Latest / MUBI Podcast / JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI... and David Gelb changes how people eat it

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JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI... and David Gelb changes how people eat it · MUBI Podcast

• 0:00
  Warning, this episode includes shellfish, soy products and spoilers.
• 0:08
  So, back in the early '00s, a guy named David Gelb, fresh out of USC film school, started hanging out at a legendary LA restaurant.
• 0:16
  Sushi Nozawa, which now is known as Sugarfish and has expanded into this chain.
• 0:21
  He wasn't there just to eat, though that was definitely a plus.
• 0:24
  He also thought its namesake, Chef Nozawa, might be the perfect subject for a documentary.
• 0:30
  He was an old sushi master in Los Angeles, in Burbank, and it was like, he was known as the Sushi Nazi, in direct reference to the Seinfeld Soup Nazi.
• 0:40
  Only in the sense that they are like,"You have to eat at my way or no way,"or get out of my restaurant." Yeah, Nozawa would kick you out for talking on your phone, for texting, for switching seats.
• 0:53
  And you definitely didn't tell him what kind of sushi he should serve you.
• 0:57
  You know, they allow no choice.
• 0:59
  It was just so cool, the idea that he didn't care if you were a celebrity or not.
• 1:02
  Nozawa didn't care.
• 1:04
  He just wanted to make his great sushi his way and all over the walls of the restaurant, there were all these posters and illustrations and various iterations of the word"trust me".
• 1:16
  That was his slogan, "trust me".
• 1:18
  In a city full of joints serving spicy tuna rolls, Nozawa was one of the few serving, barely adorned, minimalist sushi, omakase style.
• 1:23
  Chef's choice.
• 1:27
  It was the first kind of omakase that was kind of known in Los Angeles, at least, that I knew about, and you would have it his way.
• 1:35
  It's about "trust me".
• 1:39
  But I loved his stoicism, and I did a little short kind of camera test with him that ended up being a very fun short film.
• 1:45
  Four in the morning, going to the fish market, getting the best stuff.
• 1:48
  He goes to bed at 11: 30.
• 1:48
  He goes to bed at 11: He has no energy for riff raff.
• 1:52
  He goes to bed at 11: And so it's just like, you eat it my way or get out.
• 1:55
  He goes to bed at 11: I just love that.
• 1:56
  He goes to bed at 11: And yet the Nozawa short never became a full length documentary, because...
• 2:01
  He goes to bed at 11: I found the ultimate of that which is Jiro, who is like, embodies that philosophy, to the nth degree.
• 2:11
  He goes to bed at 11: In 2010, David Gelb found an even more stoic chef, serving even more minimal food, and made a documentary about him that put omakase on the menu all over the planet.
• 2:33
  He goes to bed at 11: I'm Rico Gagliano, welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
• 2:36
  He goes to bed at 11: MUBI's the global film company that champions great cinema.
• 2:39
  He goes to bed at 11: On this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
• 2:42
  He goes to bed at 11: We're in the middle of season 10.
• 2:42
  He goes to bed at 11: We are calling it A Feast For The Eyes.
• 2:46
  He goes to bed at 11: Just in time for your holiday dinners we're digging into how and why so many filmmakers obsess over food in their films, and today we are grilling director David Gelb.
• 2:56
  He goes to bed at 11: He is the creator of the super popular Netflix food series Chef's Table.
• 3:00
  He goes to bed at 11: He's also made docs about everything from the Ford Mustang to Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee.
• 3:05
  He goes to bed at 11: But none of them topped the impact of his debut, Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
• 3:09
  He goes to bed at 11: I mean, Nozawa himself is like,"You made people understand the omakase." And with its super slow motion and hypnotic Philip Glass score, it's a movie that not only changed how people eat food, but how they show it off on screen.
• 3:22
  He goes to bed at 11: As Gelb told me right off the bat, it's a style inspired by a BBC nature show and a few other influences I definitely didn't expect.
• 3:34
  He goes to bed at 11: I was a recently graduated film student in this kind of period of time between, age 22 and 25 or 26 years old, where I had a desire to make some kind of food Planet Earth-like thing, but I was really just working as a jack-of-all-trades on music video sets everything from gripping to camera operation to camera teching.
• 3:57
  He goes to bed at 11: Whatever jobs are happening around my kind of USC friends circle, and all the while, I kind of had this feeling of following the technology that might let me make something that ultimately became Jiro Dreams of Sushi and so...
• 4:15
  He goes to bed at 11: but why a food/Planet Earth type thing?
• 4:17
  He goes to bed at 11: Oh, I love to eat. I love to eat.
• 4:20
  He goes to bed at 11: My mom is a recipe chef, and she did recipes for cookbooks.
• 4:24
  He goes to bed at 11: My dad is general manager of the Metropolitan Opera and loved to take me to restaurants and stuff.
• 4:29
  He goes to bed at 11: I just, there was no food TV that I really liked watching.
• 4:33
  He goes to bed at 11: I loved, Anthony Bourdain.
• 4:35
  He goes to bed at 11: And, you know, he was kind of a hero of mine, but I imagined that there would be another kind of food show that would be like Planet Earth that would have more cinematic kind of values, but that would be around food.
• 4:47
  He goes to bed at 11: And, you know, ultimately, I narrowed that down to sushi, my favorite food.
• 4:52
  He goes to bed at 11: And what was originally gonna be a film about a number of different sushi chefs and their different approaches and their sushi in their parts of the world etc. etc., really came down to telling a personal story about Jiro Ono, who recently turned 100 years old and is kind of like, he is the...
• 5:11
  He goes to bed at 11: god of sushi is how he's known in Japan.
• 5:14
  He goes to bed at 11: When did you first learn of him?
• 5:16
  He goes to bed at 11: What was your first inkling that he existed in the world?
• 5:18
  He goes to bed at 11: It was actually during a research period.
• 5:20
  He goes to bed at 11: I was talking to chefs about which sushi chefs to film.
• 5:26
  He goes to bed at 11: I heard the name Jiro from the chef, Daniel Boulud, the great French chef, from Lyon, who has incredible restaurants in New York City.
• 5:34
  He goes to bed at 11: I was sitting with him and he was like,"Oh, you have to go film Jiro."- And I was like, "Hmm."- I see.
• 5:39
  He goes to bed at 11: By the way, you were able to talk to Daniel Boulud, I'm assuming because you're a New Yorker, your dad's working for the opera, you would occasionally bump into these people, or you could have access.
• 5:49
  He goes to bed at 11: I mean, I'm a New York culture nepo, if that makes any sense.
• 5:52
  He goes to bed at 11: So my grandfather, managing editor at The New York Times, then retired and became the president of the New York Times Foundation.
• 6:00
  He goes to bed at 11: And as an author, his life story is, his memoir is this book, City Room, which I highly recommend.
• 6:05
  He goes to bed at 11: And City Room Films is the name of your production company on that.
• 6:09
  He goes to bed at 11: That was the original production company, that's right, I named it after that.
• 6:12
  He goes to bed at 11: And then my dad, I was just hooked up in this world of chefs and artists and was granted an audience with Daniel and had a fantastic meal with him.
• 6:21
  He goes to bed at 11: And he let me know that the biggest, the three star Michelin chefs of the world, especially the French, said that Jiro's work is the greatest.
• 6:30
  He goes to bed at 11: Like, his sushi has such depth, such simplicity, and it's like the aspiration of any chef to be able to create a depth of flavor with so few brush strokes.
• 6:39
  He goes to bed at 11: People will almost certainly know this film.
• 6:42
  He goes to bed at 11: But for those who don't, can you give us the synopsis such as it is.
• 6:46
  He goes to bed at 11: - It's not like a super plot-driven movie.
• 6:46
  He goes to bed at 11: - Absolutely. So...
• 6:49
  He goes to bed at 11: Jiro Ono is an 85 year old, or 83 to 85 years old, during the period we were making the film.
• 6:55
  He goes to bed at 11: He works in this little sushi bar in a subway station.
• 6:58
  He goes to bed at 11: He only serves sushi, and he's the first sushi chef ever to earn three Michelin stars.
• 7:03
  He goes to bed at 11: But for him, the journey continues and he's always in this pursuit of perfection.
• 7:13
  He goes to bed at 11: So it's something he pursues to the exclusion of literally anything else.
• 7:17
  He goes to bed at 11: When his kids were little, Jiro says, he worked from 5am to 10 at night.
• 7:21
  He goes to bed at 11: If he ever slept in late enough for them to actually see him, they'd say...
• 7:27
  He goes to bed at 11: "Mom, there's a strange man sleeping in our house." But now his oldest son works in his dad's kitchen, trying to follow the same path.
• 7:44
  He goes to bed at 11: "Our father was always strict with himself," he says, sitting next to his brother.
• 7:48
  He goes to bed at 11: "We hold ourselves to the same standard." His son Yoshikazu works at the restaurant, and he has pretty big shoes to fill.
• 7:58
  He goes to bed at 11: And you know, he wants to do something that's worthy of his father, you know, to be a proper successor.
• 8:03
  He goes to bed at 11: And it's really a story about this philosophy of the pursuit of perfection, the art of sushi, and sort of this whole kind of Japanese ethos of being a shokunin, devoting your life to something and pursuing it for the sake of that thing.
• 8:19
  He goes to bed at 11: Not for any other goal, like making money or anything else.
• 8:22
  He goes to bed at 11: It's purely about the pursuit of excellence in a chosen craft.
• 8:29
  He goes to bed at 11: I thought that was such a beautiful thing, because I want to apply it to my own work.
• 8:34
  He goes to bed at 11: And, you know, I kind of went down there sort of with an open mind.
• 8:38
  He goes to bed at 11: And as a student with a brand new camera that had just come out that would allow these cinematic qualities of that Planet Earth style, but without needing the big crew.
• 8:46
  He goes to bed at 11: So it was just me and a translator.
• 8:48
  He goes to bed at 11: And I just kind of, just let it rip through moments of,"Wow, this is the most amazing thing ever," to, "Wow, I am making the most boring film ever. What am I gona do?" How did you get this guy's trust?
• 9:03
  He goes to bed at 11: Because he doesn't seem or anyone in his orbit, frankly, doesn't seem like they would just, like, let anybody in through the door.
• 9:10
  He goes to bed at 11: Like, regardless of whether they know the former editor ofThe New York Times.- Sure.
• 9:15
  He goes to bed at 11: - You've got to prove yourself.
• 9:17
  He goes to bed at 11: I'm just imagining they put you through some sort of boot camp.
• 9:19
  He goes to bed at 11: Well, a little bit.
• 9:21
  He goes to bed at 11: But, you know, the cultural nepo credential kept on helping me through this because my dad's translator in Japan connected me to Masuhiro Yamamoto, who is the food critic.
• 9:34
  He goes to bed at 11: - Oh, yeah, in the movie.
• 9:34
  He goes to bed at 11: - Who is in the movie.
• 9:36
  He goes to bed at 11: And I talked to him about getting to Jiro, and he was like,"Yes, this is the way." He took me down there and they're very into, like succession and kind of dynasty.
• 9:49
  He goes to bed at 11: They Masuhiro Yamamoto is a massive classical music fan and he convinced, Jiro that, you know, I'm young, but I have the chops for this.
• 9:57
  He goes to bed at 11: And, you know, I know some Japanese.
• 9:59
  He goes to bed at 11: I came in with a very gentle touch and they decided that it would be okay for me to stay for a month.
• 10:06
  He goes to bed at 11: And then I went back for 6 months and edited.
• 10:08
  He goes to bed at 11: And then I came back for a second month to kind of wrap it all up when I really knew what I was doing.
• 10:14
  He goes to bed at 11: What was-- Did you ever make a mistake in that time?
• 10:16
  He goes to bed at 11: Like, you jostled his arm and he's like, "Get out of here." Oh my God, so many mistakes.
• 10:21
  He goes to bed at 11: I was never kicked out, but I-- Yeah, of course.
• 10:23
  He goes to bed at 11: I mean, at first it was, you know, they just kind of taught me, sort of like when they take on a new apprentice because their whole thing is, they can teach sushi, but character is what they...
• 10:34
  He goes to bed at 11: - Yeah.
• 10:34
  He goes to bed at 11: - If it's a knowledge thing, fine.
• 10:36
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, like, I came in and I was too shy with my good morning.
• 10:40
  He goes to bed at 11: I was like, "Ohayou gozaimasu" And he's like, "No, when Jiro san comes in, you go, Ohayou gozaimasu!" You have to be-- They would kind of teach me the ways that he, you know, liked it or when to bother him.
• 10:50
  He goes to bed at 11: Don't talk to him when he's reading his newspaper etc. etc.
• 10:53
  He goes to bed at 11: But they were so kind.
• 10:53
  He goes to bed at 11: They were really generous.
• 10:56
  He goes to bed at 11: And they liked the idea that his work would be memorialized and that it would help cement his legacy.
• 11:05
  He goes to bed at 11: Although they really had no idea how big the film would become.
• 11:07
  He goes to bed at 11: And that's another story.
• 11:09
  He goes to bed at 11: They just kind of like treated me like a student.
• 11:11
  He goes to bed at 11: And they like-- They didn't mind that I was American because I was curious and polite, which if you're in Japan, just be polite and the world opens up to you there.
• 11:20
  He goes to bed at 11: The style of this movie has become so widely imitated, especially the use of slow motion when depicting food.
• 11:27
  He goes to bed at 11: How did that develop?
• 11:29
  He goes to bed at 11: I'm imitating some of my favorite documentary projects and favorite movies, period.
• 11:34
  He goes to bed at 11: I've been obsessed with slow motion-- When I went to USC, I wanted to make The Matrix. I also loved '80s and '90s action movies, particularly movies by John Woo and John Woo, is famous for his slow motion action scenes, his-- The doves flying in slow motion...
• 11:49
  He goes to bed at 11: A lot of high drama, a lot of really fancy camera work, shallow depth of field, and then Planet Earth was using some of that language, especially the slow motion and the shallow depth of field.
• 12:02
  He goes to bed at 11: And then Errol Morris was a big influence.
• 12:04
  He goes to bed at 11: The film Fog of War was the first documentary about a person that I was like,"Wow, this really feels like a movie." I love the Philip Glass-- I mean, the influences are all over it.
• 12:15
  He goes to bed at 11: You can see from the Philip Glass music use of slow motion, interviewing an old man about his life and his learnings through that life.
• 12:23
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, there was so much that really popped for me in that film.
• 12:26
  He goes to bed at 11: I do not think that the average person would look at Jiro Dreams of Sushi and be like, "Okay, the two influences of this are The Matrix"and a documentary about Robert McNamara, potential war criminal." So through the weird filter of my brain something original, I guess, came out of it.
• 12:42
  He goes to bed at 11: To you, what is the--'Cause this movie makes me hungry in a way few movies make me hungry.
• 12:47
  He goes to bed at 11: A lot of the movies we're talking about in this season do, though, and I'm trying throughout to figure out what is it about-- How do you depict food in a way that inspires hunger?
• 12:56
  He goes to bed at 11: Because obviously you're robbed of several senses that help hunger happen, like smell.
• 12:59
  He goes to bed at 11: Well, there is no secret here, and that's kind of what I love about it.
• 13:03
  He goes to bed at 11: It's really just context.
• 13:05
  He goes to bed at 11: I think that character is what makes people care.
• 13:09
  He goes to bed at 11: And that's what makes people choose a restaurant.
• 13:12
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, people want to know where the chef came from and why, a little bit at least, why is this restaurant good?
• 13:19
  He goes to bed at 11: And that story, I think, contributes a lot to the way that we perceive the deliciousness.
• 13:24
  He goes to bed at 11: So, understanding just basic hero's journey stuff and understanding that, these are people that had-- They discovered their powers and they didn't know how to use it.
• 13:35
  He goes to bed at 11: - It's actually more superhero,- Yeah.
• 13:37
  He goes to bed at 11: a little bit and Chef's Table and Jiro, a lot of it is origin story.
• 13:41
  He goes to bed at 11: Where did they discover their powers, and then how did they figure out how to use it?
• 13:47
  He goes to bed at 11: And then what stories are they telling with their, you know, by infusing their storytelling with their food?
• 13:52
  He goes to bed at 11: That's the journey and then the art kind of means something.
• 13:55
  He goes to bed at 11: I hate to tell you, but I've been doing the same thing with my line of questioning with you right now.
• 14:00
  He goes to bed at 11: You are the Spider Man of food documentaries.
• 14:02
  He goes to bed at 11: Thank you. Yeah.
• 14:02
  He goes to bed at 11: No, I love that. And again, I was obsessed with comic books.
• 14:06
  He goes to bed at 11: My influences are all super mainstream, and I'm just taking all that into niche land of my favorite niche, which is eating.
• 14:13
  He goes to bed at 11: The story in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, that I was like,"Oh, wow, this is really clicking," was actually about Nakazawa, who was the lead apprentice when we were filming, and now he has his own restaurants and has a wonderful...
• 14:27
  He goes to bed at 11: Sugarfish style delivery box that he does in Los Angeles, called Hi.Dozo, which is absolutely amazing.
• 14:32
  He goes to bed at 11: He was the lead apprentice.
• 14:36
  He goes to bed at 11: He had been working his entire career there, for ten years or something I think he was there when we were filming, and it took 200 attempts before Jiro approved of his egg sushi making.
• 14:47
  He goes to bed at 11: And egg, of course, in the west, like the egg sushi, nobody's choosing the egg sushi.
• 14:53
  He goes to bed at 11: And we had this moment where it's like,"Oh, the egg sushi is actually the most important thing." And so he's trying to make it and he's failing over and over again.
• 15:02
  He goes to bed at 11: He finally makes it right.
• 15:04
  He goes to bed at 11: And then Jiro, like, gives him the nod of approval.
• 15:07
  He goes to bed at 11: And he's like, "I cried." His eyes are watering and he's telling the story.
• 15:10
  He goes to bed at 11: He's like, "I wept," and I'm like, "Wow, now that sushi means something to me." Like it makes it more delicious to me.
• 15:17
  He goes to bed at 11: And then of course, shallow depth of field and nice lighting, bringing the eye line to the guest's eyeline.
• 15:24
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, when you're served sushi, it's right at this kind of quarter angle.
• 15:28
  He goes to bed at 11: I bring the camera even closer, you're down low with the sushi, inspecting it, and then the selective focus really just draws your eye to the detail.
• 15:37
  He goes to bed at 11: If I may, I have my theories about this, and it's similar to something I mentioned-- I interviewed Luca Guadagnino about his sex scenes, actually, and he was like,"I just kind of feel my way through it.
• 15:49
  He goes to bed at 11: It's very intuitive." And I was like, well, to me it feels like there's two things, one is exaggerating sound and extending time, and it feels like the slow motion, especially in your movies, is this example of extending time.
• 16:05
  He goes to bed at 11: It makes it obviously look more sensual because everything's moving more smoothly than things do in real life.
• 16:11
  He goes to bed at 11: But it's also, and I guess it's especially appropriate when you're talking about a Japanese film, there's almost a Zen quality you're trying to create where you're focusing on this small moment that normally we just breeze through.
• 16:22
  He goes to bed at 11: You take a fork, you put it in something, you put it in your mouth, it's over.
• 16:25
  He goes to bed at 11: But you're like, no, let's linger on this.
• 16:28
  He goes to bed at 11: Don't think about the rest of the world or the conversation you're having.
• 16:31
  He goes to bed at 11: This is almost what Jiro does in his restaurant, which is very austere.
• 16:34
  He goes to bed at 11: It's just like, focus on this thing right now for a second.
• 16:38
  He goes to bed at 11: There is everything to that.
• 16:39
  He goes to bed at 11: I think that's exactly right, especially in the scenes, and I'm just running through the movie in my head.
• 16:44
  He goes to bed at 11: Scenes where he's making the sushi.
• 16:44
  He goes to bed at 11: There are things that we just-- This is one of the things I loved about being able to makeJiro Dreams of Sushi. Sushi was already widely popular in the United States when I was making this movie.
• 16:55
  He goes to bed at 11: People loved sushi.
• 16:57
  He goes to bed at 11: They didn't know about nigiri sushi, where, you know, the simple sushi.
• 17:00
  He goes to bed at 11: It was always kind of special rolls and all kinds of combinations of flavor and whatnot.
• 17:06
  He goes to bed at 11: The simple act of forming sushi was completely taken for granted by everybody, including sushi chefs in the West.
• 17:13
  He goes to bed at 11: So when he's grabbing the little bit of rice from the thing, just the right amount, and then he sees him pressing it, brushing the sauce on just so, taking these micro details that one might take for granted and then extending that perfect moment.
• 17:27
  He goes to bed at 11: It draws your eye to the magic of it.
• 17:29
  He goes to bed at 11: And that's the same thing with sports.
• 17:31
  He goes to bed at 11: You're watching a football game or something, and you're seeing-- It all happens so fast, but then you can actually see the artistry of the running back faking out a horde of defenders.
• 17:41
  He goes to bed at 11: And it's like, "Whoa." Those little details are lost.
• 17:44
  He goes to bed at 11: And I think that is, we brought that to food for sure.
• 17:49
  He goes to bed at 11: We know all this now.
• 17:49
  He goes to bed at 11: But in the early 2010sJiro Dreams of Sushi was just an indie doc by an unknown filmmaker about an unknown old man making simple pieces of sushi.
• 17:59
  He goes to bed at 11: Not an obvious cultural watershed, even if Gelb suspected it could be one.
• 18:04
  He goes to bed at 11: There was a moment where I was like,"This is really good." When I got over the hump of understanding that, you know, it is this story about succession and a son trying to fill his father's footsteps and that it's really a two hander between the father and the son.
• 18:20
  He goes to bed at 11: I realized, "Oh, wow, now this is really starting to work." And the music was really working.
• 18:24
  He goes to bed at 11: And, you know, I was enjoying watching the sequences and I'm like, okay, now I know I'm on the right track.
• 18:31
  He goes to bed at 11: The movie was really well received at film festivals, 2011.
• 18:35
  He goes to bed at 11: It premiered in Berlin to a really, really warm response.
• 18:40
  He goes to bed at 11: But no buyers, not even an offer.
• 18:42
  He goes to bed at 11: We had one offer, and I won't mention the buyer.
• 18:44
  He goes to bed at 11: One offer of $0 just to try to get it out there.
• 18:50
  He goes to bed at 11: We were passed on by Weinstein Company because they said that you could never do a foreign language documentary, nobody would ever watch it.
• 18:56
  He goes to bed at 11: That was a failure of imagination.
• 18:59
  He goes to bed at 11: Jiro Dreams of Sushi makes a lot of people dream of eating Jiro sushi.
• 19:04
  He goes to bed at 11: That's coming up in just a minute.
• 19:04
  He goes to bed at 11: Stay with us.
• 19:13
  He goes to bed at 11: Alright, everybody.
• 19:14
  He goes to bed at 11: MUBI is the global film company that champions great cinema, bringing it to you wherever you are, in as many ways as we possibly can.
• 19:21
  He goes to bed at 11: We stream movies, we produce them, we release them in theaters, movies from any country, from legendary auteurs or brilliant first timers, we've always got something new for you to discover.
• 19:31
  He goes to bed at 11: And hey, since this episode has taken us to Asia to sample a very fine food film, I have a feeling you will be into another one, it is called Winter in Sokcho.
• 19:40
  He goes to bed at 11: It's based on the award winning novel, and is about a woman working at a guest house in a South Korean fishing village that empties out at winter.
• 19:49
  He goes to bed at 11: And then things warm up when a French graphic novelist comes to stay and she starts showing him her town between rounds of incredible looking fish dishes her mom cooks up.
• 19:58
  He goes to bed at 11: It's super atmospheric.
• 19:58
  He goes to bed at 11: It's very apt for the holiday season.
• 20:01
  He goes to bed at 11: There's plenty of snowfall, and it is streaming now on MUBI in the UK, US, Canada and lots of other countries.
• 20:09
  He goes to bed at 11: All you got to do is subscribe at mubi.com We've got links and all the info you need in the show notes of this episode.
• 20:16
  He goes to bed at 11: Also, by the way, if you're in the Netherlands, and I'm very jealous if you are, it's my favorite country, up there, MUBI is streaming the movie we are talking about on this very episode,Jiro Dreams of Sushi. I highly recommend you go watch that, but wait till the episode is over.
• 20:33
  He goes to bed at 11: In fact, why not?
• 20:33
  He goes to bed at 11: Let's get back to the episode right now.
• 20:40
  He goes to bed at 11: Alright, so it is 2011, Magnolia Pictures has finally stepped in and given Jiro Dreams of Sushi a respectable theatrical run, but now it's about to become...
• 20:49
  He goes to bed at 11: a phenomenon.
• 20:54
  He goes to bed at 11: When it hit Netflix, it just everything changed.
• 20:56
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, this was the moment of Netflix when people were discovering documentary just as a format.
• 21:02
  He goes to bed at 11: That's right.
• 21:02
  He goes to bed at 11: It was kind of like, people forget this, it was kind of like everyone-- I think it's understood now that, documentaries-- I remember at one point recently, walking by some multiplex and half of the screens were actually showing docs.
• 21:15
  He goes to bed at 11: That was not happening, I feel like, until Netflix started putting a whole bunch of docs up there and people were like,"These are good." It was part of it, yeah.
• 21:22
  He goes to bed at 11: There were a few good docs coming out of this period, and I know that Weinstein Company, had put out Bully that year and did a big theatrical push for this movie, Bully. And there were some-- Ironic actually, now I think about it.
• 21:35
  He goes to bed at 11: So docs were kind of coming up, but it was like Netflix connected it to the mainstream. Because you could only see these docs in art houses, in movie theaters, but in the middle of America where they didn't have these types of theaters, nobody was watching a documentary.
• 21:46
  He goes to bed at 11: But Netflix was serving these things up and making them available and people started watching them, and it just kind of blew up.
• 21:55
  He goes to bed at 11: That's when I realized something was happening, as soon as it hit Netflix and like, my Twitter was, like blowing up.
• 22:01
  He goes to bed at 11: And then people, the restaurant started to complain a little bit- that people were annoying them.
• 22:04
  He goes to bed at 11: - Jiro's restaurant?
• 22:07
  He goes to bed at 11: Oh yeah, because people started just showing up at the restaurant.
• 22:09
  He goes to bed at 11: Which is a place where, even in the movie, you have to book a month in advance even when you were making it.
• 22:15
  He goes to bed at 11: You have to book a month in advance.
• 22:16
  He goes to bed at 11: There's a scene I love where some guy wanders in, he's like,"Oh, this is a sushi restaurant.
• 22:21
  He goes to bed at 11: "Do you have appetizers?" They're like, "No." He's like, "How much is it?" It's like ¥30,000.
• 22:24
  He goes to bed at 11: It's $300 a person.
• 22:27
  He goes to bed at 11: And he's like, "Oh, okay.
• 22:27
  He goes to bed at 11: Is it possible to make reservations?""Yeah, one month in advance." And the guy just kind of inches out of the restaurant backwards.
• 22:34
  He goes to bed at 11: "Got it. Bye." And now people were just showing up and taking pictures through the windows.
• 22:38
  He goes to bed at 11: And they had to shutter up the windows and stuff.
• 22:40
  He goes to bed at 11: And it was kind of an inconvenience for them at first.
• 22:43
  He goes to bed at 11: But that was the moment.
• 22:43
  He goes to bed at 11: Netflix was the moment.
• 22:45
  He goes to bed at 11: Let's talk about the impact this movie had on the food world.
• 22:48
  He goes to bed at 11: Because there was a point where I actually wanted to do-- This whole season would be movies that actually made people eat differently, and it's actually hard to come up with movies that have done it.
• 22:58
  He goes to bed at 11: There's a few, you could argue,Sideways made people drink wine differently.
• 23:03
  He goes to bed at 11: Yeah, and not drink Merlot ever.
• 23:03
  He goes to bed at 11: Merlot was destroyed.
• 23:06
  He goes to bed at 11: Utterly destroyed by Sideways. It was. Well, this is the opposite.
• 23:10
  He goes to bed at 11: Like this is the movie that popularized omakase. Did you notice this happening?
• 23:14
  He goes to bed at 11: Did somebody have to point it out?
• 23:17
  He goes to bed at 11: Oh yeah. I mean, Nozawa himself, when he was founding Sugarfish, took me out to his new Nozawa bar and he was like,"You made people understand omakase." He's like, "Thank you." And I got one free meal from him.
• 23:30
  He goes to bed at 11: My only free meal from Nozawa.
• 23:31
  He goes to bed at 11: It was really wonderful and he was very kind.
• 23:34
  He goes to bed at 11: But, so that's been kind of a self-serving side effect because now it's a lot easier to get good sushi around the world.
• 23:42
  He goes to bed at 11: But there is now also, I know that there are those who are like, okay, that was that needed to happen.
• 23:47
  He goes to bed at 11: People needed to appreciate the artistry of sushi and the simplicity of it and omakase and respecting the chefs.
• 23:52
  He goes to bed at 11: But now it's everywhere, and it's also very rarefied and hard and expensive to get into.
• 24:00
  He goes to bed at 11: Also, Jiro, my understanding is you can't even get a reservation anymore at Jiro.
• 24:05
  He goes to bed at 11: It doesn't even allow the public to just make a reservation anymore.
• 24:09
  He goes to bed at 11: That's how rarefied this has become.
• 24:09
  He goes to bed at 11: Are there any regrets?
• 24:12
  He goes to bed at 11: Not really.
• 24:14
  He goes to bed at 11: I don't, you know, as far as Jiro's restaurant, the demand was so high that they had to kind of, it kind of became like a members club in a way where they can only serve so many people and yet this is the most famous sushi restaurant in the world all of a sudden.
• 24:30
  He goes to bed at 11: They just had to change their practices so that people would stop coming.
• 24:34
  He goes to bed at 11: Otherwise, the phone would be ringing off the hook.
• 24:36
  He goes to bed at 11: And so, you know, you have to kind of know somebody who knows somebody.
• 24:39
  He goes to bed at 11: There are also some services that you can employ that will not only get you into the restaurant for a fee, but they will also educate you on how to eat sushi and how to be there and what to expect.
• 24:51
  He goes to bed at 11: Because a lot of people go in there, they think they're just going to a fancy, you know, sushi restaurant where they'll just accommodate you.
• 24:58
  He goes to bed at 11: And this is like, not what was happening.
• 25:00
  He goes to bed at 11: People were going for clout and not knowing what they were in for.
• 25:03
  He goes to bed at 11: If there was one regret about the film.
• 25:05
  He goes to bed at 11: And Jiro mentioned this to me himself when I went, was like, there should have been a section where they teach you how to eat sushi.
• 25:11
  He goes to bed at 11: You should have said what to do when you come in the door.
• 25:13
  He goes to bed at 11: And I was like, "Good note." But it was too late.
• 25:16
  He goes to bed at 11: And by the way, I did have to educate myself.
• 25:19
  He goes to bed at 11: There was, because I remember somebody was saying-- I always dipped it rice first and somebody was like,"No, you should dip it fish side down." That's right, right?
• 25:28
  He goes to bed at 11: Yeah, I think Bourdain actually talked about this a bit, and he was an advocate of the film.
• 25:34
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, he loved the film.
• 25:35
  He goes to bed at 11: He had tried to film with Jiro before, but Jiro refused to sign the release form because he didn't want to be part of an episode with other sushi chefs.
• 25:44
  He goes to bed at 11: And so Bourdain admired not only the film, but kind of like the way I had handled the Old Master in the sense that, you know, I had earned his trust.
• 25:53
  He goes to bed at 11: And Bourdain talked about that, you know, he would talk about, I'm not sure if it was on the show or somewhere that you don't make the wasabi slurry combining wasabi with soy sauce.
• 26:02
  He goes to bed at 11: And Bourdain kind of corrected the record on that.
• 26:05
  He goes to bed at 11: And I think that he was he talked about turning the sushi, brushing the fish side.
• 26:09
  He goes to bed at 11: Nozawa advocated for that as well.
• 26:12
  He goes to bed at 11: Now they brush the soy sauce on for you like Jiro does.
• 26:16
  He goes to bed at 11: One, they don't want to waste soy sauce.
• 26:18
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, you got to put the right amount on and control that.
• 26:21
  He goes to bed at 11: I remember when I went to a lunch shortly after I made the film, and there was an already sauced piece of sushi that then he dunked into the soy sauce and soaked all that rice, and I was like, "Oh man, I really should say something," but I didn't.
• 26:34
  He goes to bed at 11: Yeah.
• 26:35
  He goes to bed at 11: I've been spoiled, but there's no reason to be a jerk to this poor person.
• 26:38
  He goes to bed at 11: Exactly. Yeah.
• 26:40
  He goes to bed at 11: Just let people enjoy it the way they like it.
• 26:42
  He goes to bed at 11: And everybody has their way.
• 26:43
  He goes to bed at 11: Just a little bit more, though, on the omakase explosion.
• 26:46
  He goes to bed at 11: Has it been a good thing overall?
• 26:48
  He goes to bed at 11: What I love are reasonably priced omakases Some of the omakases, and they're allowed to do this, they can price it as high as the market will bear, are so expensive that they are prohibitive.
• 27:00
  He goes to bed at 11: And actually there is a correction happening in that market.
• 27:03
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, not every super hyped, super expensive sushi bar is full anymore.
• 27:09
  He goes to bed at 11: There have been some closures.
• 27:11
  He goes to bed at 11: What I think is the right correction isomakase that is attainable and you do it-- It doesn't have to be such like a long, drawn out thing.
• 27:21
  He goes to bed at 11: It doesn't, it shouldn't-- To be honest, Jiro sushi is a 30 minute meal.
• 27:25
  He goes to bed at 11: It's expensive because everybody wants to go there and they are getting the absolute best fish and it's very expensive to acquire these ingredients.
• 27:32
  He goes to bed at 11: And he's kind of earned that right.
• 27:34
  He goes to bed at 11: But I don't regret it.
• 27:35
  He goes to bed at 11: I love a fancy sushi meal and I love a casual one.
• 27:38
  He goes to bed at 11: I just want them to care about the rice.
• 27:38
  He goes to bed at 11: Make the rice good.
• 27:41
  He goes to bed at 11: You know, make the thing simple and don't just serve mid rice and then shave a bunch of truffles on top of it, or don't do things just to impress with luxury ingredients, but put some thought about how you are actually, how that actually tastes.
• 27:55
  He goes to bed at 11: and is there a reason to be putting caviar on stuff?
• 27:59
  He goes to bed at 11: So, there's some stuff where it's a little bit of an eye roll, there's some stuff where there's way too much storytelling and talking.
• 28:05
  He goes to bed at 11: That's the thing about Chef's Table is there are some meals where you sit down and it's like you have to listen to an audiobook before you can enjoy your bite.
• 28:13
  He goes to bed at 11: But I think these things work themselves out and people go back to the restaurants that they love.
• 28:17
  He goes to bed at 11: What I don't regret is making people think about food and care about food, and to strive to do something better than they did yesterday.
• 28:23
  He goes to bed at 11: That's my favorite part of it.
• 28:26
  He goes to bed at 11: Apparently kaiseki is now the new thing.
• 28:28
  He goes to bed at 11: Omakase is the old thing.
• 28:28
  He goes to bed at 11: Now it's kaiseki.- What's your take?
• 28:31
  He goes to bed at 11: - I think kaiseki is cool.
• 28:34
  He goes to bed at 11: And I think it's still an omakase because it's like, the chef is choosing what's seasonal.
• 28:39
  He goes to bed at 11: But I think that actually the prince-- If they're doing kaiseki right, the principle of kaiseki is seasonality.
• 28:45
  He goes to bed at 11: And this has been a problem in American food culture since Wolfgang.
• 28:49
  He goes to bed at 11: I did the Wolfgang Puck documentary also.
• 28:52
  He goes to bed at 11: Since Wolfgang came here, since Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse, they have been trying to get people to eat seasonally and to think about making it about the ingredient.
• 29:01
  He goes to bed at 11: And this is what Wolfgang recently said on the Chef's Table: Talks podcast.
• 29:06
  He goes to bed at 11: He's like, get great ingredients and don't fuck it upKaiseki is all about seasonality.
• 29:11
  He goes to bed at 11: It's about the finest ingredients, with simple technique to bring out those flavors so that you're tasting the season.
• 29:17
  He goes to bed at 11: And I think that that helps so much with our farm system to have more delicious things.
• 29:22
  He goes to bed at 11: Michael Pollan's written a great deal about this.
• 29:24
  He goes to bed at 11: He had a great documentary, called Food, Inc. where, the tomato in the supermarket is not grown to be delicious.
• 29:32
  He goes to bed at 11: It's grown to look red like a tomato and to have shelf life.
• 29:35
  He goes to bed at 11: They're just like, in Japan, certain markets-- There are just times when certain vegetables are not available'cause they're not in season and you switch to this vegetable.
• 29:44
  He goes to bed at 11: But in the American supermarket system, you need to have everything available all the time.
• 29:49
  He goes to bed at 11: And so I hope that kaiseki moves us in that direction of seasonality.
• 29:52
  He goes to bed at 11: What is the new kaiseki spot in LA, what's opening up?
• 29:55
  He goes to bed at 11: - I want to know.
• 29:55
  He goes to bed at 11: - I have no idea.
• 29:57
  He goes to bed at 11: I've got a six year old kid.
• 29:57
  He goes to bed at 11: I don't go out to do anything anymore.
• 30:00
  He goes to bed at 11: - I have a six year old also.
• 30:00
  He goes to bed at 11: - Really?
• 30:03
  He goes to bed at 11: Are you still getting out?
• 30:03
  He goes to bed at 11: Man, that kid must eat well.
• 30:05
  He goes to bed at 11: Yeah, well, the six year old likes to go to restaurants because he knows-- I've said, while you're waiting for the food, you can play on your Nintendo Switch.
• 30:12
  He goes to bed at 11: That's the one.
• 30:12
  He goes to bed at 11: And he's adventurous.
• 30:14
  He goes to bed at 11: He goes to Petit Trois, in the Valley.
• 30:17
  He goes to bed at 11: - In Los Angeles.
• 30:17
  He goes to bed at 11: - And he loves escargot.
• 30:20
  He goes to bed at 11: He's like, "Oh, this is funny." So he eats a lot.
• 30:22
  He goes to bed at 11: My four year old, on the other hand, is on a strict French fry mac and cheese, butter pasta, diet and is utterly uncompromising.
• 30:33
  He goes to bed at 11: Phil Rosenthal told me that he knows some parents that are paying their kids to try it, in some way.
• 30:36
  He goes to bed at 11: You can give them extra screen time...
• 30:41
  He goes to bed at 11: What's also helped a little bit is I give them a rating system.
• 30:44
  He goes to bed at 11: So it's like, "Okay, raise one hand if you just like it,"raise two hands if you love it." And then you can do thumbs down, thumbs up, and they make up their own ratings.
• 30:52
  He goes to bed at 11: So it gives them the agency of judgment.
• 30:57
  He goes to bed at 11: I hope I don't turn them into food critics.
• 31:10
  He goes to bed at 11: David Gelb.
• 31:11
  He goes to bed at 11: Earlier this year, he and Jiro Dreams of Sushi were celebrated at the first ever Real Taste Film Awards honoring food movies.
• 31:18
  He goes to bed at 11: Now that's an awards dinner where they're not gonna be serving rubbery wedding chicken, I'm guessing.
• 31:23
  He goes to bed at 11: And that is the MUBI podcast for this week.
• 31:26
  He goes to bed at 11: Follow us for more stories about food and film.
• 31:28
  He goes to bed at 11: Next week, one of the world's great filmmakers makes cultures collide in a grocery aisle.
• 31:34
  He goes to bed at 11: "Holy cow," says the cash register guy, you know.
• 31:37
  He goes to bed at 11: Of course, not realizing that cows indeed are holy where I come from.
• 31:41
  He goes to bed at 11: Mira Nair slices up her moviesMississippi Masala, Salaam Bombay! and dishes on what her son, Zohran Mamdani, eats at home.
• 31:49
  He goes to bed at 11: Follow us so you don't miss it.
• 31:50
  He goes to bed at 11: Also, if you've got comments, questions, or you just want to brag about the one time you managed to wrangle a seat at Jiro's place, email us at podcast@mubi.com And now let's roll credits.
• 32:01
  He goes to bed at 11: This episode was written, hosted, and edited by me, Rico Gagliano.
• 32:04
  He goes to bed at 11: Ciara McEniff is our producer, with help from assistant producer Kat Kowalczyk.
• 32:08
  He goes to bed at 11: Our booking producer is Jackson Musker.
• 32:08
  He goes to bed at 11: Stephen Colon mastered the episode.
• 32:12
  He goes to bed at 11: Martin Austwick composed our original music.
• 32:15
  He goes to bed at 11: Thanks this week to Corrina Lesser and to the LA Press Club's National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards, where we were just named the Best Ongoing Arts Podcast of the year for the fourth time.
• 32:25
  He goes to bed at 11: Yay us! The show is executive produced by me along with Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman, and Michael Tacca.
• 32:31
  He goes to bed at 11: And finally, to watch the best in cinema, subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com Thanks for listening.
• 32:37
  He goes to bed at 11: Go watch some movies.
• 32:39
  He goes to bed at 11: And hey, here's a tip I got from a Japanese American pal: Sneak a bag of mochi crunch rice crackers into the theater, dump them into your popcorn...
• 32:48
  He goes to bed at 11: Trust me, you will never go back to caramel corn.
• 32:51
  He goes to bed at 11: That's over for you.