March 31, 2025 • 36 mins
My friend Glenn Close brought Rian Johnson to the River Cafe when they were filming Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out movie. For the rest of the summer, he was what we call a regular.
Yesterday, sending me photos of her new grandson, these were Glenn’s words: ‘Working with Rian is the highlight of my career. He wrote a great script, cast an amazing stable of actors and set us on a sublime adventure together. Rian is a master storyteller who makes work both serious and wildly fun. I am honoured to call him a friend’.
In today’s episode, Rian and I are here at the River Cafe to talk about family and friends, movies and food, his father's influence on his career, and his earliest film memory: being put in the car to see Star Wars, aged five. It's going to be serious and, hopefully, wildly fun.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
My friend Glenn Close brought Ryan Johnson to the River
Cafe where they were filming Wake Up Dead Men, the
third Knives Out movie, and for the rest of the
summer he was what we call a regular yesterday sending
me photos of her new grandson. These were her words, Ruthie.
Working with Ryan is a highlight of my career. He
(00:25):
wrote a great script, cast an amazing stable of actors,
and set us on a sublime adventure together. Ryan is
a master storyteller who makes work both serious and wildly fun.
I am honored to call him a friend. Well, if
a friend of mine says that about a friend of hers,
I do believe her. Family is crucial to Ryan. He
(00:47):
talks movingly about his father's influence on his career. His
earliest film memory being put in the car by him
to go see Star Wars Age five.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah must have been yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah. We're here together at the River Cafe to talk
about family and friends, movies and food. It's going to
be serious and hopefully wildly fun. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Thank you for that beautiful introduction. I owe Glenn a
big hug.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I think the first time you came came with Glynn,
did we might?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I think I might have been here a few times,
but that's one of the first times we really connected.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah. Yeah, when we had Sunday lunch and we kept
trying to have other times, watched the World Cup together.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I'm all right and family family.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, and you're here now with your family. Tell you,
tell me what you're doing in London.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
So we finished shooting and cutting together the movie Wake
Up deed mannon right now.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
We're recording the score.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
So we're at Abbey Road and my cousin Nathan, who's
my composer, and we've been making movies together since we
were ten years old.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
He's here because we're at Abbey Road, and because.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I'm really close to my extended family, including my aunts
and uncles and two of my uncles who really kind
of gave Nathan and I sort of a real love
of music growing up. I brought them out with us.
The music that I keep coming back to in my
life is mostly stuff that they were playing, you know,
when I was when I was a kid, it was
(02:11):
mostly kind of like the folk crock era of like
you know, a lot of Jonny Mitchell, a lot of
Neil Young lot. It was kind of that era of
sort of of post hippie sort of sort of full crock.
But yeah, and my dad also, that was a big
connecting point.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I think that music stays with you for the rest
of your life. Somebody said that buying music, you mostly
buy your music between the ages of seventeen and say
twenty two, and that's the music that stays with you.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
It imprints. I think so.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
And there's I think there's an argument to me made
that everything that most of kind of the major taste
things in your life end up getting set kind of
you know, before you're fifteen. I think that early stuff
that sitting in the back of the car with your
dad and with whatever song was on that that you know,
the forms, forms, the grooves.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I think, could you've recorded them anywhere or was it
important to you to come back to London.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, we've done the past few movies at Abbey Road
and it's just it's a really special place for a
lot of reasons, but also a lot of the people
that Nathan works with are out here and we just
know the musicians are so good and it's also it's
a it's you know, it's a treat.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yes, that's why I'm here. Really, the podcasts score while
we're here, while we're here.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It is amazing. It's so exciting to see how many
movies are being made in England at the moment.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And the cruise are so wonderful British Cruis.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
It's so so true. It feels like making a family
movie kind of in the best way. My experiences, including
Star Wars, which was a huge production, but it's still
everybody in it cared so much. And when I did it,
I kind of chalked that up to, well, is it
because we're making a Star Wars movie and everyone.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Grew up with it?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
But then being here again making this movie, I was like,
oh no, this is just everyone's just stoked.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Did you grow up thinking that food and work, in
school and life was that part of your family? Was
it all integrated into a home life. Did you sit
down for dinner most nights?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
You know, we did, That's one thing. We did, sit
down for dinner every single night. And my mom would
always cook. Her dad was Italian and her mom was
a really good cook, and most of my childhood kitchen
memories are from.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
My mom's mom.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
But she wasn't Italian.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
No, she wasn't Italian.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
She was Oh is she she was? I think mostly yeah, British.
But she would make pies and she would make Yeah,
she was a very good cook. And so most of
my sitting in the sitting in the kitchen memories are
from her. Did she live nearby, No, she lived in Illinois.
So we would go to like Mondaline, Mundoline, Illinois, which
is a little suburb in Illinois. It's also where I
(04:54):
got My uncle had a pizza place called Pizza Toni,
and that's where I got introduced like thin crust, thin
crust pizza. Yeah, and it was the most delicious thing
I'd ever taste.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I was just like, oh, that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
You would come from Maryland or from la.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So I was born in Maryland, but we were only
there for like a year or two. I don't really
have any Maryland memories really. I was a kid in Colorado, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, it's where my dad's family. You're never in Englewood.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I went to school in Carbondale.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It was very kind of a school on a ranch. Oh,
kind of one of those very liberal schools where they
thought education was part of the academic and the restree
road horses and you know made it was really it
was good.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah I missed that. Do you miss the mountains?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I miss the mountains, Yeah, I do. The summer in
the mountains I was sometimes, you know, you could keep
the beach and see the flowers and the mountains.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I do find myself craving. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I got to get up to the mountains every once
in a while, even though I don't really ski anymore.
But yeah, I don't know, there's something about it. It's
growing up there. You do just kind of start craving it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, So tell me more about the food. So you
had your grandmother's food when you went to visit her,
to visit her, did your mom work did she have No,
my mom didn't work. She worked because she had kids.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
But yeah, yeah, yeah she worked a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
But how many were there?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So I'm the oldest, and I have two younger brothers,
and after two younger brothers, a younger half brother and
then a younger sister.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So that's a lot. It's a lot. Well, I have
a big of a big family.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Also, I'm the eldest of like forty cousins, and I'm
as close to some of my cousins as I am
to my brothers and sisters, and we're a very very close.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Big family.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
My grandparents on my dad's side would put the effort
in to get the whole family together for vacations, and
so we'd have these and we would also make movies together.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
We'd make family movies together. So I would just not.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Movies of the family, but you'd actually have a plot,
have a plot.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Oh, yeah, we always the director, I will.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, I would always, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
I would always.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Basically they would the poor kids would spend their whole
vacation being like conscripted into service making making these.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
These stupid little It was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Who wrote them?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
We didn't.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
That was what was fun. Is like, so is really
me and Nathan and we didn't Nathan tonight, He's coming tonight.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, who's now? Dud does the music.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
And we would just have an idea, let's do like
a James Bond parody or something, and we would write
it as we shot, and we would edit in camera
and so which I did a lot of shorts in
high school that way, and I think that that's a
great way to learn because it also teaches you editing
at the same time. It's it just teaches you kind
of storytelling with a camera.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
And this is what year, What year?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Boy?
Speaker 3 (07:45):
So I was in grade school up through kind of
the mid eighties basically.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
So this is pre digital editing.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's pre digital, pre digital editing.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
We were shooting with I mean my first my early
movies in junior high I did get a super ereat camera,
but I also had it was right around when compact
video like high eight was like the new format, and
so you could have a camquarder that wasn't huge and
have kind of a mini format, and I mean the
quality was nothing compared to what's in our phones right now,
(08:20):
but it was it was pretty good.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And so I made a lot of movies with that.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
We have a Ryan Johnson film Fest.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
My god, I went subjective that I went subjected.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
When you watch them, do you think they're funny?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I think they're funny because they have my family in them.
But I went and subject you to.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
The River Cafe. We could put a big screen outside,
but the food was part of your Was it important
because it seems important to you know, it seems like
it's important to say the way you eat and the way.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, I mean it wasn't. That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
It's not like I grew up in like a family
where it was all about the food. But my dad
and my dad was a tell me about your dad.
So my dad, who Yeah, he passed away just a
few months before I was offered the Star Wars movie.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
So he passed away.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
He was too young, he was in his early sixties. Yeah, yeah, oh,
thank you. Really, every experience you have, you do kind
of filter it through. Boy, what would my dad feel like?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Like?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I imagine if my dad had been around when we
were making the Star Wars movie, he would have camped
out on said I would have never He would have
been just there every single day. And yeah, he got
to see me kind of become sort of someone who
could make movies for a living. And he got to
see us making Looper, which was kind of my first
(09:41):
like bigger movie.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
But he loved.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I think he really wanted to make movies. Honestly, he
was such a ham. I think he wanted to be
an actor. But I can just like I just think about, Yeah,
what it would have been like if he had been
around for Star Wars or for these murder mysteries. And
I also think about what parts he would have demanded
that I write for.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Been in.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It would have been bigger and bigger parts.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, I'm sure in Star Wars he would want to
be like on the deck of a star destroyer or something.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Or like yeah, but uh, but I love it. I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
It's uh, it's something that yeah, anyone who's is yeah,
lost a parent, you know, so it's a long journey.
It's not something you kind of go through and get
out of. It's something that just, uh, it's part of
the road for the rest of your life, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It is.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Food wise, he was a He wasn't a gourmet. He
was a Gormand would he cook. He would cook, Yeah,
and he would cook extravagantly. He would He had a
like if he was making ribs and making like a
barbecue sauce, he would put every spice that he had.
And he made a thing called bunny cake, which he
(10:48):
would basically make a chocolate cake that had all the
chocolate you can imagine it, plus molten Snickers bars. And
it was just this molten, just heap of semi li
If I congealed chocolate and the motto was nobody likes it,
but everybody eats it. But that was just anything he did,
he was going to do the most of it and
(11:10):
and then include food, and then include eating. And it's
not this not not the best and not a refined
version of it. But he loved food though, like my
dad would just pick up from the local rib joints.
It would come home and just like way too much food.
And yeah, but but he could be a really really
fun guy and he was a big guy in every
(11:31):
in every way.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Did you put him in your childhood movie?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I put him in so the one, the one movie that, uh,
this was my dad on the set of Looper in
his costume. I'll send you the picture. Oh yeah, yeah,
well yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He got to get shot in the face by Bruce
Willis in the movie. So it was the highlight of
his of his life.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
He was so happy. He was like he was.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Survived or did he die from shot?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
He died? He gets shot on the face. That yeah
was the first. What was your first?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Just tell us the trajectory from going from the Super
eight movies and the editing to your first movie. Well,
did you go to film school?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I did. I went to USC.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I got rejected like six times from USC and became
an English major.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I mean, you got rejected from even going.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
There, from the film from the films.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So but there was no place else I wanted to go,
So I went undeclared and kept applying. And I mean
my grades were terrible in high school because I was
just making movie.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, yeah, Do you think that a film school might
have recognized that?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Maybe, yeah, I guess. I also I also get it though,
because they, I mean USC, you know, they take a
really limited amount of people.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
They have so many applicants.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But I did end up getting in and like did
an undergrad program there and then graduated, and I wrote.
I wrote a script for what ended up being my
first movie, which was this weird kind of sort of
the Maltese Falcon style mystery but in an American high school.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Oh it's called Brick.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And I wrote it right out of college and basically
spent my twenties broke in LA hating Los Angeles and
failing to get my movie made, and just kind of
working day jobs.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
And I got I was lucky at.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Some of the day jobs.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I had some market a restaurant, no I never did.
I want that was a dream.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I kept applying and I never got working at a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
But I had some really good, great day jobs.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Actually I worked at a preschool for deaf kids called
the John Tracy Clinic that's in LA and I was
kind of their av guy. And I worked at the
Disney Channel producing promos just kind of yeah, really really
good jobs is really with really lovely people. But the
whole time I was just trying to get my first movie.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Made and how did that happen?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
So after years and years of it almost coming together
and falling apart, and I finally I met my producer,
Rom Bergman, who is still my producer today, and he
didn't find the money, but he said, look, you're the
way that most people go about trying to make their
first movie is they get a budget for their script
and someone tells them your movie is going to cost
(14:10):
three million dollars and they think, oh, I need to
and so then you end up never getting three million dollars.
And so Rom said, look, this is a very weird script.
I think it's really good, but it's very strange. The
only way this will work is if you have control
over it. So you need to just figure out how
much money you can get together, and then that's your budget,
(14:30):
and then you'll make figure out how to make the
movie for that. So that's what we did, and it
was my family kind of because they're in the home
building business. They had had just a big deal just
go through, so they had some cash to invest and
they made a very stupid investment. So well, investing independent
film money. It ended up doing well. Yeah, it ended
(14:51):
up being a very good investment, But investing in that
indie film, I mean, God bless them.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, So I was just going to ask you a question,
how did it relate to them? Because I love the
multie Feltonist movie. Was it the same sort of?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, it's a genre.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
So it's basically taking a dashal Hammet like mystery, hard
boiled mystery, and just setting it in the modern high school.
But all the kids talk like they're in dashal Hammet,
and so they all talk in this weird are the
sounds insufferable? I think it actually kind of kind of
works on the screen, but it's but yeah, so it's
basically just a straight up like hard boiled mystery, but
(15:29):
set in the high school.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It's a very weird hybrid, but it kind of works.
I think.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Does you film it in black and white?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
No, we filmed it in color, but a lot of
people who like saw it when it came out will
come up to me and say how much they loved
the black and white cinematography. So people remember it in
black and white sometimes when they've seen it.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, Dashal Hammett. We were talking about him the other night.
Oh yeah, yeah, she went to jail. Not name me names,
didn't he?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
I think he was blacklisted, so on the whole thing.
I know that he was a Pinkerton detective.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I know, the McCarthy era when they yeah, people you know,
had to testify before the House and American Activities.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, he refused.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I think he was.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
He was on the refuse he was. I mean, he
was fascinating. His writing, Oh my god. I love his
right and his right.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I think people kind of confuse him with Wish Chandler
and with sort of I love Chandler too, but Chandler
has those kind of long metaphors and kind of like
descriptive passages and Hamlets like him away. He's sparse and
just like hard cut, and I love his writing.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Man.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, But I made that movie, and then because I
had connected with Rom, we just kind of kept making
movies together. And some of them, some of them didn't
do good, some of them did good, but we were
able to keep piecing them together and uh, and we
were able to keep creative control.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I was.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I was able to just to always write the next
movie I wanted to make, and then make it pretty
much how I wanted to make it. I've been really,
really lucky in that regard.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
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(17:24):
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Speaker 3 (17:32):
Now, I've never really been in a situation where I've
been told what to cut and what not to cut
in a movie. But then the reality is you get
to the end of the process, you've lost all perspective
on it, and you're just driving yourself insane, not knowing
what to what to cut. So you do it, I mean,
(17:52):
getting some kind of friction. It's never good to have
your hand forced, but getting your go to I have
a lot of good filmmaker friends who I show it too,
and then I have just trusted people who are close
to me that I show it too.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But it's hard. It's tough because.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
You, I know, it's like you walk out of a
movie with even your closest, smartest friends, like another just
a random movie in a movie theater, and some one
of them will say something where you just do a
double take and say, that's completely the opposite of my experience.
So you kind of you don't want to dismiss any
note you don't agree with, because yeah, there might be
something there, but you also need to remember that. And
(18:28):
when you're so lost at sea in the editing process,
the temptation to just grab something solid if it's somebody's
opinion can be So I don't trying to.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Get better at restaurant. Yeah, it's no comparison to is
just cooking the meal. But having an open kitchen, you
can watch people, you can see their response. You can
show them. Sometimes they're going like, now, how much.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Do you do the chefs watch.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
People something back and if you believe in it, yeah,
you know, if I believe in what I cooked or
what we're serving, then it can be somebody's opinion. If
you have sometimes doubts or if somebody says it's too salty,
that's really important. But it's all about feedback, isn't it.
It's how you give the feedback. Even when I eat here,
(19:17):
do I if I had a great meal, do I go?
Or if I have something that I didn't think was
quite right and they're working and last night I was
in the kitchen, but now I'm sitting down, Do I
want to go and tell them it doesn't feel right?
But then if you say that was a great meal,
and then the next day you come in you said,
you know what I told you, it was a great meal. Actually,
(19:37):
it's always how you give that feedback.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Tough thing.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
The only thing worse than getting feedback from friends is
giving feedback to friends.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
How do you deal with that?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
It's hard, I mean, it's I'm also like I'm not.
There are some people I think who love conflict. I
don't love coming and so. But at the same time,
especially if I'm close enough with the person, and I'll
always I think if you can be honest, if you
can not tell them like what they you think they
should do with it, but if you can be honest
(20:09):
in a way you can see, we'll be constructive in
terms of or I guess being honest about your experience
of it is always helpful.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I think that's one of the reasons I quite like
having my family here. Yeah, they will say if I
call it my son, I said, as the spin I said,
how is your lunch in the River Cafe on Sunday?
Said they had a really good time. I go, oh,
was that bad?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
The weather was lovely?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Oh it was that bad? Okay, now you can.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Tell me I was, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I was sitting in the backstage like after a play
to meet an actor, and another one of the actors
was there, and their family came in to like and
just seeing the play, and their mother.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
The actor's mother was like, oh, yeah, how'd you enjoyed?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Great?
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And there was a pause and the mom said, the
seats were so much more comfortable than the last show
they did.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It was just very I don't know, if they just
redid them or I was I was, I was, Yeah,
I was melting. I was melting into a puddle. Yeah,
your mom, Yeah, she's got the right.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Are you critical about food?
Speaker 3 (21:13):
I can be, But I think I think, I'm I mean,
my wife I think has a much more refined palette
than me. I'm I tell you, I'm a little bit
of my father's son. If something's delicious, I'm just all
hap Yeah. And also but also I'm kind of like
that with movies too, Like I tend to walk into
a movie kind of very on the movie's side usually,
and I do the same thing with meals. Usually something's
(21:35):
got to really smack me in the face for me,
that's really nice.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So tell me about Star Wars, because we were going
from making these films having success and then going to what,
I mean, what does Star Wars meant to you as
a child who your father took you to the first
first one?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I think beyond even the movies.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
I think for people who were kids when they were
coming out, the toys meant that the ubiquity of the
toys meant that the worlds that you were creating in
your own imagination at home were in that world of
Star Wars. I think that's a big part of why
it's so powerful, in addition to the films. I mean,
but the one two punch of that, so so yeah,
Star Wars for me was, you know, it's all the
(22:16):
cliches of of dudes my age of just how Star
Wars was, you know, beyond movies. It was really kind
of closer to a mythology that I grew up with,
and it meant the world to me. And and I
had I had been kind of committed to I'm just
going to write and direct my own things, and they had,
especially after me I made Looper, which was kind of
(22:38):
a science fiction thing. There were other like franchise stuff
that like came came knocking, and there were always bigger movies.
And I had always just kind of said, nah, I
think I'm just going to stick to the path of
making my own stuff. But then when Star Wars came around, Yeah,
it's a not for you can't refuse, and you.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Came here to do it.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, came the time you loved No.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I actually I had made films of the second movie
I did, which was a con Man movie.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
That very few people saw. It's called the Brothers Bloom.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
It was Adrian Brody was in it and and Rachel
Weis and Mark Ruffalo is a really good cast. But
we were in Eastern Europe, so I we shot that
came out in two thousand and seven or eight, so
it was like two thousand and six that we were
shooting that. Yeah, but we were over in Eastern Europe
for that I had shot overseas, but that was that.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It was food.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Did you eat?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
I ate?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I remember.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
So we were based in Belgrade in Serbia, and we
traveled around, but we were truly a traveling circus. We
went to Montenegro, and we went to through Romania, rural Romania.
We had like two days in Prague, we had Croatia,
and so we were all over the place. And then
during that shoot I ended up meeting and falling in
love with the girl who has with for a few years,
(23:58):
who was Serbian. She was from Belgrade, so through her
and her family, I then got to kind of really experience,
you know, I don't know, I got.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
A real taste for Serbian food. It's delicious.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I think I do not know is about Serbian food.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Serbian food, I mean it's it's very meat based and
it's very meat and potatoes literally, and it's delicious.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
It's very flavorful, and it's such.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
A I don't know that it's all about big groups
and eating in big groups, and so it's food that
can just kind of be served and so I don't know,
it's delicious though.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I ended up really liking it. I love Belgrade. I
love that.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
I've never had a bigger gap between my first impression
of a city and how I end up feeling it
because you go it's it's not I mean, it's a
it's a city that really reveals its beauty to you
the longer you're there, I think. And it is a
really beautiful city with a lot of life to it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I really love it.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Do you think that immersion in the family making a
personal for you? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Absolutely, Yeah, Yeah, that's what does it.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I think you try create them now and you go
to to when you came to film.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
We we do.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
It's It was funny, especially with these like Knives Out movies,
because they're ensemble casts and because on the first one
we had through Jamie Lee Curtis was kind of the
spearhead of it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
She really got.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Everyone just hanging out on set, and so we had
kind of a taste of what it's like when you
have an ensemble cast and they all like each other
and hang out together.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And so on Glass Onion, which was the second Knives.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
That movie we shot in Greece and then in Belgrade,
and because it was during the tail end of the pandemic,
we were all isolated together and so we all got
really close and so at the end of the day shooting,
we would rent out just the bar at the top
of the hotel and just go up and have have
dance parties.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, Wess Anderson doesn't it with his films you talk
to you about, you know that they go out in
the evening. Yeah, your team and be together.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
It's so unique the way that he does it. I
find it really really interesting. And yeah, I think there's
nobody who really makes movies the way. I mean, both
in terms of the movies themselves, but the process sounds. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Are you going to Paris from here?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Phibission. You know that's just opened and it's all the costumes.
I've just seen slides of it, but it would probably
be worth going. So when you go to Paris, do
you think about what you're going to eat.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Oh, that's all I think about.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Do you tell me what are you thinking?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
I mean, so, my wife and I have spent a
lot of time in Paris, and yeah, we have like
a little place there and so we it's kind of.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Where is it.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
It's in the sixth but it's not in San Truman.
It's down south of the Luxembourg Garden, so basically it's
on the border of modern parnask it's stumbling distance from
the closery to Leila, and it's it's right.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Next to like Dome.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
It's it's right by l Duke, which is one of
our favorite spots.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Cafe Select.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
It's right by Like it's really fun because you like,
you know, it's the stuff where if you read a
Somerset mom book, it's all the places they were hanging
out right down the street. So so yeah, I have
especially because I'm taking my uncles and my aunts. I've
got yeah, I got dinners, I got well, I'm taking
taking them to the Duke. Garmo is going to be
(27:20):
there at the same time. So he's like, oh and
he's he's booked like three different the lunches for yeah,
and I did it and I brought tequila because I
wanted him to try the one that I liked, and
he brought to kill By the end of the uh
a little.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Bit, where's the really, where's the tequila? I didn't get?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Why don't you get tell me? That's right.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I'll take it. Posture is my Tequila's right.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
So that's nice that I love to be in Paris
for just a few days.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
The River Cafe, when you said lunch, is now running
from Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking on www. Rivercafe
dot co dot uk or give us a call. So
how long does it take to make Apostle? How long
does it take to make a movie? Right? Just see
(28:18):
the results? You put the water on your thing, and
you've got a work of art.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
You know, But like I gotta say, the simplicity of it? Okay.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
So Taglia Italy with asparagus and parmesan serves six or
one director one point five kilograms sprew asparagus six hundred
grams Tagli Italy, two undergrams freshly grated parmesan, one garblet, clothed,
peeled and crushed, four hundred milliliters cremfresh two large free
(28:51):
range egg yolks, which would be a problem in the
States right now.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, yeah, eggs, eggs.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
We haven't touched on the.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yeah, which has been a nice conversation. To rub the
crushed garlic around the surface of the small pan. Add
the cram fresh parmesan, and egg yolks. Place the pan
on top of another pan of hot water, stirring gently
until the sauce thickens for about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Season well and keep warm. Okay, that's good to know
(29:21):
that you do a double because the sauce was already
made when I was there.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Just regulate the heat. You can do it on a
you know, you can do it on a very low heat,
really low.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Prepare the asparagus. Snap off the tough ends of the stems,
keeping only the tender parts. Slice the stems and tips
thinly and diagonally. That thin slice on the asparagus is
so important to the dish. It makes the experisy guess
almost like feel like the ribbons of the pasta. Bring
a large saucepan of salted water to a boil salted water,
(29:56):
like really salted, and add the tagliate. Cook for one minute,
then add the asparagus and continue to cook until the
pasta and asparagus are al Dante drain in place in
a warm serving bowl, toss well sort of immediately, will you?
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Will you afford that to me?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
You can take it home, Take this home, take it.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I feel bad if I don't finish it. But I
also just I have dinner eating.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Tell us how you made it, Tell me about it.
What did what did they do?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That's what's magic to me, alright.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
So they had the blanched asparagus and they had the
pasta that Ross had made like twenty minutes ago. I
didn't realize it was so so so fresh. I figured
you kind of pre batched it, made it all in
the morning. But he makes it during the day. Put
them both in the water together, very very salty, almost
sea water, just cooked it for a couple of minutes,
(30:48):
and then put it in the sauce, mixed it up,
put it back on the heat, let it kind of
warm up and heat in the sauce.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
And it's just one. It's I've been wolfing this. It's
so good.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
And pasta is amazing. The asparagus is like an extension
of the pasta.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
It's like so yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Think it's interesting when you add something to a pasta
that you add meat, or you can add peas, or
you can add fish, but you sort of want it
not to weigh down the pasta, don't you. So the
idea of actually making asparagus almost as thin as the
tag it Telly, or when we have you know, porcini
mushrooms in the autumn make the pasta bit thicker, right,
(31:30):
so I can hold it.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Well, that's what's so great about that, the balance of it,
the fact that this this thinly sliced asparagus that's been
blanched and then cooked again with the pasta, and so
it's soft. It's almost like a fresh pasta of its own. Yeah,
it's really good.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Have you ever made fresh pasta?
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah? So I was actually as telling you Ross.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
My wife Krana and I we have because it's.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
We have a on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
We'll sometimes do pasta Palooza and will make click three
different kinds of fresh pasta.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Really, she's the cook.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And so I can I bake, I can follow, I
can follow instructions and I can bake. She can take
a look at the pantry and say, oh we have
this and this and this and put together.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
And she also she worked in New York.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
She worked at a pasta factory.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
In her twenties. So, yeah, can.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You describe a food scene in one of your movies?
Speaker 3 (32:25):
There's dinner and knives out. It's funny. I haven't like, yeah,
you're calling me out. I haven't had like a.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
True like next movie. Yeah, you're inspiring an onion in
your title.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
A knife title behind the curve. The next one will
be plates plates on and we'll here live out a
murder the river.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Okay, yeah, could this is.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Not me that was obviously gonna go ahead, going to
be scared of death.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
That pizza oven, Yeah, the pizza, we could do it.
Why not?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
The body and the pizza.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
It is quite dramatic. A kitchen, you know, a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Is full of sharp secrets.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, people, You never know what people are saying at
their table or what they're there.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
I can see this coming together.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
River Cafe, Liver Cafe.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
I like the idea. Do you think Dashel Hammett would
have liked the River Cafe? I think quite simple.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I feel I get a feeling.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Do we have an idea of what's next.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Well, I've done like three of these.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
I've had such a good time making these three movies,
and this last one is very different than the previous two,
so it's been really wonderful. At the same time, i've
done three in a row. I kind of feel like
I should do maybe totally different.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, something you're talking about that the other night, how
musical In the early days of cinema that everybody knew
how to sing and dance, even James Cagney, right, you know,
and people who our cable and they danced, and they
Christopher Walking, Christopher Walking.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We have our song and dance men still around. But
you're right.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
It's although I feel a little bit it's funny because
my buddy Joseph Gordon Levitt is can sing and dance.
Channing Tatum obviously, is it really good? I mean, there
are there are people out there who yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
But yeah, yeah, no song and dance man.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Why not, let's song and dance. So now we're going
to go and eat. But before we do, we always have,
you know, the thought that if food is something that
makes you less hungry, if it's a way of getting
your kids around the table, if like your father, it's
a memory of him being so present and so enthusiastic,
so generous. It also is comfort, So you know, I
(34:43):
hope you don't need comfort very often, but if you
did need to eat to make you feel better, is
there a food you would go to?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah, it's pasta.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
It is pasta.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, it's pasta.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
There's something about about how flavorful it is, about how
this warm gentle, I don't know. And also when you're
full on pasta, it feels like.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Just like a warm hug, like.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Nothing quite like having being truly truly sated after a
pasta meal. So yeah, pasta is my it would would
that would be that's going to be my death row?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, when I'm on deathrow?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
No, no, no, I don't like that question.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
No, I don't like what it would.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Be your last meal? Or what would you do if
you knew you were going to die the next day?
Speaker 1 (35:29):
It's comfort. That's a better way of putting especially right now.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
You're never going to die.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I'm so happy to hear it from you.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, finally say that to the end.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I've suspected this.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
I really want to thank you, and you're never going
to die.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I'm so happy. This is great.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
You good now I love you too. Thank you good,
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
My friend Glenn Close brought Ryan Johnson to the River
Cafe where they were filming Wake Up Dead Men, the
third Knives Out movie, and for the rest of the
summer he was what we call a regular yesterday sending
me photos of her new grandson. These were her words, Ruthie.
Working with Ryan is a highlight of my career. He
(00:25):
wrote a great script, cast an amazing stable of actors,
and set us on a sublime adventure together. Ryan is
a master storyteller who makes work both serious and wildly fun.
I am honored to call him a friend. Well, if
a friend of mine says that about a friend of hers,
I do believe her. Family is crucial to Ryan. He
(00:47):
talks movingly about his father's influence on his career. His
earliest film memory being put in the car by him
to go see Star Wars Age five.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah must have been yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah. We're here together at the River Cafe to talk
about family and friends, movies and food. It's going to
be serious and hopefully wildly fun. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Thank you for that beautiful introduction. I owe Glenn a
big hug.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I think the first time you came came with Glynn,
did we might?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I think I might have been here a few times,
but that's one of the first times we really connected.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah. Yeah, when we had Sunday lunch and we kept
trying to have other times, watched the World Cup together.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I'm all right and family family.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, and you're here now with your family. Tell you,
tell me what you're doing in London.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
So we finished shooting and cutting together the movie Wake
Up deed mannon right now.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
We're recording the score.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
So we're at Abbey Road and my cousin Nathan, who's
my composer, and we've been making movies together since we
were ten years old.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
He's here because we're at Abbey Road, and because.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I'm really close to my extended family, including my aunts
and uncles and two of my uncles who really kind
of gave Nathan and I sort of a real love
of music growing up. I brought them out with us.
The music that I keep coming back to in my
life is mostly stuff that they were playing, you know,
when I was when I was a kid, it was
(02:11):
mostly kind of like the folk crock era of like
you know, a lot of Jonny Mitchell, a lot of
Neil Young lot. It was kind of that era of
sort of of post hippie sort of sort of full crock.
But yeah, and my dad also, that was a big
connecting point.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I think that music stays with you for the rest
of your life. Somebody said that buying music, you mostly
buy your music between the ages of seventeen and say
twenty two, and that's the music that stays with you.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
It imprints. I think so.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
And there's I think there's an argument to me made
that everything that most of kind of the major taste
things in your life end up getting set kind of
you know, before you're fifteen. I think that early stuff
that sitting in the back of the car with your
dad and with whatever song was on that that you know,
the forms, forms, the grooves.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I think, could you've recorded them anywhere or was it
important to you to come back to London.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, we've done the past few movies at Abbey Road
and it's just it's a really special place for a
lot of reasons, but also a lot of the people
that Nathan works with are out here and we just
know the musicians are so good and it's also it's
a it's you know, it's a treat.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yes, that's why I'm here. Really, the podcasts score while
we're here, while we're here.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It is amazing. It's so exciting to see how many
movies are being made in England at the moment.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And the cruise are so wonderful British Cruis.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
It's so so true. It feels like making a family
movie kind of in the best way. My experiences, including
Star Wars, which was a huge production, but it's still
everybody in it cared so much. And when I did it,
I kind of chalked that up to, well, is it
because we're making a Star Wars movie and everyone.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Grew up with it?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
But then being here again making this movie, I was like,
oh no, this is just everyone's just stoked.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Did you grow up thinking that food and work, in
school and life was that part of your family? Was
it all integrated into a home life. Did you sit
down for dinner most nights?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
You know, we did, That's one thing. We did, sit
down for dinner every single night. And my mom would
always cook. Her dad was Italian and her mom was
a really good cook, and most of my childhood kitchen
memories are from.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
My mom's mom.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
But she wasn't Italian.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
No, she wasn't Italian.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
She was Oh is she she was? I think mostly yeah, British.
But she would make pies and she would make Yeah,
she was a very good cook. And so most of
my sitting in the sitting in the kitchen memories are
from her. Did she live nearby, No, she lived in Illinois.
So we would go to like Mondaline, Mundoline, Illinois, which
is a little suburb in Illinois. It's also where I
(04:54):
got My uncle had a pizza place called Pizza Toni,
and that's where I got introduced like thin crust, thin
crust pizza. Yeah, and it was the most delicious thing
I'd ever taste.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I was just like, oh, that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
You would come from Maryland or from la.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So I was born in Maryland, but we were only
there for like a year or two. I don't really
have any Maryland memories really. I was a kid in Colorado, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, it's where my dad's family. You're never in Englewood.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I went to school in Carbondale.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It was very kind of a school on a ranch. Oh,
kind of one of those very liberal schools where they
thought education was part of the academic and the restree
road horses and you know made it was really it
was good.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah I missed that. Do you miss the mountains?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I miss the mountains, Yeah, I do. The summer in
the mountains I was sometimes, you know, you could keep
the beach and see the flowers and the mountains.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I do find myself craving. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I got to get up to the mountains every once
in a while, even though I don't really ski anymore.
But yeah, I don't know, there's something about it. It's
growing up there. You do just kind of start craving it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, So tell me more about the food. So you
had your grandmother's food when you went to visit her,
to visit her, did your mom work did she have No,
my mom didn't work. She worked because she had kids.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
But yeah, yeah, yeah she worked a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
But how many were there?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So I'm the oldest, and I have two younger brothers,
and after two younger brothers, a younger half brother and
then a younger sister.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So that's a lot. It's a lot. Well, I have
a big of a big family.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Also, I'm the eldest of like forty cousins, and I'm
as close to some of my cousins as I am
to my brothers and sisters, and we're a very very close.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Big family.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
My grandparents on my dad's side would put the effort
in to get the whole family together for vacations, and
so we'd have these and we would also make movies together.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
We'd make family movies together. So I would just not.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Movies of the family, but you'd actually have a plot,
have a plot.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Oh, yeah, we always the director, I will.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, I would always, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
I would always.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Basically they would the poor kids would spend their whole
vacation being like conscripted into service making making these.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
These stupid little It was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Who wrote them?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
We didn't.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
That was what was fun. Is like, so is really
me and Nathan and we didn't Nathan tonight, He's coming tonight.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, who's now? Dud does the music.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
And we would just have an idea, let's do like
a James Bond parody or something, and we would write
it as we shot, and we would edit in camera
and so which I did a lot of shorts in
high school that way, and I think that that's a
great way to learn because it also teaches you editing
at the same time. It's it just teaches you kind
of storytelling with a camera.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
And this is what year, What year?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Boy?
Speaker 3 (07:45):
So I was in grade school up through kind of
the mid eighties basically.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
So this is pre digital editing.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's pre digital, pre digital editing.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
We were shooting with I mean my first my early
movies in junior high I did get a super ereat camera,
but I also had it was right around when compact
video like high eight was like the new format, and
so you could have a camquarder that wasn't huge and
have kind of a mini format, and I mean the
quality was nothing compared to what's in our phones right now,
(08:20):
but it was it was pretty good.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And so I made a lot of movies with that.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
We have a Ryan Johnson film Fest.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
My god, I went subjective that I went subjected.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
When you watch them, do you think they're funny?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I think they're funny because they have my family in them.
But I went and subject you to.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
The River Cafe. We could put a big screen outside,
but the food was part of your Was it important
because it seems important to you know, it seems like
it's important to say the way you eat and the way.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, I mean it wasn't. That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
It's not like I grew up in like a family
where it was all about the food. But my dad
and my dad was a tell me about your dad.
So my dad, who Yeah, he passed away just a
few months before I was offered the Star Wars movie.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
So he passed away.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
He was too young, he was in his early sixties. Yeah, yeah, oh,
thank you. Really, every experience you have, you do kind
of filter it through. Boy, what would my dad feel like?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Like?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I imagine if my dad had been around when we
were making the Star Wars movie, he would have camped
out on said I would have never He would have
been just there every single day. And yeah, he got
to see me kind of become sort of someone who
could make movies for a living. And he got to
see us making Looper, which was kind of my first
(09:41):
like bigger movie.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
But he loved.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I think he really wanted to make movies. Honestly, he
was such a ham. I think he wanted to be
an actor. But I can just like I just think about, Yeah,
what it would have been like if he had been
around for Star Wars or for these murder mysteries. And
I also think about what parts he would have demanded
that I write for.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Been in.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It would have been bigger and bigger parts.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, I'm sure in Star Wars he would want to
be like on the deck of a star destroyer or something.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Or like yeah, but uh, but I love it. I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
It's uh, it's something that yeah, anyone who's is yeah,
lost a parent, you know, so it's a long journey.
It's not something you kind of go through and get
out of. It's something that just, uh, it's part of
the road for the rest of your life, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It is.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Food wise, he was a He wasn't a gourmet. He
was a Gormand would he cook. He would cook, Yeah,
and he would cook extravagantly. He would He had a
like if he was making ribs and making like a
barbecue sauce, he would put every spice that he had.
And he made a thing called bunny cake, which he
(10:48):
would basically make a chocolate cake that had all the
chocolate you can imagine it, plus molten Snickers bars. And
it was just this molten, just heap of semi li
If I congealed chocolate and the motto was nobody likes it,
but everybody eats it. But that was just anything he did,
he was going to do the most of it and
(11:10):
and then include food, and then include eating. And it's
not this not not the best and not a refined
version of it. But he loved food though, like my
dad would just pick up from the local rib joints.
It would come home and just like way too much food.
And yeah, but but he could be a really really
fun guy and he was a big guy in every
(11:31):
in every way.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Did you put him in your childhood movie?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I put him in so the one, the one movie that, uh,
this was my dad on the set of Looper in
his costume. I'll send you the picture. Oh yeah, yeah,
well yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He got to get shot in the face by Bruce
Willis in the movie. So it was the highlight of
his of his life.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
He was so happy. He was like he was.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Survived or did he die from shot?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
He died? He gets shot on the face. That yeah
was the first. What was your first?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Just tell us the trajectory from going from the Super
eight movies and the editing to your first movie. Well,
did you go to film school?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I did. I went to USC.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I got rejected like six times from USC and became
an English major.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I mean, you got rejected from even going.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
There, from the film from the films.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So but there was no place else I wanted to go,
So I went undeclared and kept applying. And I mean
my grades were terrible in high school because I was
just making movie.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, yeah, Do you think that a film school might
have recognized that?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Maybe, yeah, I guess. I also I also get it though,
because they, I mean USC, you know, they take a
really limited amount of people.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
They have so many applicants.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But I did end up getting in and like did
an undergrad program there and then graduated, and I wrote.
I wrote a script for what ended up being my
first movie, which was this weird kind of sort of
the Maltese Falcon style mystery but in an American high school.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Oh it's called Brick.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And I wrote it right out of college and basically
spent my twenties broke in LA hating Los Angeles and
failing to get my movie made, and just kind of
working day jobs.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
And I got I was lucky at.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Some of the day jobs.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I had some market a restaurant, no I never did.
I want that was a dream.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I kept applying and I never got working at a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
But I had some really good, great day jobs.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Actually I worked at a preschool for deaf kids called
the John Tracy Clinic that's in LA and I was
kind of their av guy. And I worked at the
Disney Channel producing promos just kind of yeah, really really
good jobs is really with really lovely people. But the
whole time I was just trying to get my first movie.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Made and how did that happen?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
So after years and years of it almost coming together
and falling apart, and I finally I met my producer,
Rom Bergman, who is still my producer today, and he
didn't find the money, but he said, look, you're the
way that most people go about trying to make their
first movie is they get a budget for their script
and someone tells them your movie is going to cost
(14:10):
three million dollars and they think, oh, I need to
and so then you end up never getting three million dollars.
And so Rom said, look, this is a very weird script.
I think it's really good, but it's very strange. The
only way this will work is if you have control
over it. So you need to just figure out how
much money you can get together, and then that's your budget,
(14:30):
and then you'll make figure out how to make the
movie for that. So that's what we did, and it
was my family kind of because they're in the home
building business. They had had just a big deal just
go through, so they had some cash to invest and
they made a very stupid investment. So well, investing independent
film money. It ended up doing well. Yeah, it ended
(14:51):
up being a very good investment, But investing in that
indie film, I mean, God bless them.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, So I was just going to ask you a question,
how did it relate to them? Because I love the
multie Feltonist movie. Was it the same sort of?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, it's a genre.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
So it's basically taking a dashal Hammet like mystery, hard
boiled mystery, and just setting it in the modern high school.
But all the kids talk like they're in dashal Hammet,
and so they all talk in this weird are the
sounds insufferable? I think it actually kind of kind of
works on the screen, but it's but yeah, so it's
basically just a straight up like hard boiled mystery, but
(15:29):
set in the high school.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It's a very weird hybrid, but it kind of works.
I think.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Does you film it in black and white?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
No, we filmed it in color, but a lot of
people who like saw it when it came out will
come up to me and say how much they loved
the black and white cinematography. So people remember it in
black and white sometimes when they've seen it.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, Dashal Hammett. We were talking about him the other night.
Oh yeah, yeah, she went to jail. Not name me names,
didn't he?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
I think he was blacklisted, so on the whole thing.
I know that he was a Pinkerton detective.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I know, the McCarthy era when they yeah, people you know,
had to testify before the House and American Activities.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, he refused.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I think he was.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
He was on the refuse he was. I mean, he
was fascinating. His writing, Oh my god. I love his
right and his right.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I think people kind of confuse him with Wish Chandler
and with sort of I love Chandler too, but Chandler
has those kind of long metaphors and kind of like
descriptive passages and Hamlets like him away. He's sparse and
just like hard cut, and I love his writing.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Man.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, But I made that movie, and then because I
had connected with Rom, we just kind of kept making
movies together. And some of them, some of them didn't
do good, some of them did good, but we were
able to keep piecing them together and uh, and we
were able to keep creative control.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I was.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I was able to just to always write the next
movie I wanted to make, and then make it pretty
much how I wanted to make it. I've been really,
really lucky in that regard.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
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each delivery. It's a perfect way to bring some River
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(17:24):
really care for them with the gift. Visit our website
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Speaker 3 (17:32):
Now, I've never really been in a situation where I've
been told what to cut and what not to cut
in a movie. But then the reality is you get
to the end of the process, you've lost all perspective
on it, and you're just driving yourself insane, not knowing
what to what to cut. So you do it, I mean,
(17:52):
getting some kind of friction. It's never good to have
your hand forced, but getting your go to I have
a lot of good filmmaker friends who I show it too,
and then I have just trusted people who are close
to me that I show it too.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But it's hard. It's tough because.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
You, I know, it's like you walk out of a
movie with even your closest, smartest friends, like another just
a random movie in a movie theater, and some one
of them will say something where you just do a
double take and say, that's completely the opposite of my experience.
So you kind of you don't want to dismiss any
note you don't agree with, because yeah, there might be
something there, but you also need to remember that. And
(18:28):
when you're so lost at sea in the editing process,
the temptation to just grab something solid if it's somebody's
opinion can be So I don't trying to.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Get better at restaurant. Yeah, it's no comparison to is
just cooking the meal. But having an open kitchen, you
can watch people, you can see their response. You can
show them. Sometimes they're going like, now, how much.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Do you do the chefs watch.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
People something back and if you believe in it, yeah,
you know, if I believe in what I cooked or
what we're serving, then it can be somebody's opinion. If
you have sometimes doubts or if somebody says it's too salty,
that's really important. But it's all about feedback, isn't it.
It's how you give the feedback. Even when I eat here,
(19:17):
do I if I had a great meal, do I go?
Or if I have something that I didn't think was
quite right and they're working and last night I was
in the kitchen, but now I'm sitting down, Do I
want to go and tell them it doesn't feel right?
But then if you say that was a great meal,
and then the next day you come in you said,
you know what I told you, it was a great meal. Actually,
(19:37):
it's always how you give that feedback.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Tough thing.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
The only thing worse than getting feedback from friends is
giving feedback to friends.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
How do you deal with that?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
It's hard, I mean, it's I'm also like I'm not.
There are some people I think who love conflict. I
don't love coming and so. But at the same time,
especially if I'm close enough with the person, and I'll
always I think if you can be honest, if you
can not tell them like what they you think they
should do with it, but if you can be honest
(20:09):
in a way you can see, we'll be constructive in
terms of or I guess being honest about your experience
of it is always helpful.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I think that's one of the reasons I quite like
having my family here. Yeah, they will say if I
call it my son, I said, as the spin I said,
how is your lunch in the River Cafe on Sunday?
Said they had a really good time. I go, oh,
was that bad?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
The weather was lovely?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Oh it was that bad? Okay, now you can.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Tell me I was, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I was sitting in the backstage like after a play
to meet an actor, and another one of the actors
was there, and their family came in to like and
just seeing the play, and their mother.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
The actor's mother was like, oh, yeah, how'd you enjoyed?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Great?
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And there was a pause and the mom said, the
seats were so much more comfortable than the last show
they did.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It was just very I don't know, if they just
redid them or I was I was, I was, Yeah,
I was melting. I was melting into a puddle. Yeah,
your mom, Yeah, she's got the right.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Are you critical about food?
Speaker 3 (21:13):
I can be, But I think I think, I'm I mean,
my wife I think has a much more refined palette
than me. I'm I tell you, I'm a little bit
of my father's son. If something's delicious, I'm just all
hap Yeah. And also but also I'm kind of like
that with movies too, Like I tend to walk into
a movie kind of very on the movie's side usually,
and I do the same thing with meals. Usually something's
(21:35):
got to really smack me in the face for me,
that's really nice.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So tell me about Star Wars, because we were going
from making these films having success and then going to what,
I mean, what does Star Wars meant to you as
a child who your father took you to the first
first one?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I think beyond even the movies.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
I think for people who were kids when they were
coming out, the toys meant that the ubiquity of the
toys meant that the worlds that you were creating in
your own imagination at home were in that world of
Star Wars. I think that's a big part of why
it's so powerful, in addition to the films. I mean,
but the one two punch of that, so so yeah,
Star Wars for me was, you know, it's all the
(22:16):
cliches of of dudes my age of just how Star
Wars was, you know, beyond movies. It was really kind
of closer to a mythology that I grew up with,
and it meant the world to me. And and I
had I had been kind of committed to I'm just
going to write and direct my own things, and they had,
especially after me I made Looper, which was kind of
(22:38):
a science fiction thing. There were other like franchise stuff
that like came came knocking, and there were always bigger movies.
And I had always just kind of said, nah, I
think I'm just going to stick to the path of
making my own stuff. But then when Star Wars came around, Yeah,
it's a not for you can't refuse, and you.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Came here to do it.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, came the time you loved No.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I actually I had made films of the second movie
I did, which was a con Man movie.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
That very few people saw. It's called the Brothers Bloom.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
It was Adrian Brody was in it and and Rachel
Weis and Mark Ruffalo is a really good cast. But
we were in Eastern Europe, so I we shot that
came out in two thousand and seven or eight, so
it was like two thousand and six that we were
shooting that. Yeah, but we were over in Eastern Europe
for that I had shot overseas, but that was that.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It was food.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Did you eat?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
I ate?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I remember.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
So we were based in Belgrade in Serbia, and we
traveled around, but we were truly a traveling circus. We
went to Montenegro, and we went to through Romania, rural Romania.
We had like two days in Prague, we had Croatia,
and so we were all over the place. And then
during that shoot I ended up meeting and falling in
love with the girl who has with for a few years,
(23:58):
who was Serbian. She was from Belgrade, so through her
and her family, I then got to kind of really experience,
you know, I don't know, I got.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
A real taste for Serbian food. It's delicious.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I think I do not know is about Serbian food.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Serbian food, I mean it's it's very meat based and
it's very meat and potatoes literally, and it's delicious.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
It's very flavorful, and it's such.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
A I don't know that it's all about big groups
and eating in big groups, and so it's food that
can just kind of be served and so I don't know,
it's delicious though.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I ended up really liking it. I love Belgrade. I
love that.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
I've never had a bigger gap between my first impression
of a city and how I end up feeling it
because you go it's it's not I mean, it's a
it's a city that really reveals its beauty to you
the longer you're there, I think. And it is a
really beautiful city with a lot of life to it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I really love it.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Do you think that immersion in the family making a
personal for you? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Absolutely, Yeah, Yeah, that's what does it.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I think you try create them now and you go
to to when you came to film.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
We we do.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
It's It was funny, especially with these like Knives Out movies,
because they're ensemble casts and because on the first one
we had through Jamie Lee Curtis was kind of the
spearhead of it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
She really got.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Everyone just hanging out on set, and so we had
kind of a taste of what it's like when you
have an ensemble cast and they all like each other
and hang out together.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And so on Glass Onion, which was the second Knives.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
That movie we shot in Greece and then in Belgrade,
and because it was during the tail end of the pandemic,
we were all isolated together and so we all got
really close and so at the end of the day shooting,
we would rent out just the bar at the top
of the hotel and just go up and have have
dance parties.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, Wess Anderson doesn't it with his films you talk
to you about, you know that they go out in
the evening. Yeah, your team and be together.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
It's so unique the way that he does it. I
find it really really interesting. And yeah, I think there's
nobody who really makes movies the way. I mean, both
in terms of the movies themselves, but the process sounds. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Are you going to Paris from here?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Phibission. You know that's just opened and it's all the costumes.
I've just seen slides of it, but it would probably
be worth going. So when you go to Paris, do
you think about what you're going to eat.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Oh, that's all I think about.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Do you tell me what are you thinking?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
I mean, so, my wife and I have spent a
lot of time in Paris, and yeah, we have like
a little place there and so we it's kind of.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Where is it.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
It's in the sixth but it's not in San Truman.
It's down south of the Luxembourg Garden, so basically it's
on the border of modern parnask it's stumbling distance from
the closery to Leila, and it's it's right.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Next to like Dome.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
It's it's right by l Duke, which is one of
our favorite spots.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Cafe Select.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
It's right by Like it's really fun because you like,
you know, it's the stuff where if you read a
Somerset mom book, it's all the places they were hanging
out right down the street. So so yeah, I have
especially because I'm taking my uncles and my aunts. I've
got yeah, I got dinners, I got well, I'm taking
taking them to the Duke. Garmo is going to be
(27:20):
there at the same time. So he's like, oh and
he's he's booked like three different the lunches for yeah,
and I did it and I brought tequila because I
wanted him to try the one that I liked, and
he brought to kill By the end of the uh
a little.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Bit, where's the really, where's the tequila? I didn't get?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Why don't you get tell me? That's right.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I'll take it. Posture is my Tequila's right.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
So that's nice that I love to be in Paris
for just a few days.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
The River Cafe, when you said lunch, is now running
from Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking on www. Rivercafe
dot co dot uk or give us a call. So
how long does it take to make Apostle? How long
does it take to make a movie? Right? Just see
(28:18):
the results? You put the water on your thing, and
you've got a work of art.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
You know, But like I gotta say, the simplicity of it? Okay.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
So Taglia Italy with asparagus and parmesan serves six or
one director one point five kilograms sprew asparagus six hundred
grams Tagli Italy, two undergrams freshly grated parmesan, one garblet, clothed,
peeled and crushed, four hundred milliliters cremfresh two large free
(28:51):
range egg yolks, which would be a problem in the
States right now.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, yeah, eggs, eggs.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
We haven't touched on the.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yeah, which has been a nice conversation. To rub the
crushed garlic around the surface of the small pan. Add
the cram fresh parmesan, and egg yolks. Place the pan
on top of another pan of hot water, stirring gently
until the sauce thickens for about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Season well and keep warm. Okay, that's good to know
(29:21):
that you do a double because the sauce was already
made when I was there.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Just regulate the heat. You can do it on a
you know, you can do it on a very low heat,
really low.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Prepare the asparagus. Snap off the tough ends of the stems,
keeping only the tender parts. Slice the stems and tips
thinly and diagonally. That thin slice on the asparagus is
so important to the dish. It makes the experisy guess
almost like feel like the ribbons of the pasta. Bring
a large saucepan of salted water to a boil salted water,
(29:56):
like really salted, and add the tagliate. Cook for one minute,
then add the asparagus and continue to cook until the
pasta and asparagus are al Dante drain in place in
a warm serving bowl, toss well sort of immediately, will you?
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Will you afford that to me?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
You can take it home, Take this home, take it.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I feel bad if I don't finish it. But I
also just I have dinner eating.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Tell us how you made it, Tell me about it.
What did what did they do?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That's what's magic to me, alright.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
So they had the blanched asparagus and they had the
pasta that Ross had made like twenty minutes ago. I
didn't realize it was so so so fresh. I figured
you kind of pre batched it, made it all in
the morning. But he makes it during the day. Put
them both in the water together, very very salty, almost
sea water, just cooked it for a couple of minutes,
(30:48):
and then put it in the sauce, mixed it up,
put it back on the heat, let it kind of
warm up and heat in the sauce.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
And it's just one. It's I've been wolfing this. It's
so good.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
And pasta is amazing. The asparagus is like an extension
of the pasta.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
It's like so yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Think it's interesting when you add something to a pasta
that you add meat, or you can add peas, or
you can add fish, but you sort of want it
not to weigh down the pasta, don't you. So the
idea of actually making asparagus almost as thin as the
tag it Telly, or when we have you know, porcini
mushrooms in the autumn make the pasta bit thicker, right,
(31:30):
so I can hold it.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Well, that's what's so great about that, the balance of it,
the fact that this this thinly sliced asparagus that's been
blanched and then cooked again with the pasta, and so
it's soft. It's almost like a fresh pasta of its own. Yeah,
it's really good.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Have you ever made fresh pasta?
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah? So I was actually as telling you Ross.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
My wife Krana and I we have because it's.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
We have a on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
We'll sometimes do pasta Palooza and will make click three
different kinds of fresh pasta.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Really, she's the cook.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And so I can I bake, I can follow, I
can follow instructions and I can bake. She can take
a look at the pantry and say, oh we have
this and this and this and put together.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
And she also she worked in New York.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
She worked at a pasta factory.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
In her twenties. So, yeah, can.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You describe a food scene in one of your movies?
Speaker 3 (32:25):
There's dinner and knives out. It's funny. I haven't like, yeah,
you're calling me out. I haven't had like a.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
True like next movie. Yeah, you're inspiring an onion in
your title.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
A knife title behind the curve. The next one will
be plates plates on and we'll here live out a
murder the river.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Okay, yeah, could this is.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Not me that was obviously gonna go ahead, going to
be scared of death.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
That pizza oven, Yeah, the pizza, we could do it.
Why not?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
The body and the pizza.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
It is quite dramatic. A kitchen, you know, a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Is full of sharp secrets.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, people, You never know what people are saying at
their table or what they're there.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
I can see this coming together.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
River Cafe, Liver Cafe.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
I like the idea. Do you think Dashel Hammett would
have liked the River Cafe? I think quite simple.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I feel I get a feeling.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Do we have an idea of what's next.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Well, I've done like three of these.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
I've had such a good time making these three movies,
and this last one is very different than the previous two,
so it's been really wonderful. At the same time, i've
done three in a row. I kind of feel like
I should do maybe totally different.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, something you're talking about that the other night, how
musical In the early days of cinema that everybody knew
how to sing and dance, even James Cagney, right, you know,
and people who our cable and they danced, and they
Christopher Walking, Christopher Walking.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We have our song and dance men still around. But
you're right.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
It's although I feel a little bit it's funny because
my buddy Joseph Gordon Levitt is can sing and dance.
Channing Tatum obviously, is it really good? I mean, there
are there are people out there who yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
But yeah, yeah, no song and dance man.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Why not, let's song and dance. So now we're going
to go and eat. But before we do, we always have,
you know, the thought that if food is something that
makes you less hungry, if it's a way of getting
your kids around the table, if like your father, it's
a memory of him being so present and so enthusiastic,
so generous. It also is comfort, So you know, I
(34:43):
hope you don't need comfort very often, but if you
did need to eat to make you feel better, is
there a food you would go to?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah, it's pasta.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
It is pasta.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, it's pasta.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
There's something about about how flavorful it is, about how
this warm gentle, I don't know. And also when you're
full on pasta, it feels like.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Just like a warm hug, like.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Nothing quite like having being truly truly sated after a
pasta meal. So yeah, pasta is my it would would
that would be that's going to be my death row?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, when I'm on deathrow?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
No, no, no, I don't like that question.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
No, I don't like what it would.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Be your last meal? Or what would you do if
you knew you were going to die the next day?
Speaker 1 (35:29):
It's comfort. That's a better way of putting especially right now.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
You're never going to die.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I'm so happy to hear it from you.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, finally say that to the end.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I've suspected this.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
I really want to thank you, and you're never going
to die.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I'm so happy. This is great.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
You good now I love you too. Thank you good,
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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