WEBVTT - Francis Ford Coppola 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:03.680 You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair. 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:08.240 Since Francis Ford Coppola agreed to do a podcast with me, 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:12.160 I've been slightly overwhelmed. But good friends who know us, 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:18.120 both Wes Anderson, Fisher, Stevens, Greta Gerwik assured me. Actually, Ruthie, 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.239 the two of you are rather alike. Do they mean 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.400 being a chef is like being a director, or producing 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.319 a movie is like running a restaurant, or choosing the 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.440 grapes for your vineyard is like choosing the herbs for 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.479 your fish, or most of all, do they mean we 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:37.360 both have our family involved in everything we do. I'm 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:40.720 happy to take any of the above. Francis and I 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:43.640 are here together after a long lunch in the River 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:47.320 Cafe to talk about food and wine, movies and families, 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:50.200 menus and friends, and much much more. 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.360 Well, thank you for the lovely comments said. 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:58.319 You've made ruth So for lunch today, you had as 0:00:58.360 --> 0:00:59.160 a starter. 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:02.440 Pundarella, which a Roman salad which you only have certain 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.880 times of year, and basically you Italians have a taste 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.679 for bitter. Puntorella is really a bitter salad, and so 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:15.040 it comes from a kind of winter chicoria plant which 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:19.640 is divided and cut up in a certain way and 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:25.200 served with olive oil and anchovy and capers, sometimes and 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:28.760 sometimes not. And this is the famous puntorella salad that 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:30.360 you get in a Roman restaurant. 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:32.880 It is a great way to start a meal, I 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:33.360 think if. 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.679 We didn't need it when we were kids, because we 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:41.920 ate food that was either Neapolitan from my mother's side 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:48.040 or lu Canese Bernalda, the region in the extreme south 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.320 of Italy, which is my mother's side. Well, it says 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:57.520 here puntorella, it says two puntarella heads. The vegetable is chicoria, 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:01.800 and it's a winter chechorea. Twelve salted anchovy phil cut 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.960 into small pieces, four tablespoons red wine vinegar, one gar 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.760 of co peeled and finally chopped, one drud some dried 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:14.160 red chili pepperonchina rosso and then six tablespoons of virgin 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.440 olive oil. And you prepare. You slice the buds into 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:20.960 these little thin stalks in your place in the water 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:23.760 a bowl of ice water to crisp, but they'll curl up. 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.320 Combine the anchovy's garlic and chili and covered with vinegar 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:31.200 leaf for fifteen minutes, had six table students of olive oil, 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:36.560 spin dried the puntarella segments and then putting a in 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.280 a bowl and spoon the stuff over it, and that's 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:40.560 your puntarella salad. 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:44.359 So you grew up in a house that served incredible food. 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:47.000 When a lot of Southern Italians. 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:48.400 Came father and grandfather from your. 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:51.040 Father and came to the United States. I grew up 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:53.840 in upstate New York, one hundred miles north of New 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.840 York City, and when we went out to an Italian restaurant, 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:01.160 we would have veal parmechan we would have the meatballs 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:04.400 and spaghetti. The food of the meatballs. 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.520 If you know what you're doing, they really make meatballs. Well. 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:10.800 Number one, you have to have three components. A meatball 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:14.080 is one third pork, one third veal, and one for 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:18.079 a thief, and with bread a lot of breadcrumbs. 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:20.200 But the scene and the Godfather, if we can talk 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.480 about that, I sadly I watched it again. I thought, 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:25.960 you know what, the way he said, you know and 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:29.639 then throwing this, and well, that's so nonchalant. 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:32.639 When I wrote that scene, I wrote it the way 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:34.480 I knew how to do. It, and I said, well, 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.480 take you first, you brown the sausage, and then there's 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:43.000 a fry. And Mario said, Gangsters don't say brown, Franksters 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:46.240 say fry. So we changed it to fry. Then he said, 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:48.800 and then the secret is true, that the little the 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.480 secret of a good meat sauce is a little bit 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.440 of sugar. You added like a you know, a half 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:57.800 a tablespoon of sugar to a meat sauce. So the 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:02.240 recipes were authentic, but we tried to give them a 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:06.880 gangster type of vocabulary. Although I must say that the 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:10.520 reason I'm convinced that The Godfather was successful because it 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:12.480 was the first gangster film that had a lot of 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:16.880 kids running around in the seats. Never were gangster pictures 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:20.440 though they didn't have kids. But of course an Italian 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.240 wedding was all the kids sliding around it. 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:27.120 So you grew up in a family that could Italian food, 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.039 but in New York and New York speaking Italian. That's 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.480 how we started. Did you know Italian? 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.320 No? I only heard some cursed. But my mother didn't 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:41.599 want us to be like Italians couldn't live in certain neighborhoods. Yeah, 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:46.120 and the Italians, you know, each immigrant group in America 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:49.560 was bullied by the one that came before, and the 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:52.719 one who came before the Italians were the Irish, and 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.160 the Irish used to beat up on Theians. 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:57.000 The policeman and the Godfather. 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.360 Right, the police. The police were all Irish and they 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.599 used to they used to pick. That's the way it works. 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.719 So you were restricted to this neighborhood. And did you 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.520 experience food other than Italian food or did you was 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:11.640 eating Hell, if you see. 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:16.000 The Godfather, you realized that I knew that Italians used 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.520 to get takeout Chinese food. Yeah, every street corner in 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:23.200 New York had a German delicatessen, a candy store what 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:25.520 we call the candy store, which was a soda fountain 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:28.919 where they sold coke which was five cents and they 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.840 would make it to put the syrup and it wouldn't 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:37.240 be in a bottle, and model airplanes, and a German 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:40.960 delicatessen where you would buy cheesecake. 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:42.919 So there there would be a mix that would be 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:43.719 a German. 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:47.400 And always a Chinese restaurant. In the neighborhoods. There were 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:51.039 a lot of Polish people and Italians because they were 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:54.760 both Catholic, and there were a lot of Italian Polish 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:57.599 weddings because they were both Catholic. And I went to 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.839 a lot of Polish weddings, and I knew Polish food 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:05.520 was like they had Kebbasa whereas we had sazich. It 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:09.720 was America. It was a wonderful a mixture of cultures. 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:11.880 And we want to keep that. We want to keep 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.720 we want to keep that. And then should we talk 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:15.480 about polio? 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:19.080 If anything, you ask your question, I'd be. 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.400 Interested in the fact that as a child you had 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:23.720 polio and spent how long invent. 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.599 I spent the whole sixth grade, so a whole year 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.760 year and little more than a year. And in those 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:35.640 days polio, you know, of course it had also affected adults. 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.640 President Franklin Roosevelt had polio, but there was an epidemic 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.320 for children in nineteen forty nine. And I was a 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.159 cup Scout and I went on a cup Scout camp 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:49.560 out and it was raining, and the next morning I 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.919 had the symptoms. And you know, polio only affects you 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:56.880 one night. In other words, it's the night of the fever, 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.839 is the night you have it, and then you get 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:02.880 over it. But the damage is to your spinal cord, 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:09.240 and Napolio destroys the nerves selectively within the spinal cord, 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:11.960 so that I mean literally when I woke up, I 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:16.000 woke up in a ward with like eight hundred kids 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:20.880 piled up everywhere crying, a whole row of iron lungs 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:24.720 because the kids whose lungs were affected couldn't breathe, so 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:26.720 they had to be in a machine that breathe, and 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.920 they were crying for their parents. It was a nightmare. 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:33.840 And then I felt so sad for all these kids. 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:36.120 And then I got out of bed. I tried to 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:37.560 get out of bed. I just fell on the floor 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:40.640 and I realized I couldn't walk. And I was never 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.200 too scared at first. But I stayed there for about 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.520 a week more and then finally they took me home, 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:53.560 and my father was very sharp the method they took 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:56.640 me to this. I remember a French doctor who gave 0:07:56.680 --> 0:07:58.720 me a big speech of like I was a soldier 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:00.960 and I was going to be a good soul. And 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.120 then he told me the prognosis, which was he says, well, 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:07.000 you'll be able to do everything a normal person could do, 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:11.720 but always in a wheelchair. And I was just I 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:15.200 hadn't realized that it was that serious. So I remember 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:19.120 being very emotional and we all went to have my 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:22.560 favorite We all went to have Chinese food and crying 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.880 in the Mugoogai pen and they took me home, my father, 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:28.800 and they pinned me in the bed so I couldn't move. 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.360 That was the way they thought you should treat it. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.000 And it didn't make sense to my father, and he 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:37.840 heard about another method, which was the Sister Kenney method. 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:42.920 A Sister Kenny was an Australian nurse who had decided 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:48.199 that rather than make them the paralyzed victim immobilized so 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.040 they don't damage their muscle, and instead you did therapy. 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:57.080 He did the opposite. My father went and talked to 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:01.560 them and got the folio Infant how Paralysis Association to 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:06.160 pay for a Sister Kenny therapist came and this lady came. 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:10.280 Her name was Miss Wilson, wonderful lady, and she worked 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:13.920 on me, you know, and it was very gentle exercises, 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:16.160 but they were. And I was in this room, I 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.040 just watched television all that had puppets. I played with puppets. 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.880 The puppets is interesting because did that make you think 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:24.480 about film? Do you think that. 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:26.760 No, it made me think about having friends. I wanted. 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:29.840 I wanted to be with the kids. I wanted. There 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:33.520 was a show on television in those days, sponsored by 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.120 Horn and Hart, do you remember the Automatic And it 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.000 was called the Children's Hour and it was all these 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.559 talented kids singing and dancing, and I just wanted to 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:43.319 be part of that. 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:45.760 When I grew up in the fifties, there was how 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:46.280 do you duty? 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:48.000 Well? How do you do? I can tell you how 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:49.120 do duty? Stories? Too. 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:52.080 My parents took me. I was actually they knew somebody 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.640 who worked on the how do you do? We were 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.200 in the audience. I was in the Peanuts Peanut again, 0:09:57.840 --> 0:09:58.440 really lucky. 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:01.760 It's how do you do? Time? It's how they dude 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:09.760 the time Bob if I aroused here, because how they 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:14.760 do it's time to start the show. Well let's go. 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:17.160 God, I haven't satten that song for a love. 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:20.560 But he didn't look like that. One night I said 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.920 to my parents, look, I went like that and I 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.320 couldn't do that with my left arm, you know. And 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:29.680 they were shocked. And then eventually I was able. I 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:32.439 never could run fast though after that, but I was 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.880 a good wrestler. I went to the same military school 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:38.160 as Donald Trump went to. I went to many high 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:40.920 schools and I went to New York Military Academy. 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:42.800 And when did you study film? 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:47.079 I was a theaterist student and I was very successful 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.600 in college. I directed a lot of plays and I 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.320 was slated to go to the Al Drama School. And 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:57.920 then one afternoon I saw a movie in a theater 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:02.520 by the great Rush director, sirge Eisenstein. And I saw 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.440 that and came out said, wow, I know, say anything 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:08.440 like that. I'm going to be a film director. You know. 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.280 It was October the Ten Days that shook the World. 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:12.920 And I went to the UCLA Film. 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.920 School and so California then, so that was in what 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:16.520 that would have been. 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:18.439 I was in nineteen sixty. 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:22.000 Yeah, so that was the time when you went to 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:23.240 the LA Film School. 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:24.240 I went to UCLA. 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:26.320 Yeah, And what was that like? 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:29.080 Oh it was I was a graduate student. I was 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.880 very poor. I ran away from military school, so my 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:35.240 father was not going to help me very much. He 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.559 was very angry because when I ran away from military school, 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:42.040 he had to pay anyway for that year and he 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.240 didn't never forgive me for that. So when I went 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:47.800 to UCLA, I had about a dollar twenty five a 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:50.360 day to live on, so I had twenty five cents 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:57.760 for breakfast, fifty cents for lunch, and fifty cents for dinner. 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.679 So I pretty much ate every night craft macaroni and 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:03.920 cheese dinners. And I just got fatter and fatter and 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:08.040 fatter and fatter, and I was very depressed. I had 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.560 no money, I had no car, I had no girlfriend. 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:16.000 I was pretty miserable, and there was a time when 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:18.959 I thought I would quit. And I had a wonderful 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:23.680 directing teacher, a woman who was the only woman director 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.760 in Hollywood during the thirties. Her name was Miss ars 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:31.160 the Dorothy Orsner. She was great, she was she was 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:35.600 so smart, and we we all everyone who studied with 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.000 Miss Arsener just and we call her miss ars there 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:41.840 because we respected her so much, and she was just 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:47.520 What happened was I was there one night and very 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:49.960 depressed that I was pretty much decided that I was 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:51.480 going to go back to New York and get a 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:53.800 job as a stage manager because I would get a 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.520 salary and I could. And she said, what are you 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:00.000 doing here? And I said, I'm miss Arsdre. I'm just miserable. 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:02.480 I'm going to go back at the side. I'm going 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:04.800 to quit and I'm going to get a job as 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.040 a stage marcher. And she looked at me and she said, 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.000 you know, I've been around and I know you'll make it. 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.800 I know. And she left because she told me that, 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.880 and we looked up to her so much. She was 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:22.040 you look her up. She was a great woman. I 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:24.480 miss Ardas said, you'll make it. I've been around, and 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:29.040 I know. I stayed, and ultimately I stayed at UCLA 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:33.319 and I won this Goldwiner prize, which was a writing award, 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:35.600 and it was two thousand dollars and that was a 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:38.760 big turning point in my life. 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:46.600 Imagine a state bottled olive oil chosen and bottled for 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.520 the River Cafe, arriving at your door every month. Our 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:54.560 subscription is available for six or twelve months, with each 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.120 oil chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:02.920 each delivery. To bring some River Cafe flavor into your 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.800 home or to show someone you really care for them 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:10.080 with the gift, visit our website shop the Rivercafe dot 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:12.360 co dot uk to place your order. 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:21.080 Now, there were two schools that were competing. There was USC, 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:25.680 which was considered more of a technically oriented school, and 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:30.080 there was more UCLA, which was more sort of artsy 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:34.520 FARTSI kind of directors who wanted to be the new 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:37.200 Felini and the new this and that. So there was 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:42.920 a competition between USC and UCLA, and I emerged as 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.760 a star of UCLA because I won the gold Wooden 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:50.360 Prize And then I made as a thesis feature film, 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.320 which was unheard of a commercial film as my thesis 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:56.760 film was a movie in New York CLD You're a 0:14:56.760 --> 0:15:01.560 Big Boy Now. And I got married. I had two kids, 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.320 and you know, I always thought that being married with 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:07.560 kids was good for me because instead of you know, 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:11.600 going out having fund screwing around, I was concerned with 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:14.720 supporting my family. I had a wife and two kids. 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.520 I loved my kids. Geo was my first John Carlo 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:22.760 and Sofia in Roman. Sofia was born during the Godfile. 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.960 So what happened was I got a job to direct 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:30.960 Fred Astaire at a big musical called Finian's Rainbow. And 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.000 as I was directing this, I was a young guy 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:37.640 with a crew of adults all wearing suits and ties. 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.480 I noticed there was a skinny kid watching what was 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:45.240 going on. And I went over to him and I said, 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.680 I ain't I what you're doing. What are you looking at? 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:51.840 He said nothing much. I said, well, you know what 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:53.600 are you doing here? He said, well, I'm a USC 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:57.280 student and I won a scholarship to observe. I came 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:00.120 over to look at the Warner Brothers Adomation department. But 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:02.920 I heard there was a UCLA student directing this movie, 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.120 so I thought i'd watch. I said, oh great, what's 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.160 your name? He said, George Lucas And I said, well, 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:11.560 you want to come every day and watch the film? 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.120 He said sure. I said, well I'm one condition you can't. 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:17.200 He says, what's that. I said, well you got to 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:19.680 come up with a brilliant idea every day. And he said, 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.000 I'll do that, and he did. And so I met 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.880 this wonderful kid, who of course. 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:27.960 Became a well that. 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:30.960 Would be Finean's rainbow. So and I had a little boy, 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:33.840 like about two. So that must have been about nineteen 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:38.560 sixty five at the worst. And that made a marriage 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:42.920 between UCLA because then not only did I meet George, 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:47.320 but I met all of the USC guys, and they 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.800 met all the UCLA guys. So that we began. Then 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:53.800 we went off and made a film. I said, if 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:56.200 you come off and help me with this film, I'll 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.440 sponsor your first film. And we made a film called 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.560 The Rain Peaceeople where we actually rode across the country 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:05.399 at a bus at editing. And then he made a 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:09.280 film called THHX The thirty eight and we founded that's 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.359 when it became American Zorchra. We founded a company and 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:14.200 we decided to put it in San Francisco. 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:18.560 My San Francisco away from Los Angeles. Y studio is yeah. 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.760 But by being in San Francisco with no money, it 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:28.200 determined that we, as we always knew, picture and sound 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:33.280 equally contribute to a movie being being good, but sound 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:37.040 is much cheaper. So we made a big investment in sound. 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:40.399 And that really changed because there was a company in 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:45.160 San Francisco called Doby that was very that was very 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.880 nice and liked us. It always helped us, but they 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.840 benefited because they saw everything we were doing and we 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.439 changed movies both in terms of the sound. And then 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.760 when George made Star Wars, he just I died that 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:03.879 if we could shoot in a digital format, they wouldn't 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:07.960 have to convert from film to digital for effects, back 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.720 to film. So we really, because of our poverty, we 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:16.159 changed the face of cinema around the world through Dolby. 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:18.880 Do you remember have memories of food at that time? 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:23.040 Why Lucas? Did you like good food? 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:25.760 I was a good army cook. I could cook for 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:28.880 fifty people, and I always used to cook for everyone. 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:30.639 But I have youone on the set. 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.040 Yeah, I can cook dinner for fifty sixty people with 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:35.720 no trouble at all. I have done it. 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:36.480 Yeah. 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:41.119 I once went to the I went to teacher at Cuba. 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:44.120 I was invited along with Terry Mallick and some people 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:47.479 to go to Cuba and go at the Cuban Film School. 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:50.119 And I said to them, I said, I like to 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:52.679 cook for the students. And they said, well, what do 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:54.359 you want to cook? I said, well, I don't know what. 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:56.960 Do you have tomatoes? They said sure? I said, do 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:00.680 you have a basil whatever it was? Golden said, below, 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:03.800 you know they had basil. I said, do you have 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.600 any pasta? No, no, we don't have pasta. Well do 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:09.920 you have potato? You have potatoes? You see, I had flowers. 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:12.720 So I made yuki and they said, but you can't 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:14.560 just make it for the students. You got. We're a 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:17.520 socialist country, you have to make it for everybody. So 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.320 I said, well, how many people would have to eat? 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:24.680 They said five hundred, So we cooked yuki for five 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:28.159 hundred people. But we did it. We did it, and 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:28.720 it was great. 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:31.159 They they had the right potatoes because for yi you 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:32.440 need those very dry. 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.720 Got whatever potatoes they gave me. There was no selection 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:39.200 in Cuba. And then the next year I went. They said, 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:41.399 are you going to cook again? They said yes, This 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.439 time I brought pasta. We had a pasta coming. So 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:47.680 I cooked that Cuba maybe three four times. 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:51.560 With all of you in Spielberg and Lucas and who 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:56.960 was part of that other? Did you all have meals together? 0:19:57.119 --> 0:19:58.760 Was eating out? What did you? 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:02.919 All of them? Yes? But of all of them, the 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:07.280 only one who were my kind of Italian was Marty Is. 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.440 It was his parent, his mother. He wrote a very 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.480 good cookbook which you can still get and it's hard, missus. 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:14.679 Catherine Scorsese. 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:20.040 One thing for moving ahead to the Godfather is that 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:22.720 we all know the scene. Of course, we know the 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.119 scenes we were just talking about of cooking the sauce, 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:29.320 so the getting the cannoli but for me, it's about 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:33.479 citrus as well. Yeah, because you know the two scenes 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:36.440 that I thought and I that was an accident. 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:40.080 I always had someone bring an orange, but the orange 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:41.120 became going. 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:43.000 To talk about the two scenes, one of them which 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:46.880 was in the market when he's choosing the oranges. Yeah, 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.119 and then he then he's shot right when Brandon is 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:51.800 That was right across the that's the premonition that he's 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.240 when he's going to be He realized he's going to 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:54.800 be killed. 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:58.600 There was this orange motif that was not true. It's 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:01.560 just that I had always said, you know, we'll bring 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:04.480 an orange as a gift from Florida or something nice. 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:08.560 I didn't know that it became a symbol. But I 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:09.160 didn't know what. 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:11.320 About the scene at the very end when he's playing 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:12.320 with his child. 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:15.600 That scene they cut out of the script because they felt. 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:17.760 We didn't describe that scene. That's the scene. 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.320 Why, well, let me tell you the circumstance of it. 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:23.240 That that scene was cut out of the script because 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:25.680 they figured if we just cut to the graveyard, you'll 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:27.320 know he died. So what did you have to see 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:30.199 him die? But I wanted to shoot him dying in 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.560 the tomato patch. So when I was shooting the wedding, 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:37.600 I had got this little tomato patch developed. In fact, 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:40.000 we had to bring the tomatoes fly them in a 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:44.080 great expense from Chicago because we had no tomatoes. And 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.399 during lunch, I was over there trying to get the 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:51.080 shot of him with his grandson and the minder that 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:53.120 they had on me. He said, you can't do this, 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:55.080 the scene's been cut. I said, well, let me just 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.240