Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: Since Francis Ford Coppola agreed to do a podcast with me,
Speaker 2: I've been slightly overwhelmed. But good friends who know us,
Speaker 2: both Wes Anderson, Fisher, Stevens, Greta Gerwik assured me. Actually, Ruthie,
Speaker 2: the two of you are rather alike. Do they mean
Speaker 2: being a chef is like being a director, or producing
Speaker 2: a movie is like running a restaurant, or choosing the
Speaker 2: grapes for your vineyard is like choosing the herbs for
Speaker 2: your fish, or most of all, do they mean we
Speaker 2: both have our family involved in everything we do. I'm
Speaker 2: happy to take any of the above. Francis and I
Speaker 2: are here together after a long lunch in the River
Speaker 2: Cafe to talk about food and wine, movies and families,
Speaker 2: menus and friends, and much much more.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for the lovely comments said.
Speaker 2: You've made ruth So for lunch today, you had as
Speaker 2: a starter.
Speaker 1: Pundarella, which a Roman salad which you only have certain
Speaker 1: times of year, and basically you Italians have a taste
Speaker 1: for bitter. Puntorella is really a bitter salad, and so
Speaker 1: it comes from a kind of winter chicoria plant which
Speaker 1: is divided and cut up in a certain way and
Speaker 1: served with olive oil and anchovy and capers, sometimes and
Speaker 1: sometimes not. And this is the famous puntorella salad that
Speaker 1: you get in a Roman restaurant.
Speaker 2: It is a great way to start a meal, I
Speaker 2: think if.
Speaker 1: We didn't need it when we were kids, because we
Speaker 1: ate food that was either Neapolitan from my mother's side
Speaker 1: or lu Canese Bernalda, the region in the extreme south
Speaker 1: of Italy, which is my mother's side. Well, it says
Speaker 1: here puntorella, it says two puntarella heads. The vegetable is chicoria,
Speaker 1: and it's a winter chechorea. Twelve salted anchovy phil cut
Speaker 1: into small pieces, four tablespoons red wine vinegar, one gar
Speaker 1: of co peeled and finally chopped, one drud some dried
Speaker 1: red chili pepperonchina rosso and then six tablespoons of virgin
Speaker 1: olive oil. And you prepare. You slice the buds into
Speaker 1: these little thin stalks in your place in the water
Speaker 1: a bowl of ice water to crisp, but they'll curl up.
Speaker 1: Combine the anchovy's garlic and chili and covered with vinegar
Speaker 1: leaf for fifteen minutes, had six table students of olive oil,
Speaker 1: spin dried the puntarella segments and then putting a in
Speaker 1: a bowl and spoon the stuff over it, and that's
Speaker 1: your puntarella salad.
Speaker 2: So you grew up in a house that served incredible food.
Speaker 2: When a lot of Southern Italians.
Speaker 1: Came father and grandfather from your.
Speaker 2: Father and came to the United States. I grew up
Speaker 2: in upstate New York, one hundred miles north of New
Speaker 2: York City, and when we went out to an Italian restaurant,
Speaker 2: we would have veal parmechan we would have the meatballs
Speaker 2: and spaghetti. The food of the meatballs.
Speaker 1: If you know what you're doing, they really make meatballs. Well.
Speaker 1: Number one, you have to have three components. A meatball
Speaker 1: is one third pork, one third veal, and one for
Speaker 1: a thief, and with bread a lot of breadcrumbs.
Speaker 2: But the scene and the Godfather, if we can talk
Speaker 2: about that, I sadly I watched it again. I thought,
Speaker 2: you know what, the way he said, you know and
Speaker 2: then throwing this, and well, that's so nonchalant.
Speaker 1: When I wrote that scene, I wrote it the way
Speaker 1: I knew how to do. It, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: take you first, you brown the sausage, and then there's
Speaker 1: a fry. And Mario said, Gangsters don't say brown, Franksters
Speaker 1: say fry. So we changed it to fry. Then he said,
Speaker 1: and then the secret is true, that the little the
Speaker 1: secret of a good meat sauce is a little bit
Speaker 1: of sugar. You added like a you know, a half
Speaker 1: a tablespoon of sugar to a meat sauce. So the
Speaker 1: recipes were authentic, but we tried to give them a
Speaker 1: gangster type of vocabulary. Although I must say that the
Speaker 1: reason I'm convinced that The Godfather was successful because it
Speaker 1: was the first gangster film that had a lot of
Speaker 1: kids running around in the seats. Never were gangster pictures
Speaker 1: though they didn't have kids. But of course an Italian
Speaker 1: wedding was all the kids sliding around it.
Speaker 2: So you grew up in a family that could Italian food,
Speaker 2: but in New York and New York speaking Italian. That's
Speaker 2: how we started. Did you know Italian?
Speaker 1: No? I only heard some cursed. But my mother didn't
Speaker 1: want us to be like Italians couldn't live in certain neighborhoods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Italians, you know, each immigrant group in America
Speaker 1: was bullied by the one that came before, and the
Speaker 1: one who came before the Italians were the Irish, and
Speaker 1: the Irish used to beat up on Theians.
Speaker 2: The policeman and the Godfather.
Speaker 1: Right, the police. The police were all Irish and they
Speaker 1: used to they used to pick. That's the way it works.
Speaker 2: So you were restricted to this neighborhood. And did you
Speaker 2: experience food other than Italian food or did you was
Speaker 2: eating Hell, if you see.
Speaker 1: The Godfather, you realized that I knew that Italians used
Speaker 1: to get takeout Chinese food. Yeah, every street corner in
Speaker 1: New York had a German delicatessen, a candy store what
Speaker 1: we call the candy store, which was a soda fountain
Speaker 1: where they sold coke which was five cents and they
Speaker 1: would make it to put the syrup and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be in a bottle, and model airplanes, and a German
Speaker 1: delicatessen where you would buy cheesecake.
Speaker 2: So there there would be a mix that would be
Speaker 2: a German.
Speaker 1: And always a Chinese restaurant. In the neighborhoods. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of Polish people and Italians because they were
Speaker 1: both Catholic, and there were a lot of Italian Polish
Speaker 1: weddings because they were both Catholic. And I went to
Speaker 1: a lot of Polish weddings, and I knew Polish food
Speaker 1: was like they had Kebbasa whereas we had sazich. It
Speaker 1: was America. It was a wonderful a mixture of cultures.
Speaker 2: And we want to keep that. We want to keep
Speaker 2: we want to keep that. And then should we talk
Speaker 2: about polio?
Speaker 1: If anything, you ask your question, I'd be.
Speaker 2: Interested in the fact that as a child you had
Speaker 2: polio and spent how long invent.
Speaker 1: I spent the whole sixth grade, so a whole year
Speaker 1: year and little more than a year. And in those
Speaker 1: days polio, you know, of course it had also affected adults.
Speaker 1: President Franklin Roosevelt had polio, but there was an epidemic
Speaker 1: for children in nineteen forty nine. And I was a
Speaker 1: cup Scout and I went on a cup Scout camp
Speaker 1: out and it was raining, and the next morning I
Speaker 1: had the symptoms. And you know, polio only affects you
Speaker 1: one night. In other words, it's the night of the fever,
Speaker 1: is the night you have it, and then you get
Speaker 1: over it. But the damage is to your spinal cord,
Speaker 1: and Napolio destroys the nerves selectively within the spinal cord,
Speaker 1: so that I mean literally when I woke up, I
Speaker 1: woke up in a ward with like eight hundred kids
Speaker 1: piled up everywhere crying, a whole row of iron lungs
Speaker 1: because the kids whose lungs were affected couldn't breathe, so
Speaker 1: they had to be in a machine that breathe, and
Speaker 1: they were crying for their parents. It was a nightmare.
Speaker 1: And then I felt so sad for all these kids.
Speaker 1: And then I got out of bed. I tried to
Speaker 1: get out of bed. I just fell on the floor
Speaker 1: and I realized I couldn't walk. And I was never
Speaker 1: too scared at first. But I stayed there for about
Speaker 1: a week more and then finally they took me home,
Speaker 1: and my father was very sharp the method they took
Speaker 1: me to this. I remember a French doctor who gave
Speaker 1: me a big speech of like I was a soldier
Speaker 1: and I was going to be a good soul. And
Speaker 1: then he told me the prognosis, which was he says, well,
Speaker 1: you'll be able to do everything a normal person could do,
Speaker 1: but always in a wheelchair. And I was just I
Speaker 1: hadn't realized that it was that serious. So I remember
Speaker 1: being very emotional and we all went to have my
Speaker 1: favorite We all went to have Chinese food and crying
Speaker 1: in the Mugoogai pen and they took me home, my father,
Speaker 1: and they pinned me in the bed so I couldn't move.
Speaker 1: That was the way they thought you should treat it.
Speaker 1: And it didn't make sense to my father, and he
Speaker 1: heard about another method, which was the Sister Kenney method.
Speaker 1: A Sister Kenny was an Australian nurse who had decided
Speaker 1: that rather than make them the paralyzed victim immobilized so
Speaker 1: they don't damage their muscle, and instead you did therapy.
Speaker 1: He did the opposite. My father went and talked to
Speaker 1: them and got the folio Infant how Paralysis Association to
Speaker 1: pay for a Sister Kenny therapist came and this lady came.
Speaker 1: Her name was Miss Wilson, wonderful lady, and she worked
Speaker 1: on me, you know, and it was very gentle exercises,
Speaker 1: but they were. And I was in this room, I
Speaker 1: just watched television all that had puppets. I played with puppets.
Speaker 2: The puppets is interesting because did that make you think
Speaker 2: about film? Do you think that.
Speaker 1: No, it made me think about having friends. I wanted.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be with the kids. I wanted. There
Speaker 1: was a show on television in those days, sponsored by
Speaker 1: Horn and Hart, do you remember the Automatic And it
Speaker 1: was called the Children's Hour and it was all these
Speaker 1: talented kids singing and dancing, and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be part of that.
Speaker 2: When I grew up in the fifties, there was how
Speaker 2: do you duty?
Speaker 1: Well? How do you do? I can tell you how
Speaker 1: do duty? Stories? Too.
Speaker 2: My parents took me. I was actually they knew somebody
Speaker 2: who worked on the how do you do? We were
Speaker 2: in the audience. I was in the Peanuts Peanut again,
Speaker 2: really lucky.
Speaker 1: It's how do you do? Time? It's how they dude
Speaker 1: the time Bob if I aroused here, because how they
Speaker 1: do it's time to start the show. Well let's go.
Speaker 2: God, I haven't satten that song for a love.
Speaker 1: But he didn't look like that. One night I said
Speaker 1: to my parents, look, I went like that and I
Speaker 1: couldn't do that with my left arm, you know. And
Speaker 1: they were shocked. And then eventually I was able. I
Speaker 1: never could run fast though after that, but I was
Speaker 1: a good wrestler. I went to the same military school
Speaker 1: as Donald Trump went to. I went to many high
Speaker 1: schools and I went to New York Military Academy.
Speaker 2: And when did you study film?
Speaker 1: I was a theaterist student and I was very successful
Speaker 1: in college. I directed a lot of plays and I
Speaker 1: was slated to go to the Al Drama School. And
Speaker 1: then one afternoon I saw a movie in a theater
Speaker 1: by the great Rush director, sirge Eisenstein. And I saw
Speaker 1: that and came out said, wow, I know, say anything
Speaker 1: like that. I'm going to be a film director. You know.
Speaker 1: It was October the Ten Days that shook the World.
Speaker 1: And I went to the UCLA Film.
Speaker 2: School and so California then, so that was in what
Speaker 2: that would have been.
Speaker 1: I was in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was the time when you went to
Speaker 2: the LA Film School.
Speaker 1: I went to UCLA.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what was that like?
Speaker 1: Oh it was I was a graduate student. I was
Speaker 1: very poor. I ran away from military school, so my
Speaker 1: father was not going to help me very much. He
Speaker 1: was very angry because when I ran away from military school,
Speaker 1: he had to pay anyway for that year and he
Speaker 1: didn't never forgive me for that. So when I went
Speaker 1: to UCLA, I had about a dollar twenty five a
Speaker 1: day to live on, so I had twenty five cents
Speaker 1: for breakfast, fifty cents for lunch, and fifty cents for dinner.
Speaker 1: So I pretty much ate every night craft macaroni and
Speaker 1: cheese dinners. And I just got fatter and fatter and
Speaker 1: fatter and fatter, and I was very depressed. I had
Speaker 1: no money, I had no car, I had no girlfriend.
Speaker 1: I was pretty miserable, and there was a time when
Speaker 1: I thought I would quit. And I had a wonderful
Speaker 1: directing teacher, a woman who was the only woman director
Speaker 1: in Hollywood during the thirties. Her name was Miss ars
Speaker 1: the Dorothy Orsner. She was great, she was she was
Speaker 1: so smart, and we we all everyone who studied with
Speaker 1: Miss Arsener just and we call her miss ars there
Speaker 1: because we respected her so much, and she was just
Speaker 1: What happened was I was there one night and very
Speaker 1: depressed that I was pretty much decided that I was
Speaker 1: going to go back to New York and get a
Speaker 1: job as a stage manager because I would get a
Speaker 1: salary and I could. And she said, what are you
Speaker 1: doing here? And I said, I'm miss Arsdre. I'm just miserable.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back at the side. I'm going
Speaker 1: to quit and I'm going to get a job as
Speaker 1: a stage marcher. And she looked at me and she said,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been around and I know you'll make it.
Speaker 1: I know. And she left because she told me that,
Speaker 1: and we looked up to her so much. She was
Speaker 1: you look her up. She was a great woman. I
Speaker 1: miss Ardas said, you'll make it. I've been around, and
Speaker 1: I know. I stayed, and ultimately I stayed at UCLA
Speaker 1: and I won this Goldwiner prize, which was a writing award,
Speaker 1: and it was two thousand dollars and that was a
Speaker 1: big turning point in my life.
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Speaker 1: Now, there were two schools that were competing. There was USC,
Speaker 1: which was considered more of a technically oriented school, and
Speaker 1: there was more UCLA, which was more sort of artsy
Speaker 1: FARTSI kind of directors who wanted to be the new
Speaker 1: Felini and the new this and that. So there was
Speaker 1: a competition between USC and UCLA, and I emerged as
Speaker 1: a star of UCLA because I won the gold Wooden
Speaker 1: Prize And then I made as a thesis feature film,
Speaker 1: which was unheard of a commercial film as my thesis
Speaker 1: film was a movie in New York CLD You're a
Speaker 1: Big Boy Now. And I got married. I had two kids,
Speaker 1: and you know, I always thought that being married with
Speaker 1: kids was good for me because instead of you know,
Speaker 1: going out having fund screwing around, I was concerned with
Speaker 1: supporting my family. I had a wife and two kids.
Speaker 1: I loved my kids. Geo was my first John Carlo
Speaker 1: and Sofia in Roman. Sofia was born during the Godfile.
Speaker 1: So what happened was I got a job to direct
Speaker 1: Fred Astaire at a big musical called Finian's Rainbow. And
Speaker 1: as I was directing this, I was a young guy
Speaker 1: with a crew of adults all wearing suits and ties.
Speaker 1: I noticed there was a skinny kid watching what was
Speaker 1: going on. And I went over to him and I said,
Speaker 1: I ain't I what you're doing. What are you looking at?
Speaker 1: He said nothing much. I said, well, you know what
Speaker 1: are you doing here? He said, well, I'm a USC
Speaker 1: student and I won a scholarship to observe. I came
Speaker 1: over to look at the Warner Brothers Adomation department. But
Speaker 1: I heard there was a UCLA student directing this movie,
Speaker 1: so I thought i'd watch. I said, oh great, what's
Speaker 1: your name? He said, George Lucas And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you want to come every day and watch the film?
Speaker 1: He said sure. I said, well I'm one condition you can't.
Speaker 1: He says, what's that. I said, well you got to
Speaker 1: come up with a brilliant idea every day. And he said,
Speaker 1: I'll do that, and he did. And so I met
Speaker 1: this wonderful kid, who of course.
Speaker 2: Became a well that.
Speaker 1: Would be Finean's rainbow. So and I had a little boy,
Speaker 1: like about two. So that must have been about nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five at the worst. And that made a marriage
Speaker 1: between UCLA because then not only did I meet George,
Speaker 1: but I met all of the USC guys, and they
Speaker 1: met all the UCLA guys. So that we began. Then
Speaker 1: we went off and made a film. I said, if
Speaker 1: you come off and help me with this film, I'll
Speaker 1: sponsor your first film. And we made a film called
Speaker 1: The Rain Peaceeople where we actually rode across the country
Speaker 1: at a bus at editing. And then he made a
Speaker 1: film called THHX The thirty eight and we founded that's
Speaker 1: when it became American Zorchra. We founded a company and
Speaker 1: we decided to put it in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: My San Francisco away from Los Angeles. Y studio is yeah.
Speaker 1: But by being in San Francisco with no money, it
Speaker 1: determined that we, as we always knew, picture and sound
Speaker 1: equally contribute to a movie being being good, but sound
Speaker 1: is much cheaper. So we made a big investment in sound.
Speaker 1: And that really changed because there was a company in
Speaker 1: San Francisco called Doby that was very that was very
Speaker 1: nice and liked us. It always helped us, but they
Speaker 1: benefited because they saw everything we were doing and we
Speaker 1: changed movies both in terms of the sound. And then
Speaker 1: when George made Star Wars, he just I died that
Speaker 1: if we could shoot in a digital format, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to convert from film to digital for effects, back
Speaker 1: to film. So we really, because of our poverty, we
Speaker 1: changed the face of cinema around the world through Dolby.
Speaker 2: Do you remember have memories of food at that time?
Speaker 2: Why Lucas? Did you like good food?
Speaker 1: I was a good army cook. I could cook for
Speaker 1: fifty people, and I always used to cook for everyone.
Speaker 2: But I have youone on the set.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can cook dinner for fifty sixty people with
Speaker 1: no trouble at all. I have done it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I once went to the I went to teacher at Cuba.
Speaker 1: I was invited along with Terry Mallick and some people
Speaker 1: to go to Cuba and go at the Cuban Film School.
Speaker 1: And I said to them, I said, I like to
Speaker 1: cook for the students. And they said, well, what do
Speaker 1: you want to cook? I said, well, I don't know what.
Speaker 1: Do you have tomatoes? They said sure? I said, do
Speaker 1: you have a basil whatever it was? Golden said, below,
Speaker 1: you know they had basil. I said, do you have
Speaker 1: any pasta? No, no, we don't have pasta. Well do
Speaker 1: you have potato? You have potatoes? You see, I had flowers.
Speaker 1: So I made yuki and they said, but you can't
Speaker 1: just make it for the students. You got. We're a
Speaker 1: socialist country, you have to make it for everybody. So
Speaker 1: I said, well, how many people would have to eat?
Speaker 1: They said five hundred, So we cooked yuki for five
Speaker 1: hundred people. But we did it. We did it, and
Speaker 1: it was great.
Speaker 2: They they had the right potatoes because for yi you
Speaker 2: need those very dry.
Speaker 1: Got whatever potatoes they gave me. There was no selection
Speaker 1: in Cuba. And then the next year I went. They said,
Speaker 1: are you going to cook again? They said yes, This
Speaker 1: time I brought pasta. We had a pasta coming. So
Speaker 1: I cooked that Cuba maybe three four times.
Speaker 2: With all of you in Spielberg and Lucas and who
Speaker 2: was part of that other? Did you all have meals together?
Speaker 2: Was eating out? What did you?
Speaker 1: All of them? Yes? But of all of them, the
Speaker 1: only one who were my kind of Italian was Marty Is.
Speaker 1: It was his parent, his mother. He wrote a very
Speaker 1: good cookbook which you can still get and it's hard, missus.
Speaker 1: Catherine Scorsese.
Speaker 2: One thing for moving ahead to the Godfather is that
Speaker 2: we all know the scene. Of course, we know the
Speaker 2: scenes we were just talking about of cooking the sauce,
Speaker 2: so the getting the cannoli but for me, it's about
Speaker 2: citrus as well. Yeah, because you know the two scenes
Speaker 2: that I thought and I that was an accident.
Speaker 1: I always had someone bring an orange, but the orange
Speaker 1: became going.
Speaker 2: To talk about the two scenes, one of them which
Speaker 2: was in the market when he's choosing the oranges. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then he then he's shot right when Brandon is
Speaker 2: That was right across the that's the premonition that he's
Speaker 2: when he's going to be He realized he's going to
Speaker 2: be killed.
Speaker 1: There was this orange motif that was not true. It's
Speaker 1: just that I had always said, you know, we'll bring
Speaker 1: an orange as a gift from Florida or something nice.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that it became a symbol. But I
Speaker 1: didn't know what.
Speaker 2: About the scene at the very end when he's playing
Speaker 2: with his child.
Speaker 1: That scene they cut out of the script because they felt.
Speaker 2: We didn't describe that scene. That's the scene.
Speaker 1: Why, well, let me tell you the circumstance of it.
Speaker 1: That that scene was cut out of the script because
Speaker 1: they figured if we just cut to the graveyard, you'll
Speaker 1: know he died. So what did you have to see
Speaker 1: him die? But I wanted to shoot him dying in
Speaker 1: the tomato patch. So when I was shooting the wedding,
Speaker 1: I had got this little tomato patch developed. In fact,
Speaker 1: we had to bring the tomatoes fly them in a
Speaker 1: great expense from Chicago because we had no tomatoes. And
Speaker 1: during lunch, I was over there trying to get the
Speaker 1: shot of him with his grandson and the minder that
Speaker 1: they had on me. He said, you can't do this,
Speaker 1: the scene's been cut. I said, well, let me just
Speaker 1: get I can get one shot and I'm going to
Speaker 1: go to you know, you have to go to lunch,
Speaker 1: I said, And I did the one shot, and then
Speaker 1: I went to lunch and the kid was We didn't
Speaker 1: we didn't want to do it. So Brandon said, let
Speaker 1: me do something I do for my grandkids, and he
Speaker 1: cut he on his own. I didn't know what he
Speaker 1: was going to do.
Speaker 2: It is true.
Speaker 1: He cut the orange and he did it, and he
Speaker 1: did it like a monster, and the kid cried. So
Speaker 1: it became memorable and it got put in the picture.
Speaker 1: And then I shot the rest of it of him
Speaker 1: running around stuff. So that was a scene that they
Speaker 1: had tried to cut out that because of Brando's ingenuity,
Speaker 1: it became ended.
Speaker 2: In running around and playing a game and the child
Speaker 2: actually thinks that him falling down and dying is part
Speaker 2: of the gang, isn't he You know, he doesn't.
Speaker 1: It was the movie. It's just it's luck that that
Speaker 1: Brando did that and the kid, because they were there
Speaker 1: were standing there wanting me to cut. When Brando did
Speaker 1: his first day, everyone saw his first day and they said,
Speaker 1: all this stuff is too dark and he's mumbling and
Speaker 1: we hate it. One of the people who was sort
Speaker 1: of on my side, you know it, said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, France, they're going to fire you this weekend.
Speaker 1: Because they never fire a director in the middle of
Speaker 1: the week. They always fire the director on the weekend
Speaker 1: so the new director has time to come in and
Speaker 1: get everything organized. So he said, they're going to fire
Speaker 1: you this weekend. So knowing that I just that day
Speaker 1: that I heard that, I fired the fifteen people that
Speaker 1: were in on the cabal that were going to fire me,
Speaker 1: and no one knew that I even had the authority
Speaker 1: to do that. I just did it. And because I
Speaker 1: wanted to reshoot the shot of Brando that they didn't like,
Speaker 1: and when I said I want to do it, they said, no,
Speaker 1: don't do it. That's when he said, they're going to
Speaker 1: fire you. So I fired everyone. I went up and
Speaker 1: I reshot the ste It was the first scene where
Speaker 1: he comes in and sits and has the meeting with
Speaker 1: Solotso in the dark in the Hollive oil factory. So
Speaker 1: they thought it was too dark and Brando was mumbley,
Speaker 1: so I reshot it. So then everyone had to wait
Speaker 1: and see in the weekend, and everyone was saying, can
Speaker 1: he do that? You know, maybe he can't, and is
Speaker 1: he fired? I didn't know. I thought they were going
Speaker 1: to fire me anyway, so but they waited and then
Speaker 1: they decided that the reshoot was much better, and so
Speaker 1: they said they worked and fire me. And the head
Speaker 1: of the company brought me to the Palm Steakhouse and
Speaker 1: bought me and my father dinner and said that, you know,
Speaker 1: they were going to back stay with me.
Speaker 2: I'm always interested in meetings that take place in restaurants,
Speaker 2: So they took you to a restaurant.
Speaker 1: They took me to the Palm Restaurant, which I think
Speaker 1: he Charlie Bluto a own part of and my father too,
Speaker 1: and they said they weren't going to fire me. But
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is that in the movie.
Speaker 1: It's the first scene. In other words, they didn't know
Speaker 1: what they were talking about. The Godfather was dark, that
Speaker 1: was its style. Brando in an oscar for The Godfather,
Speaker 1: and you know, he always mumbled. He told me he
Speaker 1: mumbled deliberately because it was easier to add to what
Speaker 1: lines later he wanted to his mouth didn't live.
Speaker 2: Michael Kaine said to me that almost every movie that
Speaker 2: was offered to him, or that he thought of from
Speaker 2: being offered a pardon, was done in a restaurant. So
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in restaurants and work and restaurants, how
Speaker 2: people go to restaurants, and how they use restaurants. People
Speaker 2: do I always say very private things in a very
Speaker 2: public space, So fire people in a restaurant.
Speaker 1: There were a bunch of famous restaurants, show business restaurants.
Speaker 1: Sorry sorry. One of the famous Elaine's in New York.
Speaker 1: Elaine was a lady much like you. If you did
Speaker 1: you know Elaine.
Speaker 2: No, I never met her.
Speaker 1: She conducted a sort of salon. Yeah, it's more like
Speaker 1: a so long.
Speaker 2: But in Hollywood would people.
Speaker 1: I used to write with Mario Puzzo, and I would
Speaker 1: go with him because he loved the gamble I would
Speaker 1: go with him to the pepper Mill casino in Reno
Speaker 1: and we would work in the pepper Mill because in
Speaker 1: a gambling casino you can order you know, ham and
Speaker 1: eggs at three in the morning or anything else and
Speaker 1: then you can go. It's twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1: And all the work I always been with Mario was
Speaker 1: always in a gambling casino in.
Speaker 2: Reno, feeding people. You were telling me at lunch that
Speaker 2: you wanted to tell me the story about having to
Speaker 2: give the crew lunch, and if you don't.
Speaker 1: We always gave. We wanted to give. I tried to
Speaker 1: give the crew because you know, a crew worked so
Speaker 1: hard that their only entertainment, their only amusement is at lunch.
Speaker 2: You know, their mutan the people who are not actors.
Speaker 1: Well everyone including the actors. I mean, they have no loather,
Speaker 1: working sometimes twelve hours a day. So I had lunches
Speaker 1: and I would have two kinds of wine, which now
Speaker 1: was illegal, by the way, but I would. You can't
Speaker 1: not now you can't in France they do. I had
Speaker 1: two kinds of wine I had. I was famous for
Speaker 1: wonderful lunches and on Friday I would always have a
Speaker 1: special treat because it was a final thank you. So
Speaker 1: I doubled the meal budget so that they could do
Speaker 1: something really wonderful on Fridays as a thank you, because
Speaker 1: that's the only entertainment the crew gets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what you said that you were punished if
Speaker 2: you were late for giving them lunch.
Speaker 1: Oh that was there's not the thing called the meal penalty.
Speaker 1: When you're on a movie set and it's time to
Speaker 1: say lunch has to be at one o'clock. It all
Speaker 1: depends on what time the day starts one o'clock. If
Speaker 1: it's one fifteen, everyone gets one hundred dollars for the
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. And then those are penalties and where it
Speaker 1: comes from. In the twenties, there was a Hungarian director
Speaker 1: named Michael. He was a gentleman, so he would have
Speaker 1: them work and they'd bring a table and serve him
Speaker 1: at the four course dinner while everyone else was working
Speaker 1: was eating nothing. So because of that, the union put
Speaker 1: in a meal penalty.
Speaker 2: And what about the famous canteens. Meilbrooks always talked about
Speaker 2: seeing carry granting was.
Speaker 1: In a lot of the studios had, Like I remember
Speaker 1: Fox had a big area where they would have lunch.
Speaker 1: That's where I saw when me and Farrell in a
Speaker 1: tough cut off all long hair and went in there
Speaker 1: angry about something. But I don't know which canteen he saw.
Speaker 1: Carry grant was extraordinary.
Speaker 2: The stars of the of the early days. Whether it
Speaker 2: was well, I know that.
Speaker 1: Well, I know one thing. It's true that Jack Warner
Speaker 1: used to have a private dining room and he would
Speaker 1: require that the directors and stuff come into his private
Speaker 1: dining room. And that's where and then he next to it,
Speaker 1: he had a room with all his awards, and you
Speaker 1: had to go in other words, you had to go.
Speaker 1: You were expected to be in there at least three
Speaker 1: times a week. That's where I first had Matsa. And
Speaker 1: I liked Matza a lot, so I was always happy
Speaker 1: to go in Matsa. But I brought with me once
Speaker 1: into the dining room Patula Clark, and I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that there was no women had ever been in the
Speaker 1: private dining room Jack Warner.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe Winter said lunch is now running from
Speaker 2: Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking on www. Rivercafe dot
Speaker 2: co dot uk or give us a call. We have
Speaker 2: too some there people who met six hours ago, four
Speaker 2: hours ago. We have both lost our life partners. You're
Speaker 2: your wife, Eleanor.
Speaker 1: And about the loss of a child.
Speaker 2: Tell me what we both have shared that.
Speaker 1: You lost your son. What happened to me, and maybe
Speaker 1: it didn't appen to you is but to me it
Speaker 1: was thirty years before the first thing I thought of
Speaker 1: was what had happened? And then finally, after thirty years,
Speaker 1: if you can imagine, I woke up one morning and
Speaker 1: it wasn't the first thing I thought of, and I
Speaker 1: realized that it was the beginning of getting past it.
Speaker 1: So that for me it was a thirty year sentence.
Speaker 2: When was that thirty years? Well it was thirty years
Speaker 2: How many years ago?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean he died and his daughter is thirty
Speaker 1: four years old, so she that was New Year's on
Speaker 1: the year he died, so thirty four years ago, so
Speaker 1: it was four year years ago. Every morning, the first
Speaker 1: thing I thought of was, oh did that happen? And
Speaker 1: it was that was like terrible? Did that happen for you?
Speaker 1: How long? Every morning did you? Was it the first
Speaker 1: thing you thought of?
Speaker 2: Well, for me it was thirteen years ago, and.
Speaker 1: You still wake up and it's the first thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it would be the first thing
Speaker 2: I woke up with. But I certainly would be buying
Speaker 2: an orange in the market and think of it. Well,
Speaker 2: I'd walk into his room and think of it. I'd
Speaker 2: see something that reminded me. Here here music. So for me, it.
Speaker 1: It takes Yeah, well my sentence was the first thing.
Speaker 1: Oh did it happen?
Speaker 2: How are you feeling that about your wife? Now?
Speaker 1: No, No, my wife is funny because I just just
Speaker 1: all the time I think, you know, there's someone I
Speaker 1: got to tell something, and I got to tell her that.
Speaker 1: But no, I don't have to tell her that because
Speaker 1: she's so It's different because your son, you don't expect
Speaker 1: to get that news. Whereas she I knew I was
Speaker 1: with her when she died. I was holding her hand,
Speaker 1: and I knew she wanted to go because she was
Speaker 1: so so in such discomfort and pain. So I mean
Speaker 1: it was it was the whole family was there holding her,
Speaker 1: and we did it deliberately. She did for her, for her,
Speaker 1: But a child, you you don't expect that news. It
Speaker 1: was just a horrible news. I couldn't believe it when
Speaker 1: they told me.
Speaker 2: And you were making a film.
Speaker 1: I started to make a film. Yeah, I was I did,
Speaker 1: but I continued. They said, you don't have to will abandon.
Speaker 1: I said, no, he'd want me to finish it. But
Speaker 1: that was what I noticed, is that it was like
Speaker 1: a sentence, a thirty year sentence of that of being harper.
Speaker 1: I woke up every morning. Yeah, but there's that beautiful Eschylus,
Speaker 1: how it drops on you, drop by drop until by
Speaker 1: the awful grace of God, you're given you're given a break,
Speaker 1: you know, Eschylus. Can you imagine Eschlus? How long ago
Speaker 1: that is?
Speaker 2: Death of a child.
Speaker 1: It's not something Fortunately, there aren't many people today who've
Speaker 1: experienced that. It's it's it's rare.
Speaker 2: I remember thinking that that would be how I was defined,
Speaker 2: that I would be the woman whose child had died.
Speaker 1: You know, it used to be years ago, when when
Speaker 1: families were bigger, you know, people would have seven, eight kids.
Speaker 1: They always lost one or two. It was part of
Speaker 1: having a lot of kids. But that's it's rare now
Speaker 1: that they're not. Yeah, those people who lose their child,
Speaker 1: thank God, is a small minority. It's a terrible group
Speaker 1: to be part of.
Speaker 2: And if we need comfort, we find comfort. I find
Speaker 2: right now. And we talked about this for a moment
Speaker 2: as well, about when my husband died, that I find
Speaker 2: comfort in being active. My comfort is to keep working
Speaker 2: and being here. You know that you have well other people.
Speaker 2: I have a friend whose brother died in an accident
Speaker 2: in French and her mother went to bed for six months,
Speaker 2: and that's whatever it is. People find their own way,
Speaker 2: But for me, it's being active and for comfort. We
Speaker 2: find comfort in different ways. And I suppose my last
Speaker 2: question to you today, though I think we should do
Speaker 2: another one of this because there's so much more to
Speaker 2: talk about. Is if you had to find comfort in food,
Speaker 2: if there was something that you could eat before you
Speaker 2: die that you would find that it would give you comfort.
Speaker 2: Would there be a food that you would define as comforting?
Speaker 2: What would that be?
Speaker 1: Halva?
Speaker 2: Halva? Yeah, that I would not have expected.
Speaker 1: Why I love it? I always loved what I was
Speaker 1: a little.
Speaker 2: Can you describe what halva is?
Speaker 1: Halva is Middle Eastern peoples of different origin. It's made
Speaker 1: of ground sesame seeds and egg albumen and sugar probably honey.
Speaker 2: I think it has honey in it.
Speaker 1: Well Eastern foods as I love Middle Eastern.
Speaker 2: I do too. You're going to make a movie. What
Speaker 2: is it about?
Speaker 1: It's about a time in the thirties when marriage and
Speaker 1: marriage ability was in very test related. In other words,
Speaker 1: you had to be in your crowd or your set
Speaker 1: in order to consider marriage. And then people would marry,
Speaker 1: and then they would get the worst and marry upwards.
Speaker 1: And the marriage was the marriage was sort.
Speaker 2: Of for gain and you're gonna film it here.
Speaker 1: Well, no, it's I'm gonna base it here and then
Speaker 1: do it all over. They go to all the they
Speaker 1: go to Anna, they go to bay Ritz, they go
Speaker 1: to all the places rich people go to.
Speaker 2: Well, we want we want you here, We want you
Speaker 2: to be here to the future.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair