Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: In the past weeks, a phrase has been said to
Speaker 2: me over and over again, Ruthie, you are going to
Speaker 2: love Griffin Dunn. Of course, being an independent spirit wishing
Speaker 2: to make up my own mind, I've been listening to
Speaker 2: Griffin's interviews, watching his films, and most of all, reading
Speaker 2: his beautiful new memoir The Friday Afternoon Club. With stories
Speaker 2: of growing up and a family full of story tellers.
Speaker 2: Cooking a recipe is also about telling a story. Eating
Speaker 2: together is telling a story. Going to a food market
Speaker 2: in Naples is telling a story. When Griffin told his
Speaker 2: brother Alex he was going to write a book about
Speaker 2: their family, he responded, you can say anything you want,
Speaker 2: but say it from a place of love. Today, Griffin
Speaker 2: and I are going to talk about food and family,
Speaker 2: food and friends, food and memories. So we have a
Speaker 2: recipe for Tagaleradi, with which you chose from all our books.
Speaker 1: Yes I did.
Speaker 3: The ingredients are one hundred grams of panchetta, six hundred
Speaker 3: grams of veal minced, twenty five grams butter, one red onion,
Speaker 3: one small leak, one celery heart and two cloves of garlic,
Speaker 3: one teaspoon, time and sage, three hundred milli liters of
Speaker 3: chicken broth, one hundred and fifty milli liters of milk,
Speaker 3: peel of half a lemon. Finely chop the red onion, leak, celery,
Speaker 3: and garlic. Heat the olive oil in a heavy pan
Speaker 3: over a medium heat. Fry the panchetta for five minutes.
Speaker 3: Add the butter, onion, leak, celery, garlic, and thyme, and
Speaker 3: season with salt and pepper. Fry for fifteen minutes, stirring.
Speaker 3: Often add the veal in sage and cook until the
Speaker 3: veal is no longer pink. Stir in the hot froth
Speaker 3: milk and lemon peel and bring to a boil. Simmer
Speaker 3: for one hour until most of the liquid has evaporated.
Speaker 3: Set aside in a pan of boiling salted water. Cook
Speaker 3: the tagli orini until al dente. Drain and combine the
Speaker 3: pasta with the sauce.
Speaker 1: Serve. It's a story in itself.
Speaker 2: That's a story.
Speaker 1: It's a story in itself.
Speaker 2: We have Sean, our head chef, who's here to tell
Speaker 2: us about this wonderful pasta.
Speaker 4: Well, actually, what we did instead of this exact recipe.
Speaker 4: We actually substituted white wine rather than milk. Oh, I'm
Speaker 4: shop that's okay because we do it in different ways.
Speaker 4: But meat sauces are quite nice in the summer because
Speaker 4: it always remind you if your summer holidays in Tuscany
Speaker 4: or do you think how you kind of on a
Speaker 4: hot Obviously it's not a hot day today, but if
Speaker 4: it was a hot day, you might find that kind
Speaker 4: of replenishing to have something like that.
Speaker 1: I feel very.
Speaker 2: Also, the things you know when you think about American
Speaker 2: where we grew up, you know, spaghetti and meatpoles, you
Speaker 2: know bolines sauce. It's kind heavy and it's kind of
Speaker 2: the tomato and meat and meatballs. And then in the
Speaker 2: pasta and this is very delicate. It's much more like
Speaker 2: it's delicious. Okay, So going to the beginning of the beginning,
Speaker 2: what was the food like in your house? Who? Your
Speaker 2: mother was Mexican?
Speaker 3: My mother was half Mexican. My grandmother was fully Mexican.
Speaker 2: Was she present in your life? Your grandma very much.
Speaker 3: She married my grandfather, My grandfather wooed her away from
Speaker 3: a man in Mexico City.
Speaker 1: He was a banker, a very prominent man.
Speaker 2: So he went to Mexico, and he.
Speaker 3: Was in Mexico City and he was coming into No Gallas,
Speaker 3: where my grandmother lived, and she fell in love with
Speaker 3: my grandfather, and to make sure that the wedding would
Speaker 3: be called off because he was on his way to
Speaker 3: marry her. There were about twenty five to thirty stops
Speaker 3: from Mexico City to Nogallas.
Speaker 2: Where's no Gallas, is it No, It's right.
Speaker 3: On the border of Arizona and Mexico. And she was
Speaker 3: on the Mexican side, and she was so worried that
Speaker 3: he would show up, so she sent a telegram to
Speaker 3: every stop from Mexico City all the way to Nogallas,
Speaker 3: of which they were about thirty and every time there
Speaker 3: was a stop, they go telegram for signor Gomez.
Speaker 1: Do not come to the wedding. Stop. The wedding is
Speaker 1: called off. I planned to marry.
Speaker 3: Thomas Griffin and finally had a stack of about twenty
Speaker 3: eight and then he went.
Speaker 1: He got the hint.
Speaker 2: He did get them.
Speaker 3: He got them all, and then he turned and went
Speaker 3: back to Mexico City a single man, and my grandmother
Speaker 3: married Tom Griffin, who was from a very prominent family.
Speaker 3: In Chicago, they had the Griffin Wheel Company, and the
Speaker 3: Griffin wheels were on every pullman car in America. But
Speaker 3: he didn't want to be in that business. He wanted
Speaker 3: to be a rancher. And he came to Arizona as
Speaker 3: a young boy at pulmonary problems. And he came back
Speaker 3: and he left somebody at the altar too, a lot
Speaker 3: of scandal in my family, and settled on a ranch
Speaker 3: and he was sort of cut out of the will
Speaker 3: and a lot of brought up. It was quite a
Speaker 3: scandal that he left the society woman on the altar
Speaker 3: in Chicago. So when I was growing up, food was
Speaker 3: not really a priority my mother, except for the meal
Speaker 3: that we had almost every day, was always cooked by
Speaker 3: our housekeeper, a woman named Carmen, and she made free
Speaker 3: poles and rice.
Speaker 2: So she was Mexican.
Speaker 1: She's a Mexican.
Speaker 3: We grew up on rice and beans, and we loved rice.
Speaker 3: We never to this day. I'm never tired of rice
Speaker 3: and bean. If I cook for myself, I always make
Speaker 3: rice and beans. It's just a stable of our diet.
Speaker 2: But do you think your grandmother she sounds She came
Speaker 2: from a probably privileged family as well. So maybe she
Speaker 2: didn't go in the kitchen either.
Speaker 1: She did not.
Speaker 3: She was Her family were going back generations were like
Speaker 3: real estate barons. They had silver mines. But when the
Speaker 3: Mexican Revolution happened Pancho Villa, they were on the wrong
Speaker 3: side of the revolution. They were aristocrats, and that's how
Speaker 3: they ended up in Nogallas on the Arizona side. He
Speaker 3: drove them out and took all their holdings. But then
Speaker 3: my grandmother's side of the family they built up their
Speaker 3: real estate business and ended up owning a lot of
Speaker 3: property at Nogallas.
Speaker 2: When I did an interview with Alfonso Korn, you know Alfonso,
Speaker 2: he was saying that the Mexican the class structure was
Speaker 2: that when you had more wealth. So in America, if
Speaker 2: you have more wealth, you have bigger houses, bigger cars,
Speaker 2: more cars, bigger refrigerators, bigger everything. And he said in Mexico,
Speaker 2: with greater wealth, you didn't have bigger everything, but you
Speaker 2: had more domestic staff.
Speaker 3: Yes, my mother liked the comfort of how she grew up.
Speaker 3: You know, in those days when you hired someone to
Speaker 3: cook and look after your children, they stayed in your lives. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she was such an old Carmen who cooked for us.
Speaker 3: She was so old by the time she finally retired.
Speaker 2: Did you feel quite connected to home?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was just so comforting, you know. And she
Speaker 3: was the one who would spank us. She was the
Speaker 3: one who would, you know, discipline us.
Speaker 2: And she had children of her own, she did not, and.
Speaker 3: She would always go whenever we were exacerbating her patients,
Speaker 3: she go, I kim ochocho it. Oh you horrible little boy,
Speaker 3: and you know you're driving me crazy.
Speaker 2: Is you g So your grandmother spoke Spanish? Obviously, did
Speaker 2: your mother?
Speaker 3: My mother spoke Spanish well. To my regret, I had
Speaker 3: a bucket list. One was to write a book. I
Speaker 3: did that, and the other was to finally master Spanish.
Speaker 3: And recently I have a problem being in California, Mexican
Speaker 3: Spanish was the language of domestics, and I think my
Speaker 3: father was a bit of a snob at that period
Speaker 3: in his life before he evolved, so we weren't really
Speaker 3: encouraged to speak Spanish. And in fact, when I started
Speaker 3: school from the first grade, you know, they had us
Speaker 3: take French. Yeah, and here I had, you know, so
Speaker 3: I spoke of pigeon Spanish that I learned from Carmen
Speaker 3: and what else.
Speaker 2: Going back to the food, do you ever sit.
Speaker 3: Down for a fact, No, No, We would have meals
Speaker 3: always in restaurants when we ever we ate together. We
Speaker 3: never sat at a table in our home. And we
Speaker 3: would go to a place on Sunday nights. There were
Speaker 3: three restaurants. One was called the Bistro, the other was
Speaker 3: called Chasins, and the other was the Brown Derby. And
Speaker 3: our favorite was Chasins. And we'd have to get dressed up,
Speaker 3: and it was every Sunday night and we'd be there
Speaker 3: and you'd see Alfred Hitchcock at one table and mister
Speaker 3: and missus Jimmy Stewart at another.
Speaker 2: And it was a very you know, good people move around.
Speaker 3: Well, it was very social, you know, but everybody had
Speaker 3: their own sort of table. My brother and sister and
Speaker 3: I loved Chasins because they made a dish called a
Speaker 3: butterfly steak.
Speaker 2: I can imagine it's opened up.
Speaker 3: They open it up and it's just covered in butter,
Speaker 3: and it was so delicious. And we would always go
Speaker 3: on about the butterfly steak.
Speaker 2: Do you think they put the butter on so you
Speaker 2: get it? And then there would be a lump of
Speaker 2: butter on it that would melt.
Speaker 3: Over there and you'd see the lump and then you'd
Speaker 3: see it spread and it would just and you could cut.
Speaker 3: You could rest the knife on top of the steak,
Speaker 3: not even apply pressure, that would just sort of cut.
Speaker 3: And there was a bathroom at Chasin's, the men's room,
Speaker 3: and I think one of my earliest I guess sort
Speaker 3: of not to overshare, but earliest erotic memories of this
Speaker 3: place was there was in the bathroom at the urinal
Speaker 3: was a picture of a man drowning in bosoms. He
Speaker 3: was a tiny figure and then it was just surrounded
Speaker 3: by bosoms.
Speaker 2: And I bet that picture is there anymore?
Speaker 1: Is no?
Speaker 3: In fact, you know, the business Chasins went out of
Speaker 3: business and they had an aux and I found out
Speaker 3: too late, but I wanted to know what happened to
Speaker 3: the bosom picture. I wanted to have that bosom picture
Speaker 3: to where it is. I don't know who happened.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's gone to the Metropolitan Museum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if it's worthy of that.
Speaker 2: Of times in a change. So you go to Chase
Speaker 2: and said where the other did you go to other restaurants?
Speaker 2: So did you wasn't just I mean other restaurant meals,
Speaker 2: or were it you in school Monday to Friday and
Speaker 2: then Sunday night, you want to Monday.
Speaker 3: Monday through Friday, we would sit at the table and
Speaker 3: be served just my brother, sister and I the the
Speaker 3: rice and beans, and you know, we had another unusual thing,
Speaker 3: and we had a pantry in our house.
Speaker 1: Just to show you how.
Speaker 3: Irreverent we were about food. We had stacks and stacks
Speaker 3: of spam and a can and when we would I
Speaker 3: would go for lunch. They would make to school. In
Speaker 3: our lunch bags were spam sandwiches. Now they're disgusting spam,
Speaker 3: but it's I happen to love that taste. It probably
Speaker 3: tastes like dog food, if you like dog food.
Speaker 2: When they entertained, would you be sort of like sitting
Speaker 2: on the stairs watching these sparkling.
Speaker 3: Got it exactly, And you know, then there would be
Speaker 3: the moment at the beginning of the party before the
Speaker 3: adults really got hammered, and yeah, it got kind of wild.
Speaker 3: You know, we'd be called down and we'd you know,
Speaker 3: my brother and I would have matching bathrobes, and my
Speaker 3: sister wore like one of those little caps you see
Speaker 3: in like dickens a nightgown, and we'd say good night,
Speaker 3: and my brother and I would bow, and my sister
Speaker 3: would curtsey, and the adults would go ooh and on.
Speaker 3: It was a little spectacle that was terribly embarrassing to us.
Speaker 1: You know. Years later, Dennis Hopper used to come to
Speaker 1: our house. This is well before Easy Writer.
Speaker 3: And years later I'm doing a movie with Dennis and
Speaker 3: it's after work and we're smoking a joint and he
Speaker 3: kind of looks off and he goes, I'm just thinking
Speaker 3: about you kids coming down and bowing and curtsying to
Speaker 3: us all. I think that was the saddest thing I ever.
Speaker 1: Saw in my whole life. And it was weird, you know.
Speaker 2: But where do you think that came from? Because I
Speaker 2: was just thinking your mother grew up on a branch
Speaker 2: and your father had left all that, So I wondered
Speaker 2: where that. It's not as if they came from European
Speaker 2: run No.
Speaker 3: But my father at this point in his life was
Speaker 3: very materialistic and very much of a sort of the
Speaker 3: production designer of his life, with the right material things
Speaker 3: for the house. And I think he fashioned us on
Speaker 3: the photographs of the royal family of Cecil Beaton. I
Speaker 3: mean he would say as much. And he was a
Speaker 3: fantastic photographer. He had a hostle blot and every summer
Speaker 3: we would pose for these deadly serious Christmas card picks,
Speaker 3: these three glum looking children in suits and with this
Speaker 3: sort of pastoral background and the art design in our
Speaker 3: backyard and send them out as Christmas cards to families
Speaker 3: in New York, London, Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: And they were beautiful.
Speaker 2: Did you ever go to other kids' houses and see
Speaker 2: family like fridges and people sitting around?
Speaker 3: Yeah, parents and totally different, totally different kind of things
Speaker 3: in about half, but other parents were equally sort of superficial,
Speaker 3: you know, and their priority, particularly in that generation, their
Speaker 3: main focus was themselves, you know. They were not like
Speaker 3: the kind of parent I became in most every parent
Speaker 3: I know, where you just encourage every little thing they do,
Speaker 3: and you notice and you want to know where they
Speaker 3: go and where you know, And.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that. Do you have grandchildren yet? No,
Speaker 2: that's really nice.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: And I always say is that the really great thing
Speaker 2: about having grandchildren is the children, but also just seeing
Speaker 2: your kids as parents And I just look at them
Speaker 2: and I think they are. You know, I thought we
Speaker 2: were pretty good, but they are amazing.
Speaker 3: One of the happiest things I was able to do
Speaker 3: for my parents was give them a child. They loved
Speaker 3: being grandparents.
Speaker 2: So maybe that skipped generate. They were better grandparents and.
Speaker 1: Parents so much better. It was so much easier. You
Speaker 1: have less responsibility.
Speaker 3: And my father would just spoil my daughter, Hannah Rotten,
Speaker 3: and she goes, listen kid. My dad always had a funny,
Speaker 3: dark sense of humor. He goes, listen kid, when I cool,
Speaker 3: I'm going to leave you so much money, which is
Speaker 3: a terrible thing to tell a little kid, by the way,
Speaker 3: And my mother was my mother had ms, multiple scrosses,
Speaker 3: and so she was unable to you know, she was
Speaker 3: in bed confined and could be moved to a wheelchair.
Speaker 3: But the look on her face when I brought my
Speaker 3: daughter and I put her on the bed and my
Speaker 3: daughter was, you know, an infant, but she recognized that
Speaker 3: this lady sitting up in bed was someone important and
Speaker 3: she which she'd never done with anyone.
Speaker 1: She just crawled to her and.
Speaker 2: Did your parents they didn't like to cook or have
Speaker 2: a domestic life of food? Did they love food? Did
Speaker 2: you was your mother very did. She looks so elegant
Speaker 2: in these I just think they like to drink, right,
Speaker 2: they like to drink. Did they like to eat?
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: My father was you know, Irish Catholic, and I think
Speaker 3: they ate the staple of you know whatever. Again more
Speaker 3: the Irish cook would make they called cook what is
Speaker 3: cook serving? And it was all like comfort food. I
Speaker 3: know my dad loved meat loaf, you go on in.
Speaker 1: Chicken pot pie.
Speaker 3: In fact, when when I was married to Hannah's mom
Speaker 3: and at our wedding, Dad said, I'm paying for the
Speaker 3: whole thing. I'm going to take care of this. He
Speaker 3: was very you know, proud and excited. And he told
Speaker 3: the wedding planner that he hired he wanted chicken pot pie.
Speaker 3: And the wedding planner already had a chicken dish prepared,
Speaker 3: and he shows the menu of what's going to be served,
Speaker 3: and he goes, where's my chicken pot pie? He went, well,
Speaker 3: it just seemed redundant because we have chicken pie art
Speaker 3: and he went, I said, I want a chicken fucking
Speaker 3: pot pie.
Speaker 1: That's how much you love that?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what do you want?
Speaker 2: You want? Yeah? Yeah, but you had did you get
Speaker 2: boarding school?
Speaker 1: I did? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So was that a Wrencher going away?
Speaker 3: And it was his school very much based on on
Speaker 3: English boarding schools, you know, have no.
Speaker 2: Heat, bad food, and.
Speaker 1: Bullying, terrible cruelty. There was corporal punishment.
Speaker 2: Sorry for the British people here, but that is kind
Speaker 2: of the ethos of yeah, I think it's better now maybe.
Speaker 1: But that it does not.
Speaker 3: But I mean we were literally flogged. There was a
Speaker 3: it was called where was it? It was in Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: a little a town called Southborough, mass called Fay, which
Speaker 3: wasn't a lot of fun to go back to LA
Speaker 3: and come home from Fay. You know, there were children
Speaker 3: as young as seven years old. I was eleven, and
Speaker 3: it was a novelty to be a kid from LA
Speaker 3: to be going to school in Massachusetts, you know, at
Speaker 3: such a young age as well. But you know this,
Speaker 3: the food at that school was slop. You know, We're
Speaker 3: all dressed in coats and ties for dinner and we
Speaker 3: couldn't eat.
Speaker 1: There was a ceremony before.
Speaker 3: We could eat, of some kind of homily would be said,
Speaker 3: and then we'd just eat and it just stuff ourselves.
Speaker 3: Just everybody ate like it was like being at a
Speaker 3: trough and if you put your elbow on the table,
Speaker 3: the headmaster at an enormous silver spoon. It must have
Speaker 3: weighed about five pounds or something. And if you saw
Speaker 3: a kid, you know, with his elbow on the table,
Speaker 3: or he'd throw the spoon, throw it. And at one
Speaker 3: time hit a kid in the mouth and knocked his
Speaker 3: tooth out.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe, cafe, steps away from our restaurant, is
Speaker 2: now open. In the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti,
Speaker 2: chiambella and cristata from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon,
Speaker 2: ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts. Come in
Speaker 2: the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
Speaker 2: No need to book, see you here, So let's go back.
Speaker 2: So you left home all domestic sort of domestic life
Speaker 2: at home and school? Did you did you go to college?
Speaker 2: Did you go straight into film?
Speaker 1: So I was a bit of a discipline problem. I
Speaker 1: was kicked out, kicked out. I was kicked out of
Speaker 1: tenth grade.
Speaker 3: And then I became an actor both uh and moved
Speaker 3: to New York. But in tenth grade, No, I spent
Speaker 3: a year in Los Angeles before going, but and I
Speaker 3: was held back a year also because I was.
Speaker 1: Dyslexic. Poor student.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my husband's dyslexic. Yeah, can you do you spell?
Speaker 2: You can't spell?
Speaker 3: Or I have a terrible time with math. But I
Speaker 3: became a voracious reader once I was out of school.
Speaker 3: Once I wasn't And.
Speaker 2: Also probably when you were in school. I don't know.
Speaker 2: My husband's much older than you that he was in school,
Speaker 2: probably in the forties or whatever, and they didn't know
Speaker 2: what dyslexia was, so he was beaten because he couldn't
Speaker 2: memorize it. They say, you have to learn this poem,
Speaker 2: and if you can't, then he was.
Speaker 1: Also I know just what he went through.
Speaker 3: I was treated as you know, stupid, lazy, Yeah, mostly
Speaker 3: stupid and and sort of mentally handicapped. And he had
Speaker 3: to be I had to be held back a grade,
Speaker 3: and you know, I get pitying looks or just be
Speaker 3: called stupid. But you know, before then we did. I
Speaker 3: had one more you mentioned Europe. One of my mothers
Speaker 3: before she became you know, unable to walk, and she
Speaker 3: was quite healthy. When I was thirteen, my brother was
Speaker 3: eleven and my sister was eight, she took us to Italy.
Speaker 3: It was her dream and she wanted to show us.
Speaker 3: We went to Italy and England and France and we
Speaker 3: took the Michelangelo, the ocean liner, and there began our journey.
Speaker 3: And there I realized, oh, my mother really does love food.
Speaker 3: And she would take us to these restaurants and go,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this is so good, that's so good.
Speaker 3: You know, I was, you know, a bit of a
Speaker 3: you know, mischievous kid, and I would always kind of
Speaker 3: sneak out. And when we were in Venice, I snuck
Speaker 3: out and I when everybody was asleep, I assumed, and
Speaker 3: I met these girls and I told him I was thirteen, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I told him I was much older. And we
Speaker 3: kind of walked through the streets and the canals and
Speaker 3: I rescued them from some harassing Italian guys. And we're
Speaker 3: walking through and I think I told him I'm traveling
Speaker 3: on my own. I'm like much older. And all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, we're in the one of the canals were in.
Speaker 3: A boat passes by, it's a police boat and I hear.
Speaker 1: Find nay Pein and the girls go, isn't that your name?
Speaker 1: And went, yeah, your day.
Speaker 2: I thought you was some Italian.
Speaker 3: No, no, it was my name, and my mother woke
Speaker 3: up so he wasn't there, and she called the police
Speaker 3: the Venetian place, and I got totally busted and I
Speaker 3: had to get on the We all got into the
Speaker 3: thing and there's my mother at the dock practically with
Speaker 3: a rolling pin in her hand, and went, oh, so
Speaker 3: you're traveling with your mother.
Speaker 1: I went, yeah. You know.
Speaker 3: Another memory I have of that place is she was
Speaker 3: dying to show us the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel and.
Speaker 1: The Michelangelo. And so we're in line.
Speaker 3: This is in the sixties, and she's wearing a mini
Speaker 3: skirt as most women wore, and we're in line to
Speaker 3: get the tickets and one of the guys, I forget
Speaker 3: what they're called, but the guards with the hats and
Speaker 3: the little swords there they one of them came over
Speaker 3: and shamed my mother about what she was wearing and
Speaker 3: talked to her. Even though I didn't speak Italian. He
Speaker 3: talked to her like she was some you know, prostitute
Speaker 3: or something. I mean, my mother was mortified. So we
Speaker 3: went back to the hotel. She changed and her attitude
Speaker 3: by the time we went to the Vatican her attitude
Speaker 3: about being a Catholic and being you know, proud of
Speaker 3: showing us this had totally changed. We would see the
Speaker 3: displays of all the gold and the crown and she
Speaker 3: would just say, this was all stolen from poor people
Speaker 3: gave donations to buy this ridiculous extravagance, and I think
Speaker 3: a part of her, you know, lost her faith.
Speaker 2: So her father and Mexican mother were Catholic. She was
Speaker 2: raised as a Catholic, so she did have I mean
Speaker 2: to tell she did wanting to expose her children to
Speaker 2: Europe and choose the restaurants and give you to the
Speaker 2: party going. I mean there was the bar that was
Speaker 2: very different.
Speaker 1: Than my father. You think that was oh yeah, she
Speaker 1: was not.
Speaker 3: You know, my father was the the ringleader of gathering
Speaker 3: of who's coming to the parties and where we're going
Speaker 3: to go, and the emphasis on celebrity, and my mother
Speaker 3: wasn't really like that. She went along with it, but
Speaker 3: when they divorced, that was one of the main reasons.
Speaker 3: She just didn't want to be the hostess social light,
Speaker 3: you know anymore. And you know, when they divorced, my
Speaker 3: father had to do some real soul searching, and he
Speaker 3: loved my mother, and he called her his wife right
Speaker 3: all the way through decades after the divorce, and all
Speaker 3: of his priorities changed, you know, and he went he
Speaker 3: lost all of his money, He couldn't get a job
Speaker 3: anymore in the movie business that he loved, and he'd
Speaker 3: burned every bridge, you know, from drinking. And he drove
Speaker 3: up the coast in a little Ford automobile, used to
Speaker 3: have a Mercedes that he treasured. His car broke down
Speaker 3: in a little town in Oregon and he lived in
Speaker 3: a cabin in Oregon for a year, got sober and
Speaker 3: wrote these long, single space typed letters to his children.
Speaker 3: And they were like workshops for him to find his voice.
Speaker 3: And that's really the you know, the groundwork for how
Speaker 3: he became a writer and shed all of that superficiality,
Speaker 3: and you know, his priorities completely changed, and he really
Speaker 3: found himself. He found his voice and what his purpose
Speaker 3: was great and became a great writer.
Speaker 2: If you liked listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
Speaker 2: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Thank you. Did you ever enjoy food? Was
Speaker 2: there ever a time when you were eating something and
Speaker 2: you thought this is delicious.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you the.
Speaker 3: Exact time I embraced food, because now I'll tell you
Speaker 3: exactly when in nineteen eighty I did.
Speaker 1: I was in a movie that was shooting in Poland.
Speaker 2: What was it.
Speaker 3: It was called The Wall, based on John Hershey's book
Speaker 3: about the Warsaw Ghetto, and I played a young ghetto fighter.
Speaker 3: Rosanna Arquette was in this movie. Tom Conti was in
Speaker 3: this movie who became a lifelong friend, Diane West.
Speaker 1: And we were there during the.
Speaker 3: Olympics in Moscow, and that was the year that United
Speaker 3: States boycott it because of their involvement Russia's involvement in
Speaker 3: Afghanistan nineteen eighty and so all the food that would
Speaker 3: have been anything that mood or bleat was sent to
Speaker 3: Moscow to feed the people at the Olympics. So we
Speaker 3: were practically starving to death. And I mean literally. Rosanna
Speaker 3: Arquette and Diane Weist I passed them on my way
Speaker 3: to the set. When they weren't working. They would wear
Speaker 3: babushkas without any irony involved. They looked like peasants and
Speaker 3: be waiting in line for a black market because we
Speaker 3: heard bananas were being sold there and the importance of food.
Speaker 3: So each we would gather enough food from the black
Speaker 3: market in order to make a meal in one of
Speaker 3: our little tinker dressing room cavern that had an oven
Speaker 3: and stuff, and Tom County would make this incredible meal
Speaker 3: of all found things that we anybody on their day off,
Speaker 3: they had to come up with something, so we'd find bread,
Speaker 3: we'd find this, and these were the best meals I
Speaker 3: ever had. So when that's when I realized food actually
Speaker 3: tastes good, I didn't realize it tasted good. I was
Speaker 3: twenty three, twenty two something like that. So when we
Speaker 3: it came time to leave the country, also went into
Speaker 3: martial law. Like Valensa was the strikes were happening. It
Speaker 3: was a very intense time to be there, and we
Speaker 3: were held for over two months because of the conditions.
Speaker 2: We couldn't get out.
Speaker 1: We could not get out.
Speaker 2: Was this an American production?
Speaker 3: It was an American production, and so we finally got out.
Speaker 3: We're on the lot Airlines and it's changed. We're changing
Speaker 3: planes in Frankfurt and we all have are going to
Speaker 3: different destinations. We have to walk to wherever our destinations are,
Speaker 3: But in the along the way to our gate, we're
Speaker 3: all these different food places, and all of us went,
Speaker 3: oh my god, they have pizza overy, Oh my god,
Speaker 3: there's oh we have and we all missed our flights.
Speaker 2: You missed it.
Speaker 1: Every one of us missed our flights.
Speaker 3: We just ate and ate, and ever since then, I
Speaker 3: understood food, and I understood pasta in particular.
Speaker 2: And did so when you went to New York age
Speaker 2: twenty three, and you know, did you have your own apartment?
Speaker 2: Did you just eat out?
Speaker 3: So I got my first apartment and we went to
Speaker 3: the neighborhood places. It was on twentieth just West twentieth Street.
Speaker 3: It was in an area that at that time it's
Speaker 3: the flatter and district. Now it's terribly trending.
Speaker 1: But it was all.
Speaker 3: Warehouses and that made you know, a cardboard box, and
Speaker 3: there was they were.
Speaker 1: Always manufacturing things. At night. It was very noisy.
Speaker 3: You'd hear these machines and stuff, and it was a
Speaker 3: desolate street. But for some reason, I made my own
Speaker 3: clam chowder. Oh that's and I had like a croc
Speaker 3: pot and I would make clam chowder that would last
Speaker 3: for I have to say, I'm amazed. As I'm telling
Speaker 3: you this, I can believe this. You're bringing up all
Speaker 3: these sensory food memories. But yes, that would be like
Speaker 3: my dish.
Speaker 2: That's ambitious. You were acting. At the time I was
Speaker 2: acting acting. Money was money in Isshoot.
Speaker 1: Money was always an issue.
Speaker 2: But you didn't work. And another you never have you
Speaker 2: ever worked in a restaurant?
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 3: My first job was at a restaurant called Joe Allen's,
Speaker 3: of course, you know, very famous theater place. And I
Speaker 3: met Joe and had my interview with Joe.
Speaker 2: And he came to the River Cafe in the early days.
Speaker 3: I bet he did when he died about two three
Speaker 3: years ago, but he was well into his nineties then too.
Speaker 3: And so I had my meeting with Joe, and I
Speaker 3: think I mentioned something about what I could lie without
Speaker 3: my pulse raising.
Speaker 1: I told her I had all this experience and uh
Speaker 1: and uh.
Speaker 3: He saw me waiting on a table and somebody asked,
Speaker 3: can I have some oil and vinegar for my dressing?
Speaker 3: And I took the bowl, I took the salad from
Speaker 3: their plate and put the oil and vinegar on in
Speaker 3: the kitchen, and Joe went, You've never.
Speaker 1: Waited a day in your life.
Speaker 3: You bring out the oil and victory, you don't put
Speaker 3: it on for them, I thought, so he fired me
Speaker 3: very quickly, but I stayed.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 3: In fact, when I became an actor, I would go
Speaker 3: to Joe Allen's all the time, and I had a
Speaker 3: charge account there and and we became very very friendly.
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 3: From my lying and faking it. I worked at a place,
Speaker 3: mostly at a place called Beefsteak Charlie's.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, where's that?
Speaker 1: It was a chain.
Speaker 3: I worked to the one on the Upper West Side
Speaker 3: and it had all you could drink sang gria and.
Speaker 1: A salad bar.
Speaker 3: Salad bars were all the new rage then, and it
Speaker 3: was pretty easy to wait on people, but they would
Speaker 3: because there was endless sang gria.
Speaker 1: You'd be waiting on total.
Speaker 3: Drunks by the end of the night, and they would
Speaker 3: try to run out without tipping you, and I'd have
Speaker 3: to chase them down the street run.
Speaker 2: You know, that's very Do you think you learned anything
Speaker 2: from working in a restaurant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I certainly learned people skills, and you know, I
Speaker 3: kind of learned to fake it till you make it
Speaker 3: kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So living in New York working in the restaurant. Was
Speaker 2: there a time then you realize you could be full
Speaker 2: time as an actor and not have to supplant here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: That was my ambition where I felt I'd made it
Speaker 3: was to be able to support myself as an actor
Speaker 3: and most importantly take cabs after two in the morning, Yeah,
Speaker 3: instead of being in subways.
Speaker 1: And then I could take a cab whenever I wanted.
Speaker 1: That was a bar.
Speaker 2: Did you live a different life of going to good
Speaker 2: restaurants and drinking good wine and drinking Was that one
Speaker 2: of your priorities or did you?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No, No, I get the taxi thing. I really do,
Speaker 2: because I remember, you know, at even actually quite at
Speaker 2: an early age, I would skip out other things and
Speaker 2: take a taxi.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I still do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then and then your your your next you know,
Speaker 3: bar is a little higher to be able to take
Speaker 3: a woman out to a nice restaurant and let her
Speaker 3: order whatever she wants and not have to worry about,
Speaker 3: you know, if she's going to order it too much.
Speaker 3: And you know, your stakes just sort of get higher
Speaker 3: and higher as you as you go. But then I'm
Speaker 3: fortunate enough to be able to go to you know,
Speaker 3: my favorite restaurants and eat and stay in lovely hotels.
Speaker 3: And you know, there was a restaurant in Los Angeles
Speaker 3: that the owner just died recently, Dsolvano, that had really
Speaker 3: great food. And I new Silvano, and he was a
Speaker 3: bit of a hustler, but I ate there on a
Speaker 3: regular basis. I love the food and I love the wine.
Speaker 3: And I always trusted, you know, whenever I said, tell
Speaker 3: me what kind of wine to get, and they were
Speaker 3: just a great staff.
Speaker 1: I ate there quite a bit.
Speaker 2: When you work, when you're doing a movie, when you're
Speaker 2: acting or you're directing, Directors very often don't like to
Speaker 2: stop for lunch. What do you feel about food?
Speaker 3: And I cannot eat lunch if I'm working, whether I'm
Speaker 3: acting or directing, I have a food hangover. I get
Speaker 3: really tired, in lethargic. So I will either skip or graze,
Speaker 3: you know, lunch, just to keep my energy up. I
Speaker 3: think it's something to do with my metabolism, you know,
Speaker 3: even after a big meal of dinners, you know, which
Speaker 3: will invariably be a big meal of dinner, especially if
Speaker 3: I skip lunch, I will just I could eat endlessly, endlessly,
Speaker 3: the hungary er I am the more I eat, the
Speaker 3: better it tastes.
Speaker 2: But working wise you don't. But you have to, don't
Speaker 2: they do? They do make you stop at lunchtime. Yes,
Speaker 2: West was saying that he would. He really mess and
Speaker 2: just doesn't like to stop for lunch. But he tried
Speaker 2: giving everyone soup, and then the crew said, you know
Speaker 2: a way, you know, we love to eat.
Speaker 3: I learned that lesson the hard way. I had the
Speaker 3: first movie I re produced, I was twenty three years old.
Speaker 3: It was called Chili Scenes of Winter. It's based on
Speaker 3: a novel by and Beaty. It was directed by Joan mckensilver,
Speaker 3: and I had yet to really work as an actor,
Speaker 3: but I was able to produce a movie for United
Speaker 3: Artists a big studio and Joan lick and Silver directed it.
Speaker 3: And my two partners, all three of us, were struggling actors,
Speaker 3: but managed to get a movie made. We optioned this
Speaker 3: book directly from the author, and we were, you know,
Speaker 3: had kind of really no idea what we were doing.
Speaker 3: We knew we had to save money of a certain
Speaker 3: budget and stay within a budge, so we got the cheapest.
Speaker 3: We're in Salt Lake City before we came to the
Speaker 3: sound stages, in Culver City. We got the cheapest catering
Speaker 3: company we could find, and the food was terrible. Now
Speaker 3: at that time I had no relationship to food, you know,
Speaker 3: And on the third day, the crew threatened to walk
Speaker 3: off the picture, and I realized I made a terrible mistake,
Speaker 3: well three of us did, and that how important food is,
Speaker 3: and that it shows their value, how much you value them,
Speaker 3: and how much you value their work. And they're each
Speaker 3: individual talents that they bring to a production by how much,
Speaker 3: how well you feed them, how good the food is.
Speaker 3: And you know, having been on many movies set since,
Speaker 3: when a great meal is served in the catering company,
Speaker 3: it affects the entire mood of every single person in production.
Speaker 2: The trajectory of food and happiness are lonely or neglect
Speaker 2: or involvement from your family. Also is to do with grief.
Speaker 2: And you know, my son died when he was twenty six,
Speaker 2: and I remember that when we were upstairs. I just
Speaker 2: come home and my husband we all gathered and I
Speaker 2: turned to one of my sons and I said, put
Speaker 2: tomato sauce on, because I need to smell food cooking.
Speaker 2: I need to smell something about nurture. And our home
Speaker 2: and when everything was destroyed, and I know you had
Speaker 2: the tragedy of your sister, and you know you say
Speaker 2: in your book that people bought food. Do you have
Speaker 2: any sense of what that was like? Did your mother
Speaker 2: stop eating or did you well have food?
Speaker 3: You know, at the end, there was that time that
Speaker 3: it was very common, you know, with people during the
Speaker 3: periods of grief. She was on life support for five days,
Speaker 3: and then the weeks after, lovely friends and family would
Speaker 3: always come up with a dish and all different kinds,
Speaker 3: and and there was this there's this one woman who
Speaker 3: brought a meat loaf and and we just love this
Speaker 3: meat love, We just it was so comforting. And everyone
Speaker 3: thought that the woman was a friend of the other.
Speaker 3: I thought she was a friend of my mother's and
Speaker 3: dad thought she was a friend of us. And and finally,
Speaker 3: after like the fourth day of this meat loaf, we.
Speaker 1: Just went, who is she? She friend of yours?
Speaker 3: And then we realized none of us knew who the
Speaker 3: hell she was, and she was taking she was answering
Speaker 3: the phone. She was we still don't know, And my
Speaker 3: mom just went, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: She makes a hell of a meat loaf, and uh
Speaker 1: so I don't know, and you never found out. We
Speaker 1: never really found out.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it was a friend of someone that knew something,
Speaker 3: but she was so kind and it was so comforting,
Speaker 3: you know. And then you know, a year later, there
Speaker 3: was a there was a trial for she was murdered,
Speaker 3: and there was a trial for her killer that we attended.
Speaker 3: And the custom then was to eat on TV trays,
Speaker 3: watching the the events that we had just lived through
Speaker 3: on that day in the courtroom play out on the
Speaker 3: evening news, and we would just my mother would be
Speaker 3: in bed with Trey in her lap, you know, my
Speaker 3: father would be sitting in her wheelchair with a TV
Speaker 3: tray and eating, and we would just silently watch television,
Speaker 3: and then after that, you know, put on a movie.
Speaker 3: We were raised on movies, and then we'd end up
Speaker 3: just watching Oh, What's on. It was a cable, early
Speaker 3: cable called the Z Channel, and they showed movies without interruption,
Speaker 3: and oh what's on? Z?
Speaker 1: What's on?
Speaker 3: And then we'd watch Harold and Maud or you know
Speaker 3: some they were just cheer us enormously.
Speaker 2: I would like to talk about your book. When you're writing,
Speaker 2: do you eat and what is your writing routine?
Speaker 3: My writing routine was compulsive, you know, being a first book,
Speaker 3: I just could not stop. I couldn't keep away from
Speaker 3: my office. And if I was on a movie set shooting,
Speaker 3: I would run back to my dressing room between sentences,
Speaker 3: you know, finish up where I left off, which is
Speaker 3: why I didn't eat very much.
Speaker 1: I was actually I smoked.
Speaker 3: I smoked, and I paste, and I made coffee after
Speaker 3: coffee after coffee, and you know, I lived in a
Speaker 3: very unhealthy you know, physically, I didn't take good care
Speaker 3: of myself in terms of you know, eating nutritionally.
Speaker 1: I was sort of wired.
Speaker 3: And you know, I felt the presence of my family
Speaker 3: so much when I was doing it.
Speaker 1: It's like having company, you know. And I just saw.
Speaker 3: Sort of the less I ate and the more coffee
Speaker 3: I had, the memories became more and more vivid in
Speaker 3: place and objects and time and conversation. So so that's
Speaker 3: how we could like write as if it was a novel,
Speaker 3: you know, of what people said and how they you know,
Speaker 3: how they talked, and each voice was completely different, you know,
Speaker 3: different my mother talked than my father and my childhood friends,
Speaker 3: and so it was you know, right while I wrote
Speaker 3: about you know, very sad periods in our family's life.
Speaker 3: There were also really hilarious things that also happened, and
Speaker 3: so you know, our family was always.
Speaker 1: The worst things got the harder. We'd laugh, you know, not.
Speaker 3: Almost in reaction to it, you know, And that was
Speaker 3: I think, you know, I attribute that to my mother's
Speaker 3: sense of humor on her on her Mexican side, and
Speaker 3: my father's dark sense of humor on his Irish Catholic side.
Speaker 1: It really saved us, you know, our humor.
Speaker 3: But eating, I think I would, I think I would.
Speaker 3: When it was time to finally go to bed, I'd
Speaker 3: always leave something I wanted to look forward to continuing.
Speaker 3: I then go in the fridge and I'd take out
Speaker 3: one of those frozen burritos and I'd defrost it and
Speaker 3: I'd pour salce on it, and I'd eat it and
Speaker 3: wake up a little fatter in the morning.
Speaker 2: Actually, Fishers said to be asking what's in his fridge?
Speaker 2: He did actually say that to me. But I think
Speaker 2: that I would ask everyone listening to this to go
Speaker 2: to wherever you buy your books and read the Friday
Speaker 2: Afternoon Club. It is something that has been one of
Speaker 2: the most beautiful experiences for me to read it and
Speaker 2: to talk to you. And before we stop, I ask
Speaker 2: everyone one question, which is fecif food is interesting, if
Speaker 2: it's exciting, if it's something you want to explore or
Speaker 2: take an adventure with. It's also comfort. And so your
Speaker 2: book is a lot about comfort and what we need.
Speaker 2: And I was wondering that in times of comfort, Griffin done,
Speaker 2: what food would you go to if you need comfort?
Speaker 1: Well, certainly rice and beans.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's end on that.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, I never get a cigarette.
Speaker 2: Everyone, I have to say that it is. Usually the
Speaker 2: answer is something from the childhood. Have peanut butter and
Speaker 2: jelly sandwich you had with your mother or beans, rice
Speaker 2: and beans. Let's go have some. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 3: with Montclair