Speaker 1: You're listening to Ruthy's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 1: I may not know what makes a good comedian, but
Speaker 1: I do know what makes a good father. And last night,
Speaker 1: when I met Judd Apatow in the West End production
Speaker 1: of Cabaret in London, where his daughter Maude is playing
Speaker 1: the lead role of Sally Bowles, he told me this
Speaker 1: was the eighth time he'd seen it in three weeks.
Speaker 1: And if I may not know what makes a good comedian,
Speaker 1: Judd certainly does. His advice to kickstart your writing process,
Speaker 1: come up with a topic and write down as many
Speaker 1: jokes or one liners as you can think of. Don't
Speaker 1: be scared if your first draft doesn't want to make
Speaker 1: you laugh out loud, or if you don't find your
Speaker 1: own writing funny. I think they are definite parallels in
Speaker 1: comedy and cooking, and I can imagine paraphrasing the second
Speaker 1: sentence telling an aspiring chef not to be scared if
Speaker 1: the first attempt doesn't taste right. Comedy and cooking children
Speaker 1: and acting and laughing and eating movies and restaurants. Today
Speaker 1: we're here in the River Cafe, and Jed and I
Speaker 1: will cover them more for after all I said and done,
Speaker 1: life is a cabaret. I agree with that eight times.
Speaker 2: Times this weekend too.
Speaker 1: So lovely, yeah, why not? So I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about cabaret. But for the moment you've just
Speaker 1: come from the pastry kitchen or the recipe you chose,
Speaker 1: pistachio ice cream is being made.
Speaker 3: I'm Bellatups, I'm the head past chef at the River Cafe,
Speaker 3: and these are our ice cream machines and they've actually
Speaker 3: got quite a small drum make like roughly two liters
Speaker 3: of ice cream. Here is our lovely pistachio base, which
Speaker 3: is essentially plain custard that has had the pistashia paste
Speaker 3: stirred through it. We do churn. It makes a delightful
Speaker 3: noise probably, I mean for this amount, it will take
Speaker 3: like four or five minutes, like nothing crazy. So you
Speaker 3: can have a look on the topic. You can see
Speaker 3: it's sort of lightly creasing. We know that it's nearly there,
Speaker 3: but I'll turn it to churn. Then this will just
Speaker 3: go into the freezer until it's frozen fully. And in
Speaker 3: the restaurant what we do is just before service, we'd
Speaker 3: get the ice creams out to temper you mean like
Speaker 3: you would do at home, so that you can get
Speaker 3: a lovely scoop from it, but that it only takes
Speaker 3: like five minutes, but just make sure you're using a
Speaker 3: cupful of hot water and dipping your scoop in every
Speaker 3: time so you get a perfect scoopy.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, pleasure jost.
Speaker 3: Lovely to meet you too. I hope you have a
Speaker 3: lovely meta.
Speaker 1: What did you think?
Speaker 2: I'm always impressed by people who know how to cook,
Speaker 2: because as much as I like food, I don't have
Speaker 2: enough interest in making it because I always feel like
Speaker 2: there's someone who makes it better, fair enough. So why
Speaker 2: would I make myself mediocre food? I can go to
Speaker 2: you and get great food. Like it's been eight hours
Speaker 2: doing the bad version of what you do.
Speaker 1: Well, would you like to start by reading the recipe
Speaker 1: for the pistachio ice cream?
Speaker 2: Okay, this is the pistachio ice cream recipe from the
Speaker 2: River Cafe. It serves ten or me alone. One thing
Speaker 2: I learned during the pandemic is it is possible to
Speaker 2: eat a pint of ice cream, finish it, and then
Speaker 2: start another one and finish it. Okay, here's what you need.
Speaker 2: You need two hundred grams of unsalted, shelled pistachios, four
Speaker 2: hundred grams of castor sugar, plus an extra eighty grams,
Speaker 2: seven hundred milli liters of full fat milk, no oat milk,
Speaker 2: the real stuff, three hundred milliliters double cream, and ten
Speaker 2: large egg yolks. You know, in every performance of Cabaret,
Speaker 2: it's a scene where Mode has a crack open an
Speaker 2: in a cup and eat it on stage every night.
Speaker 1: That's acting for you. That is disciplined. No, it's to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: It's like that movie with a Nick cage where he
Speaker 2: I think it was vampire's kiss and he ate a
Speaker 2: bug in it like a cockroach in a scene. That's
Speaker 2: Mod's equivalent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, i'd ag a day is quite a lot.
Speaker 2: It's a very method. Okay, here we go. Roast the
Speaker 2: pistachios in a dry frying pan over medium heat. Blend
Speaker 2: roasted pistachos in a food processor with eighty grams of
Speaker 2: sugar and mix to a fine paste. Heat the milk
Speaker 2: and cream to just below boiling. In a bowl. Beat
Speaker 2: together egg yolks and four hundred grams of sugar. Add
Speaker 2: warm milk and cream into the egg and sugar. Return
Speaker 2: this custard mixture to a thick bottomed pan and cook
Speaker 2: slowly over heated and low heat until it reaches eighty
Speaker 2: two degrees. Remove from the heat, stir in the pistachio
Speaker 2: paste and then or through a fine sieve.
Speaker 1: Or what do we call it in our country? We
Speaker 1: call it a strainer.
Speaker 2: A strainer into a bowl and leave to cool. Cool,
Speaker 2: then churn in an ice cream machine. You gotta get
Speaker 2: an ice cream machine.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I do have one.
Speaker 2: No, I don't dangerous so to be for me to
Speaker 2: own my own ice cream machine and.
Speaker 1: Making pints and pipes. So when you are making a movie, okay,
Speaker 1: you're on the set of forty year Old Virgin, one
Speaker 1: of my favorites, or Knocked Up? What do you do
Speaker 1: about food for your.
Speaker 2: Crew on a movie? Every day lunch is basically a buffet,
Speaker 2: and I have trouble not taking too much from any buffet. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: that's one of my issues is like this, you know,
Speaker 2: fried chicken there, I'm not going to get like one wing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm gonna like it's hard for me not
Speaker 2: to take full advantage. So when I make movies, for
Speaker 2: the most part, I don't I can't go to where
Speaker 2: the food is, like there's usually a tent. I have
Speaker 2: to just have someone tell me what's there and have
Speaker 2: them bring it back. And because I'll just go to
Speaker 2: like the cheap lemon cake, you know, like I'll have
Speaker 2: ice cream Sundays, and then I fall asleep in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: and I told, like, I get really.
Speaker 1: Tired, and you like eating because it makes you feel
Speaker 1: such up, but you have to go back to work, right,
Speaker 1: So then so you are careful. I mean, well you
Speaker 1: don't go to thee But then I mean.
Speaker 2: I get weak. So usually about like two thirds through
Speaker 2: a movie, I lose my will and then by the
Speaker 2: end I'm just gaining weight and binging. But but for
Speaker 2: a while, I'll try to control myself. Although when we
Speaker 2: shot The King of Staten Island, we were shooting in
Speaker 2: Staten Island. We were there for months, and they got
Speaker 2: good pizza and Staten Island, so it was pretty hard
Speaker 2: not to flip out for pizza. But if I could
Speaker 2: like lose weight before a shoot starts, then by the
Speaker 2: end of the shoot I am overweight, but not insanely overweight.
Speaker 2: I have to like get a lower baseline to start,
Speaker 2: so I have to pretend I'm like Christian Bale playing
Speaker 2: a skinny person and I like lose weight to begin
Speaker 2: and then it falls apart.
Speaker 1: What are you writing at the moment?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to write a movie right now to shoot
Speaker 2: next year, which is you know, it's a little bit
Speaker 2: about like what's happening in the world of comedy at
Speaker 2: this moment where everyone doesn't know what they can say.
Speaker 2: So I'm trying to write about people not knowing where
Speaker 2: the line is.
Speaker 1: Do you do you know where the line is?
Speaker 2: Well, for me, the line is never that complicated, because
Speaker 2: I think if your heart's in the right place, people know,
Speaker 2: and if your point is reasonable and kind, you can
Speaker 2: get away with all sorts of things. I think people
Speaker 2: can tell when you're being outrageous with no real point
Speaker 2: to it, and some people love that, and I think
Speaker 2: that's fine. I think it's fine for anyone to enjoy
Speaker 2: anything like It's like music. You might like heavy metal,
Speaker 2: you might like country music. Everyone picks their flavor. I
Speaker 2: think it's hard when people feel like they're getting force
Speaker 2: fed the flavor they don't want and then suddenly like
Speaker 2: why you have to say, well, you don't have to
Speaker 2: listen to that or watch that, but it's definitely a
Speaker 2: tricky time. So I'm trying to.
Speaker 1: Find it be a movie about a comedian.
Speaker 2: Not a comedian about a writer. And so I just
Speaker 2: finished the draft of that. Hopefully I'll get to do
Speaker 2: that next year.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite movies of a long, long time
Speaker 1: ago was King of Comedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah you like That Jerry Lewis and Robert de Niro
Speaker 2: and Sandra Bernhard one of my favorite movies. Loved it
Speaker 2: when it came out, wasn't a big hit. It came
Speaker 2: out after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, so the
Speaker 2: whole plot line of kidnapping a celebrity freaked people out
Speaker 2: a bit and also obsessed fans freak people out at
Speaker 2: the time. But as the decades have passed, I think
Speaker 2: people realize it's one of Martin Scoressy's best movies.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it again, I have so many times
Speaker 1: I'd like to see it.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's one of the movies I watch to
Speaker 2: pay attention to the cinematography and the shot selection because
Speaker 2: it's very alive, but it's covered in a way that
Speaker 2: really works for comedy. So seeing how Scorsese shoots humor
Speaker 2: is really helpful, so I always watch.
Speaker 1: It for me. What was interesting about that was the
Speaker 1: movie was the idea that comedians had to be funny,
Speaker 1: And you know, is Steve Martin funny? Is Meilbrooks funny?
Speaker 1: As I think when I did my talk about Mailbrooks,
Speaker 1: I said something that people we always think about as
Speaker 1: a man who makes us laugh, but I also think
Speaker 1: about the man who talks about bankroft and what happened
Speaker 1: when she died. There is the pressure, as someone who
Speaker 1: writes about funniness or humor to be funny. Do you
Speaker 1: feel that people expect you?
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a weird pressure to try to
Speaker 2: be funny in your work all day. It's kind of
Speaker 2: an unnatural state. You know. Most people don't try to
Speaker 2: be funny that often. So imagine sitting in office and
Speaker 2: trying to be funny for ten straight first. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's you're kind of a weird person to like just
Speaker 2: be in that gear all the time and looking for
Speaker 2: it all the time. So it does get a little
Speaker 2: exhausting to be in that headspace looking at life through
Speaker 2: that lens. Ye, what's weird about this? What's funny about this?
Speaker 2: The good part about it is that when you're in comedy,
Speaker 2: when bad things happen, you don't go oh, no, a
Speaker 2: bad thing happened, You go, oh, this would be a
Speaker 2: great story. And so sometimes when things go really bad,
Speaker 2: like I threw out the first pitch at a Mets
Speaker 2: baseball game, and I thought, well, if it goes bad,
Speaker 2: it's a good story, and if it goes good, it's
Speaker 2: just good. And so there is a way of looking
Speaker 2: at life.
Speaker 1: How did it go?
Speaker 2: It wasn't in the middle. It wasn't bad enough to
Speaker 2: be a good story, and it wasn't good enough to
Speaker 2: not be a triumph. It was just like, that's a
Speaker 2: big deal.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal getting to to I mean again,
Speaker 1: for the listeners who may live in some other country.
Speaker 1: That's where was it.
Speaker 2: It was a city field in New York and it
Speaker 2: was the Mets versus Yankees, so it was sold out.
Speaker 2: There were fifty two thousand people there. Yeah, and was terrifying.
Speaker 2: And I always joke that the worst part was when
Speaker 2: they announced me throwing out the first pitch. I didn't
Speaker 2: really get more than a very small smatter of applause,
Speaker 2: and I thought, I think I'm more famous than this.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm from New York, aren't I a beloved
Speaker 2: son of New York? And I realized that no one
Speaker 2: cares about me.
Speaker 1: It was they just wanted the game to start.
Speaker 2: It was like a politician was doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe they don't do it for anyone. Absolutely, did
Speaker 1: you grow up in New York?
Speaker 2: We lived on Long Island where siast would bury. Area
Speaker 2: of Long Island. A lot of bagels being eaten there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a big bagel town. At midnight, you'd go to
Speaker 2: the bagel place while they were cooking him and get
Speaker 2: them right out of the oven.
Speaker 1: There's nothing like a bagel that's Also, West Coast isn't
Speaker 1: as good? Is it that New Yorkers always say it's
Speaker 1: Some people have said it's the water that makes it good.
Speaker 1: Then we heard that theory that they say the reason
Speaker 1: you can't have a good bagel outside of New York
Speaker 1: is the water in New York?
Speaker 2: Is that true? You understand how the bread works?
Speaker 1: Because also I think that maybe i've had bagels. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to insult a country's bagels.
Speaker 2: When someone has a good bagel.
Speaker 1: But we know. But they took me once to the
Speaker 1: East End to what's that street? Do you know Bricklay
Speaker 1: Brickday bagels And they're bagels and the British are really
Speaker 1: really proud of them. So I have got a podcast
Speaker 1: that I would like to go on and on. So
Speaker 1: I won't say I think that, but when you have
Speaker 1: a New York bagel, it makes all the difference, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that. But I don't know about La bagels.
Speaker 1: How are they? Theyre pretty much the same.
Speaker 2: There's some people who seem to have cracked the code.
Speaker 2: I don't know, they're bringing some water from New York
Speaker 2: or maybe the whole water thing is a mess.
Speaker 1: That the whole thing is a mess. Yeah, rightly and everybody.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in Long Island eating bagels and
Speaker 1: smelling bagels, and what was the food like in your house?
Speaker 2: Uh? Not impressive. I can't say my late mother was
Speaker 2: a master chef. We had a very small rotation of chicken, chicken, cutlet, salmon,
Speaker 2: sometimes like a pot roast. Our. Vegetable was usually peas
Speaker 2: and corn. I don't think broccoli got cooked in my house. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I refused to eat a salad till mid twenties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe you didn't know, but we didn't grow up
Speaker 1: on salads.
Speaker 2: There wasn't a lot of salads, A lot of Chinese
Speaker 2: food happening.
Speaker 1: There was going out for it.
Speaker 2: Going out fair amount of McDonald's happening. But then my
Speaker 2: parents opened a restaurant.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so just going back one step, your mother
Speaker 1: would cook the pot roast of the chicken.
Speaker 2: Did she work well? They owned a restaurant.
Speaker 1: And then when she was doing the restaurant, you come
Speaker 1: home and have supper. How many in the family There.
Speaker 2: Was five, five of us children. And at some point
Speaker 2: I think my mom made all the cakes for the restaurant.
Speaker 2: She started cooking the desserts for it, and I was
Speaker 2: a dishwasher.
Speaker 1: Was a restaurant.
Speaker 2: It was called Raisins, and it was like, I don't
Speaker 2: know what you would call it, American continental. It was
Speaker 2: like steak, lobster, chicken, parmesan. It was it seemed like
Speaker 2: some Italian some hamburgers. And I you know, they bring
Speaker 2: in a big bag of muscles, Give me a brush.
Speaker 2: I'd have to clean the muscles and pull the hair
Speaker 2: out of the muscles. What a nightmare. No one, No
Speaker 2: one's paid enough money to rip hairs off a mussel.
Speaker 2: I have nightmares about someone going can you do the
Speaker 2: muscles today?
Speaker 1: We'll go check it the way we could have set
Speaker 1: up pistachio ice cream. We could. Well, we don't do muscles.
Speaker 2: Actually, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't like muscles that much. I like clams, but
Speaker 1: I'm not a big muscle.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I didn't mind peeling the potatoes and give
Speaker 2: me a fifty pound bag of potatoes. I'm happy to
Speaker 2: feel them cut them into French fries. Myself. I got
Speaker 2: no issue with that.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to raisins. Your father, he wasn't
Speaker 1: a chef, so they just did it as a business
Speaker 1: as a business.
Speaker 2: So before that he was he was working in the
Speaker 2: record business. And well, my grandfather was a jazz producer
Speaker 2: who produced Charlie Parker and the first Janis Joplin record.
Speaker 2: His name was Bobby Shadd.
Speaker 1: What was the first Janis jop record?
Speaker 2: It was called Big Brother in the Holding Company, which
Speaker 2: is her first album.
Speaker 1: My generation. Yeah, and that I can remember the cover
Speaker 1: of the the Big Brother. Yeah, hold on take a
Speaker 1: little piece of My Heart right, that's right.
Speaker 2: That was on that record that dad produced, that my
Speaker 2: grandfather did, Your grandfather, it had that song down on
Speaker 2: me a song of hers. And so my father worked
Speaker 2: for him when I was a kid for a while,
Speaker 2: and they had some friends and owned a tennis equipment store,
Speaker 2: and then they all went into business with this restaurant.
Speaker 1: In your local town.
Speaker 2: My local town. I remember, well, I was getting four
Speaker 2: bucks an hour. I was so excited. I started working
Speaker 2: there at fifteen, and then I became the salad man.
Speaker 1: Oh I see, so you were actually right in there.
Speaker 2: And then my friend Ron Gardner started. He was on
Speaker 2: the grill making the steaks and the burghers. How old
Speaker 2: was he He was probably seventeen. And then at the
Speaker 2: end of the night, you know, we'd steal a lobster
Speaker 2: and head home.
Speaker 1: Wow. And this went on, but then you'd go to
Speaker 1: school the next day.
Speaker 2: I hope we went to school. But we loved making money,
Speaker 2: is the truth. You know, to be sixteen seventeen and
Speaker 2: have a little pocket money was was fun. And we
Speaker 2: put in a lot of hours, like we really worked there,
Speaker 2: you know, three or five nights a week, and they
Speaker 2: so you can go to.
Speaker 1: School, come home, eat, do your homework, and then go
Speaker 1: to the restaurant or not.
Speaker 2: Do your homework maybe sometimes sometimes no homework.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And did they do that because it was hard
Speaker 1: to get stuff, or was it that they wanted you there,
Speaker 1: or was the incentive of having your kid just kept
Speaker 1: me out of the house and they were out of
Speaker 1: that Your mom.
Speaker 2: Was what did sheep me out of trouble?
Speaker 1: What did she do there?
Speaker 2: My mom?
Speaker 1: Did she cook in the kitchen? Uh?
Speaker 2: No, just just at some point she started doing the cakes.
Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone wanted her to do the cakes.
Speaker 2: It's also the key. Was it a good Maybe she
Speaker 2: was forcing the cakes on everyone. I'm not saying she
Speaker 2: was good at it. I'm just saying she did it well.
Speaker 1: Did The question is did the restaurant carry on? Did
Speaker 1: to have a good?
Speaker 2: Lasted a little while and then they sold it to
Speaker 2: someone Those people couldn't pay the money that they owed,
Speaker 2: and then they got it back, and then they owned
Speaker 2: it for a few more years and then they sold it.
Speaker 2: But it was a really fun part of our childhood.
Speaker 2: And rumor has it Billy Joel ate there once. I
Speaker 2: know you have a lot of celebrities here and all
Speaker 2: the doctor Dre's eating here, but we had one Billy
Speaker 2: Joel sighting in our whole history of the restaurant.
Speaker 1: I used to have seen him.
Speaker 2: Do you know I have met Billy Joel a few times?
Speaker 1: Did you ever come to my caro?
Speaker 2: I may have?
Speaker 1: Might say that was the best cake I've ever had.
Speaker 2: That's a big thing on Long Island is a Billy Joel.
Speaker 2: You know you had that song scenes from Italian restaurant
Speaker 2: and so every Italian restaurant claimed it was written about
Speaker 2: their place.
Speaker 1: I see, but not yours because wasn't Italian.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't Italian. Yeah, we thought that our local pizzeria,
Speaker 2: Christiano's was what he was writing about.
Speaker 1: Did you know The River Cafe has a shop. It's
Speaker 1: full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbooks, linen, napkins,
Speaker 1: kitchen ware, toad bags with our signatures. Class is from Venice,
Speaker 1: chocolates from Turin. You can find us right next door
Speaker 1: to the River Cafe in London or online at shopth
Speaker 1: Rivercafe dot co dot uk. Did you ever sit down
Speaker 1: for dinner with your parents around the table? Yes, for
Speaker 1: the restaurant or during the restaurant.
Speaker 2: Well, my parents got divorced when I was in middle school,
Speaker 2: and then I would do a fair amount of cooking
Speaker 2: for myself, Like I was very excited to learn how
Speaker 2: to use a walk. Okay, that was a big thing.
Speaker 2: To cut up steak and broccoli and just pour an
Speaker 2: enormous amount of Kikuman's soy sauce. And then I thought
Speaker 2: that was cooking. It was a three ingredients meal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you come upon that? I wonder, But
Speaker 1: I think it was a period when everybody did walks,
Speaker 1: but for a teenage.
Speaker 2: Kid to do that, we thought that was fun. And
Speaker 2: also I remember on my kitchen island at home as
Speaker 2: a kid, it was a grill on the kitchen island.
Speaker 2: So I used to make hamburgers and I really felt
Speaker 2: like a chef, just like taking my hamburgers every day
Speaker 2: and then my comfort food. I would come home. All
Speaker 2: my friends played sports and I didn't, so I would
Speaker 2: come home by myself and I'd watch like talk shows
Speaker 2: and I would cook a grilled cheese sandwich. I would
Speaker 2: get a vanilla and chocolate Inimin's cake, and I would
Speaker 2: eat a bite of grilled cheese, bite of the cake,
Speaker 2: little milk, cheese cake, milk, and I would do that
Speaker 2: for years.
Speaker 1: You didn't understand the concept of dessert.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the interaction between the grilled cheese and the
Speaker 2: chocolate cake. And so we did a show called Freaks
Speaker 2: and Geeks, and as a sequence of that, I was
Speaker 2: going to ask about this. So Bill was one of
Speaker 2: my favorite characters. I'm not sure. So that's true that
Speaker 2: that is based on your upbringing. That was based on
Speaker 2: me sitting home watching comedians cooking myself grilled cheese. And
Speaker 2: then then much later in life, people were like, that's
Speaker 2: really bad for you to eat because there was so
Speaker 2: much butter involved, so much or margarine whatever.
Speaker 1: I was using the grilled cheese sandwich, more in the cake,
Speaker 1: in the grilled cheese, and that was your recipe. How
Speaker 1: did you make a grilled cheese so much?
Speaker 2: It was it was not fancy, it was wonderbread. It
Speaker 2: was pure wonderbread, Fleischmann's margarine, American cheese, but American like
Speaker 2: but like Kraft America already slice that right then, even
Speaker 2: right now, I'm like, is that the best food in
Speaker 2: the world? Like, I don't know if any food tops it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to eat at your restaurant today and I
Speaker 2: could try and.
Speaker 1: Make your grilled cheese sandwich. Right I have challenging finding
Speaker 1: the craft cheese and the wonder because Wonderbread still exists.
Speaker 2: It still exists.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that they called you know what it is.
Speaker 1: We used to take a package of Wonderbread, which was
Speaker 1: sliced white bread, and if you put, like put your
Speaker 1: weight and squeezed it, it would squeeze it too. You know,
Speaker 1: something that was about a foot tall to would go
Speaker 1: into about half an inch because it was all air.
Speaker 1: It was just air. You could just kind of squeeze it, right.
Speaker 2: Only My wife pointed out when I met her in
Speaker 2: my mid to late twenties, that everything I ate was
Speaker 2: unhealthy and disgusting. She also pointed that out, like why
Speaker 2: are you eating wonderbread? You know, there's like good bread
Speaker 2: out there, there's good cheese out there, there's good butter
Speaker 2: out there. But first, on my first date with Leslie,
Speaker 2: I made her chicken parmesan and spaghetti with rag goo
Speaker 2: sauce and wonderbread with the bargarin and she still married you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the fact that there was a second date is incredible.
Speaker 2: After that meal, she always talks about the madness of
Speaker 2: that meal.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I talked to bob Byker and he
Speaker 1: can remember exactly what he cooked. I thank you for
Speaker 1: the first date with his wife Willow. I did think
Speaker 1: about maybe doing a guide to emotional eating. You know,
Speaker 1: so what do you eat or cook when you're depressed?
Speaker 1: When you want us to do? Somebody what you read
Speaker 1: her cook you? Because eating is not just hunger. It's emotion,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a Deepak Chopra book. I think it's called
Speaker 2: What's Eating You? Or Why are You Eating? And it's
Speaker 2: about emotional eating because way too much of my eating
Speaker 2: is reward eating or sedating myself because I love to
Speaker 2: be stuffed. I love to be stuffed, so all the
Speaker 2: blood goes to my stomach and I am half conscious.
Speaker 2: I enjoy that.
Speaker 1: What do you do about that? Just that makes you
Speaker 1: sort of wanted.
Speaker 2: To It's just like it's like being stoned, but on
Speaker 2: eight pieces of pizza. What's better than that? Well? I'm
Speaker 2: not that fit thin. I'm riding two hundred right now.
Speaker 2: Two hundred is my line. If I go above two hundred,
Speaker 2: I know we're in trouble. I should be at like
Speaker 2: one eight.
Speaker 1: Will you ever overweight?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Over? What? I think the worst I got I almost
Speaker 2: got to two ten in the early pandemic era, and
Speaker 2: then I started walking several hours every day. And then
Speaker 2: I went vegetarian for a couple of years. And do
Speaker 2: you think it helped a bit? Because I think I
Speaker 2: eat bad things with the meat. Is that just the meat,
Speaker 2: it's what you put on it? Or shame eating? A
Speaker 2: lot of shame eating. When I was a kid, we
Speaker 2: used to hide things, right, So my parents would buy
Speaker 2: like a box of like yodels or ding dongs or
Speaker 2: something like that, and as soon as they brought it home,
Speaker 2: I would hide like half the box around the house.
Speaker 2: You know, So there was a lot of secretive eating happens.
Speaker 1: Did your mother noticed that she.
Speaker 2: Was busy eating an entire box of chip wich ice
Speaker 2: cream sandwiches alone?
Speaker 1: When you then started? You went out to us sate?
Speaker 1: And so what was the food like? There was that
Speaker 1: different from I got it?
Speaker 2: Well, I had no money, so I got a job
Speaker 2: making burritos in the cafeteria of US. That's how I
Speaker 2: paid for my beer. And when I look back at
Speaker 2: what I ate, it's amazing. I'm alive. Why because I
Speaker 2: think we just went and had like Tommy's cheeseburgers at night.
Speaker 2: And I don't even think I thought then. I don't
Speaker 2: even think I understood what nutrition was. I never once
Speaker 2: thought you would eat for energy for health. Food was
Speaker 2: always for fun. When I was a kid, we were like,
Speaker 2: let's go to beefsteak Charlie's. There's an all you can
Speaker 2: eat ribs. I mean, it was always food for fun.
Speaker 2: It was never like, oh, that'll really keep your head clear.
Speaker 1: So USC and making burritos and eating.
Speaker 2: Badly and studying what studying cinema and writing? You know,
Speaker 2: then that was the I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a stand up comedian, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't think of a major at college.
Speaker 1: I don't teach that in college.
Speaker 2: Well they do now, my friend Wayne Vetterman teaches it
Speaker 2: at USC, but they didn't then. So I just thought, well,
Speaker 2: what's kind of like comedy? I guess movies and writing.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't dreaming of making movies. I just wanted
Speaker 2: to be like Jane Lenno or Jerry Seinfeld. I didn't
Speaker 2: care about movies, and so I was great at school.
Speaker 2: Then later when I got some opportunities to write movies,
Speaker 2: I realized, wait a second, I think I learned how
Speaker 2: to do this at school.
Speaker 1: Did you learn at school?
Speaker 2: I think I know how to do this.
Speaker 1: Education does have a point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it bubbled back up, and it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: I knew how to do it well. But I think
Speaker 2: maybe I had some irrational belief that I could. So
Speaker 2: I had some confidence from going to school, but it
Speaker 2: was completely unearned. But it did get me to sit
Speaker 2: my ass in a chair and write, yeah, because I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: I guess I could maybe do this solitary.
Speaker 1: Or did you go to the famous writer's rooms? Where
Speaker 1: did you start?
Speaker 2: Where did I start writing?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well I did stand up and then slowly my friends
Speaker 2: started getting work. So Adam Sandler was on Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 2: so we don't try to help him write sketches, And
Speaker 2: then as he did better, you know, we would help
Speaker 2: out on movies and different capacities. And I was writing
Speaker 2: sketches with Jim Carrey for a Living Color. I wasn't
Speaker 2: a writer on the show, but I would just help him.
Speaker 1: See what I once said, I told all the stuff.
Speaker 1: I was really really excited because Foreign Secretary John Kerrey
Speaker 1: was coming in to dinner at the River Cafe and I,
Speaker 1: this is going to be a really important night. At
Speaker 1: the end of the night, I said, what's up you
Speaker 1: don't seem really excited, And they said, well, we thought
Speaker 1: it was Jim car They.
Speaker 2: Preferred Jim carry to John Carey. I think we all
Speaker 2: still do you all still do There's no moment where
Speaker 2: someone's like, oh, man, I preferred John Carey to Jim.
Speaker 1: Carrey, but to Jim Carrey. Did you work on SNL?
Speaker 2: I never could get a job there, So I was
Speaker 2: helping out comedians with their act. They used to write
Speaker 2: jokes for Roseanne bar and people like that. And then
Speaker 2: I met Ben Still and we created a sketch show
Speaker 2: called The Ben Stiller Show, and that was my first
Speaker 2: TV job. And then that you stayed in LA.
Speaker 1: I just stayed in LA and you were in your twenties.
Speaker 2: Was in my twenties doing stand up at night.
Speaker 1: Were were earning the money for that just by the work.
Speaker 2: My rent was very low. I got a very crappy
Speaker 2: apartment with Adam Sandler, and I mean the rent was
Speaker 2: so low it was like we weren't stressed to pay
Speaker 2: the rent because it was just a few hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: And so I was writing jokes for people and working
Speaker 2: at the American version of Comic Relief.
Speaker 1: Oh really, what was it?
Speaker 2: What was the version. It was for the homeless in
Speaker 2: the United States. Robin Williams and Billy Crystal and Whoopie
Speaker 2: Goldberg hosted it every year for a long time, and
Speaker 2: that was my first job. So between writing some jokes,
Speaker 2: doing stand up, and working in comic relief, those three
Speaker 2: things was enough for me to pay my rent. Oh
Speaker 2: my god, I found a receipt the other day. So
Speaker 2: when Adam Sandler got Saturday Night Live, he just left
Speaker 2: and he left everything at the apartment, including his wallet
Speaker 2: and driver's license. He literally just left. I don't know
Speaker 2: how he was able to get on the plane to
Speaker 2: go to New York, because I still have his wallet
Speaker 2: from then. So then the other day I went through
Speaker 2: and I went through it the other day as I
Speaker 2: was going through some stuff and there was like a
Speaker 2: receipt from a supermarket, and so I took it out
Speaker 2: to read, like, well, what is this receipt? And it
Speaker 2: was like what Adam would want to eat, which was
Speaker 2: frosted flakes cupcakes. Maybe it's like milk and spaghetti, but
Speaker 2: it was just so funny, like that was our life
Speaker 2: and what we ate. And I took a picture of
Speaker 2: it and sent it to Adam.
Speaker 1: Would you still make cheese sandwiches?
Speaker 2: Yes, I was still heavy in the rotation, but for
Speaker 2: the most part, I mean, you know, there was a
Speaker 2: real Hamburger World. There was a place called Jerry's Deli
Speaker 2: in the valley and we would eat there all the
Speaker 2: time and have their Matza ball soup. And that place was,
Speaker 2: you know, right on Ventura Boulevard by Cold Water Canyon.
Speaker 2: It's not there anymore, sadly, but a lot of our
Speaker 2: life was based out of there. And then night we
Speaker 2: would go to the improv and do stand up and
Speaker 2: try to get our career is going after very heavy after,
Speaker 2: not before, never before. But at midnight I would have
Speaker 2: fetichini alfredo, like four nights a week.
Speaker 1: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
Speaker 1: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Thank you. So where'd you live?
Speaker 2: We live in Los Angeles, Yeah, and we spent some
Speaker 2: time in New York as well and in LA kind
Speaker 2: of hard to find the great restaurants in LA. I
Speaker 2: can't say I'm happy about because where we live in Brentwood,
Speaker 2: there's so much traffic at two o'clock. You can't go
Speaker 2: east where all the good restaurants, and so you're just
Speaker 2: stuck in your house because there's like an hour traffic
Speaker 2: to move a mile.
Speaker 1: And I went to a place called I was in
Speaker 1: LA last week and I went to place called The Grill.
Speaker 2: The Grill is I really liked it in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 2: excellent show business lunch spots for the.
Speaker 1: Girl coming from England and being in LA because people
Speaker 1: always want to take you to the best French restaurant
Speaker 1: or Italian restaurant. Actually we want to eat American food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was the kind of I don't want if
Speaker 1: they had a grilled cheese sandwich there. Where can you
Speaker 1: get a really good grilled cheese sandwich in a restaurant.
Speaker 2: I've rarely gotten a great grilled cheese sandwich in a restaurant,
Speaker 2: but that could be because they don't have the wonderbread
Speaker 2: and the craft cheese.
Speaker 1: Is there any place you can walk to?
Speaker 2: No, it's not walking. We like it here because we
Speaker 2: could walk everywhere and there's an amazing restaurant every like
Speaker 2: eighty feet. And people don't like when you pop by
Speaker 2: in La if you just show up at their house,
Speaker 2: They're like, why are you in my house here? You know,
Speaker 2: in New York, it's a a little easy. Although I
Speaker 2: did get to spend time with our friend mel Brooks recently,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Well, I like to visit my friend Norman Lear, who
Speaker 2: just turned one hundred and one, one hundred and one.
Speaker 2: So I said to Norman, let's let's hang out with
Speaker 2: mel because I'm always looking for any excuse to just
Speaker 2: be around mel Brooks. And then he said, Mel's gonna
Speaker 2: come over next week. And then I came over and
Speaker 2: it was mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke were there.
Speaker 1: Did it make you feel incredibly young?
Speaker 2: Like, well, sometimes when you hang out with people, they
Speaker 2: treat you like years old as them. Oh I see,
Speaker 2: you know, so just by hanging out with them, they
Speaker 2: assume you're one hundred.
Speaker 1: So let's just go through that. Mel's ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Mell's ninety seven, Dick Van Dyke is ninety seven, okay,
Speaker 2: then Norman's one on one that's two hundred ninety five years,
Speaker 2: and then you add mine in three point fifty. It
Speaker 2: was just a hangout session for fun. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of talk of World War Two. Let me
Speaker 2: just say, when you sit with three gentlemen who fought
Speaker 2: in World War two, the Battle of they're going to
Speaker 2: tell you about it, whether you like it or not,
Speaker 2: You're going to get deep into World War two talk.
Speaker 2: But I also thought that's amazing because how many people
Speaker 2: can you speak with that?
Speaker 1: So normally it was in World War Two he.
Speaker 2: Went on bombing missions. He did fifty missions. Norman Lair
Speaker 2: and he said, no one lives past twenty five missions.
Speaker 2: So he did a lot of He survived a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of missions. And mel Brooks said that
Speaker 2: he part of his job was he was in the
Speaker 2: Army Corps of Engineers, so they would build little bridges
Speaker 2: so that the vehicles could get over bodies of water
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But he also had to defuse bombs.
Speaker 2: If you can imagine mel Brooks defusing your bomb.
Speaker 1: Maybe.
Speaker 2: Dick and Dick van Dyke. I forgot exactly what he did.
Speaker 2: But he also got pulled into performing because I think
Speaker 2: when people showed they were good performers, they really need
Speaker 2: people to entertain the troops so that they wouldn't get crazy,
Speaker 2: because without entertainment they're in trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did they glamorize war?
Speaker 2: Did you say? No, No, not at all. I asked
Speaker 2: mel Brooks in my interview. I said, when you were
Speaker 2: diffusing bombs, did you think you were going to blow up?
Speaker 2: And he said every day, every day. But I interviewed
Speaker 2: him for the Atlantic magazine and I wanted to do
Speaker 2: an interview where we just talked more about life and
Speaker 2: not so much about work and comedy and just what
Speaker 2: he had learned over his many years because he's the greatest.
Speaker 1: What did you glean from it?
Speaker 2: Well? You know, his philosophies are very simple. It's just
Speaker 2: like be nice and I could I like that? You know,
Speaker 2: that's you know, my religion is you know, very Dolly
Speaker 2: Lama ask It's just kindness. My religion is kindness, and
Speaker 2: I think it shows in your work.
Speaker 1: So we haven't talked about is your family and cooking
Speaker 1: and what happens in your household. I assume you're not
Speaker 1: going out for McDonald's and.
Speaker 2: No, McDonald's killed all fast food, all fast food.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's your secret. But what about food in
Speaker 1: your house? How do you feed you? How many children
Speaker 1: do you have?
Speaker 2: Oh, well, two daughters. Iris is twenty and mad is
Speaker 2: twenty five, and how do we feed them? Is the question?
Speaker 1: Growing up? Did you sit down for dinner most nights?
Speaker 1: Were you away most nights?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: We sat down and ate and went out to eat
Speaker 2: and in La, in La, and I think, I think
Speaker 2: you know they've grown up. They they're healthy. I think
Speaker 2: we did Okay. We didn't feed them the way I
Speaker 2: would have fed them. I would have fed them badly.
Speaker 2: Leslie was like, let's not do that. And so there
Speaker 2: was the house was pretty healthy. He was in a
Speaker 2: house field of like cookies and stuff, although we were
Speaker 2: eating our fine ice cream at night. But other than that,
Speaker 2: I think it was it was pretty good. And Leslie
Speaker 2: is a very good shot.
Speaker 1: What does she cook?
Speaker 2: Well, she can kind of cook anything from a cookbook
Speaker 2: if she wants to. And so it's just she gets
Speaker 2: in little jags where like she's cooking for a period
Speaker 2: and then other jags where that's slows down.
Speaker 1: Do you have friends over, do you entertain or do
Speaker 1: you go you entertained?
Speaker 2: Well? Will we cook for other people? Occasionally? Not that office,
Speaker 2: but you go out and then we do go out.
Speaker 2: We go out to eat too much. And there's not
Speaker 2: that many great restaurants.
Speaker 1: You're saying you have to dry.
Speaker 2: But every once in a while I'll try to cook
Speaker 2: and I'll go, wow, that worked. Yeah, but I always
Speaker 2: think i'd rather lay down than put the time in.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fair enough. I have respect for people who
Speaker 1: don't cook.
Speaker 2: It requires patience. Fine, it's meditative not to cook. To cook, Oh,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: So, I think there is something that whenever I used
Speaker 1: to come back from work and people say, I'll just
Speaker 1: sit down and relax, and actually I found it more
Speaker 1: relaxing to kind of make a result of just see
Speaker 1: the process and to go sully and all that kind
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Shows good mental health because most people they don't like
Speaker 2: being alone or alone in their head. You know, you'll go, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to take a walk for two hours, like,
Speaker 2: but then I'm with me. And I think cooking is
Speaker 2: like that. So I feel like when I like myself
Speaker 2: more than I'm going to go want a cooking binge.
Speaker 2: And then because I'll be comfortable in the quiet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then when you want you're feeling fine, you
Speaker 1: can go for a walk exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's Iris doing now?
Speaker 2: What is Iris doing now? She was going to also
Speaker 2: screenwriting and directing school at usc.
Speaker 1: So all four of you in this family are.
Speaker 2: She's been working. She just worked on a film acting.
Speaker 2: And you know, we shot a movie out here called
Speaker 2: The Bubble during the pandemic. So in the middle of
Speaker 2: the pandemic, no one was really making anything because it
Speaker 2: all seemed kind of dangerous, and so he said to Netflix, like,
Speaker 2: I think I could find a way to make something safely.
Speaker 2: So we made a movie called The Bubble about a
Speaker 2: group of actors in a hotel trying to complete a
Speaker 2: dinosaur action movie during the pandemic. And it was a
Speaker 2: little bit like a mel Brooks or Christopher Guest movie
Speaker 2: about all the actors having a nervous breakdown because they're
Speaker 2: stuck in the hotel and the studio won't let them
Speaker 2: leave till they finished their dinosaur movie. And uh, Pedro
Speaker 2: Pascal was in it, and Leslie and Keegan, Michael Key
Speaker 2: and Karen Gillan and Fred Armison and a lot of
Speaker 2: it's on Netflix. And so we were here during the
Speaker 2: pandemic when everything was closed other than grocery stores and pharmacies.
Speaker 2: The whole time we were here like nothing was open.
Speaker 1: So have you moved to England? Is going to be
Speaker 1: going to be with us for a lot.
Speaker 2: I like to spent a lot more time here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you here now just to stay or no
Speaker 1: return ticket? Just good? You know that's good.
Speaker 2: I'm just hanging out here and joy.
Speaker 1: So if we're going to wind up, I will ask
Speaker 1: you one more time now that we've talked about the
Speaker 1: girl cheese and the ice cream and the pop tarts.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned comfort food for but is there one
Speaker 1: special food?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I'm a sucker for a good eight
Speaker 2: ounce burger, Okay, for sure. When you find the place,
Speaker 2: it's got the fresh French fries and the great burger.
Speaker 2: There's a place called Lunetta all day in West Hollywood
Speaker 2: near my office, and I think it's the best burger
Speaker 2: I've ever had. I have to I have to try
Speaker 2: to trick myself in into not remembering it's there. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: or I'll just do it all the time. So in
Speaker 2: my head, I just like lied to myself, like I
Speaker 2: place closed just what I'm ordered every day.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe if I come to La we'll go and
Speaker 1: have a burger. Yes, Thanks about Jed, Thank you, Thanks,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to Ruthie's table for in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair.
Speaker 3: Ruthie's Table four is produced by Otome Studios for iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by William Lensky.
Speaker 3: This episode was edited by Julia Johnson a mixed by
Speaker 3: Nigel Appleton.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Fay Stewart and Zad Rogers. Our
Speaker 1: production manager is Caitlin Paramore, and our production coordinator is
Speaker 1: Bella Selini.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everyone at The River Cafe for your
Speaker 2: help in making this episode