Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: There is much you can know about a person by
Speaker 2: the way they are in a restaurant. Will they be
Speaker 2: kind to a waiter patient if mistakes are made, say
Speaker 2: goodbye when they leave? Will the staff look forward to
Speaker 2: their arrival? When Kathy Kennedy, creator of So Many Movies,
Speaker 2: books a table, everyone in the River Cafe is elated.
Speaker 2: I've witnessed her be attentive and kind to the writers, directors,
Speaker 2: and fans that interrupt her meal, mostly with her husband,
Speaker 2: Frank Marshall. And I've seen the expression that only a
Speaker 2: good food lover can make when she tastes something she likes.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Ruthie, this is great fun.
Speaker 4: I know that this sounds like I'm picking a flavor
Speaker 4: that people go, oh really, but I think great vanilla
Speaker 4: ice cream is just the best. So this is for
Speaker 4: serving fifteen. It's two liters of double cream. It's four
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty milli liters of milk, four fresh vanilla
Speaker 4: pods so important, split lengthwise, fifteen egg yolts, three hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty grams of castor sugar in a large saucepan.
Speaker 4: You'll combine the cream and the milk. You'll then scrape
Speaker 4: the vanilla seeds very carefully to get every single seed
Speaker 4: out of the pods into the pan, and then the
Speaker 4: pods too, and you cook until just below boiling, because
Speaker 4: you don't want it to boil that'll actually ruin the custard.
Speaker 4: And you then remove from the heat, beat the egg
Speaker 4: yolks and sugar together until pale and thick. Pour a
Speaker 4: little of the warm cream into the egg yolk mixture.
Speaker 4: And this is something that you want to do very slowly,
Speaker 4: so that you can blend everything and stir. Return this
Speaker 4: to the rest of the cream in the saucepan, and
Speaker 4: cook gently over a low heat, stirring constantly to prevent
Speaker 4: the custard from curdling. And when the custard has thickened
Speaker 4: enough to coat the back of the spoon, strain it
Speaker 4: into a bowl and leave to cool, Pour into an
Speaker 4: ice cream machine and churn until frozen. And then you
Speaker 4: have perfect vanilla ice.
Speaker 2: Cream that's beautifully red. And also, I did not know
Speaker 2: how good a cook you are, because you know, you
Speaker 2: said it with confidence, with authority, and with knowledge, So
Speaker 2: you do make vanilla ice cream.
Speaker 3: I do make vanilla ice cream. I don't.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: The thing is, I don't really get a lot of
Speaker 3: chance to cook.
Speaker 4: I wish I did, because I think I would really
Speaker 4: enjoy it. But when I do, when I have the
Speaker 4: time and I can really focus and pay attention, then
Speaker 4: I find it very relaxing and fun.
Speaker 2: And what about when you started working, what was food like? Well?
Speaker 4: I think the great thing when I started working, I
Speaker 4: immediately started traveling because we've made so many movies all
Speaker 4: over the world, so food is something I really connected
Speaker 4: with because we for instance, with Raiders of Lost Arc
Speaker 4: we were in Tunisia, so I remember one of the
Speaker 4: first scouts we ever did. We were taken to this
Speaker 4: tent basically and they were making pork and lamb in
Speaker 4: the ground, cooking and heating it with fresh vegetables and
Speaker 4: cous goose, and I never had anything like that.
Speaker 3: It was really spectacular.
Speaker 2: I love that food. I haven't been to Tunisia, but
Speaker 2: Morocco very sophisticated.
Speaker 4: You know. That's the great thing about movie cruise. I
Speaker 4: think people assimilate very very quickly. As recently as the
Speaker 4: Last Star Wars with JJ when we were in Jordan,
Speaker 4: and that was the first thing we were all talking
Speaker 4: about was.
Speaker 3: What we're going to eat and where would we go.
Speaker 4: And we were based out of Acaba and so we
Speaker 4: were treated to some pretty amazing meals.
Speaker 2: I think in any work environment, you know, taking care
Speaker 2: of the people who work for you, and the way
Speaker 2: they're fed, the way they are given time off. But
Speaker 2: it's interesting because when we talked to Wes Anderson, he
Speaker 2: said that he loathes stopping for lunch. He did tell
Speaker 2: the story that he tried to just give everybody soup
Speaker 2: and that worked for about one day. Said yeah, maybe maybe.
Speaker 2: He said that actually going out at the end of
Speaker 2: a day with the people who was working with was crucial.
Speaker 2: That time around the table, that time to relax.
Speaker 4: And do you think that's one of the things that
Speaker 4: people are missing right now with COVID is you know,
Speaker 4: so much of what we're doing to be pre prepared
Speaker 4: and handed to people, and that sense of being able
Speaker 4: to gather at the end of the day, usually over food,
Speaker 4: whether you go to somebody's home, like for instance, we're
Speaker 4: shooting one of the Star Wars series and we're up
Speaker 4: in Scotland and Diego Luna is the star of that show,
Speaker 4: and he had about fifteen people who were all vaccinated.
Speaker 4: That was one of the things we had to find out.
Speaker 4: But he had about fifteen people come over and he
Speaker 4: fixed this amazing paiea and everybody was just raving about
Speaker 4: what he had done. And he has his two kids
Speaker 4: with him, and his ten year old daughter is actually,
Speaker 4: from the sounds of it, becoming quite a wonderful cook
Speaker 4: and really enjoys it. And she was in there helping him,
Speaker 4: and you know, I think everybody was realizing how great
Speaker 4: it is to get back to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when you were saying about making vanilla ice
Speaker 2: cream and having time to cook, there is something about
Speaker 2: cooking that is both relaxing and engrossing and apart from
Speaker 2: you know, it takes all your attention. I remember when
Speaker 2: I before I was a chef, I worked in a
Speaker 2: publishers and everybody'd come back and everybody say, don't cook,
Speaker 2: just sit down and relax, But actually it was much
Speaker 2: more relaxing to go and cook. Do you think that's
Speaker 2: something that because it's.
Speaker 4: Complete focus, the same reason some people play golf, you know,
Speaker 4: it's what is it that takes you your attention away
Speaker 4: from the rest of the world and gives you something
Speaker 4: that creative to immerse yourself in. I think, you know,
Speaker 4: it reminds me of one of the things that my
Speaker 4: mom taught me. I'm very particular about how the plate looks.
Speaker 4: You know, whatever it is you're cooking, it really is
Speaker 4: important to then look at the plate and say, well,
Speaker 4: you know, what's the relationship with color and garnish, and
Speaker 4: just how pleasing is it when you set it down
Speaker 4: in front of somebody. And I think that all of
Speaker 4: those little details are what makes it, you know, such
Speaker 4: an enjoyable experience that you.
Speaker 2: Could be talking about a movie. Yes, you just exactly
Speaker 2: have something which could be a same from a film.
Speaker 3: Because it's all in the details.
Speaker 4: That's something that we say all the time, what is
Speaker 4: that That everything you're doing, all the creative processes in
Speaker 4: the details, and that's what makes it so personally enjoyable.
Speaker 4: My mom was actually an incredible cook. She was right
Speaker 4: in the middle of the Julia Child's you know, period
Speaker 4: of time, and so it's one of the reasons I
Speaker 4: think I kind of don't cook because my mom would
Speaker 4: have us out of the kitchen. She would take over
Speaker 4: the kitchen, prepare everything. Sometimes she'd have us come in
Speaker 4: sort of her soue chef, but most of the time
Speaker 4: she was doing everything herself.
Speaker 2: And did your father cook? No, never in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: What did he do.
Speaker 4: We actually lived in a little tiny town in northern California,
Speaker 4: and my dad was a lawyer initially and eventually a judge,
Speaker 4: but he became a mining expert because gold mining was
Speaker 4: a big deal in northern California, and even when I
Speaker 4: was born in the fifties, there was still a lot
Speaker 4: of work to be done in mining claims and what
Speaker 4: not throughout that region, and so my dad became an
Speaker 4: expert in that area.
Speaker 3: He also was very, very involved in a lot of
Speaker 3: the water.
Speaker 4: Rights for the state of California, so the building of
Speaker 4: the dams and that kind of thing, and then there
Speaker 4: were probably thirty forty reservations in northern California at that time,
Speaker 4: and so he was also intricately involved in that. So
Speaker 4: as a kid, it was really interesting to travel with
Speaker 4: him and visit some of these places that were very remote,
Speaker 4: meet some real characters, and that's where I actually in
Speaker 4: terms of food, I was introduced to venison and lots
Speaker 4: of wild game, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Pheasants, doves, fish doves.
Speaker 2: You ateed doves.
Speaker 4: They would cook, just very small doves. And then I
Speaker 4: learned how to fish and caught steelhead. Steelhead was a
Speaker 4: big thing at that time. You can't really find a
Speaker 4: lot of steelhead in that area anymore. Steelhead is a
Speaker 4: large trout. It's also a very fun fish to catch
Speaker 4: because it takes a long time to bring steelhead in.
Speaker 2: So this is very northern California.
Speaker 3: It's right near the Oregon border.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and traveling and eating and exploring and fishing all
Speaker 2: were connected to adventure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, connected to adventure, and frankly always connected to food
Speaker 4: because it was a question of how were you going
Speaker 4: to prepare something, whether you were outside or we even
Speaker 4: had friends that would hang venison down in the basement
Speaker 4: to make you know, homemade jerky and that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: How do you stuff a pheasant? You know, the cherries
Speaker 4: and fruits and things that were used for stuffings, the
Speaker 4: making of wild rice, different kinds of rices. That was
Speaker 4: a constant conversation, a seasonal kind of conversation.
Speaker 2: Was that from your mother or both parents, I.
Speaker 4: Think both parents, but their friends, you know, everybody would
Speaker 4: always talk about food. There was always something in service
Speaker 4: to the preparation of food.
Speaker 2: That's so because it doesn't you know, if you think
Speaker 2: of small town America and in the fifties, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: necessarily think that, would you.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I think it's it's interesting because I
Speaker 4: think it has a lot to do with people who
Speaker 4: comfortably hunt and a certain amount of agriculture. That part
Speaker 4: of northern California is right at the tip of the
Speaker 4: Central Valley in California, so there was a lot of
Speaker 4: fresh produce. I learned a lot about fish, even though
Speaker 4: we were inland. A lot of the fish would come
Speaker 4: in from the Bay area or the rivers, the nearby rivers.
Speaker 4: So there were different kinds of trout. There was petrolley's soul.
Speaker 4: There was salmon because that would come from the Eureka area,
Speaker 4: which is up near Humboldt, you know, and different kinds
Speaker 4: of salmon, you know, the coho versus the Copper River.
Speaker 3: And that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: So you even the variations of the fish that was
Speaker 4: caught was something that I just remember as a kid
Speaker 4: being very aware of not to mention what you were
Speaker 4: catching yourself and bringing home.
Speaker 2: Were you to go back there, now, do you think
Speaker 2: the culture would have changed.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think it's definitely changed. I think fast
Speaker 4: food has changed the culture in a lot of places,
Speaker 4: because when I was a kid, there just wasn't a
Speaker 4: massive amount of fast food, so people were cooking and
Speaker 4: eating what was available.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you left home at what age to go to college.
Speaker 4: I left right out of high school, so I was
Speaker 4: just seventeen going on eighteen, and I went down to
Speaker 4: San Diego. Of course, there was all the influence of
Speaker 4: Mexican food and Mexican culture. They even had these fantastic
Speaker 4: factories downtown where they made homemade tortillas and chips and
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. It was really fun when we
Speaker 4: were in college because we would go down and just
Speaker 4: have these freshly baked tortilla chips and homemade salsa and
Speaker 4: tacos and burritos and and all. The food was just
Speaker 4: so fresh and great and very indigenous to the area.
Speaker 4: So you really felt like you were eating something that
Speaker 4: that was part of the culture, and it was.
Speaker 2: How far San Diego.
Speaker 3: It's very close. Yeah.
Speaker 4: In fact, when you go to school down there, you're
Speaker 4: often going down into Rosata Beach and yeah, so that
Speaker 4: was a big thing during Easter break and that kind
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 2: Did your parents ever come experience.
Speaker 3: They didn't really come down that much.
Speaker 4: They were pretty much homebodies and my dad was so
Speaker 4: busy that they were pretty much confined to northern California.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a funny thing about northern California and
Speaker 4: southern California, and there aren't a lot of people north
Speaker 4: of San Francisco that are very interested. I think even
Speaker 4: today in visiting Los Angeles, it truly is like two
Speaker 4: very very different cultures.
Speaker 2: I remember when Richard after the Pompado, he taught at UCLA,
Speaker 2: and I thought, as an American, we lived in the
Speaker 2: United States until I lived in LA and then it
Speaker 2: was like, why would you go to San Francisco for
Speaker 2: the weekend when where San Francisco was like why would
Speaker 2: you teach at UCLA when you could be at Berkeley.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very much divided. Everybody has strong feelings about
Speaker 4: the state.
Speaker 2: When you are producing a movie, tell me about that
Speaker 2: day in terms of how you start with the breakfast.
Speaker 2: Do you think about what you're going to have to
Speaker 2: lunch or do you well, I think it's.
Speaker 4: Very much the same way of looking at what are
Speaker 4: your ingredients for the day, What is it you're trying
Speaker 4: to accomplish, and how are you bringing it all together
Speaker 4: in order to present something at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: which our presentation are the dailies and the eventual present
Speaker 4: is the editorial process.
Speaker 3: But in that moment, it's the same.
Speaker 4: Process where you're isolating all the things you're going to need,
Speaker 4: and whether that's the detail around set dressing, the detail
Speaker 4: around performance, the detail around the look of the lighting,
Speaker 4: the detail around a stunt being choreographed, really well, all
Speaker 4: of those details are important and you're doing it. Oftentimes
Speaker 4: with sometimes the size movies we're working on, we have
Speaker 4: hundreds of people, and even in that core team that's
Speaker 4: actually working around the camera, that's usually at least fifty
Speaker 4: or more people. So communicating to everybody what it is
Speaker 4: you're trying to achieve is much like a restaurant. You
Speaker 4: come in at the beginning of the night or the
Speaker 4: day and you have a pretty good idea of what
Speaker 4: you're going to try to accomplish. You know how many
Speaker 4: reservations are there, what's going to be prepped, what's going
Speaker 4: to be ready, what do you have to anticipate, what
Speaker 4: do you have to be ready for? That's something we're
Speaker 4: doing all the time. I always say as a producer,
Speaker 4: seventy five percent of my job should be done by
Speaker 4: the time the director says action, and then I'm problem solving. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's pretty much what I'm doing in the course.
Speaker 3: Of the day.
Speaker 2: I always say that. Also, you know again in common ground,
Speaker 2: that a restaurant is a very good place to work in.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're out of school, because if you
Speaker 2: don't do your work, you don't necessarily get in trouble
Speaker 2: with your boss, but with your colleagues. So if a
Speaker 2: chef is preparing a salsa verde and a way to
Speaker 2: because all the waiters in the River Cafe come in
Speaker 2: in the morning and they don't lay tables. They do
Speaker 2: the jobs of being of helping the chefs, so they know,
Speaker 2: chop the chili's, they they grill the peppers, they dessult
Speaker 2: the anchievies. But if they haven't done their job, then
Speaker 2: when he goes to make the sauce in the PARSI
Speaker 2: hasn't been he said. It's very it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: You're working on a schedule and.
Speaker 4: Exactly, yeah, yeah, and that's very, very similar to the
Speaker 4: process of working on a movie, because if everything is
Speaker 4: in prepped and ready to go, then the directors standing
Speaker 4: around waiting hours.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, Yeah, it's not knowing your lines. Yeah, have you
Speaker 2: ever worked in I did.
Speaker 4: I did little bits here and there, but nothing, you know,
Speaker 4: nothing I could really describe in any detail. It was
Speaker 4: one of my early jobs, actually one I think I
Speaker 4: was sixteen, sixteen years old. I worked in a little restaurant.
Speaker 4: It was scared me to death, actually.
Speaker 3: It was. It was a great way to start, do
Speaker 3: you work.
Speaker 2: When I interviewed Michael Caine, he said that he had
Speaker 2: never done a deal in Hollywood that wasn't done in
Speaker 2: a restaurant. When I asked JJ, he said, no, that
Speaker 2: was old school. Yeah, you would you take somebody out
Speaker 2: to a restaurant to finalize you know.
Speaker 4: I take somebody out to a restaurant to get to
Speaker 4: know them. Certainly for key people that you're trying to
Speaker 4: bring into a movie, you're trying to build a relationship,
Speaker 4: and there's no better way to do that than to
Speaker 4: do that over food, you know. I I look at
Speaker 4: relationships based on a phone call, breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Speaker 4: Are you going to go to dinner with somebody that's
Speaker 4: a commitment. That's a significant commisment. Are you going to
Speaker 4: go to lunch with somebody a little less breakfast, little less?
Speaker 4: And so it's.
Speaker 2: I'm not very worried, Okay, Kathy. If I come to
Speaker 2: and you say Ruth, no, no, no, no, I might be really.
Speaker 3: We're already we're already friends. We'd have tons of pots.
Speaker 4: But if you're trying to meet somebody and you're just
Speaker 4: doing it with a phone call, that's a lot different
Speaker 4: than committing to having dinner.
Speaker 2: Dinner is a commitment and it does teach you. But
Speaker 2: that's why I started out by saying that I do
Speaker 2: see the way you are in a restaurant, and it
Speaker 2: tells you something, doesn't it. Whether people look the waiter
Speaker 2: in the eyeo whate that they say thank you, well, I.
Speaker 4: Think it comes from a level of appreciation. You know,
Speaker 4: some people, food is not something they think a lot
Speaker 4: about and it's just, you know, another box to tick,
Speaker 4: as opposed to walking into a place where you appreciate
Speaker 4: what's gone into the preparation, the service, and the love
Speaker 4: of creating something like this.
Speaker 2: When you travel, it depends on where we are.
Speaker 4: And maybe this comes from my background of having eaten
Speaker 4: lots of different kinds of things.
Speaker 3: I always want to know.
Speaker 4: Like, for instance, when we were up in Scotland just
Speaker 4: the other day, had venison because I haven't had venison
Speaker 4: in a long long time, but they had it on
Speaker 4: the menu. We also went and got a platter of
Speaker 4: what they called a lock seafood platter, so it's all
Speaker 4: the different kinds of shellfish and fish that come out
Speaker 4: of the locks. I'll usually gravitate right away to something
Speaker 4: like that when you're in a restaurant where you feel
Speaker 4: that they're paying attention to what's around them.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, we talk about food memories, we
Speaker 2: talk about food as adventure. We talk about food is
Speaker 2: taking care of the people we work with and the
Speaker 2: family that we love. But also food is a comfort.
Speaker 2: What would be Kathy Kennedy your comfort food?
Speaker 3: My comfort food?
Speaker 4: I would say that it's probably a really good hearty
Speaker 4: soup and a great homemade, thick piece of bread to
Speaker 4: go with it or corn bread. That's my comfort food.
Speaker 2: Thank you well, thank you for giving us, as I
Speaker 2: said the movies, thank you for coming to the River
Speaker 2: Cafe tonight, and thank you for doing this well.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Rauthie. It was a real pleasure.
Speaker 2: To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go
Speaker 2: to shop Therivercafe dot co dot UK.
Speaker 1: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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