Jon Favreau must be so sick of hearing that he’s “so money and doesn’t even know it” that it feels like the last thing I want to mention is something he probably gets all the time. Yet as I wait for my turn to speak with him, I witness a brave soul say that to his face for the millionth time. His face lights up with a big smile and genuine thank you as he gives the stranger a firm handshake and stops to talk to him for a few minutes.
That kind gesture and warm regard to his fans is exactly why Jon Favreau is so admired by film lovers. Before he directed the first two Iron Man movies, Favreau was mostly known as an independent filmmaker with a passion for film that seeped through his first two screenplays, Swingers and Made. Both films became cultural touchstones and continue to build a rabid fanbase years later. After playing in Hollywood waters for a while, which aside from the Iron Man movies also includes Elf and Cowboys & Aliens, he has returned to smaller-scale filmmaking with Chef.
His latest is a passion project that came together out of frustration with the Hollywood system. Instead of Favreau continuing to try and make Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood eventually reworked a different version) and Magic Kingdom (it’s basically Night at the Museum with Disney characters and is still a high priority for him), he financed Chef on the cheap with some of his famous friends helping out too.
The film has Favreau starring as an all-star chef who washes out at a fancy restaurant and must restart his career with scaled-down resources. The similarities between the film’s plot and filmmaking in general are very deliberate and Favreau’s thoughts on making movies go all the way back to his groundbreaking TV show Dinner For Five. In that candid environment, Favreau would sit with other entertainers and literally discuss anything and everything about making movies. It was a blunt examination of what happens in front of and behind the camera, something that probably wouldn’t be anywhere near television today.
Favreau recently stopped in San Francisco to promote Chef and we had a fun chat about food, filmmaking and why most chefs consider Ratatouille the best food movie ever made. This is a transcription of that conversation.
Q: You obviously have great chemistry with your cast. Do you have any plans to do a Dinner For Five segment on the eventual DVD of Chef?
Jon Favreau: Dinner For Five was a fun show to do and it was especially fun because nobody was doing anything like it at the time. Now with podcasts it feels like that’s being filled, long-form conversations with interesting people. I like that kind of conversation and I would love to do Dinner For Five again. I wonder if I would do that online but clearly not as a mainstream TV show because part of what was fun about it was that we didn’t try to appeal to everybody.
Q: And as a result those conversations were candid and awesome.
Favreau: I’m very proud of it and people are still discovering it. We did about 50 episodes. It’s an easy thing to do but the hard part is to get the guests.
Q: When you were writing Chef did you know you wanted to have such a big social media component in the film?
Favreau: It’s a big part of it but it’s not like I wanted to make a social media movie. It was part of the language, especially for the food truck world and the chef world. Chefs are not good with social media. They tend to overshare or emotionally tweet or post something on Yelp and I wanted to include it. When I made Swingers I didn’t want to make a movie about an answering machine but it seemed like that was part of my life at the time. It also creates the differentiation between the dad and son’s generation because the son is native to the digital age and the father is at first dismissive of it, then enamored with it, scared of it and finally accepting of it.
Q: You have a very strong collaboration with Chef Roy Choi in the film. How did that come about?
Favreau: I wrote the script and the story is pretty much what it is and I was looking for someone to be a consultant. Part of my team was doing research and they said I should check out Roy Choi. I had tried his Korean tacos when Gwyneth Paltrow brought his food truck to the set of Iron Man 2 because she’s on Goop and she knows all the cool things before they happen. She magically got this truck to appear that nobody could seem to find. It was like a unicorn. I finally read about Roy and felt that my script was so similar that he wouldn’t want to do it. I was worried that he would think I was doing his story but he could not have been cooler. He said it was different enough.
Q: Did you look at other food movies for inspiration?
Favreau: Yes. I looked at all the food movies I could get my hands on. I started with the ones the chefs liked. They have a very specific list that they tend to agree on. They are Eat Drink Man Woman, Babette’s Feast, Ratatouille. They were saying the best movie about chefs is a cartoon. They also liked Mostly Martha which No Reservations was a remake of. In that movie the chef is a very flawed and broken character who can only express herself through food. Big Night was big too.
Q: Have you seen Like Water For Chocolate?
Favreau: Yeah. Like Water For Chocolate, “Chocolat.” It’s almost a subgenre at this point but this is the only one that’s been truly about food. The whole thing is an obsession about food and I find that the people who do it as a career, that’s all they think about. Chefs and filmmakers alike, as opinionated as they might seem, it’s the acceptance of the audience that they really vie for. If you finish your plate, the chef is happy. If you send the food back, they’re miserable. Same thing with a filmmaker, if someone walks out of my movie I could make every excuse but it really breaks your heart. So ultimately the audience and to some degree critics are taken very much to heart by us creative types.
Q: Is the live adaptation of The Jungle Book still next for you?
Favreau: Yes it is.
Q: With all the questions you’re answering promoting this film, is there one question you wish would go away?
Favreau: I think there’s a tendency to read more autobiography into work. I remember when I was growing up and Woody Allen did Stardust Memories it seemed like it was straight from his life and he swore up and down that it had nothing to do with it. Ones that you act in seem to be more transparent because it’s you, but in Swingers none of those things actually happened. I think it’s a way for audiences to connect with it. I don’t wish it would go away but it’s a hard one to answer because it seems like you’re BS’ing everybody.
Chef is now playing in theatres nationwide.
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