0:00

You're listening to Ruthy's Table four in

0:02

partnership with Montclair. I

0:05

may not know what makes a good comedian,

0:08

but I do know what makes a good father. And

0:10

last night, when I met Judd Apatow in

0:12

the West End production of Cabaret in London,

0:15

where his daughter Maude is playing the lead role

0:17

of Sally Bowles, he told me this

0:19

was the eighth time he'd seen it in three weeks.

0:23

And if I may not know what makes a good

0:25

comedian, Judd certainly does.

0:27

His advice to kickstart your

0:29

writing process, come up with a topic and

0:31

write down as many jokes or one liners

0:33

as you can think of. Don't be

0:35

scared if your first draft doesn't want to make

0:37

you laugh out loud, or if you don't find your

0:39

own writing funny. I think

0:41

they are definite parallels in comedy and

0:44

cooking, and I can imagine paraphrasing

0:46

the second sentence telling an aspiring chef

0:49

not to be scared if the first attempt doesn't

0:51

taste right. Comedy and

0:53

cooking children and acting, laughing

0:55

and eating movies and restaurants. Today

0:58

we're here in the River Cafe, and Jed and

1:00

I will cover them more for after all

1:02

I said and done. Life is a cabaret.

1:06

I agree with that eight

1:08

times more

1:11

times this weekend too.

1:12

So lovely, yeah, why not? So

1:15

I want to talk to you about cabaret. But for the moment

1:18

you've just come from the pastry kitchen

1:20

or the recipe you chairs, pistachio

1:23

ice cream is being made.

1:27

I'm Bellatups, I'm the head pastry chef

1:30

at the River Cafe, and these are

1:32

our ice cream machines and they've actually

1:34

got quite a small drum make like roughly

1:38

two liters of ice cream. Here

1:40

is our lovely pistachio base,

1:42

which is essentially plain

1:45

custard that has had the pistashia

1:47

paste stirred through it. We

1:50

do churn. It

1:53

makes a delightful noise probably, I mean

1:55

for this amount, it will take like four

1:57

or five minutes, like nothing crazy. So

2:00

you can have a look on the topic. You

2:02

can see it's sort of lightly creasing. We know

2:04

that it's nearly there, but I'll

2:07

turn it to churn. Then

2:10

this will just go into the freezer until it's

2:13

frozen fully. And

2:16

in the restaurant, what we'd do is just before

2:19

service, we'd get the ice creams out to temper

2:21

you mean like you would do at home so

2:24

that you can get a lovely scoop from it,

2:26

but that it only takes

2:29

like five minutes. But just

2:32

make sure you're using a cupful

2:34

of hot water and dipping your scoop in every time

2:36

so you get a perfect scoop. Thank

2:38

you very much, pleasure enjoy first,

2:41

lovely to meet you too. I hope you have a lovely meta.

2:46

What did you think?

2:48

I'm always impressed by people who know how to cook,

2:51

because as much as I like

2:53

food, I don't have enough interest in making

2:55

it because I always feel like there's someone who makes

2:57

it better, fair enough. So why would I make myself mediocre

2:59

food? I can go to you and get great

3:01

food. Like it's been eight hours

3:04

doing the bad version of what you do.

3:06

Well, would you like to start by reading

3:08

the recipe for the pistachio ice cream?

3:10

Okay, this is the pistachio

3:12

ice cream recipe from the River Cafe.

3:15

It serves ten or

3:18

me alone. One

3:21

thing I learned during the pandemic is it is possible

3:23

to eat a pint of ice cream, finish

3:25

it, and then start another one and

3:28

finish it. Okay, here's

3:30

what you need. You need two hundred grams of unsalted,

3:33

shelled pistachios, four

3:35

hundred grams of castor sugar, plus

3:38

an extra eighty grams, seven

3:41

hundred milli liters of full fat

3:43

milk, no oat

3:45

milk, the real stuff, three

3:48

hundred milliliters double cream,

3:51

and ten large egg

3:53

yolks. You know, in every performance

3:55

of Cabaret, it's a scene where Mode

3:57

has a crack open an in

4:00

a cup and eat it on stage

4:03

every night.

4:04

That's acting for you, that is disciplined.

4:07

Its to do that.

4:08

It's like that movie with a Nick cage where

4:11

he I think it was vampire's kiss and

4:13

he ate a bug in it like a cockroach

4:16

in a scene that's Mod's equivalent.

4:18

Yeah, i'd ag a day is quite a

4:20

lot.

4:20

It's a very method. Okay, here we go.

4:22

Roast the pistachios in a dry frying

4:25

pan over medium heat.

4:28

Blend roasted pistachos in a

4:30

food processor with eighty grams of sugar

4:33

and mix to a fine paste. Heat

4:35

the milk and cream to just

4:37

below boiling.

4:39

In a bowl. Beat together egg.

4:40

Yolks and four hundred grams of sugar. Add

4:44

warm milk and cream into the egg and sugar.

4:46

Return this custard mixture to a thick

4:49

bottomed pan and cook slowly

4:51

over heated and low

4:53

heat until it reaches eighty two degrees.

4:56

Remove from the heat, stir in

4:58

the pistachio paste and then or through a fine

5:01

sieve.

5:02

Or what do we call it in our country? We call

5:04

it a strainer.

5:06

A strainer into a bowl and leave to cool. Cool,

5:10

then churn in an ice

5:12

cream machine. You gotta get an ice cream machine.

5:13

Oh yeah, I do have one.

5:15

No, I don't dangerous so to be

5:17

for me to own my own ice cream machine and.

5:19

Making pints and pipes. So

5:23

when you are making a movie, okay, you're

5:25

on the set of forty year Old Virgin, one

5:27

of my favorites, or Knocked Up? What

5:30

do you do about food for your.

5:32

Crew on a movie?

5:34

Every day lunch is basically

5:36

a buffet, and I have trouble

5:40

not taking too much from any buffet. Yeah,

5:42

Like, that's one of my issues is like this,

5:45

you know, fried chicken there, I'm not going to get like

5:47

one wing. I mean,

5:49

I'm gonna like it's hard for me not to take full advantage.

5:52

So when I make movies, for

5:54

the most part, I don't

5:56

I can't.

5:57

Go to where the food is, like there's

5:59

usually a tent.

6:00

I have to just have someone tell me what's

6:02

there and have them bring it back. And

6:05

because I'll just go to like the cheap

6:08

lemon cake, you know, like I'll

6:10

have ice cream Sundays, and

6:13

then I fall asleep in the afternoon and I get.

6:17

Really tired.

6:18

And you like eating because it makes you feel such

6:20

up, but you have to go back to work, right, So then

6:22

so you are careful, I mean, well you don't

6:24

go to thee But then I mean.

6:26

I get weak.

6:27

So usually about like two thirds through a movie,

6:29

I lose my will and then by

6:31

the end I'm just gaining weight and binging.

6:34

But but for a while, I'll

6:36

try to control myself. Although when we shot The King of Staten

6:39

Island, we were shooting in

6:42

Staten Island. We were there for months,

6:44

and they got good pizza and Staten Island,

6:46

so it was pretty hard not to flip out

6:48

for pizza. But if I could like lose weight

6:51

before a shoot starts, then by

6:53

the end of the shoot I am

6:55

overweight, but not insanely overweight.

6:58

I have to like get a lower baseline to.

7:00

Start, so I have to pretend I'm like Christian

7:02

Bale playing a skinny person, and I like

7:04

lose Weight to begin and then.

7:06

It falls apart.

7:07

What are you writing at the moment?

7:09

I'm trying to write a movie right now to shoot

7:12

next year, which

7:14

is you

7:16

know, it's a little bit about like what's happening in the world

7:18

of comedy at this moment

7:20

where everyone doesn't know what they can say. So

7:23

I'm trying to write about people not

7:25

knowing where the line is.

7:26

Do do you know where the line is?

7:28

Well, for me, the line is never

7:30

that complicated, because I think if your heart's in the right

7:33

place, people know, and

7:35

if your point is reasonable

7:37

and kind, you can get away

7:39

with all sorts of things. I think people can tell when

7:41

you're being outrageous with no real

7:44

point to it, and some

7:46

people love that, and I think that's fine. I

7:49

think it's fine for anyone to enjoy anything

7:51

like It's like music. You might like heavy metal,

7:53

you might like country music. Everyone picks

7:56

their flavor. I think it's hard when people

7:58

feel like they're getting force

8:00

fed the flavor they don't want and

8:03

then suddenly like why you

8:05

have to say, well, you don't have to listen to.

8:07

That or watch that. But

8:09

it's definitely a tricky time. So I'm trying to.

8:11

Find it be a movie about a comedian.

8:14

Not a comedian about a writer. And

8:17

so I just finished the draft of that. Hopefully

8:19

I'll get to do that next year.

8:20

One of my favorite movies of a

8:23

long, long time ago was King of Comedy.

8:25

Yeah you like that Jerry Lewis

8:27

and Robert de Niro and Sandra Bernhard

8:30

one of my favorite movies. Loved it when it came

8:32

out, wasn't a big hit. It came out

8:34

after the attempted assassination

8:36

of Ronald Reagan, so the

8:39

whole plot line of kidnapping a celebrity

8:41

freaked people out a bit and

8:45

also obsessed fans freak

8:47

people out at the time. But as the decades

8:49

have passed, I think people realize it's one of Martin

8:51

Scorcey's best movies.

8:53

I haven't seen it again, I have so many times

8:56

I'd like to see it.

8:56

In fact, it's one of the movies I watch to

9:00

pay attention to the cinematography

9:03

and the shot selection because it's

9:05

very alive, but it's covered

9:07

in a way that really works for comedy. So

9:10

seeing how Scorsese shoots humor

9:13

is really helpful. So I always watch.

9:15

It for me. What was interesting about

9:17

that was the movie was the idea that

9:19

comedians had to be funny, And you

9:22

know, is Steve Martin funny? Is Meilbrooks

9:25

funny? As I

9:27

think when I did my talk about Mailbrooks,

9:29

I said something that people we always think about as a

9:31

man who makes us laugh, but I also think about

9:33

the man who talks about Bankroft

9:36

and what happened when she died. There is the pressure,

9:39

as someone who writes about funniness

9:41

or humor to be funny. Do you

9:43

feel that people expect

9:45

you to?

9:46

I mean, it is a weird pressure to try to

9:48

be funny in your work all day. It's kind of an unnatural

9:50

state.

9:51

You know.

9:51

Most people don't try to be funny that often. So

9:54

imagine sitting in office and trying to

9:56

be funny for ten straight first. I

9:58

mean, it's you're kind of a weird person

10:00

to like just be in that gear all

10:03

the time and looking for it all the time. So

10:05

it does get a little exhausting to be in

10:08

that headspace looking at life through

10:10

that lens. Ye, what's weird about

10:12

this? What's funny about this? The good part about it

10:14

is that when you're in comedy. When bad things happen,

10:17

you don't go oh, no, a bad thing happened, you go, oh,

10:19

this would be a great story.

10:21

And so sometimes when things go.

10:23

Really bad, like I threw out the first

10:25

pitch at a Mets baseball

10:27

game, and I thought, well, if

10:29

it goes bad, it's a good story, and if it goes good,

10:32

it's just good.

10:32

And so there is a way of looking

10:35

at life.

10:35

How did it go.

10:36

It wasn't in the middle.

10:38

It wasn't bad enough to be a good story,

10:40

and it wasn't good enough to not be a

10:42

triumph.

10:43

It was just like, that's a big deal.

10:45

That's a big deal getting to to I mean again

10:47

for the listeners who may live in some other

10:49

country. That's where was it.

10:51

It was a city field

10:53

in New York and it was the Mets versus Yankees, so it was

10:55

sold out. There were fifty two thousand people there.

10:57

Yeah, and was

11:00

terrifying. And I always joke

11:03

that the worst part was when they announced

11:05

me throwing out the first

11:07

pitch. I didn't really get

11:09

more than a very small smatter of applause,

11:12

and I thought, I think I'm more famous than this.

11:14

I mean, I'm from New York. Aren't

11:16

I a beloved son of New York? And I realized

11:18

that no one cares about me.

11:19

It was they just wanted the game to start.

11:21

It was like a politician was doing it.

11:23

Yeah, maybe they don't do it for anyone.

11:26

Absolutely, did you grow up in New York?

11:28

We lived on Long Island where siast

11:31

would bury. Area of Long Island.

11:33

A lot of bagels being eaten there. Yeah,

11:35

it's a big bagel town. At midnight, you'd

11:37

go to the bagel place while they were cooking him and get

11:39

them right out of the oven.

11:40

There's nothing like a bagel that's

11:43

Also, West Coast isn't as good?

11:45

Is it that New Yorkers always say it's Some

11:47

people have said it's the water that

11:49

makes it good. Then we heard that theory that they

11:52

say the reason you can't have a good bagel outside

11:54

of New York is the water in New York?

11:55

Is that true? You understand how the bread works?

11:58

Because also I think that maybe i've

12:00

had bagels. It's really hard to insult

12:02

a country's bagels.

12:05

When someone has a good bagel.

12:07

But we know. But they took me once to the

12:10

East End to what's that street? Do you know Bricklay

12:13

Brickday bagels, and they're bagels and the British

12:16

are really really proud of them. So I

12:19

have got a podcast that I would like to go on and

12:21

on, So I won't say I think that, but when you have

12:23

a New York bagel, it makes all the difference,

12:26

you know, I think that. But I don't know about La bagels.

12:28

How are they?

12:28

Theyre pretty much the same.

12:30

There's some people who seem to have cracked

12:32

the code.

12:32

I don't know. They're bringing some water from New York

12:34

or maybe the whole water thing is a mess.

12:36

That the whole thing is a mess. Yeah, rightctly and

12:38

everybody. So you grew up in Long

12:41

Island eating bagels and smelling bagels,

12:43

and what was the food like in your house?

12:45

Uh?

12:46

Not impressive. I can't say my

12:48

late mother was a master chef.

12:51

We had a very small rotation of chicken,

12:55

chicken, cutlet, salmon, sometimes

12:58

like.

12:59

A pot roast. Our.

13:01

Vegetable was usually peas and corn. I

13:03

don't think broccoli got cooked in my house. Yeah.

13:06

I think I refused to eat a salad till

13:09

mid twenties.

13:09

Yeah, maybe you didn't know, but we didn't grow up

13:11

on salads.

13:12

There wasn't a lot of salads, a lot of Chinese food happening.

13:15

There was going out for it.

13:17

Going out fair amount of McDonald's happening.

13:19

But then my parents opened a restaurant.

13:21

Oh yeah, so just going back one step.

13:23

Your mother would cook the pot roast of the chicken.

13:26

Did she work well? They

13:28

owned a restaurant.

13:29

And then when she was doing the restaurant, you'd

13:31

come home and have supper. How many in the family there

13:34

was five, five of us

13:36

children.

13:37

And at some point I think my mom made

13:40

all the cakes for the restaurant. She started

13:42

cooking the desserts for it. And

13:44

I was a dishwasher.

13:45

What was a restaurant.

13:46

It was called Raisins and it was like,

13:49

I don't know what you would call it, American continental.

13:51

It was like steak, lobster, chicken,

13:53

parmesan. It was it seemed like some

13:56

Italian some hamburgers.

13:59

And I, you know, they bring.

14:00

In a big bag of muscles, Give me

14:02

a brush.

14:02

I'd have to clean the muscles and pull

14:05

the hair out of the muscles.

14:07

What a nightmare.

14:08

No one, No one's paid enough money to rip hairs

14:10

off a mussel. I have nightmares

14:13

about someone going, can you do the muscles today?

14:15

We'll go check it the way we could have set a pistachio

14:17

ice cream. We could, Well, we don't do muscles.

14:19

Actually, I don't know.

14:20

I don't like muscles that much. I like clams,

14:22

but I'm not a big muscle.

14:24

I'm not.

14:24

I didn't mind peeling the potatoes and give me a fifty

14:26

pound bag of potatoes. I'm happy to feel them cut

14:29

them into French fries myself. I got no issue

14:31

with that.

14:31

So let's go back to raisins. Your father,

14:34

he wasn't a chef, so they just did it as a business

14:36

as a business. So before that he was he

14:38

was working in the record business.

14:40

And well, my grandfather was a jazz

14:42

producer who produced Charlie Parker

14:44

and the first Janis

14:46

Joplin record.

14:47

His name was Bobby Shadd.

14:49

What was the first Janis jopord?

14:50

It was called Big Brother in the Holding Company,

14:53

which is her first album My

14:56

generation.

14:57

Yeah, and that I can remember the cover

14:59

of the the Big Brother. Yeah, hold on take

15:02

a little piece of.

15:02

My Heart right, that's right, that was on

15:04

that record that dad produced, that my grandfather

15:07

did.

15:07

Your grandfather, it had that song down on me

15:10

a song of hers.

15:12

And so my father

15:14

worked for him when I was a kid for a while,

15:16

and they had some friends and owned

15:19

a tennis equipment store,

15:21

and then they all went into business with this.

15:23

Restaurant in your local town.

15:25

My local town. I remember, well,

15:27

I was getting four bucks an hour. I was so excited.

15:31

I started working there at fifteen, and

15:33

then I became the salad man.

15:35

Oh I see, so you were actually right

15:37

in there.

15:38

And then my friend Ron Garner started. He was

15:40

on the grill making the steaks and the burghers.

15:43

How old was he He.

15:44

Was probably seventeen. And then at the end

15:46

of the night, you know, we'd steal a lobster and head home.

15:49

Wow. And this went on. But then you'd go to

15:51

school the next day.

15:51

I hope we went to school.

15:53

But we loved making money, is the truth.

15:55

You know, to be sixteen seventeen and have a little

15:58

pocket money was

16:00

was fun. And we put in a lot of hours,

16:02

like we really worked there, you

16:04

know, three or five nights a week,

16:07

and.

16:07

They so you can go to school, come home, eat,

16:10

do your homework, and then go to the restaurant or not

16:12

do your.

16:12

Homework maybe sometimes sometimes no

16:14

homework.

16:15

Yeah, And did they do that because it was hard

16:17

to get stuff, or was it that they wanted

16:19

you there, or was the incentive

16:21

of having your kid just kept me out

16:23

of the house and they were out of that Your mom was

16:26

what did sheep.

16:27

Me out of trouble?

16:27

What did she do there?

16:29

My mom?

16:30

Did she cook in the kitchen? Uh?

16:32

No, just just at some point

16:34

she started doing the cakes. I don't know if anyone

16:36

wanted her to do the cakes.

16:37

It's also the key.

16:39

Was it a good Maybe she was.

16:40

Forcing the cakes on everyone. I'm not saying she was good at

16:42

it. I'm just saying she did it well.

16:43

Did The question is did the restaurant

16:46

carry on? Did it have a.

16:47

Good lasted a little while, and then they sold

16:49

it to someone Those people couldn't pay

16:53

the money that they owed, and then they got it back,

16:55

and then they owned it for a few more

16:57

years and then they sold it. But it was a

16:59

really fun part of our childhood. And

17:02

rumor has it Billy Joel ate there once. I know

17:04

you have a lot of celebrities here and all the

17:06

doctor Dre's eating here, but we had one

17:08

Billy Joel sighting in our

17:10

whole history of the restaurant.

17:13

I used to have seen him.

17:14

Do you know I have met Billy Joel

17:16

a few times?

17:17

Did you ever come to my harou?

17:20

I may have?

17:21

Might say that was the best cake I've ever had.

17:23

That's a big thing on Long Island is a

17:26

Billy Joel.

17:27

You know you had that song scenes from Italian restaurant,

17:29

and so every Italian restaurant claimed

17:32

it was written about their place, I

17:35

see.

17:35

But not yours because wasn't Italian, So

17:38

it wasn't Italian.

17:39

Yeah, we thought that our local pizzeria,

17:41

Christiano's was.

17:43

What he was writing about.

17:49

Did you know The River Cafe has a shop. It's

17:52

full of our favorite foods and designs.

17:54

We have cookbooks, linen, napkins, kitchen

17:57

ware, toad bags with our signatures.

17:59

Class is from Venice, chocolates

18:01

from Turin. You can find us right next

18:03

door to the River Cafe in London or

18:06

online at shopth Rivercafe

18:08

dot co dot uk. Did

18:17

you ever sit down for dinner with your parents

18:19

around the table? Yes, for the restaurant

18:22

or during the restaurant.

18:23

Well, my parents got divorced when I was in middle

18:26

school, and then I would do a fair amount

18:28

of cooking for myself, like I was very

18:30

excited to learn how to use a walk. Okay,

18:32

that was a big thing. To cut up steak and

18:35

broccoli and just pour an enormous amount of Kikuman's

18:38

soy sauce. And then I thought that was cooking. It

18:40

was a three ingredients meal.

18:42

Yeah, how did you come upon that? I

18:45

wonder, But I think there was a period when

18:47

everybody did walks, but for a teenage.

18:49

Kid to do that, we thought that was fun.

18:51

And also I remember on my kitchen island

18:53

at home as a kid, it was a grill on

18:56

the kitchen island. So I used

18:58

to make hamburgers, and I really felt like a chef,

19:01

just like taking my hamburgers

19:03

every day and then my comfort food.

19:06

I would come home.

19:07

All my friends played sports and I didn't, so

19:09

I would come home by myself and I'd

19:12

watch like talk shows and I would

19:14

cook a grilled cheese sandwich. I

19:16

would get a vanilla

19:19

and chocolate Inimin's cake and

19:22

I would eat a bite of grilled cheese, bite

19:25

of the cake, little milk,

19:28

cheese cake, milk, and I

19:30

would do that for years.

19:32

You didn't understand the concept of dessert.

19:34

I enjoyed the interaction between

19:36

the grilled cheese and the chocolate cake. And

19:39

so we did a show called Freaks and Geeks, and

19:41

as a sequence of that.

19:43

I was going to ask about this. So Bill was one of my favorite

19:45

characters. I'm not sure. So that's

19:47

true that that is based on your

19:49

upbringing.

19:50

That was based on me sitting home watching comedians

19:52

cooking myself grilled cheese. And then

19:55

then much later in life, people were like, that's

19:57

really bad for you to eat because there was

20:00

so much butter involved, so

20:02

much or margarine whatever.

20:03

I was using the.

20:04

Grilled cheese sandwich, more in the cake.

20:05

In the grilled cheese, and that was your recipe.

20:07

How did you make a grilled cheese so much?

20:09

It was it was not fancy, it was wonderbread.

20:11

It was pure wonderbread, Fleischmann's

20:14

margarine, American

20:17

cheese, but American like but

20:19

like Kraft.

20:19

America already slice that right

20:22

then.

20:22

Even right now, I'm like, is that the best food

20:24

in the world?

20:25

Like, I don't know if any food tops it. I'm going to eat at

20:27

your restaurant today and I could.

20:28

Try and make your grilled cheese sandwich. Right I have challenging

20:31

finding the craft cheese and the wonder because Wonderbread

20:33

still exists.

20:34

It does still exist.

20:35

It's amazing that they called you know what it is. We

20:38

used to take a package of Wonderbread,

20:40

which was sliced white bread, and if you

20:42

put, like put your weight and squeezed

20:44

it, it would squeeze it too. You know, something

20:47

that was about a foot tall to

20:50

would go into about half an inch because

20:52

it was all air. It was just air. You

20:54

could just kind of squeeze it, right.

20:56

Only My wife pointed out when

20:58

I met her in my mid to late

21:00

twenties, that everything I ate

21:02

was unhealthy and disgusting.

21:05

She also pointed that out, like why

21:07

are you eating wonderbread? You know, there's like good bread

21:10

out there, there's good cheese out there, there's

21:12

good butter out there.

21:14

But first, on my first

21:16

date with Leslie, I made her chicken parmesan

21:19

and spaghetti with rag goo sauce

21:22

and wonderbread

21:25

with the bargarin and.

21:26

She still married you.

21:28

Yeah, the fact that there was a second date

21:30

is incredible. After that meal, she always

21:33

talks about the madness of that meal.

21:35

It's funny because I talked

21:37

to bob Byker and he can remember

21:39

exactly what he cooked. I thank you

21:41

for the first date with his wife Willow.

21:43

I did think about maybe doing

21:46

a guide to emotional eating. You

21:48

know, so what do you eat or cook when you're depressed?

21:51

When you want us to do? Somebody what you read her

21:53

cook you? Because eating is not

21:55

just hunger. It's emotion, isn't it.

21:57

Yeah, there's a Deepak Chopra book.

22:00

I think it's called What's

22:03

Eating You? Or Why are You Eating? And

22:06

it's about emotional

22:09

eating because way too

22:11

much of my eating is reward

22:14

eating or sedating

22:17

myself because I love to be stuffed. I

22:19

love to be stuffed, so all the blood goes to my stomach and

22:22

I am half conscious.

22:23

I enjoy that.

22:24

What do you do about that? Just that makes you sort of

22:26

wanted to It's just.

22:27

Like it's like being stoned, but on

22:30

eight pieces of pizza.

22:31

What's better than that? Well?

22:34

I'm not that fit thin. I'm riding two hundred right

22:36

now. Two hundred is my line. If I go above two hundred,

22:39

I know we're in trouble. I

22:41

should be at like one e eight.

22:45

Will you ever overweight?

22:47

Like?

22:47

Really? Over what?

22:48

I think the worst I got I almost got

22:50

to two ten in the early

22:52

pandemic era, and then I started

22:55

walking several hours every day, and

22:57

then I went vegetarian for a couple

22:59

of years. And do you think that it helped a

23:01

bit? Because I think I eat bad things with the meat.

23:04

Is that just the meat, it's what you put on it? Or

23:07

shame eating? A lot of shame eating. When

23:09

I was a kid, we used to hide things, right, So my

23:11

parents would buy like a box of like yodels

23:13

or ding dongs or something like that, and as

23:15

soon as they brought it home,

23:18

I would hide like half the box around

23:21

the house, you know, So there was a lot

23:23

of secretive eating halfens.

23:25

Did your mother noticed that she was.

23:26

Busy eating an entire box of chip wich ice

23:29

cream sandwiches alone?

23:31

When you then started? You went out to us

23:34

sate And so what was the food like?

23:36

There was that different from I got

23:38

it?

23:39

Well, I had no money, so I got a job making

23:41

burritos in the cafeteria

23:43

of US.

23:44

That's how I paid for my beer.

23:46

And when

23:48

I look back at what I ate, it's

23:51

amazing.

23:51

I'm alive.

23:52

Why because I think we just went and

23:54

had like Tommy's cheeseburgers at night.

23:56

And I don't even

23:58

think I thought then, I

24:00

don't even think I understood what nutrition was.

24:04

I never once thought you would eat

24:06

for energy for health. Food

24:09

was always for fun. When

24:12

I was a kid, we were like, let's go to beefsteak

24:14

Charlie's. There's an all you can eat ribs. I

24:16

mean, it was always food for fun. It was never

24:19

like, oh, that'll really keep

24:21

your head clear.

24:23

So USC and making burritos and

24:26

eating badly and studying what.

24:28

Studying cinema and writing? You

24:31

know, then that was the I didn't want

24:33

to do that.

24:33

I wanted to be a stand up comedian, but I couldn't think of

24:35

a major at college.

24:37

I don't teach that with college.

24:39

Well they do now, my friend Wayne Vetterman

24:41

teaches it at USC, but they didn't

24:43

then. So I just thought, well, what's kind

24:46

of like comedy? I guess

24:48

movies and writing. But I

24:50

wasn't dreaming of making movies.

24:53

I just wanted to be like Jane Lenno

24:55

or Jerry Seinfeld. I didn't care

24:57

about movies, and so I

24:59

was great at school. Then later when

25:02

I got some opportunities to write

25:04

movies, I realized, wait a second, I think I learned

25:06

how to do this at school.

25:07

Did you learn at school?

25:09

I think I know how to do this.

25:11

Education does have a point.

25:13

Yeah, maybe they bubbles.

25:14

Back up, and it doesn't mean I knew how to do

25:17

it well. But I think maybe

25:19

I had some irrational belief that

25:21

I could. So I had some

25:23

confidence from going to school, but

25:26

it was completely unearned. But it did

25:28

get me to sit my ass in a chair and write,

25:30

yeah, because I thought, oh, I guess I could

25:33

maybe do this solitary.

25:35

Or did you go to the famous writer's

25:37

rooms? Where did you start?

25:39

Where did I start writing?

25:40

Yeah?

25:40

Well I did stand up, and then slowly.

25:42

My friends started getting work. So

25:45

Adam Sandler was on Saturday Night Live, so

25:47

we don't try to help him write sketches.

25:49

And then as he did better,

25:51

you know, we would help out on movies

25:54

and different capacities. And I was writing

25:56

sketches with Jim Carrey for a Living Color.

25:58

I wasn't a writer on the show, but I would just help

26:00

him.

26:01

See what I once said, I told all the stuff.

26:03

I was really really excited because Foreign

26:06

Secretary John Kerrey was coming in

26:08

to dinner at the River Cafe and I, this is going to

26:10

be a really important night. At the end of the night, I

26:12

said, what's up? You don't seem really excited,

26:14

and they said, well, we thought it was Jim Cary.

26:18

They preferred Jim carry to John Carey.

26:20

I think we all still do you all still do

26:23

There's no moment where someone's like, oh,

26:26

man, I preferred John Carey

26:29

to Jim.

26:29

Carrey, but

26:33

to Jim Carrey.

26:34

Did you work on SNL?

26:35

I never could get a job there, So

26:39

I was helping out comedians

26:41

with their act. They used to write jokes for Roseanne

26:44

bar and people like that. And then I

26:46

met Ben Still and we created a sketch show called

26:48

The Ben Stiller Show, and that was my

26:50

first TV job.

26:53

And then that you stayed in LA. I

26:56

just stayed in LA and you were in your

26:58

twenties. Was in my twenties doing stand

27:00

up at night?

27:01

Were you earning the money for that just by

27:03

the work?

27:05

My rent was very low.

27:06

I got a very crappy apartment

27:08

with Adam Sandler, and I

27:10

mean the rent was so low it

27:13

was like we weren't stressed

27:15

to pay the rent because it was just a few hundred dollars.

27:17

And so I was writing jokes for people and working

27:20

at the American version of Comic Relief.

27:22

Oh really, what was it. What was the version?

27:24

It was for the homeless in the United States.

27:27

Robin Williams and Billy Crystal and Whoopie

27:29

Goldberg hosted it every year for a long

27:32

time, and that was my first job. So

27:34

between writing some jokes, doing

27:36

stand up, and working in comic really those

27:39

three things was enough

27:41

for me to pay my rent. Oh my

27:43

god, I found a

27:45

receipt the other day.

27:48

So when Adam Sandler got Saturday Night Live, he

27:50

just left and he left everything at the apartment,

27:53

including his wallet and driver's

27:56

license.

27:56

He literally just left. I don't know how he was able to get.

27:58

On the plane to go to New York,

28:00

because I still have his wallet from then.

28:02

So then the other day I went through.

28:06

And I went through it the other day as

28:08

I was going through some stuff and there was like a receipt

28:10

from a supermarket, and so I

28:13

took it out to read, like, well, what is this receipt?

28:16

And it was like what Adam would want to eat,

28:18

which was frosted flakes cupcakes.

28:22

Maybe it's like milk and.

28:23

Spaghetti, but it was just so

28:26

funny, like that was our life and

28:28

what we ate. And I took a picture of it and sent

28:30

it to Adam.

28:31

Would you still make pilcheese sandwiches?

28:34

Yes, I was still heavy in the rotation, but

28:36

for the most part, I mean, you

28:39

know, there was a real Hamburger

28:41

World.

28:41

There was a place called Jerry's Deli.

28:42

In the valley and we would eat there all

28:45

the time and have their Matza ball soup. And

28:48

that place was, you know, right on Ventura

28:50

Boulevard by Cold Water Canyon. It's not there

28:52

anymore, sadly, but a lot of our life

28:54

was based out of there. And then night we would go to the improv

28:57

and do stand up and try to get

28:59

our career is going after very

29:02

heavy after, not before, never

29:05

before. But at midnight I would

29:07

have fetichini alfredo, like four nights

29:09

a week.

29:17

If you like listening to Ruthie's Table

29:19

four, would you please make sure

29:22

to rate and review the podcast

29:24

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

29:26

Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever

29:29

you get your podcasts. Thank

29:31

you. So

29:38

where'd you live?

29:40

We live in Los Angeles, Yeah, and

29:42

we spend some time in New York as well and

29:46

in LA kind of hard to find

29:48

the great restaurants in LA. I can't say

29:50

I'm happy about because

29:54

where we live in Brentwood. There's

29:56

so much traffic at two o'clock you can't go east

29:58

where all the good restaurants,

30:01

and so you're just stuck in your house because there's

30:03

like an hour traffic to move a mile.

30:05

And I went to a place called I was in LA

30:07

last week and I went to place called The Grill.

30:10

The Grill is I really liked it in Beverly

30:12

Hills. Excellent show

30:14

business lunch spots.

30:16

For the girl coming from England

30:19

and being in LA because people always want to take you to

30:22

the best French restaurant or Italian restaurant.

30:24

Actually we want to eat American food. Yeah,

30:26

And that was the kind of I don't want If they had a grilled

30:28

cheese sandwich there Where can you get a really

30:31

good grilled cheese sandwich in a restaurant.

30:34

I've rarely gotten a great grilled

30:36

cheese sandwich in a restaurant, but that could

30:39

be because they don't have the wonderbread

30:41

and.

30:41

The craft cheese. Is there

30:43

any place you can walk to?

30:45

No, it's not walking.

30:46

We like it here because we could walk everywhere

30:49

and there's an amazing restaurant every like eighty

30:51

feet. And people don't like when you pop by

30:53

in La. If you just show up at their house, they're like,

30:56

why are you in my house?

30:57

Here?

30:58

You know, in New York it's a a little easy. Although

31:00

I did get to spend time with our friend mel Brooks.

31:03

Recently, I know.

31:03

Tell me about that.

31:04

Well, I like to visit my friend Norman Lear, who just

31:07

turned one.

31:07

Hundred and one, one hundred

31:10

and one.

31:11

So I said to Norman, let's let's hang out

31:13

with mel because I'm always looking for any excuse

31:15

to just be around mel Brooks. And

31:17

then he said, Mel's gonna

31:19

come over next week. And then I came over and it

31:21

was mel Brooks and Dick Van

31:23

Dyke were there.

31:24

Did it make you feel incredibly young?

31:26

Like, well, sometimes when you hang out with people, they

31:28

treat you like years old as them. Oh I see,

31:31

you know, so just by hanging out with them, they assume you're

31:33

one hundred.

31:34

So let's just go through that. Mel's ninety

31:36

seven, Mell's.

31:38

Ninety seven, Dick Van Dyke is ninety

31:40

seven, Okay, then Norman's one

31:42

on one that's

31:44

two hundred ninety five years, and

31:46

then you add mine in three

31:48

point fifty.

31:49

It was just a hangout session for fun. It

31:51

was you know a lot of talk of World War Two.

31:53

Let me just say, when you sit with three

31:55

gentlemen who fought in World

31:58

War two, the Battle of they're

32:01

going to tell you about it, whether you like it or not,

32:03

you're going to get deep into World War two talk. But

32:05

I also thought that's amazing because how many people can you

32:07

speak with that?

32:09

So normally it was in World War Two he

32:11

went on bombing missions.

32:15

He did fifty missions.

32:17

Norman Lair and he said, no

32:19

one lives past twenty five missions.

32:21

So he did a lot of He survived

32:23

a lot of a lot of missions. And mel

32:26

Brooks said that he part

32:28

of his job was he was in the Army Corps of

32:30

Engineers, so they would build little bridges

32:32

so that the vehicles could get over bodies

32:35

of water and stuff like that. But he also

32:38

had to defuse bombs. If you can imagine

32:40

mel Brooks defusing

32:42

your bomb, maybe

32:45

Dick and Dick van Dyke.

32:48

I forgot exactly what he did.

32:49

But he also got pulled into performing

32:52

because I think when people showed they were good performers, they

32:54

really need people to entertain the

32:56

troops so that they wouldn't get crazy, because without

32:58

entertainment, they're in trouble.

33:01

Yeah, did they glamorize war?

33:03

Did you?

33:03

No? No, not at all. I asked mel

33:05

Brooks in my interview.

33:06

I said, when you were diffusing

33:08

bombs, did you think you were going to blow up?

33:11

And he said every day, every

33:14

day. But I interviewed him for the Atlantic magazine

33:16

and I wanted to do an interview where we just talked more

33:18

about life and not so much about work and comedy

33:21

and just what he had learned over his many

33:23

years because he's the greatest.

33:25

What did you glean from it?

33:26

Well? You know, his philosophies are very simple. It's

33:28

just like be nice and

33:31

I could I like that? You know, that's you

33:33

know, my religion is you know,

33:36

very dolly Lama ask It's just.

33:39

Kindness. My religion is.

33:41

Kindness, and I think it shows

33:43

in your work. So we haven't talked about

33:45

is your family and cooking and what

33:47

happens in your household. I assume

33:50

you're not going out for McDonald's

33:52

and.

33:52

No, McDonald's killed

33:55

all fast food.

33:56

Fast food, So yeah, that's your secret.

33:59

But what about food in your house? How do you feed

34:01

you? How many children do you have?

34:02

Oh?

34:02

Well, two daughters. Iris

34:04

is twenty and mad is

34:07

twenty five. And how

34:09

do we feed them?

34:10

Is the question?

34:11

Growing up? Did you sit down for dinner most nights?

34:13

Were you away most nights?

34:15

No?

34:15

We sat down and ate and went out to

34:17

eat and in la

34:20

in la, and I think, I think you know they've

34:22

grown up. They they're

34:25

healthy. I think we did okay. We

34:27

didn't feed them the way I would have fed them. I

34:29

would have fed them badly. Leslie was like, let's

34:32

not do that, and so there was the

34:34

house is pretty healthy. He was in a house field of like cookies

34:37

and stuff, although we were eating

34:39

our fine ice cream at night. But

34:41

other than that, I think it was it

34:43

was pretty good. And Leslie is a very good shot.

34:46

What does she cook?

34:47

Well, she can kind of cook anything from a

34:50

cookbook if she wants

34:52

to. And so it's just she

34:54

gets in little jags where like she's

34:56

cooking for a period and then other jags

34:59

where that's slows down.

35:00

Do you have friends over, do you entertain or

35:02

do you go when you entertain?

35:04

Well? Will we cook for other

35:06

people? Occasionally?

35:08

Not that office, but you go out

35:10

and then we do go out. We go out to eat too much, and

35:13

there's not that many great restaurants.

35:15

You're saying you have to dry.

35:16

But every once in a while I'll try to cook and I'll go, wow, that worked.

35:19

Yeah, but I always think i'd rather

35:21

lay down than put.

35:22

The time in.

35:22

Okay, that's fair enough. I have respect

35:24

for people who don't cook.

35:26

It requires patience. Fine, it's meditative.

35:29

Not to cook.

35:30

To cook, Oh, I think.

35:31

So, I think there is something that whenever

35:34

I used to come back from work and people say, I'll

35:36

just sit down and relax, and actually I found it more relaxing

35:38

to kind of make a result of just

35:40

see the process and to go silly

35:43

and all that kind of.

35:44

It shows good mental health because most

35:46

people they don't like being alone

35:48

or alone in their head. You know, you'll

35:50

go, oh, I want to take a walk for two hours, like, but

35:52

then I'm with me, And

35:55

I think cooking is like that. So I feel like, when

35:57

I like myself more than

35:59

I'm going to go, I want a cooking binge.

36:02

And then because I'll be comfortable in the

36:04

quiet.

36:05

Yeah, and then when you want you're feeling

36:07

fine, you can go for a walk

36:09

exactly. Yeah, what's Iris doing?

36:11

Now?

36:12

What is Iris doing?

36:13

Now?

36:13

She was going to also

36:17

screenwriting and directing school at USC.

36:20

So all four of you in this family.

36:22

Are She's been working.

36:24

She just worked on a

36:26

film acting and you know, we shot a

36:28

movie out here called The Bubble during the pandemic.

36:31

So in the middle of the pandemic, no one

36:33

was really making anything because it all seemed kind of dangerous,

36:36

and so he said to Netflix, like, I

36:38

think I could find a way to make something

36:40

safely.

36:40

So we made a movie.

36:42

Called The Bubble about a group

36:44

of actors in a hotel trying

36:46

to complete a dinosaur action movie

36:49

during the pandemic. And it

36:51

was a little bit like a mel Brooks or Christopher Guest

36:54

movie about all the actors having a nervous

36:56

breakdown because they're stuck in the hotel and the

36:58

studio won't let them leave till they finished their

37:00

dinosaur movie. And uh, Pedro

37:03

Pascal was in it, and Leslie and Keegan,

37:06

Michael Key and Karen Gillan

37:08

and Fred Armison and a lot of it's

37:12

on Netflix. And

37:14

so we were here during the pandemic

37:17

when everything was closed other

37:19

than grocery stores

37:21

and pharmacies. The whole time we were

37:23

here like nothing was open.

37:26

So have you moved to England? Is going to be

37:28

going to be.

37:28

With us for a long I like to spent a lot more time

37:31

here. Yeah.

37:31

Are you here now just to stay or.

37:34

No return ticket?

37:35

Just good? You know that's good.

37:37

I'm just hanging out here and joy.

37:40

So if we're going to wind up, I will ask you

37:42

one more time now that we've talked about

37:44

the girl cheese and the ice cream and

37:46

the pop tarts. But you mentioned comfort

37:48

food for but is there one

37:50

special food?

37:51

Well, I mean

37:54

I'm a sucker for a good eight

37:56

ounce burger, okay for sure.

37:58

When you find the place, it's got the fresh French

38:00

fries and the great burger.

38:03

There's a place called.

38:04

Lunetta all day in

38:07

West Hollywood near my office,

38:10

and I think it's the best

38:12

burger I've ever had. I have to I have to try

38:14

to trick myself in into not remembering

38:17

it's there.

38:17

Oh okay, or I'll just do it all the time.

38:19

So in my head, I just like lied to myself, like

38:22

I place closed just

38:24

what I'm ordered every day.

38:26

Well, maybe if I come to LA we'll go and have a burger.

38:28

Yes, Thanks about Jed, Thank you,

38:31

Thanks, thank

38:36

you for listening to Ruthie's table for in

38:38

partnership with Montclair.

38:48

Ruthie's Table four is produced by Otomi

38:51

Studios for iHeartRadio. It's

38:53

hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced

38:55

by William Lensky. This episode

38:57

was edited by Julia Johnson a mixed

39:00

by Nigel Appleton. Our executive

39:02

producers are Fay Stewart and Zad

39:04

Rogers. Our production manager

39:07

is Caitlin Paramore, and our production coordinator

39:09

is Bella Selini. Thank you to

39:11

everyone at The River Cafe for your help

39:13

in making this episode