Jon Favreau made a movie about Jon Favreau making a movie, but about food. Let’s backtrack a bit: after debuting in the independent film scene in the 1990s with Swingersa and Made, he became a blockbuster darling with the influential comic book movie Iron Man, and subsequent, less popular big summer movies Iron Man 2 and Cowboys and Aliens. With Chef he’s back in the independent mode, telling the smaller story about a chef named Casper (Favreau) who showed promise in his early years, took a safe but artistically stifling path to success, then retreats to his roots after a critic (Oliver Platt) pans his work. Perhaps you can see the parallels.
After Chef‘s hit debut at SXSW we caught up with Jon Favreau over the phone to talk about the film’s theatrical release this weekend. We took a lot of time to discuss the film’s delicious-looking food, but also to give him the opportunity to discuss in depth his personal relationship with people who criticize his work for a living. SPOILER ALERT for Chef… we’re going to talk about the film’s ending and some of the cameos from his old Iron Man buddies.
CraveOnline: I saw Chef at SXSW and just loved it.
Jon Favreau: Oh wow, that was a stacked deck there man. They love Austin there. The minute we mentioned Texas or showed barbecue it was like being on the deck of an aircraft carrier with the jets taking off.
Yeah, but it’s also just a damned good movie so I think that helped.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
And I must say, like all the best food movies, it made me really hungry. I can’t think about it without wondering what the recipe is for those sandwiches.
Oh, for the Cuban?
Yeah, have you got that?
Very traditional. The traditional Cuban sandwiches is slow-cooked pork butt, which is shoulder, and that’s grilled with ham, and then you throw on some Swiss cheese, pickle and mustard on bread from a Cuban bakery. What made ours more of a gourmet version of it is a recipe that Chef Roy Choi came up with. It has to do with the marinade and how the pork is cooked. The bread was gourmet bread and pretty much everything else was supermarket grade. So he mixed straight-up French’s yellow mustard and cheese from a supermarket, ham from a supermarket, with really gourmet bread and delicately cooked pork. So that’s all it is. It’s just two different types of pork and of course it’s the butter on the pancha. That’s really what makes it, is how golden the bread is and how the cheese melts.
When you’re making a movie with this much delicacy, with this much cooking in it, is that your craft service or do you have to keep it separate?
Yeah, we didn’t go to craft service a hell of a lot. There was always delicious food on the set and because Chef Roy Choi was there all the time, he was cooking as though he was cooking for a restaurant. When he was working with the food stylists we weren’t using the tricks you would use on a commercial. We weren’t spraying stuff with glycerin. Everything was edible and amazing tasting. Even when we broke down the pig we made sure that we were doing it up to code and that we parceled it out and sent it home with the crew, so they had some good barbecues that weekend.
Was Cuban always the direction that Casper was going to go once he got a food truck?
Yeah, that was mostly because I love the music, and that was an excuse to use Cuban music throughout the film. I thought that there was something really romantic and cool about Cuban culture, and I had spent some time in Miami, in Little Havana, when I was filming Iron Man 3, and I’d actually gone to that club and seen music and thought, what a great place for him to begin reconnecting with his ex-wife and begin reconnecting with his passion again, and connect with his son.
So was that also an excuse to turn the last part of Chef into a road trip movie?
Yeah. I kind of wanted to do everything you’re not allowed to do in a big movie. It starts off as a traditional chef versus critic, like a Ratatouille-type food subgenre, and what should have been “he connects with his passion and then he cooks a good meal and then the [critic] eats the meal and his gets his Michelin star,” that’s not the way I wanted to go. I wanted him to just completely ruin his reputation, social media came into play, and he ended up publicly embarrassing himself, and it allowed us to change gears. Then the whole second half of the movie is about him and the kid, him and secondary characters getting together. The kid who he won’t let in the kitchen and the line cook who’s low man on the totem pole in the kitchen ended up being his saviors.
That’s the fun of independent film. You might not be able to afford big sets or visual effects, but when they did Easy Rider they just took those motorcycles and those cameras on the road and they got great production value. And I wanted to live that fantasy. So we went from city to city, listening to the music, tasting the food and filming the coolest parts of each city.
How renegade was this? Were you actually feeding passers-by with that food truck?
There were different issues with what was code, but we definitely fed the extras with food that we were cooking that tasted delicious, and giving it out to people who came around and wanted it. But I think there was something that had to do with actually serving food, so oftentimes we’d cook food and then we’d have prepared food already that we’d hand out for them to eat, because I don’t think you can actually prepare food and give it to people to eat it in the same… You’re dealing with health issues.
I don’t mean to make all my questions food-centric, I just haven’t eaten yet today.
[Laughs.] It’s a big part of the movie.
It’s a wonderful part of the movie. But speaking as someone who works as a critic I really did appreciate the way that you dramatized the interplay between artists and those who critique. It would have easy to demonize. It would have been easy to oversimplify that.
Yeah, I think so. I don’t pretend not to read it. I learn a lot from reading criticism. The problem of course is it’s such a watered-down occupation that you have people who understand movies, or understand food, who write thoughtful commentary that help people decide what movies they want to see and also draw conclusions about what’s happening in cinema, and then you have a lot of people who just put their opinions up, and one waters down the other.
I agree.
I think that the people who understand… like in the restaurant business, the people who are the seasoned food critics, like the Jonathan Golds, they are beloved and they are respected and revered, and they take very seriously… They think twice before they write something negative, because they know they can put a restaurant out of business. But then when there’s somebody on Yelp writing a review, that’s when the chefs get on and start writing back and it turns into a big ol’ flame war that ends up getting picked up by the food blogs.
But the chefs rarely engage, they usually have the utmost respect for the established critics because they live for those reviews. There’s no box office report. There’s no marketing campaign. Everything is about how many stars you receive. They take tremendous pride in it, whereas in the film business there are movies that take pride in not getting good reviews and doing well at the box office.
To me, I grew up in independent film, I write critics, I read critics, I’ve learned. It’s always the best part of a movie when you’ve got a good write-up from a critic you respected. You’re walking on air that whole day. I really wanted to make… That’s why I hired Oliver [Platt]. First because he’s just a great, smart actor who can be intimidating but also is very thoughtful. But then his brother is also Adam Platt, so I know he’s had meals with a guy who is a very well respected food critic, and he could bring dimension and humanity to it. I don’t know how it figures into your article with how much spoiling, but at the end of the thing he’s not apologizing. He’s not saying he’s wrong, and my guy owns up to it. The reason he hit rock bottom was because he was called out for something he was feeling already, and he ends up being a really thoughtful person which most of those guys are.
I admired that about the film. Usually in movies an artist is portrayed as, I don’t want to say “full of themselves,” but there’s so much self-confidence that they won’t listen to anyone, and often the message is “Don’t listen to anyone, be yourself.” Here’s someone who calls them out to challenge themselves, and they meet that challenge. That’s how it should work, don’t you think?
I think that’s what hurt him the most, in that the guy… I mean, that’s the worst. If somebody says “I hate you” or “I’ve always hated you, you still suck,” whatever. But if a person says, “I’m so disappointed in how you’ve grown?” [Laughs.] That one hurts. The guy says, “I’ve loved his old stuff, I’ve been watching him from the beginning of his career, and now I’m disappointed.” The poor son of a bitch really… what was his argument? “You’re not getting to me. You’re not getting to me.” That’s the weakest thing you can yell at somebody.
Has there been a critic or a particular review that really made you think about you were doing, or affected your career?
Honestly, I like reading them. Even when they hurt I kind of like it, it’s like touching a toothache with your tongue. It’s interesting to me, except when they’re just mean. You don’t really read [those reviews] that closely. When they’re just mean you just kind of pass them by. You kind of skim over it and you realize there’s an agenda where the person didn’t get it. It’s like reading Twitter. You can’t really read everything, you just kind of glance over it.
The area, the thing I don’t look at, and the thing this is more emblematic of, is like comment sections. Anonymous commenting. That’s the part that will drive you crazy and my character didn’t really understand well enough to avoid because he was new to social media. That shit’s going to drive you crazy and that shit, when the chefs read the Yelp reviews, it drives them fucking bananas. But generally critics who have a reputation to protect as well, just as the chefs do or the filmmakers, they tend to be responsible. Sometimes they don’t get it and that’s sad, especially when you put so much love into something. It’s just disappointing, but it’s not infuriating.
But I’m a [much] different dude than the movie, and chefs tend to be a lot more passionate. It tends to be much more one-to-one, because you serve that food to that person and they didn’t like it, compared to somebody that’s checking out your movie and didn’t like something that you put in there. It doesn’t get me down. It’s what I signed up for, and I’m really looking forward to reading the reviews on this. I enjoy reading them. But I’ve been maybe spoiled in the past where people made me sound smarter than I am. You know what I mean? I like hearing it. It makes feel like I’m a real moviemaker. It makes me feel like I’m really living the dream that people are putting that much thought into my shit, that they’re writing about it. I don’t know. I just get a kick out of it.
Have any of your movies been overthought? Have you ever read a review of a review of Iron Man and been like, “It has nothing to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall! What are you talking about?”
No, I like it when they do that. Because you don’t know when you’re making the movie what it’s about. I don’t know what it’s about until I read the critics. Then I know what the movie is about. But I mean like, Cowboys & Aliens, people just didn’t care one way or the other really. That bothered me more. They weren’t really that passionate. It’s not like they hated it. That’s hard when people don’t react strongly, you know? [Laughs.] I thought like I was reaching a pinnacle in my filmmaking skills, and it was a flavor of ice cream that people did not want to eat at the time. But it’s not like it made me angry, I just felt like I wish people saw in it what I saw in it.
I do want to talk about your use of social media in Chef. It seems like we’re getting more savvy about incorporating the use of social media into a film, and you have a great way of making it visual, where when you tweet something a little bird flies out.
Thanks.
Was that always the plan or did you discover that in the editing room?
Well I knew it was going to be part of the story. I knew that Twitter was, just like answering machines were part of dating in Swingers, if you’re talking about food culture Twitter is a thing, and I thought it was an interesting thing to show the dark side and the light side of social media. This guy being sloppy with how he’s handling it ruins his career, but his son understanding the subtlety of it ends up rescuing him. That’s the thing, the count that ended up destroying him, the followers ended up being the foundation for his new business. So I knew it was part of the story, and I thought it was a good way to sort of cross the generation gap and make the kid really valuable to the dad, that the kid had something to offer beyond what his expectations were.
But the trick was how do you depict it in a way that’s cinematic? Thankfully from working on the Iron Man movies I had some experience in visual effects and design, and there were a lot of challenges in designing the HUD, the display inside the helmet, how we were going to connect Robert [Downey Jr.] with the CGI Iron Man. That was done graphically, and creating the proper perspective and having it occupy the space but be slightly stylized. Those were all challenges that we had to face. So for the Twitter stuff I had a vision for how to make it comedic and charming but still communicate everything that we needed to.
Robert Downey Jr. has a great scene in this movie, but what I find kind of fascinating about it is that he’s in his own separate universe within the movie. He doesn’t come back again. He could just be a plot point but you give him so much character.
Yeah, I mean my guy had to have one last kick in the balls before he’s given the key to his dreams. So Robert really played both of those notes so well, of the guy who on the one hand graciously and generously giving him the means to explore his dreams, and at the same time completely driving him nuts and challenging him and breaking him down ego-wise. Especially a guy who’s a chef who’s beyond reproach with criticism and beyond reproach in being told what to do by his boss, and here he is, his ego being completely shattered by this guy. He is the almighty Oz, the great and powerful Oz in that scene. He gets to be that. That’s who the character is. If it was just a guy that he passed by on the side of the road I think it would have been distracting, but here he punctuates the movie and kicks it into gear for the last lap.
I also like the way you used Scarlett Johansson’s character. On the one hand she’s a sounding board and tells you some things you need to hear, but the fact that you have a dating relationship expands Casper’s character so it doesn’t feel like he’s pining for his ex-wife the way it might otherwise.
Yeah, and it’s something you couldn’t do in a big movie. That would have been scrubbed right out of the script. Because I wanted to show him seemingly having a great life. Here he was, he’s living the life of a rock star. It also showed how good his food was, if she was loving his food that much that she was drawn to him. You can’t taste the food, but…
If you’re a chef, that’s the fantasy. You’re dating the girl from the front of the house, beautiful women are just appreciating you for how skilled you are at what you do, and you’re the king of your domain. But it wasn’t a happy set of circumstances.
It also seemed like he was giving something up to leave it, and she was part of [that]. Between the kitchen he was working in, and here he was bonding with somebody who understood and appreciated what he did, and he’s living the life of a bachelor and he was held in high esteem, but ultimately it was all hollow. He’s looking at that little skeleton and it’s haunting him. Something’s not right in his world, and so he had to start from scratch and scale things back and find his voice again.
Were you tempted at all to bring her character back at the end for some sort of coda?
You know it’s a delicate balance because Scarlett’s gone from the screen before Sofia [Vergara] appears. Even though they were divorced and there was no reason that they should ever feel like they should [get back together], but ultimately you had to want to root for him to end up with Sofia. So Scarlett had to exit screen left. You catch her again but by the time you catch her again she’s consoling him to move on, so any romantic connection is gone by the time the movie progresses. It would not have been appropriate for her to be at the wedding, for us to be reminded of the fact that she was there.
I’ll bet she was invited, but it was one of those “polite” invites where they knew she wasn’t going to go.
Right! Yeah. I don’t think the ex-wife would have been happy. Nor for Robert to be there either, and there was some question whether Dustin Hoffman should be there or not, but I think really when you move on, you move on, and you don’t take any pleasure in the fact he did it without Dustin. Dustin wasn’t a bad dude. Or Bobby Cannavale, that would have maybe been good, but really it was about the boy, the kid, the mom, the dad.
I admired the way Casper treats Bobby when he takes over as the chef. He’s like, “Hey, it’s a good opportunity. I don’t begrudge you.” He could have easily gone in the other direction.
Yeah, it was very tricky because that’s the one scene that the chefs are like, “Oh, I don’t know…” Loyalty is very important in that community, and he crosses a line, but then he also owns up to it. I think it was time for Casper to go anyway.
Is there a parallel anywhere there in the film industry, or would that situation go very differently?
It would go differently in the film industry. People unfortunately are let go on troubled productions a lot, and people are replaced by studios and people have to handle that and deal with it. But if movies go overbudget, or if they don’t like the way the script is going or if the schedule is not being met, there’s always the sense that the show goes on, and everybody’s committed to making the movie. In the food industry there tends to be a lot of loyalty within the kitchen unit, and they don’t necessarily take orders from management. They take orders internally, from the chef.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
