WEBVTT - Michael Mann 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.840 Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:05.400 Adamized Studios. 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:11.800 Michael Man and I met about twenty five years ago 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:15.360 through architecture. On a trip to London. He asked to 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:19.080 visit the Lloyd's Building, designed by my husband Richard Rogers. 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:23.000 For us, it was an honor for if Michael was 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:26.799 a fan of Richard's architecture. Richard was a huge fan 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:33.200 of Michael's movies. In fact, when watching Ali, Miami, Vice, Collateral, 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:37.000 my arm would be constantly squeezed, not due to a 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:41.159 dramatic moment of fear or tension or mystery, but at 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:46.640 the way the buildings, streets, airports, bridges, and interiors, even 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:51.640 elevators were portrayed on screen. Over long dinners, Richard and 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.200 Michael often compared making a movie to making a building. 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.360 Michael once said, while at least Richard, in a building, 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.960 you can say to a client, if you remove a column, 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:06.520 the building will fall down. Try saying that about a 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:11.200 scene to a producer. Of all the movies Michael has made, though, 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.080 the one that I consider the greatest is sixty seconds 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:20.080 long shot entirely underwater in a swimming pool. Michael and 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:25.160 summer with their children swimmingly, wishing a happy birthday to Richard. 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:35.679 No architecture in this movie, just love So Michael, would 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.520 you read the recipe for sure? 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.960 This is a Southern Italian version of a tello tonato 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:47.400 cold roasvelle fresh tomato. So five hundred grams of cold 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:51.520 roast velle, two hundred and fifty milli liters of tomato sauce, 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:56.200 six basil leaves, fifty grams of salted capers, two lemons 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.000 and extra virgin olive oil. Slice of veal as fine 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:03.440 as possible. Squeeze the juice of one lemon and mixt 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:06.480 it with three times its volume of olive oil, and season. 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:11.079 Lay the veal slices over each plate, season with sea salt, 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:15.160 and drizzle with the dressing. Spoon over the tomato sauce, 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:18.120 and scatter with the capers and basil leaves, and then 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:19.240 drizzle with olive oil. 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:23.520 This dish Fatello tonato is very northern, and this is 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:27.919 a southern version. And I wonder whether you have traveled 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:30.600 from north to south in Italy? What is your Italian 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:32.160 traveling experience? 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.560 Varied but mostly spent a little time in Naples Once 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.560 upon a time, and then then Venice and drove around 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:41.960 the Dolomites at different times, but mostly it's been in 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:43.399 It's been in the Media. 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:45.600 Romagna, around Modena Maronello. 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:52.720 The Ferrari factory is then in Bologna Milan, where all 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:53.880 the great design is. 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:58.760 And it's very different. You know, we're just describing northern Italy. 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:00.920 I don't know what you ate in Naples and this 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:04.480 dish being so southern that it is, it's not even 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.320 region to region or city to city. It can be 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.520 village to village town, you know, family to family. The 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:12.000 way that people eat in Italy. 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:14.840 First time I visited the Ferrari Factory, went across the 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.720 street to Kavolino restaurant that has been there since the 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:24.880 nineteen fifties, and the cuisine is modernation. So it's a 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.760 big metal cart full of horribly boiled meats. 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:33.480 Alo that's right. Yeah, I actually really love it. But 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:36.160 they do cook it a very long time time and 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:39.240 you get the tongue and you get the yet everything. 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:43.080 Yeah, my grandmother hit the neck of totally destroying meats. 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:47.600 I think it came from it came from it came 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:48.360 from Big Russia. 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:53.560 Living tell me about her, So just starting going back 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:56.400 to your child. So your grandparents came, both of them 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:56.960 from Russia. 0:03:57.040 --> 0:03:59.360 My grandfathers came from Russia. They came from about seventy 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:00.880 or eighty miles north of Chernobol. 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:03.440 Did they come from the same place or did they meet. 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:05.040 They came, No, they came from the same place. They 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:07.920 came from over. My grandfather had to leave at the 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:12.480 very traumatic circumstances in nineteen twelve, and it took him 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.200 ten years to get my father, who was one at 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:17.760 the time, and my grandmother to the United States. 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.040 Your grandfather came first in twelve, and then did he 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:21.560 go directly? 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:24.880 He went to White Chapel, he was in a British army. 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.000 Then he wasn't in a British army. Then he came. 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:29.880 Then he went to Hartford, Connecticut. Then it was an 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:31.000 American army. 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:31.840 In the First World War. 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:35.279 Then the First World War. Yeah, And then nineteen nineteen 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:39.760 he lost his hearing and the flu epidemic and my. 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.480 Grandfather died in the fluid the same generation, you know. 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:45.440 And then finally in nineteen twenty two was able to 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:49.640 get my grandmother my father out and then they moved 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:53.600 to Chicago. But she was a spectacular woman, very very witty, 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.600 very politically very progressive. But what she was she killed 0:04:57.600 --> 0:04:59.000 as a cork were COIs. 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.520 She made these cheese described finish. 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.119 Fish is kind of a It's a bread, small bread 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.880 thing that's cooked in olive oil and has either meat 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.960 or cheese on the inside. And what it's made in 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:17.000 a cast iron frying pan that's been around for forty years. 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:20.880 It's fantastic. And remember one time I was driving home 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:24.560 from her house. I'd picked up a blue earthenware container 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:27.120 of this of these things and around the seat of 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.160 the car as car as a fifty four plymouth. It 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.680 was my uncle Sam's car that he let me drive 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.560 the car. And there was a lot of traffic on 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.640 California Avenue and I was driving back to to our house, 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.800 and so I took a hard light on Catalpa, took 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.359 a left out in an alley and hit a gigantic 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:50.880 pothole in the alley, and in the way time slows down, 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:55.520 I saw this earthenware container of my grandmother's condess just 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:59.360 start to fall off the seat in slow motion, and 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.360 I saw myself had to get to a telephone pole 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:06.640 and I'm thinking moment, it was either saved the conditioners 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:08.760 or saved the car. So I reached for the conditions 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:11.080 and just crashed the car into the pole. 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:14.160 To die for a kindish might not have been. 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.480 That's how much it's got all the important early themes 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.880 of basically immature life. From that point forward, it was 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:25.839 just driving cars. 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:30.840 And so your grandmother was the cook, She made the conditions. 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:32.520 Was she the one that overlooked the beef or was 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:33.080 that your mother? 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:34.960 No, she over cooked the beef. I don't know. I 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:35.640 think it was. 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.159 I mean it was a standing joke and the family, 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:39.920 my brother and I, you know, you would chew it 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:42.720 and tell you your jaws ate you couldn't masticate this. 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:45.960 What else did your grandmother? Did she live with you? 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.400 By the way, your grandmother, No, she didn't. So you 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.640 would go to her house an event to eat in 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:52.400 her house. 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.400 And my father was my father stopped and saw her 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.480 every day. And later in life, when I knew more 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:00.760 about life, I realized there was because it's probably the 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.400 ten years that they were alone together. 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:04.840 There was a certain bond there. 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:09.720 Because while my grandfather was gone came the First World War, 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:14.560 the Russian Revolution, the Civil War, and there were progroms 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.440 in the area from the through the Civil War from 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.800 the white Russians. So you know, there were hard times. 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.400 If your grandmother brought her food, did your mother did 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:26.119 they move towards American food? 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:28.400 My mother was born in the United States, Okay, so 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.240 my grandmother. No, my grandmother cooked. You know, if you 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:34.840 cook the way they traditionally the way they did, you went, 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:36.960 you went to the store, you bought a live chicken. 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:38.840 They killed the chicken. You brought the chicken at home. 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.120 You know, I'm not going back to the nineteen fifties. 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:43.880 And what was it like in your house? Who did 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:44.880 the cooking at your house? 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:45.680 My mother? 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:48.920 Yeah, did your father ever venture into the kitchen. 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.840 Yeah, he did, and he had a real sensibility for cusine, 0:07:55.040 --> 0:08:02.360 for fruit number one. But then also finally imported mushrooms 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:07.000 from Poland, for example, a certain kind of a mushroom 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:11.320 barley soup. Or when I was working for my father 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:12.800 when I was a kid, from when I was like 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:16.040 twelve to sixteen, Uh, he had like a supermarket, a 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:19.040 small supermarket. And in the winter I was I was 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:23.360 delivering groceries and it's ten below and you're carrying groceries 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.520 wagon or something carrying a portion that you got cold. 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:29.560 And they always had some gigantic pot with some kind 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:31.200 of a massive. 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.160 Stew, you know, it all day long in the grocery store. 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:36.040 In the back of the grocery store. It was a 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:41.040 very family kind of a kind of affair. Yeah, and 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:45.280 exotic kinds of smoked fish from Eastern Europe would show 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.679 up and there'd be something hanging in the basement, but 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.839 he would sell that. That was that's where that's where 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:52.080 we had. 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:54.720 That's we head home, you know, and the grocery store sold. 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:57.199 It was just a big Yeah. 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:00.000 It was just a standard kind of supermarket, neighborhood, supermar 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:01.160 What was the. 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:01.839 Area was it. 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:04.360 It's near the northwest side, it says, kind of a 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.800 mixed kind of lower middle class, working class area, very 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:11.760 very diverse population. Two waves of Polish immigrants, a very 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:16.200 upper middle class wave of Polish immigration from the nineteen twenties, 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:22.040 very sophisticated people, a Jewish, Italian, some Irish. 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:23.640 So it was quite mixed. 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:26.439 I saw when they had we used to go to 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.319 a church right after must have been nineteen forty six 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.240 forty seven, right right after the War. There was a 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:35.280 neighborhood church a block away that had showed movies in 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.400 the basement, the old black and white, sixteen milimeter movies. 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:40.439 And I remember being taken that. 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.040 When I was very young and I saw a movie, 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:46.280 I just remembered certain things about it. In nineteen ninety one, 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.840 when I had I couldn't figure out what to do next, 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:52.120 what film to do next. I remember that railing around 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:56.240 in my brain was this image of a of an 0:09:56.240 --> 0:10:02.080 Iroquois Indian head shaved bold and lined with a red coat, 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.640 a British uniform eighteenth century British uniform soldier. And that's 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.720 such an anomaly because we always saw as your kid, 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:12.040 you always saw America, you know, Native Americans and cowboys 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.600 or something, and that stuck in my mind, and also 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:18.040 a corollary tragedy of the death of a young woman. 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:20.480 And I realized that this has been rattling around in 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:22.360 my head since I was about three. So it was 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:24.680 last of the Mohicans and so so well, you got 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:26.880 to go to the last Mohicans. So this, this old 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:31.040 neighborhood really had this resonance. I think things impressed themselves 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:33.280 on your memory when you're very young, in ways that 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:34.840 are are are huge. 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:38.480 And then at home, who is it you have a 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:39.240 brother or sister? 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:40.160 How many brother? 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:42.760 And did you sit down for meals? Did your father 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:43.120 come back? 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:45.440 We waited. My father came home. 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:47.679 He took a bath and took a shower, and we 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:51.480 formally sat down and he always had a good shot 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.559 of whiskey and a shot of whiskey and uh and 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:57.600 we had a formal dinner every night. 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:01.679 And that continued till you left home. 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:03.360 That continued until I left home. 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:12.480 You know, when you left home? 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:13.439 What was that like? 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.719 Going from being cooked for every day and then being 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:19.360 out there? Did you cook yourself? Where were you after it? 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:21.440 I did? I went to I went to the University 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.240 of Wisconsin, Madison, and then after four years there I 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:24.880 went to London. 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.760 And uh, yes, I did. I cook for myself. 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:33.160 I also was working as a kind of a short 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.120 ordered cook, doing breakfast at a girls dormitory in the 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:37.760 morning in Wisconsin. 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:37.480 You know. 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:41.400 So it was just interesting getting up at five thirty 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.800 in the morning and Wisconsin in a winter and going 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:45.000 to you know, a. 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.800 Lot of clue from your grandmother to your mother, to 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.120 the grocery store to working. Did you ever work in 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:51.720 a restaurant. 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:53.959 Yeah, I did. I was a short cook one summer 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:58.080 in front of Yeah, which is crazy. You will blanche 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.440 at some of these stories from these places. We used 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:03.920 to because there'd be this massive rush and it was 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:06.120 a memory test because you were having to remember all 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:08.839 these orders at the same time. And if somebody ordered 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.840 a steak the way we would get a steak done quickly, 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:14.000 somebody would grab it out of the freezer, they throw 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:16.200 it down the kitchen. We would catch it and dump 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:17.400 it in the French frar. 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:18.439 In the fire. 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:21.319 Yes, absolutely horrible. 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.800 Probably guilty of some form of order, manslaughter or something, 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:29.040 because there's probably regular diets who had earlier heart disease 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:30.800 because they ate these things. 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:33.040 Yeah, And that was Wisconsin. And then you went to 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.240 this is about but what about London? Because I was 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:38.599 in London in the sixties and it was kind of 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:41.439 I always felt there was a kind of beginning of 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.840 that multicultural excitement of food rationing was you know, only 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:49.360 fifteen years before after the war, I think that then 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:51.760 and then in the sixties there seemed to be a 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:55.400 lot more food of Greece and Italy. This it was 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:57.760 much more vibrant. Did you remember the food of this. 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:01.760 Totally absolutely my experience with bigger short of cook and 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:04.120 all this stuff. This is in the this in your 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:08.000 early sixties and the States and h I talked about, 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:09.360 you're working for my father. 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:10.760 This is in the nineteen fifties. 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:13.839 But in sixty five I went to London to a 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.280 film school for two years and stayed there for six years. 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.920 And the cuisine was, you know, basically beans on toast, yeah, 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:21.280 and transport. 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:23.240 Calf yeah, and chip sandwiches. 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:25.480 Did you ever have chip sandwiches? 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:29.480 That was really big on transport caffs, beans on toast 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:31.640 or you're having you know, or eggs. 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:32.240 I used to love. 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:38.439 Yeah, every swimming in Greece, bacon fat maybe large. 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:41.400 And the revelation was I couldn't afford it. But the 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:45.240 revelation was was Greek food particularly particularly there's a heavy 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:50.920 influence from Cypriot food, so it's like cheftalia sausage and 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:53.840 those kinds of things. So there's these little funky kebab 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:58.360 stands around Charlotte Street just north of Oxford Street, and 0:13:58.480 --> 0:13:59.440 an Indian food. 0:13:59.200 --> 0:13:59.920 Which is a revelation. 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:01.480 Yeah, where did you live? 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:05.040 I lived all over I lived in Queensway, very briefly, 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:07.280 and then we were on New King's Road. Then I 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:10.560 lived in Balum, then clap himself and back in South ken. 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:13.760 Did anybody ever take you to a restaurant that was Yeah? 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:15.880 How did I start actually started making a little bit 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:20.680 of money? And then the thing was so attractive was 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:27.800 on Fulham Road there was an Italian restaurant and I 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.920 was living on ten pounds a week, literally is five 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:35.840 pounds for rent, five pounds. But the ambiance of a 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.480 nice Italian restaurant on the spring or a summer day 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.840 and you know, a Saturday or Sunday with families kind 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.200 of which to me was kind of was so touching 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:49.480 about the River Cafe because that ambiance is there and 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:53.120 its fullest, most technicolor form in your restaurant and this 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:55.080 whole extended family that you created. 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:57.880 So were you taken to when you were in film school? Then? 0:14:59.120 --> 0:14:59.960 What was that in London? 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:02.720 I was in London, it was in Covent Garden, It's 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:04.960 on Charlotte Street. Then the move to Covent Garden. It's 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:05.840 a London film school. 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:07.400 Yeah, and what was that like? 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:08.680 That was great? 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:10.440 For the first time in my life, I was doing 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.880 exactly only what I wanted to do, which is make film, 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:17.640 which was a revelation to me when it happened in 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:18.600 my junior. 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:19.400 Year at was Scott's. 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.920 So I took a film history course for a kind 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:25.320 of cynically, I thought, oh, we're going to there's gonna. 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:26.640 Be three credits for looking at movies. 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:30.480 And I didn't expect to get completely mugged and hijacked 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:33.480 by this whole notion which curded a flash of light, 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:36.280 like the skies parted and bolt of lightning came down and. 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:38.680 Said you will do this, you will become a film director. 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:41.280 And from that point on and that was it. That's 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:42.720 what I want to do with you. 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.880 Was Ridley Scott. There was Alan Parker and Ridley Scott. 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:47.880 Were they in the same Did you know them? 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:48.080 Then? 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:49.080 I knew Ridley. 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:51.880 I didn't know I met Alan Parker years later, but 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.440 I knew Ridley, And you know, the late sixties, I 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.600 started a small production company after I got out of 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:00.880 film school and London. We made some commercials and documentaries 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:04.680 and I shot some of Paris after Major in sixty eight. 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.840 That was politically pretty involved. Yeah, and so life was 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:12.320 changing and evolving. At one point I worked at twentieth 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:17.040 century Fox towards sixty nine in production, and by that 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:19.960 point I was making enough money it's going to live reasonably. 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.320 And I had a production manager I worked with whose 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:24.480 wife was fresh and he was. 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:25.560 Quite a spectacular cook. 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:29.880 And that was probably the first serious exposure I had 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.320 to really good cuzin home cooking. Yeah, it was home 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:35.680 cooked French French food. And then we were spending a 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:37.880 lot of time in France at that point, in trailing 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:41.000 to Morocco in Italy, and so the world was getting 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:42.479 to be a much larger place. 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.720 And France was that huge few Being in Paris. 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:47.840 Well sixty eight was pretty wild. 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:49.800 Well, we got there much later. We got there in 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:52.000 sort of seventy one, but there were still the buses 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.440 full of police and Daniel Combandi Well. 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.400 I interviewed Combindi Lan's mar Alon Cravine. 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:00.720 Wow have that footage? 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:02.120 No, it wound up. 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:06.080 It grown up in the bowels of NBC News someplace, 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:08.560 and I tried to find it years and years ago, 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:09.440 couldn't find it. 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.680 Did you make a documentary about from beginning to end it? 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:12.840 Well? 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.879 You just is it footage for the news documentary? 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:20.160 About the focus of documentary was that the sixth May 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.679 JUnit happened, and what's what's going to be the after effect, 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:26.080 And that's what it was really focused on. And the 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:29.440 prediction at the time, which was partially true parsonally not, 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.440 was that the major impact was going to be amongst 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:36.680 teenagers into these says, and that there was a radicalization 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.480 of the young workers, particularly young workers at the Renaul 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:43.439 factory who were CGT, and they started to look at 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.240 the CGT in a very different light as being basically reactionary. 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:50.720 But the idea that you're in a country and forty 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:54.040 percent of the population is on strike, and if you 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:57.880 turned on RTF at six o'clock to watch the news, 0:17:57.960 --> 0:17:59.960 there'd be some girls she might or may not still 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:01.879 reading the news, sitting on the desk, she may may 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:02.639 not have a shirt on. 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:04.680 I mean, it was everybody. 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:09.200 A youth generation had taken over, and it wasn't just students. 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:10.600 There was students and young workers. 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:14.040 But then you know, and they say that the gold 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:16.680 that he had a plane ready, it was very very 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:18.480 close to him leaving. 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:23.600 He was basically a prisoner in the palace, and then 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:25.879 he made a deal and he couldn't count on the 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:30.600 French army in France because they would deploy and then 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:34.800 some you know, girls would show up with some flowers 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:37.359 and the soldiers would walk away from the APC's so 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.399 it's complete chaos. So he made a deal with the 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:43.199 French Army of the Rhine, because Germany is still occupy 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:45.399 at that point, to come in and support him, and 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.960 they extorted from him, in effect, the release of Ceylon, 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:55.240 who was a right wing of French general. 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:57.920 Who over the war in Algeria. 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:00.840 It was part of a plot to sassinate the Gall 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:02.840 and was in prison, and that that was the quid 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:06.720 pro quo of the Gall getting support from the military, 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:10.800 and that they they marched in from Germany and that 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.359 so so better kind of dived and everything dissipated. 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:17.399 So that the military cushed it. Right, Yeah, I was 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:19.960 because there was always theories that the working class didn't 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.119 you know, that it was a student led revolution, and 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:25.600 that it just didn't have the backing of. 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.720 Well but every but the people who were intellectually on 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:31.320 top of it, who were at the heart of it, 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:35.240 knew nothing serious was actually going to happen in the 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:38.240 real world right then and there. It was very sophisticated. 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:41.760 The irony is that is that sitting in London prior 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:46.000 to Major sixty eight, everybody dismissed the French's Cafe Marxist 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.119 or something, and then ironically that's where sixty eight was 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:53.040 just extraordinary. You're in Czechoslovakia and Mexico City. I was 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:56.040 in the Grosvenor Square on October twenty fifth. 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:57.080 Yeah, that was there. 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:00.560 You were there, Clinton was there, Tarika, he was there. 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:04.960 Illy have a picture by the march. It was heady times. 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:07.760 And as I said, when Richard, when the Pampato we went, 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.320