Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: My friend Glenn Close brought Ryan Johnson to the River
Speaker 2: Cafe where they were filming Wake Up Dead Men, the
Speaker 2: third Knives Out movie, and for the rest of the
Speaker 2: summer he was what we call a regular yesterday sending
Speaker 2: me photos of her new grandson. These were her words, Ruthie.
Speaker 2: Working with Ryan is a highlight of my career. He
Speaker 2: wrote a great script, cast an amazing stable of actors,
Speaker 2: and set us on a sublime adventure together. Ryan is
Speaker 2: a master storyteller who makes work both serious and wildly fun.
Speaker 2: I am honored to call him a friend. Well, if
Speaker 2: a friend of mine says that about a friend of hers,
Speaker 2: I do believe her. Family is crucial to Ryan. He
Speaker 2: talks movingly about his father's influence on his career. His
Speaker 2: earliest film memory being put in the car by him
Speaker 2: to go see Star Wars Age five.
Speaker 1: Yeah must have been yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We're here together at the River Cafe to talk
Speaker 2: about family and friends, movies and food. It's going to
Speaker 2: be serious and hopefully wildly fun. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that beautiful introduction. I owe Glenn a
Speaker 3: big hug.
Speaker 2: I think the first time you came came with Glynn,
Speaker 2: did we might?
Speaker 3: I think I might have been here a few times,
Speaker 3: but that's one of the first times we really connected.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, when we had Sunday lunch and we kept
Speaker 2: trying to have other times, watched the World Cup together.
Speaker 1: I'm all right and family family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're here now with your family. Tell you,
Speaker 2: tell me what you're doing in London.
Speaker 3: So we finished shooting and cutting together the movie Wake
Speaker 3: Up deed mannon right now.
Speaker 1: We're recording the score.
Speaker 3: So we're at Abbey Road and my cousin Nathan, who's
Speaker 3: my composer, and we've been making movies together since we
Speaker 3: were ten years old.
Speaker 1: He's here because we're at Abbey Road, and because.
Speaker 3: I'm really close to my extended family, including my aunts
Speaker 3: and uncles and two of my uncles who really kind
Speaker 3: of gave Nathan and I sort of a real love
Speaker 3: of music growing up. I brought them out with us.
Speaker 3: The music that I keep coming back to in my
Speaker 3: life is mostly stuff that they were playing, you know,
Speaker 3: when I was when I was a kid, it was
Speaker 3: mostly kind of like the folk crock era of like
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of Jonny Mitchell, a lot of
Speaker 3: Neil Young lot. It was kind of that era of
Speaker 3: sort of of post hippie sort of sort of full crock.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and my dad also, that was a big
Speaker 3: connecting point.
Speaker 2: I think that music stays with you for the rest
Speaker 2: of your life. Somebody said that buying music, you mostly
Speaker 2: buy your music between the ages of seventeen and say
Speaker 2: twenty two, and that's the music that stays with you.
Speaker 1: It imprints. I think so.
Speaker 3: And there's I think there's an argument to me made
Speaker 3: that everything that most of kind of the major taste
Speaker 3: things in your life end up getting set kind of
Speaker 3: you know, before you're fifteen. I think that early stuff
Speaker 3: that sitting in the back of the car with your
Speaker 3: dad and with whatever song was on that that you know,
Speaker 3: the forms, forms, the grooves.
Speaker 2: I think, could you've recorded them anywhere or was it
Speaker 2: important to you to come back to London.
Speaker 3: Well, we've done the past few movies at Abbey Road
Speaker 3: and it's just it's a really special place for a
Speaker 3: lot of reasons, but also a lot of the people
Speaker 3: that Nathan works with are out here and we just
Speaker 3: know the musicians are so good and it's also it's
Speaker 3: a it's you know, it's a treat.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's why I'm here. Really, the podcasts score while
Speaker 1: we're here, while we're here.
Speaker 2: It is amazing. It's so exciting to see how many
Speaker 2: movies are being made in England at the moment.
Speaker 1: And the cruise are so wonderful British Cruis.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 3: It's so so true. It feels like making a family
Speaker 3: movie kind of in the best way. My experiences, including
Speaker 3: Star Wars, which was a huge production, but it's still
Speaker 3: everybody in it cared so much. And when I did it,
Speaker 3: I kind of chalked that up to, well, is it
Speaker 3: because we're making a Star Wars movie and everyone.
Speaker 1: Grew up with it?
Speaker 3: But then being here again making this movie, I was like,
Speaker 3: oh no, this is just everyone's just stoked.
Speaker 2: Did you grow up thinking that food and work, in
Speaker 2: school and life was that part of your family? Was
Speaker 2: it all integrated into a home life. Did you sit
Speaker 2: down for dinner most nights?
Speaker 3: You know, we did, That's one thing. We did, sit
Speaker 3: down for dinner every single night. And my mom would
Speaker 3: always cook. Her dad was Italian and her mom was
Speaker 3: a really good cook, and most of my childhood kitchen
Speaker 3: memories are from.
Speaker 1: My mom's mom.
Speaker 2: But she wasn't Italian.
Speaker 1: No, she wasn't Italian.
Speaker 3: She was Oh is she she was? I think mostly yeah, British.
Speaker 3: But she would make pies and she would make Yeah,
Speaker 3: she was a very good cook. And so most of
Speaker 3: my sitting in the sitting in the kitchen memories are
Speaker 3: from her. Did she live nearby, No, she lived in Illinois.
Speaker 3: So we would go to like Mondaline, Mundoline, Illinois, which
Speaker 3: is a little suburb in Illinois. It's also where I
Speaker 3: got My uncle had a pizza place called Pizza Toni,
Speaker 3: and that's where I got introduced like thin crust, thin
Speaker 3: crust pizza. Yeah, and it was the most delicious thing
Speaker 3: I'd ever taste.
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh, that's yeah.
Speaker 2: You would come from Maryland or from la.
Speaker 3: So I was born in Maryland, but we were only
Speaker 3: there for like a year or two. I don't really
Speaker 3: have any Maryland memories really. I was a kid in Colorado, Colorado.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's where my dad's family. You're never in Englewood.
Speaker 2: I went to school in Carbondale.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was very kind of a school on a ranch. Oh,
Speaker 2: kind of one of those very liberal schools where they
Speaker 2: thought education was part of the academic and the restree
Speaker 2: road horses and you know made it was really it
Speaker 2: was good.
Speaker 1: Yeah I missed that. Do you miss the mountains?
Speaker 2: I miss the mountains, Yeah, I do. The summer in
Speaker 2: the mountains I was sometimes, you know, you could keep
Speaker 2: the beach and see the flowers and the mountains.
Speaker 1: I do find myself craving. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I got to get up to the mountains every once
Speaker 3: in a while, even though I don't really ski anymore.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know, there's something about it. It's
Speaker 3: growing up there. You do just kind of start craving it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So tell me more about the food. So you
Speaker 2: had your grandmother's food when you went to visit her,
Speaker 2: to visit her, did your mom work did she have No,
Speaker 2: my mom didn't work. She worked because she had kids.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah she worked a lot.
Speaker 2: But how many were there?
Speaker 3: So I'm the oldest, and I have two younger brothers,
Speaker 3: and after two younger brothers, a younger half brother and
Speaker 3: then a younger sister.
Speaker 1: So that's a lot. It's a lot. Well, I have
Speaker 1: a big of a big family.
Speaker 3: Also, I'm the eldest of like forty cousins, and I'm
Speaker 3: as close to some of my cousins as I am
Speaker 3: to my brothers and sisters, and we're a very very close.
Speaker 1: Big family.
Speaker 3: My grandparents on my dad's side would put the effort
Speaker 3: in to get the whole family together for vacations, and
Speaker 3: so we'd have these and we would also make movies together.
Speaker 1: We'd make family movies together. So I would just not.
Speaker 2: Movies of the family, but you'd actually have a plot,
Speaker 2: have a plot.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, we always the director, I will.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would always, yeah.
Speaker 1: I would always.
Speaker 3: Basically they would the poor kids would spend their whole
Speaker 3: vacation being like conscripted into service making making these.
Speaker 1: These stupid little It was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 2: Who wrote them?
Speaker 1: We didn't.
Speaker 3: That was what was fun. Is like, so is really
Speaker 3: me and Nathan and we didn't Nathan tonight, He's coming tonight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who's now? Dud does the music.
Speaker 3: And we would just have an idea, let's do like
Speaker 3: a James Bond parody or something, and we would write
Speaker 3: it as we shot, and we would edit in camera
Speaker 3: and so which I did a lot of shorts in
Speaker 3: high school that way, and I think that that's a
Speaker 3: great way to learn because it also teaches you editing
Speaker 3: at the same time. It's it just teaches you kind
Speaker 3: of storytelling with a camera.
Speaker 2: And this is what year, What year?
Speaker 1: Boy?
Speaker 3: So I was in grade school up through kind of
Speaker 3: the mid eighties basically.
Speaker 2: So this is pre digital editing.
Speaker 1: It's pre digital, pre digital editing.
Speaker 3: We were shooting with I mean my first my early
Speaker 3: movies in junior high I did get a super ereat camera,
Speaker 3: but I also had it was right around when compact
Speaker 3: video like high eight was like the new format, and
Speaker 3: so you could have a camquarder that wasn't huge and
Speaker 3: have kind of a mini format, and I mean the
Speaker 3: quality was nothing compared to what's in our phones right now,
Speaker 3: but it was it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: And so I made a lot of movies with that.
Speaker 2: We have a Ryan Johnson film Fest.
Speaker 1: My god, I went subjective that I went subjected.
Speaker 2: When you watch them, do you think they're funny?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think they're funny because they have my family in them.
Speaker 1: But I went and subject you to.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe. We could put a big screen outside,
Speaker 2: but the food was part of your Was it important
Speaker 2: because it seems important to you know, it seems like
Speaker 2: it's important to say the way you eat and the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it wasn't. That's the thing.
Speaker 3: It's not like I grew up in like a family
Speaker 3: where it was all about the food. But my dad
Speaker 3: and my dad was a tell me about your dad.
Speaker 3: So my dad, who Yeah, he passed away just a
Speaker 3: few months before I was offered the Star Wars movie.
Speaker 1: So he passed away.
Speaker 3: He was too young, he was in his early sixties. Yeah, yeah, oh,
Speaker 3: thank you. Really, every experience you have, you do kind
Speaker 3: of filter it through. Boy, what would my dad feel like?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: I imagine if my dad had been around when we
Speaker 3: were making the Star Wars movie, he would have camped
Speaker 3: out on said I would have never He would have
Speaker 3: been just there every single day. And yeah, he got
Speaker 3: to see me kind of become sort of someone who
Speaker 3: could make movies for a living. And he got to
Speaker 3: see us making Looper, which was kind of my first
Speaker 3: like bigger movie.
Speaker 1: But he loved.
Speaker 3: I think he really wanted to make movies. Honestly, he
Speaker 3: was such a ham. I think he wanted to be
Speaker 3: an actor. But I can just like I just think about, Yeah,
Speaker 3: what it would have been like if he had been
Speaker 3: around for Star Wars or for these murder mysteries. And
Speaker 3: I also think about what parts he would have demanded
Speaker 3: that I write for.
Speaker 2: Been in.
Speaker 1: It would have been bigger and bigger parts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure in Star Wars he would want to
Speaker 3: be like on the deck of a star destroyer or something.
Speaker 1: Or like yeah, but uh, but I love it. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: It's uh, it's something that yeah, anyone who's is yeah,
Speaker 3: lost a parent, you know, so it's a long journey.
Speaker 3: It's not something you kind of go through and get
Speaker 3: out of. It's something that just, uh, it's part of
Speaker 3: the road for the rest of your life, you know.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: Food wise, he was a He wasn't a gourmet. He
Speaker 3: was a Gormand would he cook. He would cook, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he would cook extravagantly. He would He had a
Speaker 3: like if he was making ribs and making like a
Speaker 3: barbecue sauce, he would put every spice that he had.
Speaker 3: And he made a thing called bunny cake, which he
Speaker 3: would basically make a chocolate cake that had all the
Speaker 3: chocolate you can imagine it, plus molten Snickers bars. And
Speaker 3: it was just this molten, just heap of semi li
Speaker 3: If I congealed chocolate and the motto was nobody likes it,
Speaker 3: but everybody eats it. But that was just anything he did,
Speaker 3: he was going to do the most of it and
Speaker 3: and then include food, and then include eating. And it's
Speaker 3: not this not not the best and not a refined
Speaker 3: version of it. But he loved food though, like my
Speaker 3: dad would just pick up from the local rib joints.
Speaker 3: It would come home and just like way too much food.
Speaker 3: And yeah, but but he could be a really really
Speaker 3: fun guy and he was a big guy in every
Speaker 3: in every way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Did you put him in your childhood movie?
Speaker 1: I put him in so the one, the one movie that, uh,
Speaker 1: this was my dad on the set of Looper in
Speaker 1: his costume. I'll send you the picture. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, and.
Speaker 3: He got to get shot in the face by Bruce
Speaker 3: Willis in the movie. So it was the highlight of
Speaker 3: his of his life.
Speaker 1: He was so happy. He was like he was.
Speaker 2: Survived or did he die from shot?
Speaker 1: He died? He gets shot on the face. That yeah
Speaker 1: was the first. What was your first?
Speaker 2: Just tell us the trajectory from going from the Super
Speaker 2: eight movies and the editing to your first movie. Well,
Speaker 2: did you go to film school?
Speaker 1: I did. I went to USC.
Speaker 3: I got rejected like six times from USC and became
Speaker 3: an English major.
Speaker 2: I mean, you got rejected from even going.
Speaker 1: There, from the film from the films.
Speaker 3: So but there was no place else I wanted to go,
Speaker 3: So I went undeclared and kept applying. And I mean
Speaker 3: my grades were terrible in high school because I was
Speaker 3: just making movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Do you think that a film school might
Speaker 2: have recognized that?
Speaker 3: Maybe, yeah, I guess. I also I also get it though,
Speaker 3: because they, I mean USC, you know, they take a
Speaker 3: really limited amount of people.
Speaker 1: They have so many applicants.
Speaker 3: But I did end up getting in and like did
Speaker 3: an undergrad program there and then graduated, and I wrote.
Speaker 3: I wrote a script for what ended up being my
Speaker 3: first movie, which was this weird kind of sort of
Speaker 3: the Maltese Falcon style mystery but in an American high school.
Speaker 1: Oh it's called Brick.
Speaker 3: And I wrote it right out of college and basically
Speaker 3: spent my twenties broke in LA hating Los Angeles and
Speaker 3: failing to get my movie made, and just kind of
Speaker 3: working day jobs.
Speaker 1: And I got I was lucky at.
Speaker 2: Some of the day jobs.
Speaker 1: I had some market a restaurant, no I never did.
Speaker 1: I want that was a dream.
Speaker 3: I kept applying and I never got working at a restaurant.
Speaker 1: But I had some really good, great day jobs.
Speaker 3: Actually I worked at a preschool for deaf kids called
Speaker 3: the John Tracy Clinic that's in LA and I was
Speaker 3: kind of their av guy. And I worked at the
Speaker 3: Disney Channel producing promos just kind of yeah, really really
Speaker 3: good jobs is really with really lovely people. But the
Speaker 3: whole time I was just trying to get my first movie.
Speaker 2: Made and how did that happen?
Speaker 3: So after years and years of it almost coming together
Speaker 3: and falling apart, and I finally I met my producer,
Speaker 3: Rom Bergman, who is still my producer today, and he
Speaker 3: didn't find the money, but he said, look, you're the
Speaker 3: way that most people go about trying to make their
Speaker 3: first movie is they get a budget for their script
Speaker 3: and someone tells them your movie is going to cost
Speaker 3: three million dollars and they think, oh, I need to
Speaker 3: and so then you end up never getting three million dollars.
Speaker 3: And so Rom said, look, this is a very weird script.
Speaker 3: I think it's really good, but it's very strange. The
Speaker 3: only way this will work is if you have control
Speaker 3: over it. So you need to just figure out how
Speaker 3: much money you can get together, and then that's your budget,
Speaker 3: and then you'll make figure out how to make the
Speaker 3: movie for that. So that's what we did, and it
Speaker 3: was my family kind of because they're in the home
Speaker 3: building business. They had had just a big deal just
Speaker 3: go through, so they had some cash to invest and
Speaker 3: they made a very stupid investment. So well, investing independent
Speaker 3: film money. It ended up doing well. Yeah, it ended
Speaker 3: up being a very good investment, But investing in that
Speaker 3: indie film, I mean, God bless them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was just going to ask you a question,
Speaker 2: how did it relate to them? Because I love the
Speaker 2: multie Feltonist movie. Was it the same sort of?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a genre.
Speaker 3: So it's basically taking a dashal Hammet like mystery, hard
Speaker 3: boiled mystery, and just setting it in the modern high school.
Speaker 3: But all the kids talk like they're in dashal Hammet,
Speaker 3: and so they all talk in this weird are the
Speaker 3: sounds insufferable? I think it actually kind of kind of
Speaker 3: works on the screen, but it's but yeah, so it's
Speaker 3: basically just a straight up like hard boiled mystery, but
Speaker 3: set in the high school.
Speaker 1: It's a very weird hybrid, but it kind of works.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Does you film it in black and white?
Speaker 3: No, we filmed it in color, but a lot of
Speaker 3: people who like saw it when it came out will
Speaker 3: come up to me and say how much they loved
Speaker 3: the black and white cinematography. So people remember it in
Speaker 3: black and white sometimes when they've seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dashal Hammett. We were talking about him the other night.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, she went to jail. Not name me names,
Speaker 2: didn't he?
Speaker 1: I think he was blacklisted, so on the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I know that he was a Pinkerton detective.
Speaker 2: I know, the McCarthy era when they yeah, people you know,
Speaker 2: had to testify before the House and American Activities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he refused.
Speaker 2: I think he was.
Speaker 1: He was on the refuse he was. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was fascinating. His writing, Oh my god. I love his
Speaker 1: right and his right.
Speaker 3: I think people kind of confuse him with Wish Chandler
Speaker 3: and with sort of I love Chandler too, but Chandler
Speaker 3: has those kind of long metaphors and kind of like
Speaker 3: descriptive passages and Hamlets like him away. He's sparse and
Speaker 3: just like hard cut, and I love his writing.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I made that movie, and then because I
Speaker 3: had connected with Rom, we just kind of kept making
Speaker 3: movies together. And some of them, some of them didn't
Speaker 3: do good, some of them did good, but we were
Speaker 3: able to keep piecing them together and uh, and we
Speaker 3: were able to keep creative control.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 3: I was able to just to always write the next
Speaker 3: movie I wanted to make, and then make it pretty
Speaker 3: much how I wanted to make it. I've been really,
Speaker 3: really lucky in that regard.
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Speaker 3: Now, I've never really been in a situation where I've
Speaker 3: been told what to cut and what not to cut
Speaker 3: in a movie. But then the reality is you get
Speaker 3: to the end of the process, you've lost all perspective
Speaker 3: on it, and you're just driving yourself insane, not knowing
Speaker 3: what to what to cut. So you do it, I mean,
Speaker 3: getting some kind of friction. It's never good to have
Speaker 3: your hand forced, but getting your go to I have
Speaker 3: a lot of good filmmaker friends who I show it too,
Speaker 3: and then I have just trusted people who are close
Speaker 3: to me that I show it too.
Speaker 1: But it's hard. It's tough because.
Speaker 3: You, I know, it's like you walk out of a
Speaker 3: movie with even your closest, smartest friends, like another just
Speaker 3: a random movie in a movie theater, and some one
Speaker 3: of them will say something where you just do a
Speaker 3: double take and say, that's completely the opposite of my experience.
Speaker 3: So you kind of you don't want to dismiss any
Speaker 3: note you don't agree with, because yeah, there might be
Speaker 3: something there, but you also need to remember that. And
Speaker 3: when you're so lost at sea in the editing process,
Speaker 3: the temptation to just grab something solid if it's somebody's
Speaker 3: opinion can be So I don't trying to.
Speaker 2: Get better at restaurant. Yeah, it's no comparison to is
Speaker 2: just cooking the meal. But having an open kitchen, you
Speaker 2: can watch people, you can see their response. You can
Speaker 2: show them. Sometimes they're going like, now, how much.
Speaker 1: Do you do the chefs watch.
Speaker 2: People something back and if you believe in it, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, if I believe in what I cooked or
Speaker 2: what we're serving, then it can be somebody's opinion. If
Speaker 2: you have sometimes doubts or if somebody says it's too salty,
Speaker 2: that's really important. But it's all about feedback, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's how you give the feedback. Even when I eat here,
Speaker 2: do I if I had a great meal, do I go?
Speaker 2: Or if I have something that I didn't think was
Speaker 2: quite right and they're working and last night I was
Speaker 2: in the kitchen, but now I'm sitting down, Do I
Speaker 2: want to go and tell them it doesn't feel right?
Speaker 2: But then if you say that was a great meal,
Speaker 2: and then the next day you come in you said,
Speaker 2: you know what I told you, it was a great meal. Actually,
Speaker 2: it's always how you give that feedback.
Speaker 1: Tough thing.
Speaker 3: The only thing worse than getting feedback from friends is
Speaker 3: giving feedback to friends.
Speaker 2: How do you deal with that?
Speaker 3: It's hard, I mean, it's I'm also like I'm not.
Speaker 3: There are some people I think who love conflict. I
Speaker 3: don't love coming and so. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: especially if I'm close enough with the person, and I'll
Speaker 3: always I think if you can be honest, if you
Speaker 3: can not tell them like what they you think they
Speaker 3: should do with it, but if you can be honest
Speaker 3: in a way you can see, we'll be constructive in
Speaker 3: terms of or I guess being honest about your experience
Speaker 3: of it is always helpful.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the reasons I quite like
Speaker 2: having my family here. Yeah, they will say if I
Speaker 2: call it my son, I said, as the spin I said,
Speaker 2: how is your lunch in the River Cafe on Sunday?
Speaker 2: Said they had a really good time. I go, oh,
Speaker 2: was that bad?
Speaker 1: The weather was lovely?
Speaker 2: Oh it was that bad? Okay, now you can.
Speaker 1: Tell me I was, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 3: I was sitting in the backstage like after a play
Speaker 3: to meet an actor, and another one of the actors
Speaker 3: was there, and their family came in to like and
Speaker 3: just seeing the play, and their mother.
Speaker 1: The actor's mother was like, oh, yeah, how'd you enjoyed?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Great?
Speaker 3: And there was a pause and the mom said, the
Speaker 3: seats were so much more comfortable than the last show
Speaker 3: they did.
Speaker 1: It was just very I don't know, if they just
Speaker 1: redid them or I was I was, I was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was melting. I was melting into a puddle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your mom, Yeah, she's got the right.
Speaker 2: Are you critical about food?
Speaker 3: I can be, But I think I think, I'm I mean,
Speaker 3: my wife I think has a much more refined palette
Speaker 3: than me. I'm I tell you, I'm a little bit
Speaker 3: of my father's son. If something's delicious, I'm just all
Speaker 3: hap Yeah. And also but also I'm kind of like
Speaker 3: that with movies too, Like I tend to walk into
Speaker 3: a movie kind of very on the movie's side usually,
Speaker 3: and I do the same thing with meals. Usually something's
Speaker 3: got to really smack me in the face for me,
Speaker 3: that's really nice.
Speaker 2: So tell me about Star Wars, because we were going
Speaker 2: from making these films having success and then going to what,
Speaker 2: I mean, what does Star Wars meant to you as
Speaker 2: a child who your father took you to the first
Speaker 2: first one?
Speaker 1: I think beyond even the movies.
Speaker 3: I think for people who were kids when they were
Speaker 3: coming out, the toys meant that the ubiquity of the
Speaker 3: toys meant that the worlds that you were creating in
Speaker 3: your own imagination at home were in that world of
Speaker 3: Star Wars. I think that's a big part of why
Speaker 3: it's so powerful, in addition to the films. I mean,
Speaker 3: but the one two punch of that, so so yeah,
Speaker 3: Star Wars for me was, you know, it's all the
Speaker 3: cliches of of dudes my age of just how Star
Speaker 3: Wars was, you know, beyond movies. It was really kind
Speaker 3: of closer to a mythology that I grew up with,
Speaker 3: and it meant the world to me. And and I
Speaker 3: had I had been kind of committed to I'm just
Speaker 3: going to write and direct my own things, and they had,
Speaker 3: especially after me I made Looper, which was kind of
Speaker 3: a science fiction thing. There were other like franchise stuff
Speaker 3: that like came came knocking, and there were always bigger movies.
Speaker 3: And I had always just kind of said, nah, I
Speaker 3: think I'm just going to stick to the path of
Speaker 3: making my own stuff. But then when Star Wars came around, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a not for you can't refuse, and you.
Speaker 2: Came here to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, came the time you loved No.
Speaker 3: I actually I had made films of the second movie
Speaker 3: I did, which was a con Man movie.
Speaker 1: That very few people saw. It's called the Brothers Bloom.
Speaker 3: It was Adrian Brody was in it and and Rachel
Speaker 3: Weis and Mark Ruffalo is a really good cast. But
Speaker 3: we were in Eastern Europe, so I we shot that
Speaker 3: came out in two thousand and seven or eight, so
Speaker 3: it was like two thousand and six that we were
Speaker 3: shooting that. Yeah, but we were over in Eastern Europe
Speaker 3: for that I had shot overseas, but that was that.
Speaker 1: It was food.
Speaker 2: Did you eat?
Speaker 1: I ate?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 3: So we were based in Belgrade in Serbia, and we
Speaker 3: traveled around, but we were truly a traveling circus. We
Speaker 3: went to Montenegro, and we went to through Romania, rural Romania.
Speaker 3: We had like two days in Prague, we had Croatia,
Speaker 3: and so we were all over the place. And then
Speaker 3: during that shoot I ended up meeting and falling in
Speaker 3: love with the girl who has with for a few years,
Speaker 3: who was Serbian. She was from Belgrade, so through her
Speaker 3: and her family, I then got to kind of really experience,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know, I got.
Speaker 1: A real taste for Serbian food. It's delicious.
Speaker 2: I think I do not know is about Serbian food.
Speaker 3: Serbian food, I mean it's it's very meat based and
Speaker 3: it's very meat and potatoes literally, and it's delicious.
Speaker 1: It's very flavorful, and it's such.
Speaker 3: A I don't know that it's all about big groups
Speaker 3: and eating in big groups, and so it's food that
Speaker 3: can just kind of be served and so I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's delicious though.
Speaker 1: I ended up really liking it. I love Belgrade. I
Speaker 1: love that.
Speaker 3: I've never had a bigger gap between my first impression
Speaker 3: of a city and how I end up feeling it
Speaker 3: because you go it's it's not I mean, it's a
Speaker 3: it's a city that really reveals its beauty to you
Speaker 3: the longer you're there, I think. And it is a
Speaker 3: really beautiful city with a lot of life to it.
Speaker 1: I really love it.
Speaker 2: Do you think that immersion in the family making a
Speaker 2: personal for you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, Yeah, that's what does it.
Speaker 2: I think you try create them now and you go
Speaker 2: to to when you came to film.
Speaker 1: We we do.
Speaker 3: It's It was funny, especially with these like Knives Out movies,
Speaker 3: because they're ensemble casts and because on the first one
Speaker 3: we had through Jamie Lee Curtis was kind of the
Speaker 3: spearhead of it.
Speaker 1: She really got.
Speaker 3: Everyone just hanging out on set, and so we had
Speaker 3: kind of a taste of what it's like when you
Speaker 3: have an ensemble cast and they all like each other
Speaker 3: and hang out together.
Speaker 1: And so on Glass Onion, which was the second Knives.
Speaker 3: That movie we shot in Greece and then in Belgrade,
Speaker 3: and because it was during the tail end of the pandemic,
Speaker 3: we were all isolated together and so we all got
Speaker 3: really close and so at the end of the day shooting,
Speaker 3: we would rent out just the bar at the top
Speaker 3: of the hotel and just go up and have have
Speaker 3: dance parties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wess Anderson doesn't it with his films you talk
Speaker 2: to you about, you know that they go out in
Speaker 2: the evening. Yeah, your team and be together.
Speaker 3: It's so unique the way that he does it. I
Speaker 3: find it really really interesting. And yeah, I think there's
Speaker 3: nobody who really makes movies the way. I mean, both
Speaker 3: in terms of the movies themselves, but the process sounds. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Are you going to Paris from here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Phibission. You know that's just opened and it's all the costumes.
Speaker 2: I've just seen slides of it, but it would probably
Speaker 2: be worth going. So when you go to Paris, do
Speaker 2: you think about what you're going to eat.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's all I think about.
Speaker 2: Do you tell me what are you thinking?
Speaker 3: I mean, so, my wife and I have spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time in Paris, and yeah, we have like
Speaker 3: a little place there and so we it's kind of.
Speaker 1: Where is it.
Speaker 3: It's in the sixth but it's not in San Truman.
Speaker 3: It's down south of the Luxembourg Garden, so basically it's
Speaker 3: on the border of modern parnask it's stumbling distance from
Speaker 3: the closery to Leila, and it's it's right.
Speaker 1: Next to like Dome.
Speaker 3: It's it's right by l Duke, which is one of
Speaker 3: our favorite spots.
Speaker 1: Cafe Select.
Speaker 3: It's right by Like it's really fun because you like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's the stuff where if you read a
Speaker 3: Somerset mom book, it's all the places they were hanging
Speaker 3: out right down the street. So so yeah, I have
Speaker 3: especially because I'm taking my uncles and my aunts. I've
Speaker 3: got yeah, I got dinners, I got well, I'm taking
Speaker 3: taking them to the Duke. Garmo is going to be
Speaker 3: there at the same time. So he's like, oh and
Speaker 3: he's he's booked like three different the lunches for yeah,
Speaker 3: and I did it and I brought tequila because I
Speaker 3: wanted him to try the one that I liked, and
Speaker 3: he brought to kill By the end of the uh
Speaker 3: a little.
Speaker 1: Bit, where's the really, where's the tequila? I didn't get?
Speaker 2: Why don't you get tell me? That's right.
Speaker 1: I'll take it. Posture is my Tequila's right.
Speaker 3: So that's nice that I love to be in Paris
Speaker 3: for just a few days.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe, when you said lunch, is now running
Speaker 2: from Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking on www. Rivercafe
Speaker 2: dot co dot uk or give us a call. So
Speaker 2: how long does it take to make Apostle? How long
Speaker 2: does it take to make a movie? Right? Just see
Speaker 2: the results? You put the water on your thing, and
Speaker 2: you've got a work of art.
Speaker 1: You know, But like I gotta say, the simplicity of it? Okay.
Speaker 3: So Taglia Italy with asparagus and parmesan serves six or
Speaker 3: one director one point five kilograms sprew asparagus six hundred
Speaker 3: grams Tagli Italy, two undergrams freshly grated parmesan, one garblet, clothed,
Speaker 3: peeled and crushed, four hundred milliliters cremfresh two large free
Speaker 3: range egg yolks, which would be a problem in the
Speaker 3: States right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, eggs, eggs.
Speaker 2: We haven't touched on the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which has been a nice conversation. To rub the
Speaker 3: crushed garlic around the surface of the small pan. Add
Speaker 3: the cram fresh parmesan, and egg yolks. Place the pan
Speaker 3: on top of another pan of hot water, stirring gently
Speaker 3: until the sauce thickens for about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: Season well and keep warm. Okay, that's good to know
Speaker 3: that you do a double because the sauce was already
Speaker 3: made when I was there.
Speaker 2: Just regulate the heat. You can do it on a
Speaker 2: you know, you can do it on a very low heat,
Speaker 2: really low.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Prepare the asparagus. Snap off the tough ends of the stems,
Speaker 3: keeping only the tender parts. Slice the stems and tips
Speaker 3: thinly and diagonally. That thin slice on the asparagus is
Speaker 3: so important to the dish. It makes the experisy guess
Speaker 3: almost like feel like the ribbons of the pasta. Bring
Speaker 3: a large saucepan of salted water to a boil salted water,
Speaker 3: like really salted, and add the tagliate. Cook for one minute,
Speaker 3: then add the asparagus and continue to cook until the
Speaker 3: pasta and asparagus are al Dante drain in place in
Speaker 3: a warm serving bowl, toss well sort of immediately, will you?
Speaker 1: Will you afford that to me?
Speaker 2: You can take it home, Take this home, take it.
Speaker 1: I feel bad if I don't finish it. But I
Speaker 1: also just I have dinner eating.
Speaker 2: Tell us how you made it, Tell me about it.
Speaker 2: What did what did they do?
Speaker 1: That's what's magic to me, alright.
Speaker 3: So they had the blanched asparagus and they had the
Speaker 3: pasta that Ross had made like twenty minutes ago. I
Speaker 3: didn't realize it was so so so fresh. I figured
Speaker 3: you kind of pre batched it, made it all in
Speaker 3: the morning. But he makes it during the day. Put
Speaker 3: them both in the water together, very very salty, almost
Speaker 3: sea water, just cooked it for a couple of minutes,
Speaker 3: and then put it in the sauce, mixed it up,
Speaker 3: put it back on the heat, let it kind of
Speaker 3: warm up and heat in the sauce.
Speaker 1: And it's just one. It's I've been wolfing this. It's
Speaker 1: so good.
Speaker 3: And pasta is amazing. The asparagus is like an extension
Speaker 3: of the pasta.
Speaker 1: It's like so yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think it's interesting when you add something to a pasta
Speaker 2: that you add meat, or you can add peas, or
Speaker 2: you can add fish, but you sort of want it
Speaker 2: not to weigh down the pasta, don't you. So the
Speaker 2: idea of actually making asparagus almost as thin as the
Speaker 2: tag it Telly, or when we have you know, porcini
Speaker 2: mushrooms in the autumn make the pasta bit thicker, right,
Speaker 2: so I can hold it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what's so great about that, the balance of it,
Speaker 3: the fact that this this thinly sliced asparagus that's been
Speaker 3: blanched and then cooked again with the pasta, and so
Speaker 3: it's soft. It's almost like a fresh pasta of its own. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really good.
Speaker 2: Have you ever made fresh pasta?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I was actually as telling you Ross.
Speaker 3: My wife Krana and I we have because it's.
Speaker 1: We have a on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 3: We'll sometimes do pasta Palooza and will make click three
Speaker 3: different kinds of fresh pasta.
Speaker 1: Really, she's the cook.
Speaker 3: And so I can I bake, I can follow, I
Speaker 3: can follow instructions and I can bake. She can take
Speaker 3: a look at the pantry and say, oh we have
Speaker 3: this and this and this and put together.
Speaker 1: And she also she worked in New York.
Speaker 3: She worked at a pasta factory.
Speaker 1: In her twenties. So, yeah, can.
Speaker 2: You describe a food scene in one of your movies?
Speaker 3: There's dinner and knives out. It's funny. I haven't like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're calling me out. I haven't had like a.
Speaker 1: True like next movie. Yeah, you're inspiring an onion in
Speaker 1: your title.
Speaker 3: A knife title behind the curve. The next one will
Speaker 3: be plates plates on and we'll here live out a
Speaker 3: murder the river.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, could this is.
Speaker 1: Not me that was obviously gonna go ahead, going to
Speaker 1: be scared of death.
Speaker 2: That pizza oven, Yeah, the pizza, we could do it.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: The body and the pizza.
Speaker 2: It is quite dramatic. A kitchen, you know, a restaurant.
Speaker 1: Is full of sharp secrets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people, You never know what people are saying at
Speaker 2: their table or what they're there.
Speaker 1: I can see this coming together.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1: River Cafe, Liver Cafe.
Speaker 2: I like the idea. Do you think Dashel Hammett would
Speaker 2: have liked the River Cafe? I think quite simple.
Speaker 1: I feel I get a feeling.
Speaker 2: Do we have an idea of what's next.
Speaker 1: Well, I've done like three of these.
Speaker 3: I've had such a good time making these three movies,
Speaker 3: and this last one is very different than the previous two,
Speaker 3: so it's been really wonderful. At the same time, i've
Speaker 3: done three in a row. I kind of feel like
Speaker 3: I should do maybe totally different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something you're talking about that the other night, how
Speaker 2: musical In the early days of cinema that everybody knew
Speaker 2: how to sing and dance, even James Cagney, right, you know,
Speaker 2: and people who our cable and they danced, and they
Speaker 2: Christopher Walking, Christopher Walking.
Speaker 1: We have our song and dance men still around. But
Speaker 1: you're right.
Speaker 3: It's although I feel a little bit it's funny because
Speaker 3: my buddy Joseph Gordon Levitt is can sing and dance.
Speaker 3: Channing Tatum obviously, is it really good? I mean, there
Speaker 3: are there are people out there who yeah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, no song and dance man.
Speaker 2: Why not, let's song and dance. So now we're going
Speaker 2: to go and eat. But before we do, we always have,
Speaker 2: you know, the thought that if food is something that
Speaker 2: makes you less hungry, if it's a way of getting
Speaker 2: your kids around the table, if like your father, it's
Speaker 2: a memory of him being so present and so enthusiastic,
Speaker 2: so generous. It also is comfort, So you know, I
Speaker 2: hope you don't need comfort very often, but if you
Speaker 2: did need to eat to make you feel better, is
Speaker 2: there a food you would go to?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pasta.
Speaker 2: It is pasta.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pasta.
Speaker 3: There's something about about how flavorful it is, about how
Speaker 3: this warm gentle, I don't know. And also when you're
Speaker 3: full on pasta, it feels like.
Speaker 1: Just like a warm hug, like.
Speaker 3: Nothing quite like having being truly truly sated after a
Speaker 3: pasta meal. So yeah, pasta is my it would would
Speaker 3: that would be that's going to be my death row?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I'm on deathrow?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I don't like that question.
Speaker 1: No, I don't like what it would.
Speaker 2: Be your last meal? Or what would you do if
Speaker 2: you knew you were going to die the next day?
Speaker 1: It's comfort. That's a better way of putting especially right now.
Speaker 2: You're never going to die.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to hear it from you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, finally say that to the end.
Speaker 1: I've suspected this.
Speaker 2: I really want to thank you, and you're never going
Speaker 2: to die.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy. This is great.
Speaker 2: You good now I love you too. Thank you good,
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair