October 21, 2024 • 53 mins
Our first guest in the new series is film director Guillermo Del Toro. Guillermo has taken us into his world, often surreal, mystical, and sometimes dark, through his hugely successful films. But today, he joins us in The River Cafe to talk about the foods of his childhood in Mexico, the foods in his movies, and how food is often used to build trust between his characters.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:48):
Guillermo del Toro in his extraordinary movies Pan Slambermouth, The
Shape of Water Pinocchio takes us to his worlds surreal, mystical,
sometimes dark. But when he and I met in the
River Cafe, my world. We started talking and we didn't
really stop for two hours. Connected by a love for
Mexican people, Mexican food, and Mexican culture. It's Sunday morning
(01:14):
and Geramo and I are together again in the River
Cafe to talk about the power of love and trust,
understanding monsters as gentle and peaceful. When we're done, I'll
know more about trust, I'll know more about food. But
most of all, I hope i'll know more about Guillermo,
(01:34):
my magical and magnificent friend.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
No, thank you, my learning.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I make it good. So what we do now is
we read. You chose a recipe. This was pizza with
tledgio artichoke. Yes, you read the recipe, then we'll have
our conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Well, this is a recipe for pizza with the legio
artichokes improcudo. It serves six six by twenty five centimeters
pizza dough into balls, rolled out six small artichokes, two
tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, one bunch of thyme,
four hundred grams of to ledio cheese roughly got ryan removed,
(02:12):
and three hundred grams of prescudo thinly slice.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
This is what you need to make this now white
the ledio we.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Like to legends in northern cheese. It melts very beautifully
and it has a kind of saltiness that you know
that is a contrast almost to the doughiness of pizza.
I mean, we love pizza with mozzarella. We love pizza.
I think today he might be doing a pizza with
cork and sola and figs. But this to led you,
I'd like you to try it because it has a
(02:40):
saltiness and a kind of slightly surprising when you have it.
You order pizza at the River Cafe and you get
a very thin crust and then you get the layer
of to ledgo nice.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So you know how to make it is in a
heavy bottom band, heat the olive oil, add the art
heart sometime could the hearts, turning them for about ten minutes.
Heavy bottom pan is important because.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Because it distributes the heat in the distribute. You use
a thin pan, you'll get some pieces that burnt, some
pieces that are not cooked. And it's better to invest
in a good saucepan and keep it for the rest
of your life. Stainless steel is important. Aluminum thin pads
too much.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I know a little about this because when I was
a young man, for about ten years I studied and
did make up effects, makeup effects, special makeup effects. And
when you cook the latex, the foam latex, you have
to design the oven with heavy walls of real iron
or like expensive iron to distribute the heat.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So what do you do with the latex?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
You cook it, you mike it, you form it using
you know, three or four parts, and then as you
cook they ventilate. But the latex take is curing for decades.
It doesn't stop. It's quite a quite an alchemy anyway,
not late this remove the pan and cool right dot
(04:08):
the pieces of the leado over rolled out pizza vases
scatter the artist chokes are over and then season nice
baking the preheat oven until the door is cooked crispy
and the cheese is melted. If you like her with
a slice of proscutta lad over the top of the pizza.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
This is like the kama.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Do you want a pizza?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I would like to try this?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Can we ask for pizza to come? It's not what
you today, it's with gorganzole and fig What would you
want to do you want to let you? They can
make you whatever you want?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Is it like.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Do you want? Do you want what you prefer? Okay?
Can you ask them to make it? To let your
precuto pizza?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I like it?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
God yourself spoiled. Well, I mean honestly, not many people
get to choose the pizza they want.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, look, you know what happened.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I like spoiling people. That's why I like having a restaurant.
People always say, what do you say, Ruth? In a restaurant?
You know what I say to say? Yes? Yes, somebody
wants something, Say yes. It makes life easy.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Do you say you never hear yeah, you'll never hear
me say no to that restaurant.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
But even when you're working, don't you think that you
can say yes, Well, it's funny you have to say no?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Funny? Ye? Do you say that?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Because I have described the role of a director, I
say there are directors that are hosts and directors that
are guests.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
There are directors that like to be.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Served by every department, and there are directors, which is
my case, that I'd like to host every department to
deliver their best and coach them, coach them and coordinate
them into an orchestra. You know, I'm a host as you,
and I think the universal rule that is without flow
true is when people say, how would you define somebody
(05:55):
being rich? It's not what you have, is how much
you can give, right, so hosting is actually the most
rewarding thing you can do for yourself, and at the
same time, it's a paradox is the most selfless and
most selfish thing you can do because you are ultimately giving,
but you get in return. It's really a very simple
(06:18):
cosmic law.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I often think that I had the best job in
the world.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Now you do.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I come in here and hopefully after two hours people
will leave feeling better than when they arrived. Because people
you never know. It's like making sure you'd ever know
if the person on that table has just been fired,
or it's just had a baby, or it's just had
bad news.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Good news, was fired by the baby.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Maybe fired by a baby baby.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
When they take to what did it take my baby
fired me? Give me a double you can.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Say to the baby, what would you do if you
were a baby?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, the baby would say I would poop my pants
and then cry, which which right away is a great
thing recommended. I thought it would be good to bring
you things from my hometown or my readion.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Let me, let me, let's have the but I'll explain
what this is.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Somebody opened the box, butterskirt.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
This is this is from the same state that the
kila comes from. It's called Sahula, and Sahula was the
place my father used to go to hunt. They would
go in the summers. They would hunt for large geese
and dogs and all that. I hated it because I
hate it because you know, I don't like hunting. I
don't like anybody killing an animal. I was a very
(07:39):
thin and frail little boy, you know. And and they
once or twice they forgot me while they were hunting.
So I was left behind for several hours. And one
time without boots, I worked and a thorny mud the
(08:00):
landscape for about three hours.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
And my father family and said, don't tell your mother.
I said, what happened?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
That is I forgot my god, which I think I've
been in treatment for two.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Days on that alone.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
That they were.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
But the good thing about that region was this butter
scotch or this is a kheta. But this is a
recipe that a family, the Lugo family, which still makes it.
In nineteen fifteen, they started making because they were short
of cash. And the matron of the family remembered that
when she worked for a very rich family of Spanish origin,
(08:39):
they made this duel said a legend this cotta right,
and it was basically milk, eggs, vanilla sugar.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I think so many cultures have Spanish crem caramel. You know,
the French have a creme.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
The Cuban maker fantastic one.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, but it is the exact same recipe from nineteen fifteen.
Is this, and they burn it at the end, so
it's caramelized at the end. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take
the first bite.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
But you take it. I can give you this. And
this was a good part of going hunting with my dad.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Oh, they would take this.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It would find me one of these.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
So when you have this, what do you think of
being in the fields with the kid?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, I'm a kid, and the hard thing is to stop.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
This is so good. No, give it to me.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna grab a little more.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
You know what's so good about it? It's very it's
not very sweet.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
No, it's not very sweet, and it's completely natural good.
And the fact that it comes in this little wooden box, handmade,
is so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Beautiful. Tell me about me about the food from your region.
Other foods from Well Mexico's Wahaka that you've never had
because you lived in it.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Like like there are many regions where, for example, their
signature is there how they riff on molay, you know,
so like Wahaka has the black molly, and Puebla has
the more the one that is more naughty, you know.
And then there is Pepian which is the pumpkin seed molley.
(10:15):
And but my my hometown or my region doesn't have
so much sophistication.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
We have a great gold barbecue called Beria. You know.
We have go yeah, go.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Barbell I eat it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
They cook it now.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
They do it in ament on the earth and all that,
and for a long long time with leaves and so forth.
But the other thing is we have a very hearty
soup of oval called menudo. Not really not not in
we have we have a large the largest lake in Mexico,
(10:54):
Lake Chappella. When I was a child and we would
go there in the seas, we would wake up really early,
like four thirty five am and go fishing with a net.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I love the butterscotch. It's very very good.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
You like it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Do you take it wherever you go?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
No? I wanted to bring it with you.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
That if you're filming somewhere. I'm sure that you have
the kind of food that you love.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I love not really, but in this case, a friend
came to visit a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Do you like staying in people's houses or do you
like that people?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I hate that too. I hate that. I can't.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I never feel comfortable no matter how close I am
to the person.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
I hate it.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
You know, I grew up with my brothers and my brothers,
my older brother, every time anyone used the toilet, he
would kick the door open and scream. So I have
to be completely privacy.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
And he did not want anybody.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
No, no, he liked to scare people. Oh I see, Yeah,
that was my older brother.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
He would.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Now he's in Texas, you know the he makes cars,
he restores cars. Yeah, he's a great guy. And we
were talking about regional food. And the thing is I
lived in Texas. I've been in Texas many many times
over the years, hundreds of times. And I lived in
Texas a few years after the kidnapping of my dad.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I know, I'm sorry, So where is your father now?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
My father died, but many many years after the kidnam
he came back.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
He survived, he thrived, I'm sorry, and you know, no.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It's like being lost in the on the hunting trip, isn't.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Well, yeah, not anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
I actually understand perfectly that it's a cycle and if
you are not good with any part of the cycle,
don't get in life. Life has the ups and the
downstnd you.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Can't I mean yeah. But when you say don't get in,
I mean.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
No, you know, like like like if you if you're
injureds for the good part you're gonna It's a completely
silly attitude to have with life.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
But think that also comes from your culture of Day
of the Dead.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
We're very happy about that.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah, Like I'm very happy knowing like I can make
a prediction and I packed filmhouse and say everybody in
this film house is going to die.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And another that I'm being.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Mean is just the fact. So let's say that you're
board a train or a boss that says death. You
can't complain when it gets to the destination.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
But the person who's died, but this is another conversation,
but the people who left behind. You've had grief, you
missed your father, you said, it's taken me a long time.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Ricky said that death is like stupidity. It doesn't affect
the person having it. You only are people that are around, and.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It does, doesn't it. So you can say it's fine
and it's part of life and it's it. But the
person who's left and you know it, and I know,
I know it's it's not easy, is it.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
No, it is, It isn't.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
But you know, the culture when I was a kid,
death was so near all the time. It's simply you
would be walking on a street and somebody would get shot.
When I was going out on a day, I don't.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
We just stopped there. Why would somebody walk down?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
There's a lot of guns. There's a lot of guns
ever since.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I can remember when you were talking how many years ago.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
No, any year, you take a break.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
And there's a famous anecdote of Louis Monoel going to
Mexico and noticing everybody had a gun. And he went
to the Minister of Culture and I said, I'm surprised
how many people.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
The only people that don't have a gun is you
and me, And the guy said, speak for yourself.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
You know, my dad, when we would go out on
Saturday night, he would say, don't forget your gun. Really, yeah,
I mean, I adore my country about all things, but
part of the language is violence.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It is part of that.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
And you can substract the good with the bat when
you talk about Italy, when you talk about countries that
are capable of great sentimental outbursts, are capable of great
violence too.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
It is the thing that I find curious now is
when you discuss anything, it seems to be that we
can only accept the mammalian sweet side of our nature
and not the territorial, the predatorial, the savage side of
being a primate of sorts. You have to understand that
(15:25):
all those things are going to be expressed. And the
more you push the topper we're down trying to keep
them in, the more they're gonna spill through the sides.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, you could also say that we are we are animals,
but we are evolving. We're better than agg Wells.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
In the island of doctor moraw and I'm gonna paraphrase,
I'm sure I'm doing it wrong, but he said he
watched the animals dis caused the law, and he said,
and every time they mentioned the law, they would mention
something that suppressed something that was essential to their names.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
He says, they're in a nutshell? Is mankind? You know?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
And I think that the thing is if you have
an open discussion and a tacit or open agreement about behavior,
that's the social contract we all live in. And within
that social contract there are real spiritual rewards at being good,
and I have no doubt there are a spiritual punishment
(16:26):
for not being good.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
What do you what would that be?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
I think that you one hundred percent attract what you
are if you give your receive. The laws are very simple,
you know. One simple simple law is if you aren't happy,
you're thinking about yourself. If you're happy, you're thinking about others.
It's very simple and it sounds like a Chinese cookie
(16:51):
and nugget, but it's from litrue. When I talk to
my kids, I say, you want to be happy, think
about what you can do for somebody else.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Period.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Did you grow up with your parents this way? Did
you come to this yourself to yes to your parents
being this way?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Or yes? No?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
I think I think if my friends were going in
different directions. But I like my mother was very much
into the you know, in all the hermetic laws, and
she was sort of a white witch, and you know,
she read the taro for me and taught me how
to read the tarol. Blah blah blah. She was very
very interesting in a spirit. But I think eventually you
(17:29):
realize that these are very simple truths. I mean, it's
like when you were young when you say, if I
managed to be out of debt and have twenty thousand
in the bank, I'll be done.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Then you do that and you.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Say if I managed to get a handred in the
bank and a house and so I'll be fine, And
then you keep going, and the more you need, the
less you have. My father won the lottery in nineteen
sixty nine, and he immediately moved the whole family to
a house that was the most part of the block.
(18:07):
And I could go in the town and I could
go for weeks magically finding food in the fridge and
never sing a living person for weeks. I would arrive
at midnight. Nobody would be there saying what were you
doing out so late? Nobody would say good morning. I
would ride my bicycle in the house like Danny in
(18:28):
the shining, you know, nobody would be there. And I
came to a very simple role. If if you cannot say,
honeywere are my shoes and somebody heard you, how was
to be?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
That's a good lue, that's honeywaere am I?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
How old were you when he won the lottery? I
was about four, So you didn't know life before that?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
What was I did? I did?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I have a perfect What was life before the lottery?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
My mother and father.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
My mother came from a family that you know, was very,
very rooted in the region. The name was, you know,
one of the founding names of the city. And she
had about she had. The dowry was about six or
seven houses that they gave her in a row, and
(19:19):
my father used that to create a car salesmanship. But
we lived in a middle class home. I remember my
mother used to grab the matches came with a little
landscape printed in the back, and she would turn them
around and glue them to.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
A little frame and would hang them on the wall.
You know. It was a very My mother was.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
A very good cook, so she would cook.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
She would cook back then, and I remember the change
when the lottery came.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
It was a big, big change.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
How much did you wind in the lottery?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
He won six million dollars in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Wow, which was buying a lottery ticket.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, well he bought it with other pe about the
whole series, the whole sheep, and the other people lost
their money, and my father kept.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
It the decades.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I mean he kept the money that.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Most of the people that win the lottery lose the money.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
My father was one of the guys that managed.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Did you all eat together in the evening? Did you
have a cook?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Depends on what decade, and it is very In my generation.
All the kids married and had houses within three blocks
of their parents' house, and you ate with your parents
three four times a week, always on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Even if you weren't living in the house.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Doesn't matter. You came home. It was always your home.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
After lunch, all the women would go to one room
and the men would go to another room and take
a cs.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
The River Cafe Cafe, our all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant, is now open. In the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and crostada from
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coops and
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Salumi, misti, mozzarella,
(21:20):
brisquetto red and yellow peppers, Vitello, Tonato and more. Come
in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in
the bar. No need to book. See you here. If
we were going back to the days of the review
(21:42):
the pizza, there we go. What do you think it's good?
Do you want any of you guys want some pizza?
Anybody over there? It's a good cheese, isn't it. It
has a kind of mild but it also this might
be quite salty because it has so wood. I'm really
(22:04):
interested about your father, the lottery, the change in the
way that you still ate very local foods. And then
when you left home. How old were you actually when
you left or did you ever leave home? Or did
you live just around the corner in one of those houses?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I know I was very very fast to leave home.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
How old were you?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Well?
Speaker 3 (22:24):
I am about fifteen, maybe sixteen fifteen sixteen. I started
doing makeup, effects and effects and storyboards and all that,
and I would sleep in my office.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
What did you eat that?
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I cook? Horrible? What I mean?
Speaker 3 (22:42):
You could buy a good roasted chicken and it will
last you the week. Yeah, but cooking, I'm a terrible cook.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Did it ever interest you to cook for yourself.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yes, but that's the difference with an interest and talent.
It includes dancing and cooking.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Okay, I agree, And also I don't think it's important.
If you don't want to cook, you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
By the way, there is there is a lot of wisdom.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
In knowing how to eat how to eat?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, I mean I think it's what is.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
The wisdom of knowing how to eat well?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
It's like a good conversation, isn't it. I mean you
want to listen.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
What is a pizza telling you well?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
To me? For example?
Speaker 3 (23:16):
One of the things I value and I think is
it has a molecular explanation. There are two things that
I love in food. One is when something is slight
slightly burned, and I mean burned, not caramelized, no, no,
no fancy terms.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Burned.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
If the dois has little black spots of where it
burned a little more thorough. That bitterness makes a lot
for the flavor. This crust is great for me. It's thin,
it has parts that are really black and and crunchy
and carbonized in a great way that distributes the flavor differently.
And I talked to a chef friend of mine and
(23:55):
I was talking about reheated food. I said, why is
it the bad and he said, well, there depends on
the food. So some foods concentrate and they're good, but
most food loses all these qualities after cooking. But certain
soups and certain things with heavy sauces, they can concentrate
(24:15):
over over. And one thing when my family was in
that big house a delicious thing for me, and it
still is. It's like vicious walls of beans because it
does the fancy term for cold beans in my fridge,
you know, but it.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Was really really good.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
You blended it, you blended the beans, and it came
like a very thick, vicious wild, very delicious, and you know,
but all they were the cold beans nobody wanted.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
A fond son and mutual friend of ours told me
that in Mexico, and he's made films about this that well.
He said that in the United States, when you had wealth,
you got bigger, you had a bigger house, a bigger kitchen,
a bigger refridge, writer, a bigger car. And in Mexico,
(25:04):
when you had wealth, you had more domestic people kept
the house small, small kitchen, small house, but you had
more people working. Irony in that was that the case
in your.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Case, when in the case of my father, the house
got bigger and we got a lot of people had
both yeah, and but he he made it a point
to raise the kids blue collar. Like if you wanted money,
he would say, what are you going to do for me?
Like I wanted a toy, he said, save my older brother.
(25:37):
One says. One said, oh, but you know we I
shouldn't happen because we're rich. On my first at Amorridge,
you're not, and neither are your brothers.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
It's like back to I want to know why Louis
but Well was in Mexico. Did he shoot a movie
in Mexico?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
When you escaped?
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Right around the Franco Ira, he went to I believe
he went to New York first. I think he came
into a really bad situation with Theli and I think
Dali was very pro Franko, very profascist, and he hated Bunuel.
They started together, but he hated him and he was
fired from his position in New York because of Deli.
(26:18):
And I think years later he encountered Ali on the
street and he punched them, and Bunuel had said very
famously he said to his friends he said, if I disappeared,
look everywhere from me except Mexico. And he ended up
in Mexico because there was a very strong colony of
intellectual you know, left wing Marxist intellectuals, and Bunuel landed.
(26:43):
He started making movies there and he stayed there the
rest of his life. And he ran a very conservative household.
He was very wild in his mind, but in his
every day he was Don Louise.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
He was a very.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
He ran a very Catholic Yeah, yeah, very you know, yeah,
the kids needed to be home at nine. He was
a very jealous man. He won the traditional roles in
his family. The wife stayed at home, He went and
earned a breath. It was a very interesting paradox. Such
a great filmmaker, incredible filmmaker. I mean, I think that
(27:23):
the thing with filmmaking is your paradox is what gives
you your vocabulary. People have this word vision, and I
think it's a hostage negotiation with reality. Filmmaking is not dictating.
Filmmaking is negotiating an image or a moment with the actors,
with reality, with the sun, with the light, with the color,
(27:45):
you know, and it's a complete dialogue with what is
happening in front of you. Is an active is not
a dictatorial position to me? Is the dialogue with reality
produces art.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And the collaboration with other people people.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, I think that film is a very social and
I think that for people you have a filmography for
you is part of your biography. You neglect family, you
neglect friends, you neglect everything, and in exchange you get
a family of Andred and twenty people for twelve twenty weeks,
(28:22):
and you have to treat that those people like family, and.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Then you say goodbye to them.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Yeah, but you know it's carnival. It's a carnival.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
You will meet them in another town down the road
in another season, and you have to accept it like that.
You know, Carneys the tradition and a carnival. Most of
the people were outlaws because they were running from there
around so they would they would say, look, I cannot
go to that town. I'll see you three towns down
because I'm wanted in that town because I was a
(28:52):
burglar or a shop lifter or whatever. And they would
skip a town. The carney is called each other other mo,
how are you because they didn't want anyone to hear
their real names.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
And is that like, what is it like on a film?
Speaker 3 (29:09):
It's very you know William Friedkin he used to call
everybody in the head mo.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, I know. Somebody who was another film director always
called everybody darling.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, well that that was very common. That was like darling,
Oh my darling. I know what's my name? I don't
know darling?
Speaker 1 (29:27):
It was it was it was Richard Attenborough apparently he
always called everyone very theater.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, it's very theater.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, you meet a lot of people, with a lot
of people. You have to when you're writing your films
before when you're alone in the room, if you are writing,
do you write by yourself?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I tried to?
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Reality is sometimes I like association because it takes care
of even if you don't like what is being written,
you know how you corrected and it becomes active. The
loneliness of the the page is very, very difficult. But
there are movies. For example, this Frankenstein. I could not
go write with anyone.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Can we talk about Frank It's like Pans Labyrinth.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I couldn't co write it with anyone. I couldn't explain
what I wanted Pans Labyrinth. It took me six months
to find the opening image, and once I found the
opening image, I understood the whole movie. And I wrote
it in six weeks or nine weeks, something really quick.
With Frankenstein. I wrote the opening fifteen pages, and the
(30:32):
studio said, how is it going? Its fantastic because I
started writing that movie the idea for more than twenty
years ago. Yeah, I thought, this is what I'm going
to do. Yeah, and you laid the plan, and then
I wrote those fifteen pages, and I stopped until I collected.
I put the novel on the on the computer, the
entire novel, and I started taking every paragraph that I
(30:55):
liked and then discarding the ones that I thought I
had absorbed until I have nothing on the page again.
So he went through a novel that way, and then
I wrote, But it took it took a while. It
took a while too, And.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
That brings us to a monster. You know. I know
it's probably an anathematic for you to mention, but you
know mel Brooks's I love it, you know, and one
thing that one of the great do you think? So
I'm so pleased you say that because I did a
podcast with Mel No it's ninety eight now, and for me,
(31:30):
one of the beautiful things about Young Frankenstein was of
course the singing, the songs and the humor, but was
also there was nobody in that that whole trajectory that
was a bad person. No, you know everyone there's no villain,
you know. And the the loneliness of Frankenstein, you know,
and the and the creature when he just sits on
(31:52):
that rock. And so I'm glad you liked that. So
tell me about you. Why do you think it's a masterpiece.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
It is not a pastiche It was something that was
very dear to Jim Wilder first, and then to Jim
Wilder and mel Brooks second. Uh is not based so
much on Bride or the original Frankstin is based much
more on Son of Frankenstein, which, in my opinion, is
one of the great movies. It is a very very
(32:23):
good movie that few people know that the origin of
the of the assistant's name being Igor in the Original
of Frankenstein is called Fritz you know. But Son of
Frankenstein is a really interesting movie. It was done by
a director that was an improvisational director. He didn't want
to be to stick to the screenplay, so he would
(32:47):
I don't want to lie. You know, it's the last
movie where a card of plays the monster and the
director would come in the morning and and say, well,
what am we gonna do.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Let's try this, Let's try that.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
The movie went overbodgeed over schedule, but the result is
very creative, incredibly visual. A Vela Lugosi who was down
on his luck. He was out of money and Universal
didn't want to pay him well at all, and the
director said, don't worry, I'll keep you around. And he
(33:21):
kept him around for months. And the movie is one
of the three masterpieces that includes many of the part
The wardrobe that Jim Wilder has is from that movie,
The Man with the wooden arm, the constable is from
that movie. Many many of the things are from that movie.
And the score of Young Frankenstein is one of the
(33:43):
great most melancholic.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah exactly. You know.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
The composer Morris, he composed two of the most melancholic,
longing scores in the history of movies, The Elephant Man
and Young Frankenstein.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I haven't when they had it here in the West
End in London, and I know mel So we went,
you know together, and I went, but I think I
took almost everyone who worked here. I felt kind of
I just wanted to take everyone to see.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah, it's funny, but it's not is making. It's so
affectionate and affectionate.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
So tell me about your Frankenstein.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Well, but you know, there are certain tales that grow
with you and they become you, and then you can
you know, it's like a great song.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
You know, you sing on your range.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Nobody wants to sing out of their range, and there
are two or three you know, everybody gets up and
you don't want to do karaoke. Yeah, you know, and
that's why I love John Frankenstan He's not karaoke.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Is a new song by the Boys.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
You haven't heard about a thing that is universal, and
I can say that that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
What is universal?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Well, there are certain characters that are about ten twenty
characters in the history of.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Mankind's narrative at our universe. I'll tell you. For example.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
You know these are characters that, even if you haven't
read the book, you know what they mean. Dracula instantly,
Sherlock Holmes instantly, Tarzan, Pinocchio, Frankenstein.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
There are very few.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
The count of Monte Cristo and now you know the basics,
no matter if you haven't read it. You know comment
Christians about revenge. You know, Pinocchio wants to be human, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
So these few characters become the vocabulary of humanity in
the same way that certain symbols are common to all humanity.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Dragons. All cultures have dragons.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
The theory behind it anthropologically is that people combine the predators,
the mammals fear the most an eagle and a lizard
like a large alligator, and they combined them and they
became an object of fear vampirism. Not every culture, but
most of them have it. Ghosts. So these are the
(35:59):
vocabulary of humanity. And when that character is that big,
it can be rephrased and it changes value. What do
I mean by that? Romeo and Juliet, right, there is
a huge premise. I told you Romeyan and Juliet. You
say I've seen it. I said, no, no, no, no, no, wait,
it's an aphavela in Brazil. I haven't seen it in
(36:22):
nineteen sixty five, the year that they you know. And
then the specifics bring down the register of the song
and change the modulation of the song and all of
a sudden the song is new. That happens if a
thing is that personal to you and it's the same.
For example, most people say I love singing in the
(36:45):
Ring and I love that.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Song, and you say, yes, say it.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
And they know it, but they don't know that this
was the third or fourth time that song had been
in a movie since the thirties, know, and it had
never quite catched on the wave called Jim Kelly. So
in creating something like Binocchio or Frankenstein, these are things
that have been absorbed more likeularly by me. And when
(37:12):
I sing them, I hope you haven't heard that song,
you know that's the way you got it. If you
didn't have anything to add, don't get up.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, because we can as a person in the audience,
we long as you said, to hear the different you
know you're Frankenstein. If you like listening to Ruthie's Table
for would you please make sure to rate and review
the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts O wherever
(37:47):
you get your podcasts. Thank you. But when you wake
up in the morning, do you think about what you're
going to eat that day? Or when you like.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
One of the things I adore, but it's very, very
hard to find truly truly expressive is eggs. I think
eggs are one of the things that tell you the
culture of the country. The French eggs are amazing, the
best eggs in my opinion. Spanish, you know, Japanese eggs
(38:21):
are Japanese eggs.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Okay, So you're talking about the way they cook the eggs. No,
you're talking about the quality and.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
All is either musical and beautiful or dour. And I
must say, and you have to guide me in here.
I haven't had an interesting dialogue with UK eggs.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Maybe it's been very, very very.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
We could try and set up that dialogue, but it is,
you know, it's very tower I think we'll try. What
about the United States? I mean, you know that's really
if we're going to go for culture and eggs, we
have to say, have you had an omelet in New
York or no?
Speaker 3 (39:03):
That's because look, there is one of the most intimate foods.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Right an egg and egg Well, let's talk about.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
It comes from the chicken. It does the whole being
of the chicken going into it. Here we go, and
if the chicken is.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Unhappy and sad and you know whatever it is, the
egg is a really depressing egg.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
So what do you do for eggs?
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I got to friends or wait for to get lucky
and go to Spain.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
To Spain, and this is why I had really good
eggs in Mexico. You know there's the wavos divorces, wavos rancheros.
There's ways Mexicana. There's there's so many ways.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Is a poem?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Can you tell the audience what it is?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
How kill is? What you do is you chocolate tortilla.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
It can be either dry or fresh, and then you
soak it in a really good salta with onion, garlic, tomato, salt,
and you soak it until the until the chili killos
are soggy, gets soggy again. But it has to be
the perfect balance. Can be too soggy, can be too dry.
(40:17):
I don't like crisp chilla killis. They had to be
slightly soggy, and then you put them on a plate.
You put cream, cheese and a fried egg on top
and a side of fried beans. We have them, and
that's for me to be. That's what I miss the most.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Can make that? Where do you live?
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Mostly Los Angeles, uh and part part of the time
in Toronto, and you cannot get chila killers in Toronto.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
If you held the Prime Minister for ransom, you can
l a oh my lord, Yes, you can.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Have cream chili sauce. Isn't it.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Antillo so as you're gonna have domentillos, so you're gonna
have red tomato sauce. But in La I can have
every great Mexican food I need every day if I
want to, and I often do.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
When we think about food, we think about you know
what we were saying about sharing about your parents, whay
you cooked at home, about the power of deciding. And
it's also seduction. And I think in the shape of water,
what really moved me was the scene with the egg.
You know, when the beautiful woman is holding the It's
(41:34):
just a simple boiled egg, isn't it. It's just an egg.
Tell me about that scene. Can you describe that scene?
Because it is an almost it's insane. Come to me,
isn't it saying I will get this creature from the water.
That could be frightening, that could be scary with an egg,
you know, and you can see that the creature is
coming out of the water, and.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Not entirely, but entirely.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Tell me that the one thing I do every week
is I hard boiled eggs. That's my my dietary supplement
is and the only thing I cook is hard boiled eggs,
and I do it perfectly.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Okay, tell me how do you cook a hardboiled egg?
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Well, the way I like them is you boil the
water for fifteen minutes until it's really really really hot,
and then you put the eggs and you let it simmer.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Do you turn off then heat?
Speaker 3 (42:24):
You keep it simmering, keep it simmering for another fifteen
and then you turn it off, but leave them there. Yeah,
And then you grab one and you roll it and
if you can take the shell out in one single move,
then that they're good.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
And I do it every week with twenty thirty every
week and the first two days you don't want to
open the fridge because it's melt like a boiled egg.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
But and Kim hates it.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
She goes, oh my god, you're boiling eggs, and go, yeah, sorry,
but that's my favorite sort of pocket food, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
And so when you did that scene, I'm.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
The fish.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Of all I belong in water, I'm I'm a great swimmer,
good scuba diver. If I am in water all day long,
I'm happy. But also the egg is a symbol of
two things, fertility and immortality, right, And I think there
was a beautiful courtship, very succent thing with her being
(43:22):
represented by the egg. And you know she you know,
the movie opens with her putting a timer in the
shape of an egg and she has three minutes to
find pleasure in the bathtub before going to work.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
And it's a symbol of what is eternal. And for
me in the movie is you find people of relative
values except her, that are social values. The guy wants power,
the bad guy wants power, The Americans want to win
the space race, this and that. And you find a
creature that is a god, and then they chain it
(44:00):
to operate upon it. They want to kill it, they
want to make it submissive, they want to make it
a thing.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
And then at the end.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
It's revealed he is a god. So the eternal of
the egg was at play. There's a many's. The way
I tried to layer the movies is you don't have
to read them the way I write them, but I
write them very carefully in terms of symbols or organizing
the colors and the things to mean something that doesn't mean.
You have the obligation of reading it that way. And
(44:29):
that is very much like cooking and eating. When you
are an audience member in a movie theater or in
a museum with a piece of painting, you can see
the piece of painting and say I like it or
I don't like it, and then you move on to
the next one.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
If you are an educated you have an educated balette.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
You learn to see the composition, the brushstrokes, the color balance,
the point of view, the thematic elements, the rendition, et cetera,
et cetera, and have a dialogue with a painting for
an hour two hours, depending on your level of sort
of balete sophistication. Same is true with a movie.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
But I say that my husband was an architect and
many of my film friends are filmmakers, And I say,
you create a work of art and it lasts forever.
You know, if somebody doesn't like your building today, they
might understand it in a week's time or year's time
or ten years time. Or if you make a movie
(45:29):
and it got bad reviews, then we might all understand it.
It makes a work of art, and it's like in
five minutes and it's gone.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah, but I don't think it's I don't think if
ever gone. I don't think it's ever gone. A memory,
especially if it has a heavy cheese, it never leaves.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
No, No, let's talk about that, because I do think
I have had a few meals in my lifetime that
are as cherished for me as family memory.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
And I'm not excited. I'm not being hyperbolic. I mean it.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
I remember very particularly there was a soup in Albui
and north of Barcelona that was for many years the
most famous restaurant in the world.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Well, one time we went the last night last night
they were open for the season, and one of the
dishes which made me cry. It was a soup or
potato three ways. That was like you were eating a
souper potato that was your grandma, grandma's if she was
(46:34):
a chemical engineer. I'm a molecular engineer. So there was
a molecular density to it that was completely It filled you,
it moved you with caress you, it comford you, and
I cried. I am not making this up. I'm not
trying to be interesting for the podcast. I cried and
it reminded me of my childhood. It was a full
rattuy moment. And at the end of the night they said, well,
(46:59):
and they they served the dessert once a crab of
crem which means that they made a film. You know
how the milk creates that film on top that is
just cream, like a skin of cream. They would use
that to make a crap that was filled with another cream.
And they were closer and I said, did any of
(47:22):
those get left behind?
Speaker 2 (47:23):
And they said about twenty.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
And they brought them to the table and we dispose
of the cref the cream and it.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Was brilliant, genius, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Yeah, food is memory.
And so when you make a movie, and I do
want to talk for a few minutes just about lovable monsters,
because that is something that is very important to me
because it tells a lesson of life about how you
love something, as you say the other But let's just
(47:51):
get to the process of making a film and food.
Do you care about what you feed the people who
work on your set and do you mind stuck up
at lunchtime for stopping work?
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
I don't like it, like when you do it in Spain.
For example, if you should have moved in Spain, there
will be wine involved. Yeah, and that means that the
hour after the lunch is going to start really really slow,
and then you quite never quite recuperate, you know, but
if you do it.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
My favorite is what they call French howers.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
French howers. I've learned about French hour.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Ten hours, ten hours of work and that's it. You concentrate.
There's food on the set.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
But that's it.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Where are you on it? Have you finished filming it?
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Now? I finished Friday. I finished shooting.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
That's what I think. Are you going home? Then?
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah? You stayed for this?
Speaker 1 (48:39):
No? And so when will you be back?
Speaker 2 (48:41):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Depend on the ta kila, okay, but but I am
in post production.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
I caught every day.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Where will you edit it?
Speaker 2 (48:49):
I will finish anything in la and then yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
And do you eat when you're editing?
Speaker 2 (48:55):
You know? Yes? And no? I mean I have a
coffee with whatever is there.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah, And I have bowls and bowls of tangerines and
I eat the tangerines with the peel, and with the peel,
I wash them and the peel is so good.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
It is good. I sometimes eat the fruit and then
I go back to the peel. Never kind of crunch.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
In Mexico, we eat the caramelized fruit, and I love
lemons in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
How often do you go back to Mexico?
Speaker 3 (49:28):
I used to go a lot, and now my my well,
my parents are dead, and I don't like every time
I land, I feel really lonely.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
I mean, it's really difficult for me.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Even knowing that they took the train.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
And they went on, it doesn't matter because because to me,
the the parents and the kids leave a hole in
the universe. Basically part of the universe just caeesars to exist,
and there's no way you can process. That is totemic,
you know, to the point where if you lose a kid,
(50:03):
there's no word for you. There's no one you know,
if you lose her husband or a wife, you're a widow.
Or if you lose her parents, would you lose a kid,
you are you are undescribably destroyed. So you know, the
thing with my parents is, I didn't know my father died,
and I process did reasonably well, and then when my mother.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Died, I couldn't I won't do, but I can't.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Yeah, but Mexico City is on fire.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Now, you know we should go. The food is incredible,
the art is amazing.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
One of the great cities of the world, I think. So.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
People sometimes ask me where you'd like to live other
than London, the expect me to say an Italian city.
For me, Mexico. It was really powerful to me.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
It is.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
As a kid from a provincial city, which my city
was a provincial city. I still get a thrill going
to Mexico City. Still on the mornings. The smell of
the mornings in Mexico City with the wet streets.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Is incredible.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
I don't think people realize how green Mexico City. That's
the thing that really hit me was how green a
city was. The trees. I couldn't see the sky sometimes.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
And it's a city that is patterned after after Paris,
you know that.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Yeah, during the Porphyrio ideas period, the model was Paris,
the Heisman's Osmond's Paris with the large boulevards and the
big buildings, you know, and the biggest artes and the
Reformer and.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
All that Reformer.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, if you had to think of a food that
when you were needing comfort, not when you're hungry, not
when you want to celebrate, not when you want something
to eat for your kids. Is there something that gives
you comfort?
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Yes, it's such a cliche. Refried beans beans?
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, is it a cliche.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
It is a little bit. I have it.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
I mean it's to me and they are not one thing.
Like there are at least ten ways of have a
refright being. Tell me one way that I like that
I only drive once in a in a little stand
in Mexico City. Is they mix them with lentils. Lentils
(52:22):
and refraed beans together. And it was so fantastic. If
you try it in the restaurant, then call them beans.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Okay, we will, We'll call the beans. Thank you. It
was a beautiful interview.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Well, darling, darling, thank you. Oh you get, you get?
But yeah, no, I'll have a lunch while Are you
kidding me?
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Do we have more glasses? Come? You have some more?
Do you guys want to tequila
This episode is brought to you by Me and M,
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(00:48):
Guillermo del Toro in his extraordinary movies Pan Slambermouth, The
Shape of Water Pinocchio takes us to his worlds surreal, mystical,
sometimes dark. But when he and I met in the
River Cafe, my world. We started talking and we didn't
really stop for two hours. Connected by a love for
Mexican people, Mexican food, and Mexican culture. It's Sunday morning
(01:14):
and Geramo and I are together again in the River
Cafe to talk about the power of love and trust,
understanding monsters as gentle and peaceful. When we're done, I'll
know more about trust, I'll know more about food. But
most of all, I hope i'll know more about Guillermo,
(01:34):
my magical and magnificent friend.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
No, thank you, my learning.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I make it good. So what we do now is
we read. You chose a recipe. This was pizza with
tledgio artichoke. Yes, you read the recipe, then we'll have
our conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Well, this is a recipe for pizza with the legio
artichokes improcudo. It serves six six by twenty five centimeters
pizza dough into balls, rolled out six small artichokes, two
tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, one bunch of thyme,
four hundred grams of to ledio cheese roughly got ryan removed,
(02:12):
and three hundred grams of prescudo thinly slice.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
This is what you need to make this now white
the ledio we.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Like to legends in northern cheese. It melts very beautifully
and it has a kind of saltiness that you know
that is a contrast almost to the doughiness of pizza.
I mean, we love pizza with mozzarella. We love pizza.
I think today he might be doing a pizza with
cork and sola and figs. But this to led you,
I'd like you to try it because it has a
(02:40):
saltiness and a kind of slightly surprising when you have it.
You order pizza at the River Cafe and you get
a very thin crust and then you get the layer
of to ledgo nice.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So you know how to make it is in a
heavy bottom band, heat the olive oil, add the art
heart sometime could the hearts, turning them for about ten minutes.
Heavy bottom pan is important because.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Because it distributes the heat in the distribute. You use
a thin pan, you'll get some pieces that burnt, some
pieces that are not cooked. And it's better to invest
in a good saucepan and keep it for the rest
of your life. Stainless steel is important. Aluminum thin pads
too much.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I know a little about this because when I was
a young man, for about ten years I studied and
did make up effects, makeup effects, special makeup effects. And
when you cook the latex, the foam latex, you have
to design the oven with heavy walls of real iron
or like expensive iron to distribute the heat.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So what do you do with the latex?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
You cook it, you mike it, you form it using
you know, three or four parts, and then as you
cook they ventilate. But the latex take is curing for decades.
It doesn't stop. It's quite a quite an alchemy anyway,
not late this remove the pan and cool right dot
(04:08):
the pieces of the leado over rolled out pizza vases
scatter the artist chokes are over and then season nice
baking the preheat oven until the door is cooked crispy
and the cheese is melted. If you like her with
a slice of proscutta lad over the top of the pizza.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
This is like the kama.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Do you want a pizza?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I would like to try this?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Can we ask for pizza to come? It's not what
you today, it's with gorganzole and fig What would you
want to do you want to let you? They can
make you whatever you want?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Is it like.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Do you want? Do you want what you prefer? Okay?
Can you ask them to make it? To let your
precuto pizza?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I like it?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
God yourself spoiled. Well, I mean honestly, not many people
get to choose the pizza they want.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, look, you know what happened.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I like spoiling people. That's why I like having a restaurant.
People always say, what do you say, Ruth? In a restaurant?
You know what I say to say? Yes? Yes, somebody
wants something, Say yes. It makes life easy.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Do you say you never hear yeah, you'll never hear
me say no to that restaurant.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
But even when you're working, don't you think that you
can say yes, Well, it's funny you have to say no?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Funny? Ye? Do you say that?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Because I have described the role of a director, I
say there are directors that are hosts and directors that
are guests.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
There are directors that like to be.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Served by every department, and there are directors, which is
my case, that I'd like to host every department to
deliver their best and coach them, coach them and coordinate
them into an orchestra. You know, I'm a host as you,
and I think the universal rule that is without flow
true is when people say, how would you define somebody
(05:55):
being rich? It's not what you have, is how much
you can give, right, so hosting is actually the most
rewarding thing you can do for yourself, and at the
same time, it's a paradox is the most selfless and
most selfish thing you can do because you are ultimately giving,
but you get in return. It's really a very simple
(06:18):
cosmic law.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I often think that I had the best job in
the world.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Now you do.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I come in here and hopefully after two hours people
will leave feeling better than when they arrived. Because people
you never know. It's like making sure you'd ever know
if the person on that table has just been fired,
or it's just had a baby, or it's just had
bad news.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Good news, was fired by the baby.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Maybe fired by a baby baby.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
When they take to what did it take my baby
fired me? Give me a double you can.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Say to the baby, what would you do if you
were a baby?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, the baby would say I would poop my pants
and then cry, which which right away is a great
thing recommended. I thought it would be good to bring
you things from my hometown or my readion.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Let me, let me, let's have the but I'll explain
what this is.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Somebody opened the box, butterskirt.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
This is this is from the same state that the
kila comes from. It's called Sahula, and Sahula was the
place my father used to go to hunt. They would
go in the summers. They would hunt for large geese
and dogs and all that. I hated it because I
hate it because you know, I don't like hunting. I
don't like anybody killing an animal. I was a very
(07:39):
thin and frail little boy, you know. And and they
once or twice they forgot me while they were hunting.
So I was left behind for several hours. And one
time without boots, I worked and a thorny mud the
(08:00):
landscape for about three hours.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
And my father family and said, don't tell your mother.
I said, what happened?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
That is I forgot my god, which I think I've
been in treatment for two.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Days on that alone.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
That they were.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
But the good thing about that region was this butter
scotch or this is a kheta. But this is a
recipe that a family, the Lugo family, which still makes it.
In nineteen fifteen, they started making because they were short
of cash. And the matron of the family remembered that
when she worked for a very rich family of Spanish origin,
(08:39):
they made this duel said a legend this cotta right,
and it was basically milk, eggs, vanilla sugar.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I think so many cultures have Spanish crem caramel. You know,
the French have a creme.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
The Cuban maker fantastic one.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, but it is the exact same recipe from nineteen fifteen.
Is this, and they burn it at the end, so
it's caramelized at the end. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take
the first bite.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
But you take it. I can give you this. And
this was a good part of going hunting with my dad.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Oh, they would take this.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It would find me one of these.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
So when you have this, what do you think of
being in the fields with the kid?
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, I'm a kid, and the hard thing is to stop.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
This is so good. No, give it to me.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna grab a little more.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
You know what's so good about it? It's very it's
not very sweet.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
No, it's not very sweet, and it's completely natural good.
And the fact that it comes in this little wooden box, handmade,
is so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Beautiful. Tell me about me about the food from your region.
Other foods from Well Mexico's Wahaka that you've never had
because you lived in it.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Like like there are many regions where, for example, their
signature is there how they riff on molay, you know,
so like Wahaka has the black molly, and Puebla has
the more the one that is more naughty, you know.
And then there is Pepian which is the pumpkin seed molley.
(10:15):
And but my my hometown or my region doesn't have
so much sophistication.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
We have a great gold barbecue called Beria. You know.
We have go yeah, go.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Barbell I eat it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
They cook it now.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
They do it in ament on the earth and all that,
and for a long long time with leaves and so forth.
But the other thing is we have a very hearty
soup of oval called menudo. Not really not not in
we have we have a large the largest lake in Mexico,
(10:54):
Lake Chappella. When I was a child and we would
go there in the seas, we would wake up really early,
like four thirty five am and go fishing with a net.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I love the butterscotch. It's very very good.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
You like it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Do you take it wherever you go?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
No? I wanted to bring it with you.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
That if you're filming somewhere. I'm sure that you have
the kind of food that you love.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I love not really, but in this case, a friend
came to visit a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Do you like staying in people's houses or do you
like that people?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I hate that too. I hate that. I can't.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I never feel comfortable no matter how close I am
to the person.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
I hate it.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
You know, I grew up with my brothers and my brothers,
my older brother, every time anyone used the toilet, he
would kick the door open and scream. So I have
to be completely privacy.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
And he did not want anybody.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
No, no, he liked to scare people. Oh I see, Yeah,
that was my older brother.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
He would.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Now he's in Texas, you know the he makes cars,
he restores cars. Yeah, he's a great guy. And we
were talking about regional food. And the thing is I
lived in Texas. I've been in Texas many many times
over the years, hundreds of times. And I lived in
Texas a few years after the kidnapping of my dad.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I know, I'm sorry, So where is your father now?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
My father died, but many many years after the kidnam
he came back.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
He survived, he thrived, I'm sorry, and you know, no.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It's like being lost in the on the hunting trip, isn't.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Well, yeah, not anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
I actually understand perfectly that it's a cycle and if
you are not good with any part of the cycle,
don't get in life. Life has the ups and the
downstnd you.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Can't I mean yeah. But when you say don't get in,
I mean.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
No, you know, like like like if you if you're
injureds for the good part you're gonna It's a completely
silly attitude to have with life.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
But think that also comes from your culture of Day
of the Dead.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
We're very happy about that.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah, Like I'm very happy knowing like I can make
a prediction and I packed filmhouse and say everybody in
this film house is going to die.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And another that I'm being.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Mean is just the fact. So let's say that you're
board a train or a boss that says death. You
can't complain when it gets to the destination.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
But the person who's died, but this is another conversation,
but the people who left behind. You've had grief, you
missed your father, you said, it's taken me a long time.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Ricky said that death is like stupidity. It doesn't affect
the person having it. You only are people that are around, and.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It does, doesn't it. So you can say it's fine
and it's part of life and it's it. But the
person who's left and you know it, and I know,
I know it's it's not easy, is it.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
No, it is, It isn't.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
But you know, the culture when I was a kid,
death was so near all the time. It's simply you
would be walking on a street and somebody would get shot.
When I was going out on a day, I don't.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
We just stopped there. Why would somebody walk down?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
There's a lot of guns. There's a lot of guns
ever since.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I can remember when you were talking how many years ago.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
No, any year, you take a break.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
And there's a famous anecdote of Louis Monoel going to
Mexico and noticing everybody had a gun. And he went
to the Minister of Culture and I said, I'm surprised
how many people.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
The only people that don't have a gun is you
and me, And the guy said, speak for yourself.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
You know, my dad, when we would go out on
Saturday night, he would say, don't forget your gun. Really, yeah,
I mean, I adore my country about all things, but
part of the language is violence.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It is part of that.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
And you can substract the good with the bat when
you talk about Italy, when you talk about countries that
are capable of great sentimental outbursts, are capable of great
violence too.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
It is the thing that I find curious now is
when you discuss anything, it seems to be that we
can only accept the mammalian sweet side of our nature
and not the territorial, the predatorial, the savage side of
being a primate of sorts. You have to understand that
(15:25):
all those things are going to be expressed. And the
more you push the topper we're down trying to keep
them in, the more they're gonna spill through the sides.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, you could also say that we are we are animals,
but we are evolving. We're better than agg Wells.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
In the island of doctor moraw and I'm gonna paraphrase,
I'm sure I'm doing it wrong, but he said he
watched the animals dis caused the law, and he said,
and every time they mentioned the law, they would mention
something that suppressed something that was essential to their names.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
He says, they're in a nutshell? Is mankind? You know?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
And I think that the thing is if you have
an open discussion and a tacit or open agreement about behavior,
that's the social contract we all live in. And within
that social contract there are real spiritual rewards at being good,
and I have no doubt there are a spiritual punishment
(16:26):
for not being good.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
What do you what would that be?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
I think that you one hundred percent attract what you
are if you give your receive. The laws are very simple,
you know. One simple simple law is if you aren't happy,
you're thinking about yourself. If you're happy, you're thinking about others.
It's very simple and it sounds like a Chinese cookie
(16:51):
and nugget, but it's from litrue. When I talk to
my kids, I say, you want to be happy, think
about what you can do for somebody else.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Period.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Did you grow up with your parents this way? Did
you come to this yourself to yes to your parents
being this way?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Or yes? No?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
I think I think if my friends were going in
different directions. But I like my mother was very much
into the you know, in all the hermetic laws, and
she was sort of a white witch, and you know,
she read the taro for me and taught me how
to read the tarol. Blah blah blah. She was very
very interesting in a spirit. But I think eventually you
(17:29):
realize that these are very simple truths. I mean, it's
like when you were young when you say, if I
managed to be out of debt and have twenty thousand
in the bank, I'll be done.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Then you do that and you.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Say if I managed to get a handred in the
bank and a house and so I'll be fine, And
then you keep going, and the more you need, the
less you have. My father won the lottery in nineteen
sixty nine, and he immediately moved the whole family to
a house that was the most part of the block.
(18:07):
And I could go in the town and I could
go for weeks magically finding food in the fridge and
never sing a living person for weeks. I would arrive
at midnight. Nobody would be there saying what were you
doing out so late? Nobody would say good morning. I
would ride my bicycle in the house like Danny in
(18:28):
the shining, you know, nobody would be there. And I
came to a very simple role. If if you cannot say,
honeywere are my shoes and somebody heard you, how was
to be?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
That's a good lue, that's honeywaere am I?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
How old were you when he won the lottery? I
was about four, So you didn't know life before that?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
What was I did? I did?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I have a perfect What was life before the lottery?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
My mother and father.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
My mother came from a family that you know, was very,
very rooted in the region. The name was, you know,
one of the founding names of the city. And she
had about she had. The dowry was about six or
seven houses that they gave her in a row, and
(19:19):
my father used that to create a car salesmanship. But
we lived in a middle class home. I remember my
mother used to grab the matches came with a little
landscape printed in the back, and she would turn them
around and glue them to.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
A little frame and would hang them on the wall.
You know. It was a very My mother was.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
A very good cook, so she would cook.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
She would cook back then, and I remember the change
when the lottery came.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
It was a big, big change.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
How much did you wind in the lottery?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
He won six million dollars in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Wow, which was buying a lottery ticket.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, well he bought it with other pe about the
whole series, the whole sheep, and the other people lost
their money, and my father kept.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
It the decades.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I mean he kept the money that.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Most of the people that win the lottery lose the money.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
My father was one of the guys that managed.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Did you all eat together in the evening? Did you
have a cook?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Depends on what decade, and it is very In my generation.
All the kids married and had houses within three blocks
of their parents' house, and you ate with your parents
three four times a week, always on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Even if you weren't living in the house.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Doesn't matter. You came home. It was always your home.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
After lunch, all the women would go to one room
and the men would go to another room and take
a cs.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
The River Cafe Cafe, our all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant, is now open. In the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and crostada from
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coops and
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Salumi, misti, mozzarella,
(21:20):
brisquetto red and yellow peppers, Vitello, Tonato and more. Come
in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in
the bar. No need to book. See you here. If
we were going back to the days of the review
(21:42):
the pizza, there we go. What do you think it's good?
Do you want any of you guys want some pizza?
Anybody over there? It's a good cheese, isn't it. It
has a kind of mild but it also this might
be quite salty because it has so wood. I'm really
(22:04):
interested about your father, the lottery, the change in the
way that you still ate very local foods. And then
when you left home. How old were you actually when
you left or did you ever leave home? Or did
you live just around the corner in one of those houses?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I know I was very very fast to leave home.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
How old were you?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Well?
Speaker 3 (22:24):
I am about fifteen, maybe sixteen fifteen sixteen. I started
doing makeup, effects and effects and storyboards and all that,
and I would sleep in my office.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
What did you eat that?
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I cook? Horrible? What I mean?
Speaker 3 (22:42):
You could buy a good roasted chicken and it will
last you the week. Yeah, but cooking, I'm a terrible cook.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Did it ever interest you to cook for yourself.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yes, but that's the difference with an interest and talent.
It includes dancing and cooking.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Okay, I agree, And also I don't think it's important.
If you don't want to cook, you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
By the way, there is there is a lot of wisdom.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
In knowing how to eat how to eat?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, I mean I think it's what is.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
The wisdom of knowing how to eat well?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
It's like a good conversation, isn't it. I mean you
want to listen.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
What is a pizza telling you well?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
To me? For example?
Speaker 3 (23:16):
One of the things I value and I think is
it has a molecular explanation. There are two things that
I love in food. One is when something is slight
slightly burned, and I mean burned, not caramelized, no, no,
no fancy terms.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Burned.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
If the dois has little black spots of where it
burned a little more thorough. That bitterness makes a lot
for the flavor. This crust is great for me. It's thin,
it has parts that are really black and and crunchy
and carbonized in a great way that distributes the flavor differently.
And I talked to a chef friend of mine and
(23:55):
I was talking about reheated food. I said, why is
it the bad and he said, well, there depends on
the food. So some foods concentrate and they're good, but
most food loses all these qualities after cooking. But certain
soups and certain things with heavy sauces, they can concentrate
(24:15):
over over. And one thing when my family was in
that big house a delicious thing for me, and it
still is. It's like vicious walls of beans because it
does the fancy term for cold beans in my fridge,
you know, but it.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Was really really good.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
You blended it, you blended the beans, and it came
like a very thick, vicious wild, very delicious, and you know,
but all they were the cold beans nobody wanted.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
A fond son and mutual friend of ours told me
that in Mexico, and he's made films about this that well.
He said that in the United States, when you had wealth,
you got bigger, you had a bigger house, a bigger kitchen,
a bigger refridge, writer, a bigger car. And in Mexico,
(25:04):
when you had wealth, you had more domestic people kept
the house small, small kitchen, small house, but you had
more people working. Irony in that was that the case
in your.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Case, when in the case of my father, the house
got bigger and we got a lot of people had
both yeah, and but he he made it a point
to raise the kids blue collar. Like if you wanted money,
he would say, what are you going to do for me?
Like I wanted a toy, he said, save my older brother.
(25:37):
One says. One said, oh, but you know we I
shouldn't happen because we're rich. On my first at Amorridge,
you're not, and neither are your brothers.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
It's like back to I want to know why Louis
but Well was in Mexico. Did he shoot a movie
in Mexico?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
When you escaped?
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Right around the Franco Ira, he went to I believe
he went to New York first. I think he came
into a really bad situation with Theli and I think
Dali was very pro Franko, very profascist, and he hated Bunuel.
They started together, but he hated him and he was
fired from his position in New York because of Deli.
(26:18):
And I think years later he encountered Ali on the
street and he punched them, and Bunuel had said very
famously he said to his friends he said, if I disappeared,
look everywhere from me except Mexico. And he ended up
in Mexico because there was a very strong colony of
intellectual you know, left wing Marxist intellectuals, and Bunuel landed.
(26:43):
He started making movies there and he stayed there the
rest of his life. And he ran a very conservative household.
He was very wild in his mind, but in his
every day he was Don Louise.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
He was a very.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
He ran a very Catholic Yeah, yeah, very you know, yeah,
the kids needed to be home at nine. He was
a very jealous man. He won the traditional roles in
his family. The wife stayed at home, He went and
earned a breath. It was a very interesting paradox. Such
a great filmmaker, incredible filmmaker. I mean, I think that
(27:23):
the thing with filmmaking is your paradox is what gives
you your vocabulary. People have this word vision, and I
think it's a hostage negotiation with reality. Filmmaking is not dictating.
Filmmaking is negotiating an image or a moment with the actors,
with reality, with the sun, with the light, with the color,
(27:45):
you know, and it's a complete dialogue with what is
happening in front of you. Is an active is not
a dictatorial position to me? Is the dialogue with reality
produces art.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And the collaboration with other people people.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, I think that film is a very social and
I think that for people you have a filmography for
you is part of your biography. You neglect family, you
neglect friends, you neglect everything, and in exchange you get
a family of Andred and twenty people for twelve twenty weeks,
(28:22):
and you have to treat that those people like family, and.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Then you say goodbye to them.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Yeah, but you know it's carnival. It's a carnival.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
You will meet them in another town down the road
in another season, and you have to accept it like that.
You know, Carneys the tradition and a carnival. Most of
the people were outlaws because they were running from there
around so they would they would say, look, I cannot
go to that town. I'll see you three towns down
because I'm wanted in that town because I was a
(28:52):
burglar or a shop lifter or whatever. And they would
skip a town. The carney is called each other other mo,
how are you because they didn't want anyone to hear
their real names.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
And is that like, what is it like on a film?
Speaker 3 (29:09):
It's very you know William Friedkin he used to call
everybody in the head mo.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, I know. Somebody who was another film director always
called everybody darling.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, well that that was very common. That was like darling,
Oh my darling. I know what's my name? I don't
know darling?
Speaker 1 (29:27):
It was it was it was Richard Attenborough apparently he
always called everyone very theater.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, it's very theater.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, you meet a lot of people, with a lot
of people. You have to when you're writing your films
before when you're alone in the room, if you are writing,
do you write by yourself?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I tried to?
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Reality is sometimes I like association because it takes care
of even if you don't like what is being written,
you know how you corrected and it becomes active. The
loneliness of the the page is very, very difficult. But
there are movies. For example, this Frankenstein. I could not
go write with anyone.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Can we talk about Frank It's like Pans Labyrinth.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I couldn't co write it with anyone. I couldn't explain
what I wanted Pans Labyrinth. It took me six months
to find the opening image, and once I found the
opening image, I understood the whole movie. And I wrote
it in six weeks or nine weeks, something really quick.
With Frankenstein. I wrote the opening fifteen pages, and the
(30:32):
studio said, how is it going? Its fantastic because I
started writing that movie the idea for more than twenty
years ago. Yeah, I thought, this is what I'm going
to do. Yeah, and you laid the plan, and then
I wrote those fifteen pages, and I stopped until I collected.
I put the novel on the on the computer, the
entire novel, and I started taking every paragraph that I
(30:55):
liked and then discarding the ones that I thought I
had absorbed until I have nothing on the page again.
So he went through a novel that way, and then
I wrote, But it took it took a while. It
took a while too, And.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
That brings us to a monster. You know. I know
it's probably an anathematic for you to mention, but you
know mel Brooks's I love it, you know, and one
thing that one of the great do you think? So
I'm so pleased you say that because I did a
podcast with Mel No it's ninety eight now, and for me,
(31:30):
one of the beautiful things about Young Frankenstein was of
course the singing, the songs and the humor, but was
also there was nobody in that that whole trajectory that
was a bad person. No, you know everyone there's no villain,
you know. And the the loneliness of Frankenstein, you know,
and the and the creature when he just sits on
(31:52):
that rock. And so I'm glad you liked that. So
tell me about you. Why do you think it's a masterpiece.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
It is not a pastiche It was something that was
very dear to Jim Wilder first, and then to Jim
Wilder and mel Brooks second. Uh is not based so
much on Bride or the original Frankstin is based much
more on Son of Frankenstein, which, in my opinion, is
one of the great movies. It is a very very
(32:23):
good movie that few people know that the origin of
the of the assistant's name being Igor in the Original
of Frankenstein is called Fritz you know. But Son of
Frankenstein is a really interesting movie. It was done by
a director that was an improvisational director. He didn't want
to be to stick to the screenplay, so he would
(32:47):
I don't want to lie. You know, it's the last
movie where a card of plays the monster and the
director would come in the morning and and say, well,
what am we gonna do.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Let's try this, Let's try that.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
The movie went overbodgeed over schedule, but the result is
very creative, incredibly visual. A Vela Lugosi who was down
on his luck. He was out of money and Universal
didn't want to pay him well at all, and the
director said, don't worry, I'll keep you around. And he
(33:21):
kept him around for months. And the movie is one
of the three masterpieces that includes many of the part
The wardrobe that Jim Wilder has is from that movie,
The Man with the wooden arm, the constable is from
that movie. Many many of the things are from that movie.
And the score of Young Frankenstein is one of the
(33:43):
great most melancholic.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah exactly. You know.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
The composer Morris, he composed two of the most melancholic,
longing scores in the history of movies, The Elephant Man
and Young Frankenstein.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I haven't when they had it here in the West
End in London, and I know mel So we went,
you know together, and I went, but I think I
took almost everyone who worked here. I felt kind of
I just wanted to take everyone to see.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah, it's funny, but it's not is making. It's so
affectionate and affectionate.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
So tell me about your Frankenstein.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Well, but you know, there are certain tales that grow
with you and they become you, and then you can
you know, it's like a great song.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
You know, you sing on your range.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Nobody wants to sing out of their range, and there
are two or three you know, everybody gets up and
you don't want to do karaoke. Yeah, you know, and
that's why I love John Frankenstan He's not karaoke.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Is a new song by the Boys.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
You haven't heard about a thing that is universal, and
I can say that that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
What is universal?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Well, there are certain characters that are about ten twenty
characters in the history of.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Mankind's narrative at our universe. I'll tell you. For example.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
You know these are characters that, even if you haven't
read the book, you know what they mean. Dracula instantly,
Sherlock Holmes instantly, Tarzan, Pinocchio, Frankenstein.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
There are very few.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
The count of Monte Cristo and now you know the basics,
no matter if you haven't read it. You know comment
Christians about revenge. You know, Pinocchio wants to be human, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
So these few characters become the vocabulary of humanity in
the same way that certain symbols are common to all humanity.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Dragons. All cultures have dragons.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
The theory behind it anthropologically is that people combine the predators,
the mammals fear the most an eagle and a lizard
like a large alligator, and they combined them and they
became an object of fear vampirism. Not every culture, but
most of them have it. Ghosts. So these are the
(35:59):
vocabulary of humanity. And when that character is that big,
it can be rephrased and it changes value. What do
I mean by that? Romeo and Juliet, right, there is
a huge premise. I told you Romeyan and Juliet. You
say I've seen it. I said, no, no, no, no, no, wait,
it's an aphavela in Brazil. I haven't seen it in
(36:22):
nineteen sixty five, the year that they you know. And
then the specifics bring down the register of the song
and change the modulation of the song and all of
a sudden the song is new. That happens if a
thing is that personal to you and it's the same.
For example, most people say I love singing in the
(36:45):
Ring and I love that.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Song, and you say, yes, say it.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
And they know it, but they don't know that this
was the third or fourth time that song had been
in a movie since the thirties, know, and it had
never quite catched on the wave called Jim Kelly. So
in creating something like Binocchio or Frankenstein, these are things
that have been absorbed more likeularly by me. And when
(37:12):
I sing them, I hope you haven't heard that song,
you know that's the way you got it. If you
didn't have anything to add, don't get up.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, because we can as a person in the audience,
we long as you said, to hear the different you
know you're Frankenstein. If you like listening to Ruthie's Table
for would you please make sure to rate and review
the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts O wherever
(37:47):
you get your podcasts. Thank you. But when you wake
up in the morning, do you think about what you're
going to eat that day? Or when you like.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
One of the things I adore, but it's very, very
hard to find truly truly expressive is eggs. I think
eggs are one of the things that tell you the
culture of the country. The French eggs are amazing, the
best eggs in my opinion. Spanish, you know, Japanese eggs
(38:21):
are Japanese eggs.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Okay, So you're talking about the way they cook the eggs. No,
you're talking about the quality and.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
All is either musical and beautiful or dour. And I
must say, and you have to guide me in here.
I haven't had an interesting dialogue with UK eggs.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Maybe it's been very, very very.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
We could try and set up that dialogue, but it is,
you know, it's very tower I think we'll try. What
about the United States? I mean, you know that's really
if we're going to go for culture and eggs, we
have to say, have you had an omelet in New
York or no?
Speaker 3 (39:03):
That's because look, there is one of the most intimate foods.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Right an egg and egg Well, let's talk about.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
It comes from the chicken. It does the whole being
of the chicken going into it. Here we go, and
if the chicken is.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Unhappy and sad and you know whatever it is, the
egg is a really depressing egg.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
So what do you do for eggs?
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I got to friends or wait for to get lucky
and go to Spain.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
To Spain, and this is why I had really good
eggs in Mexico. You know there's the wavos divorces, wavos rancheros.
There's ways Mexicana. There's there's so many ways.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Is a poem?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Can you tell the audience what it is?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
How kill is? What you do is you chocolate tortilla.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
It can be either dry or fresh, and then you
soak it in a really good salta with onion, garlic, tomato, salt,
and you soak it until the until the chili killos
are soggy, gets soggy again. But it has to be
the perfect balance. Can be too soggy, can be too dry.
(40:17):
I don't like crisp chilla killis. They had to be
slightly soggy, and then you put them on a plate.
You put cream, cheese and a fried egg on top
and a side of fried beans. We have them, and
that's for me to be. That's what I miss the most.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Can make that? Where do you live?
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Mostly Los Angeles, uh and part part of the time
in Toronto, and you cannot get chila killers in Toronto.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
If you held the Prime Minister for ransom, you can
l a oh my lord, Yes, you can.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Have cream chili sauce. Isn't it.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Antillo so as you're gonna have domentillos, so you're gonna
have red tomato sauce. But in La I can have
every great Mexican food I need every day if I
want to, and I often do.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
When we think about food, we think about you know
what we were saying about sharing about your parents, whay
you cooked at home, about the power of deciding. And
it's also seduction. And I think in the shape of water,
what really moved me was the scene with the egg.
You know, when the beautiful woman is holding the It's
(41:34):
just a simple boiled egg, isn't it. It's just an egg.
Tell me about that scene. Can you describe that scene?
Because it is an almost it's insane. Come to me,
isn't it saying I will get this creature from the water.
That could be frightening, that could be scary with an egg,
you know, and you can see that the creature is
coming out of the water, and.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Not entirely, but entirely.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Tell me that the one thing I do every week
is I hard boiled eggs. That's my my dietary supplement
is and the only thing I cook is hard boiled eggs,
and I do it perfectly.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Okay, tell me how do you cook a hardboiled egg?
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Well, the way I like them is you boil the
water for fifteen minutes until it's really really really hot,
and then you put the eggs and you let it simmer.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Do you turn off then heat?
Speaker 3 (42:24):
You keep it simmering, keep it simmering for another fifteen
and then you turn it off, but leave them there. Yeah,
And then you grab one and you roll it and
if you can take the shell out in one single move,
then that they're good.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
And I do it every week with twenty thirty every
week and the first two days you don't want to
open the fridge because it's melt like a boiled egg.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
But and Kim hates it.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
She goes, oh my god, you're boiling eggs, and go, yeah, sorry,
but that's my favorite sort of pocket food, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
And so when you did that scene, I'm.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
The fish.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Of all I belong in water, I'm I'm a great swimmer,
good scuba diver. If I am in water all day long,
I'm happy. But also the egg is a symbol of
two things, fertility and immortality, right, And I think there
was a beautiful courtship, very succent thing with her being
(43:22):
represented by the egg. And you know she you know,
the movie opens with her putting a timer in the
shape of an egg and she has three minutes to
find pleasure in the bathtub before going to work.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
And it's a symbol of what is eternal. And for
me in the movie is you find people of relative
values except her, that are social values. The guy wants power,
the bad guy wants power, The Americans want to win
the space race, this and that. And you find a
creature that is a god, and then they chain it
(44:00):
to operate upon it. They want to kill it, they
want to make it submissive, they want to make it
a thing.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
And then at the end.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
It's revealed he is a god. So the eternal of
the egg was at play. There's a many's. The way
I tried to layer the movies is you don't have
to read them the way I write them, but I
write them very carefully in terms of symbols or organizing
the colors and the things to mean something that doesn't mean.
You have the obligation of reading it that way. And
(44:29):
that is very much like cooking and eating. When you
are an audience member in a movie theater or in
a museum with a piece of painting, you can see
the piece of painting and say I like it or
I don't like it, and then you move on to
the next one.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
If you are an educated you have an educated balette.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
You learn to see the composition, the brushstrokes, the color balance,
the point of view, the thematic elements, the rendition, et cetera,
et cetera, and have a dialogue with a painting for
an hour two hours, depending on your level of sort
of balete sophistication. Same is true with a movie.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
But I say that my husband was an architect and
many of my film friends are filmmakers, And I say,
you create a work of art and it lasts forever.
You know, if somebody doesn't like your building today, they
might understand it in a week's time or year's time
or ten years time. Or if you make a movie
(45:29):
and it got bad reviews, then we might all understand it.
It makes a work of art, and it's like in
five minutes and it's gone.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah, but I don't think it's I don't think if
ever gone. I don't think it's ever gone. A memory,
especially if it has a heavy cheese, it never leaves.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
No, No, let's talk about that, because I do think
I have had a few meals in my lifetime that
are as cherished for me as family memory.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
And I'm not excited. I'm not being hyperbolic. I mean it.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
I remember very particularly there was a soup in Albui
and north of Barcelona that was for many years the
most famous restaurant in the world.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Well, one time we went the last night last night
they were open for the season, and one of the
dishes which made me cry. It was a soup or
potato three ways. That was like you were eating a
souper potato that was your grandma, grandma's if she was
(46:34):
a chemical engineer. I'm a molecular engineer. So there was
a molecular density to it that was completely It filled you,
it moved you with caress you, it comford you, and
I cried. I am not making this up. I'm not
trying to be interesting for the podcast. I cried and
it reminded me of my childhood. It was a full
rattuy moment. And at the end of the night they said, well,
(46:59):
and they they served the dessert once a crab of
crem which means that they made a film. You know
how the milk creates that film on top that is
just cream, like a skin of cream. They would use
that to make a crap that was filled with another cream.
And they were closer and I said, did any of
(47:22):
those get left behind?
Speaker 2 (47:23):
And they said about twenty.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
And they brought them to the table and we dispose
of the cref the cream and it.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Was brilliant, genius, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Yeah, food is memory.
And so when you make a movie, and I do
want to talk for a few minutes just about lovable monsters,
because that is something that is very important to me
because it tells a lesson of life about how you
love something, as you say the other But let's just
(47:51):
get to the process of making a film and food.
Do you care about what you feed the people who
work on your set and do you mind stuck up
at lunchtime for stopping work?
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
I don't like it, like when you do it in Spain.
For example, if you should have moved in Spain, there
will be wine involved. Yeah, and that means that the
hour after the lunch is going to start really really slow,
and then you quite never quite recuperate, you know, but
if you do it.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
My favorite is what they call French howers.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
French howers. I've learned about French hour.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Ten hours, ten hours of work and that's it. You concentrate.
There's food on the set.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
But that's it.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Where are you on it? Have you finished filming it?
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Now? I finished Friday. I finished shooting.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
That's what I think. Are you going home? Then?
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah? You stayed for this?
Speaker 1 (48:39):
No? And so when will you be back?
Speaker 2 (48:41):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Depend on the ta kila, okay, but but I am
in post production.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
I caught every day.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Where will you edit it?
Speaker 2 (48:49):
I will finish anything in la and then yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
And do you eat when you're editing?
Speaker 2 (48:55):
You know? Yes? And no? I mean I have a
coffee with whatever is there.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah, And I have bowls and bowls of tangerines and
I eat the tangerines with the peel, and with the peel,
I wash them and the peel is so good.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
It is good. I sometimes eat the fruit and then
I go back to the peel. Never kind of crunch.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
In Mexico, we eat the caramelized fruit, and I love
lemons in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
How often do you go back to Mexico?
Speaker 3 (49:28):
I used to go a lot, and now my my well,
my parents are dead, and I don't like every time
I land, I feel really lonely.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
I mean, it's really difficult for me.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Even knowing that they took the train.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
And they went on, it doesn't matter because because to me,
the the parents and the kids leave a hole in
the universe. Basically part of the universe just caeesars to exist,
and there's no way you can process. That is totemic,
you know, to the point where if you lose a kid,
(50:03):
there's no word for you. There's no one you know,
if you lose her husband or a wife, you're a widow.
Or if you lose her parents, would you lose a kid,
you are you are undescribably destroyed. So you know, the
thing with my parents is, I didn't know my father died,
and I process did reasonably well, and then when my mother.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Died, I couldn't I won't do, but I can't.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Yeah, but Mexico City is on fire.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Now, you know we should go. The food is incredible,
the art is amazing.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
One of the great cities of the world, I think. So.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
People sometimes ask me where you'd like to live other
than London, the expect me to say an Italian city.
For me, Mexico. It was really powerful to me.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
It is.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
As a kid from a provincial city, which my city
was a provincial city. I still get a thrill going
to Mexico City. Still on the mornings. The smell of
the mornings in Mexico City with the wet streets.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Is incredible.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
I don't think people realize how green Mexico City. That's
the thing that really hit me was how green a
city was. The trees. I couldn't see the sky sometimes.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
And it's a city that is patterned after after Paris,
you know that.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Yeah, during the Porphyrio ideas period, the model was Paris,
the Heisman's Osmond's Paris with the large boulevards and the
big buildings, you know, and the biggest artes and the
Reformer and.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
All that Reformer.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, if you had to think of a food that
when you were needing comfort, not when you're hungry, not
when you want to celebrate, not when you want something
to eat for your kids. Is there something that gives
you comfort?
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Yes, it's such a cliche. Refried beans beans?
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, is it a cliche.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
It is a little bit. I have it.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
I mean it's to me and they are not one thing.
Like there are at least ten ways of have a
refright being. Tell me one way that I like that
I only drive once in a in a little stand
in Mexico City. Is they mix them with lentils. Lentils
(52:22):
and refraed beans together. And it was so fantastic. If
you try it in the restaurant, then call them beans.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Okay, we will, We'll call the beans. Thank you. It
was a beautiful interview.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Well, darling, darling, thank you. Oh you get, you get?
But yeah, no, I'll have a lunch while Are you
kidding me?
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Do we have more glasses? Come? You have some more?
Do you guys want to tequila
Host
Ruth Rogers
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