (Photo by Jon Salmon, Crazycow Productions)

Contestant Cheryl Von der Hellen and her entry Cape Cod Crab Fest are seen here in the 2018 table setting competition at the OC Fair. She's now featured in the new documentary "Set!" which was filmed at the 2019 fair. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Janet Lew of Laguna Hills is seen here in the OC Fair's 2018 table-setting competition. She is featured in the new documentary "Set!" which was shot during the 2019 competition. Here she poses with her entry, Palace of the First Thai Princess. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

"Set!" is a new documentary set in the world of competitive table setting at the OC Fair. (Photo by Jon Salmon/Crazycow Productions)

Tim Wyckoff, left, and Cheryl von der Hellen, right, assemble their place settings at the OC Fair in Costa Mesa, CA, on Tuesday, July 9, 2019. They are now featured in the new documentary "Set!" which was filmed that same year. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

In search of relief from the triple-digit heat, Gawlik had ducked into the shade of Culinary Arts Building and a room filled with elaborately decorated tables. He found himself in a place where "tablescaping" is an actual word.

"I was like, ‘Oh, it's a place to eat, we’re gonna eat now,’" he says. "And they’re like, ‘No, no, no, you can't place your trash here! It's the table-setting competition.’"

He realized that these were no ordinary tables, and to his surprise, the over-the-top designs and themes spoke to him.

"I just immediately had really strong opinions about the tables," Gawlik says. "Like this one was better than that one. And believe me, I’ve never had an opinion about table-setting ever. Ever.

"Other than, you know, we just need a knife or a fork and a napkin, and that's it.’"

Now, three years later, his film "Set!" has been screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival and will make its debut on the Discovery+ streaming channel on Nov. 12.

Its arrival is proof, he says, that his instincts that day at the fair were correct.

"I was like, ‘If this could make me care about table-setting, and the people I was with care about table-setting, maybe they can sit through a movie," Gawlik says. "So I immediately went home and kind of Googled it.

"And at the time, when you Googled ‘competitive table-setting,’ a certain woman came up."

Bonnie Overman of Hacienda Heights was the woman whose name filled Gawlik's search results that night.

Not only had Overman been entering tables at the Orange County and Los Angeles County fairs for decades, she won so often that Gawlik came to see her as the LeBron James of table-setting.

"I called her, talked to her, and that kind of was a catalyst to everything," he says. "She was open to us filming, and it kind of took off from there."

Overman served as his entry into the world of competitive table setting, but soon he’d connected with many more, ultimately focusing on nine contestants who offered a range of different personalities.

There was Hilarie Moore of Orange, who told him she liked to climb into a sensory deprivation tank to clear her mind and let inspiration for each year's table theme surface. (She also wrote about the experience in 2014 for the OC Register.) Tim Wyckoff of Garden Grove, the sole male competitor featured in the film, shared his struggle to find a job and talked about the boost to his self-confidence a win at the fair could provide.

Crystal Young of San Dimas was the new kid on the block, winning the Best of Show ribbon and a $150 check in 2018, just her second year in competition. Cheryl Von der Hellen and Virginia "Ginnie" Jacobson called themselves the Water Babes thanks to the Seal Beach aqua-aerobics classmates they consulted on their table designs.

Janet Lew of Laguna Niguel is cheerfully eccentric. While most contestants dismantle their tables for good at the end of each fair, she reassembles them in her home, usually in a room dedicated solely to the tables. However, with that room full, she's put one in the bedroom she and her husband Ron share.

The film follows them and a few others over the six months leading up to the fair, jumping back and forth between contestants to follow their progress.

Moore, whose tables tend to make statements, such as the 2018 table setting made entirely out of trash that ends up in the ocean, is the renegade, the one doing things such as including taxidermy in her designs to the dismay of traditionalists such as Overman.

"Hilarie plays a little bit of the antagonist throughout the film; she's kind of the firestarter," Gawlik says.

"Tim told me early (about his struggles)," he says. "I was like, ‘Hey, are you sure you’re comfortable talking about this?’ I think just being really honest, people respond to that. It's just the sort of person I am."

"Set!" celebrates the unusual personalities of the competitors in a warm, friendly, and often humorous way. Even so, Gawlik says he wasn't sure what the featured competitors would think after seeing the finished film.

"I was so nervous about Hilarie because she could be seen as the bad guy," he says. "I like Hilarie, we’d become friendly, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, she's gonna hate me.’"

The morning after she saw the film she called. Gawlik says his hand was shaking as he held the phone.

"She goes, ‘Do you want to hear what I thought of the movie?’" he says. "I was like, ‘Oh god, yeah, of course.’

"And after a dramatic pause she goes, ‘I loved it," he says, adding that she did say she came off a little harsh.

By the time of the Newport Beach Film Festival screening on Oct.23, most of the featured competitors had seen the movie, though Gawlik says this was the first time they would see it together.

"There was a 2021 competition and Tim and Hilarie were next to each other and made amends and they’re best friends now," he says. "But during the 2021 competition, Bonnie and Hilarie didn't even look at each other.

"I was a little nervous about what the drama would be like," he says. "It's like having divorced parents but they’re going to a mutual wedding of somebody. You know they’re going to have to talk to each other.

"I looked over at the end of the screening and there they were talking to each other," Gawlik says. "I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’

"I think the movie may have pushed them apart a little bit, but the screening and that environment pushed them together, and they may be friendly now."

At some point, during the filming or the editing, Gawlik had an epiphany on the passion the table-setters have for their work.

"Take away the words ‘table setting’ from the scenario, and just call it art — because it's art they’re making, right?" he says. "Then you’re like, ‘It's a movie about people that are passionate about art.’ People probably wouldn't bat an eye at the film, they’d be ‘OK, it's a movie about passion, we get it.’

"That's what it is like," Gawlik says. "Table-setting is kind of what draws you into it, but it's really hardly about setting the table. The movie is about people's passion for art."

Art means different things to different people, of course, and that applies to the table-setters as much as it does to the audience.

"For Crystal, she's coping with the loss of her father," Gawlik says. "She puts all of her energy into her art and is able to cope with it. The mother-daughter team (Marie and Christel Schoenfelder of Rancho Cucamonga) had entered individually for years before deciding to team up in 2019.

"Bonnie, every time you go to her house, like, all the furniture's rearranged for a different season or different color. She just loves creating, that's her passion.

Tim, he doesn't have the financial means that some of these ladies have," he says. "But who says you need money to create art? Tim sure as hell doesn't feel that way."

Gawlik says he came to feel that he wasn't any different than his subjects in terms of the passions they pursue.

"My art is filmmaking," he says. "I did it because this was my passion, and I think I’m just the same as those ladies.

"The only difference is it's not a table setting, it was this film. And I think that's really how I was able to capture them in the way that I did."

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