The Tim Ferriss Show - #71: The Master Creator - How Jon Favreau Went from Swingers to Elf to Ironman to Chef

Episode Date: April 13, 2015

 Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) is a man of many talents. He burst onto the acting scene with his role in Rudy.  He first established himself as a writer with the iconic cult hit Swingers, in which he starred. Then, Favreau made his feature film directorial debut with Made, which he also wrote and produced. Other directing credits include Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Cowboys & Aliens, Elf, Zathura, and Chef, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in.  Lots of commas! This man does everything. Recent acting credits include The Wolf of Wall Street and Identity Thief. Favreau is currently directing a live-action film with groundbreaking technology that blow your mind — an adaptation of Disney’s Jungle Book, set to be released on April 15, 2016. In our conversation, we dig deep into his creative process, how he writes, the inflection points in his career, how he prepared for Chef, and much more. The impact of Dungeons and Dragons? The value and danger of motorcycle treks? It's all in here. All show notes, links, and resources related to this episode can be found at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast This show is sponsored by: Onnit Labs — See the gear I use by clicking here. 99Designs — See the competitions I’ve run there, including the mock ups for the cover of The 4-Hour Body, which hit #1 NY Times.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that you'd dig it a lot. And you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, ladies and gents, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where I deconstruct world-class performers to figure out what makes them tick. And moreover, what are the tools, tricks, tactics, routines, books, whatever, secret snacks that you can replicate, that you can actually use in your daily life or in your career or in your personal endeavors and your journey into life itself. Wow, that was profound. Anyway, my guest for this episode is just a tremendous, tremendous man.

He is an actor, writer, director, and producer. His name is Jon Favreau. I've been hugely impressed by Jon, and we've had an opportunity to spend some time together. He is a man of many talents. He burst onto the acting scene with his role in Rudy. Then he established himself as a writer with the iconic cult hit Swingers, in which he starred. And many of you have seen it. We have a lot of stories about Swingers, which I was surprised by, and I had done a lot of homework. Then Favreau made his feature film directorial debut with Made, which he also wrote and produced. His other directing critics include Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Cowboys and Aliens, Elf,

and that was a real turning point for him. So we dig into that. And I did not know that he was involved with Elf before I really dug into it. Zathura and Chef, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in. And the way he approached making Chef was very, very fascinating. And as someone who's trying to create myself in more than one way, I suppose, I'm creating books and podcasts and now TV shows. And I have news coming related to that. I was very, very interested in how he approached doing Chef, which I fell in love with. And that's actually how we ended

up connecting. It was through Chef, and I went on Twitter, and then we connected, had a short exchange on Twitter, and we also ended up investing in a couple of startup companies together. Okay, so lots of commas. This guy does everything. Some of his recent acting credits include The Wolf of Wall Street and Identity Thief, and he's done much, much more. He is currently directing the live-action feature film that I'm dying to see because I'm obsessed with The Jungle Book. This is Disney's adaptation, which is set to be released in April 2016. So without further ado, I invite you into the mind and story, some of which are very funny, the stories of Jon Favreau. Jon, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time. I've really been looking forward to this. Oh, good. And I suppose we could start perhaps at the beginning. And one of these questions that I like to sometimes ask is what albums or bands you listened to in high school? What was your go-to music? I was looking at this one. Let's see. I liked the earliest music I listened to that I can remember actually having an album of was, I remember the Animal House soundtrack, all the old music, like the 60s music. And then Billy Joel.

I grew up in New York, so Billy Joel. And my first rock album I ever bought was Led Zeppelin. It was Led Zeppelin. I was in high school already. And then I was in high school in the 80s, so then you had like the Ramones around in New York and Queens, where I'm from. So it was an interesting time.

And then there was a little bit of overlap with CBGBs as I got older in high school. But that was more for the scene because it was cool, rather than the music itself, which I don't find myself listening to too much. I ended up getting into Billy Joel myself. I was always a Metallica sort of heavy metal head. And I got into Billy Joel because I was a busboy and waited on him at one point on Long Island. And he was the coolest guy I'd ever met. He would buy a cup of coffee and give me a 20 as a tip,

which was a lot of money to me at the time. Yeah. That's a big, that's a good thing to remember too, by the way. Yeah. That's, that's pretty good.

That's not, and you know, in the greater scheme of things, he could probably afford it, but it made, it made a big difference. Look at that. Huge impression.

Yeah. It made a fan out of you. I still, I still remember it to this day. It's good to remember. Now when, we may not have the same exact frame of reference. I'm 48 years old.

So I'm 10 behind, roughly. I'm 37 right now. So that was a golden oldie. You were listening to the oldies, right? Right. He was still recording when I was listening to him. Yeah, he was still. I mean, everyone, the hush came over all the waitstaff when he came in.

Yes, in Long Island especially. Oh, yeah. Kind of. Absolutely, out by Montauk. And I remember the waiter's name, Gavin, he was supposed to wait the table, and he said, all right, I'm going to do you a favor today, Ferris. I'm going to give you that table.

Because he knew you'd get broed out so hard. Yeah, exactly. That is nice. What was your experience in high school? What was it like? Can you paint a picture? High school was, let's see i was i had just gone to uh bronx high school of science which was a public school that you

had to take a test for in new york it was a very good school it had been around for a while and in the new york uh public school system uh it was was very good at the time. I think it still is. If you do well, you will never outgrow the public school system. There's always room for people who require different education needs in every way. And I know my dad was a public school teacher. And, you know, I feel pretty strongly about that system. And especially having lived in other cities, too, I really grew to appreciate it. And the Bronx High School of Science was one of the flagship schools for Zad Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech.

You know, all of these free schools. But I did have to commute all the way from Queens to the Bronx. It was about an hour and a half each way. But I was around other people who were more academically inclined. But I also met people from every different borough and all different walks of life because, you know, the one thing that unified us was that we all passed this test. And you have a lot of different socioeconomic backgrounds because, again, it was a free school.

And so I had the good fortune of meeting the brightest from every community. So everybody that I met, if I met a kid from Harlem, he was a really smart kid from Harlem. If I met someone from Brooklyn, from Riverdale, so you really had all walks of life. I didn't realize it at the time because I grew up in New York. So diversity was just something you grew up with, especially as you traveled through different boroughs, you know, you just knew people from all over the place.

Or if you worked in the city, you met people from everywhere. And, you know, that was a, I think that was a good experience too. You learn a little bit. I know you like to speak a lot of languages. You get to know how to curse in every bit. I know you like to speak a lot of languages. You get to know how to curse in every language. I try. That's usually what you pick up first. That's what you do. In Greek and in Spanish.

But you see him in a lot of great kids. But they were kind of nerdy kids. They weren't big on sports teams, things like that. Long commute time, a lot of, a lot of homework. So I, I early on the, the first thing from high school that I got into through that crowd was Dungeons and Dragons. That was something I was really into. Then I kind of outgrew that a bit more socially than anything, but I always liked fantasy. I always liked that swords and sorcery stuff and science fiction. And then, then I moved more into, because remember, I graduated in 84. So it was the early 80s.

That's when also punk rock was kind of in its heyday. And there were a lot of clubs downtown that were going strong that you could go to. And we were from all the different boroughs, so we were very comfortable going into Manhattan. That was kind of the central point for us all. And this was still in high school? Still in high school. Never really was a – the kids from the city, from Manhattan, were more the – a little bit more socially advanced and could actually get into these clubs.

A little edgier. Yeah. We're from the – we're the bridge and tunnel crowd. So we didn't really end up in the nightlife too much. But you were exposed to, and you were going down to Greenwich Village and hanging out in Washington Square Park. And also, that was a lot of when I got introduced to cinema, because it was pre-VCR. The only way you'd see a movie is it was in the movie theater, if it was on television. And so, I remember going to a lot of the revival houses, first with my dad when I was younger. And then, and then,

you know, when I was in high school going on my own down to like the cinema village, uh, all around, all around NYU down there, there were a lot of great revival houses and seeing the films of like Kurosawa, Scorsese, and,

um, just being introduced to a lot of stuff I would not otherwise have access to. Was there any particular film that was the inflection point for you wanting to focus on that craft yourself? I didn't want to do it till much later. It was never a realistic option for me. So all the way through high school, college, it was never something that I thought I would do.

It wasn't until I was 22 that I actually decided to try in earnest to get into entertainment. But I always enjoyed acting and I always loved movies. And I was an usher actually during high school at an old ex-Vaudeville house, the RKO Keiths in Flushing. And as an usher, you got to see movies over and over again. And it was still the architecture, the projection room, all of it really felt like something out of a time machine. So I was exposed to that side of the movie business first. And it was really cool. I liked it.

I like movies. It was an old rundown theater. It's not there anymore. But it was really wonderful seeing the – you kind of could see the history of it if you look behind the curtain. Because first it was an old vaudeville palace and then it started showing films and then eventually it got broken up into a triplex. So you had this beautiful, elegant, Moorish style just, again, the movie palaces of the vaudeville era and the post-vaudeville era

broken down into the multiplexes that didn't have a lot of personality back in the 80s. I guess the 70s started that. But it still had some of the gloss of it and some of the beauty. But, you know, of course, there were still the dressing rooms from the vaudeville days and there were sub-basements

and you went behind the screen in the big theater and you saw, you know, all the ropes and rigging from its live theater days. So it was kind of nice. And there was a sense of nostalgia. But it was also just overrun by mice. And it wasn't well-maintained. So there was a sadness to it. So I have a nostalgic feel towards the movie business even from you know even from before i was around because i was exposed to all that stuff and of

course all movies keep keep the legacy alive as well yeah and and that was part of the fun part about coming out here even when i was just auditioning uh for the first time for for bit parts you would audition on the lot you would go you'd get a drive on and then you'd be walking around like the fox lot and see the New York streets or Warner Brothers and see all the back lots as you're walking from your parking to the appointment. And you just felt so lucky to be in the business. You were like, I'm somehow connected to this industry. And even though we were just like the guy sweeping up after the parade,

we still were, you know, what, and give up showbiz? Even the guy shoveling after the elephant, it feels like he's part of the show. And I was that guy. And you dropped out of college, is that right? I did, yeah. It was, well, misleading, because I took a- You took a lot of credits. I left to go to, I got a job offer.

What was the job? I got a job offer to work on Wall Street. Got it. For a friend's dad who needed to hire an assistant. And I worked there for a year. And it wasn't a great fit for me. But I had not been a great student in college. I'd gone to a very academically oriented high school, as I said.

And then I was on the waiting list for Cooper Union to go to school for engineering. Cooper Union is a great school in Greenwich Village. It's all scholarship. It would have been a great school for engineering. Cooper Union is a great school in Greenwich Village. That is, it's all scholarship. It would have been a great, it would have been a great fit for me. And again, my family was, you know, my dad was a teacher. So there wasn't a lot, we didn't have a lot of dough for a private education.

But the idea of Cooper Union, that would have gotten a great, a great opportunity. Waiting list never got called up. I ended up going to Queens College, which was a city school, good school too, but never really found my footing. What I wanted to do was more interested in what was going on socially at school rather than academically. I didn't really have a major. I didn't find myself excelling. I got by, but I didn't excel. And then after I'd worked for a year and went back to school, then I got Dean's List straight A's because that year

of working in the real world really seasoned me a bit and I got me, I think matured me a bit. And then after I was back in school and back on the Dean's List, that's when I went cross-country and that's when I discovered people doing improvisation in Chicago and decided I wanted to join that circus. And that's when I dropped out. Got it. And the, when you came back and were more seasoned and hit the Dean's list,

was that because of the structure of working in the adult world? Or was it because you saw the benefits of focus rewarded in, say, a company? Well, kind of the opposite of that. I felt that at school, if you worked at all, you got recognized. There's every once in a while an asshole teacher that, you know, I'm busting my ass and the guy's still giving me bad grades. But that's like a rarity. Usually if you're not doing good in school, you don't like the teacher. You're not coming halfway. you're not doing your job.

But if you do your work, you'll get an A. And there's something real, you know, real egalitarian about that. Whereas in the workspace, you're expected to bust your ass and rarely do you get recognized for the work you do because somebody else is either – they're either oblivious because they're so hung up on what they're dealing with, your boss, or somebody else is – there's weird office politics or you're just – it's just expected of you to do your work. So it felt like a whiff of reality of the real world where it's not revolving around you. Whereas in school, even if you're part of a big lecture hall, at the end of the day, it's about you. You're paying money to be there. They're going to give you a grade based on the work you do, and it's focused around how you absorb and fit the work and how you fit into

the system. In the workspace, you're a cog, and you can figure out how to move your way up, but it's not incumbent upon them to recognize you. You have to make your own way. So it felt like a very much, it felt like I was going back to a kinder, gentler situation when I went back to school where I put in the same work I would have on Wall Street and then I was getting straight A's. So it felt good. But I also felt in another way that it lets some of the air out of the balloon

that I got a whiff of what real life was. What was waiting in the wings. It was kind of scary that it was like, okay, now I'm going to work 50 weeks a year to get two weeks off. And I'm going to live in those two weeks because pretty much everything happening during the week, you're either recovering over the weekends or you're, you're you know or you're you know you just everything's about getting ready for work i just came home from work uh decompressing and just getting back on the horse the next day and especially in manhattan where you're you know i was commuting from the boroughs also. And then I had gone cross country and seen how everybody was living.

And I had. What sparked that cross country trip? I think it was. I think it was that I had worked for a year. Right. And I had saved up enough money for a motorcycle. And that was sort of a fantasy to go. You know, you watch like Easy Rider.

I was just going to say. Oh, that's the thing. Oh, man, you know. And so I went cross country and there was a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota that happened to be lining up with when I wasn't in school or something. I don't even remember if I still was in school. It's going back many years now in the 80s uh but i remember saying oh let me go check this out and then once i was all the way in south dakota

um a girl i was uh dating at the time was in san francisco and i looked close on the map and i was like let me just you're like it's only three and a half inches i'll never be closer um and that's back when you know i was thinking about this the other day. It was back before you could just go online and get a map. You had to belong to like the AAA and Triptych something where they would send you maps with highlighters showing you the route. So you had this map that was like folded up in your saddlebag and you would look at it. It really was like the old west and you're like on horseback going cross country. And it was such a long harrowing trip.

And I remember how many people in the country looked like they weren't enjoying themselves. The way they lived. And some people were having a great time. But there seemed to be a lot of variety in the way people lived and the lifestyles people had. And I think also having grown up in a big city, I didn't realize what rural America was like and really how big the country was and how much variety there was. And also the other thing was how personable people are. And here I was on a motorcycle and I was young and I wasn't, you know, I was not user friendly. I didn't have the, you know, Buckminster Fuller banker look.

I was, you know, a guy climbing, you know, covered with dust and young and New York plates on my bike. And people were really cool to me. Like people really, when, if I broke down, people helped me out. I helped other people out. You know, you sort of develop a sense of how you fit into the world and how it's not about you. You're one little piece of the whole thing.

And you start to appreciate how big the world is and that you have to figure out how to fit into that. Whereas I think your whole life, especially the way I was brought up, it's more about how does it fit into my world. So it's that perspective that, you know, I think we all continue to struggle with as we get older, how we fit into this whole thing, how this whole it's not fair feeling is one that you feel a lot more when you're young than when you're older.

There's something magical about motorcycles, too, being part of the environment as opposed to inside the bubble that is the chassis of the car. Yeah. Would not recommend it, by the way. Very dangerous. My buddy is in a wheelchair now who introduced me to it. It fits in really well with your sense of invulnerability that comes at that

age. Not something I would do. I would thought if I could afford when I would. So let me just say to the people listening out there, I don't want to turn this into something where I'm proselytizing for it because it's not, it's not something that I do anymore, but it,

but it was definitely a bit of a transcendent experience that you're flying and you're so vulnerable and so much, you know, you're just taking it in a much different way. It's like a ride. So I'm going to love to ask you about Chicago. The motorcycle also, just as a side note for folks, I totaled a bike and at that point sold it because I had a friend get a fantastic rider, had a car run a red light, hit him at an intersection, cut off one of his legs. And when your body is the bumper, my mom actually calls motorcycles donor cycles because she's been a PT for 30 plus years. Brain injuries with perfect organs. So, uh, and it's not the, it's not the rider, it's the people around you and, and, um, and under the right circumstances, it's great. But the way I'm very fortunate that I made it out, uh, intact because it's, it's, um, bad odds. You're playing,

you're playing slots at the, it's not, it's not the best game. It has nothing to do with how good you are as a writer like you said so dialing back the clock a little ways so and i won't spend too much time on this but i was a runt up until about sixth grade got the living hell beat out of me all the time and dnd was my refuge oh yeah okay so i still have all of my modules um i'm one of those guys uh now i'm completely self-conscious about the fact that i played it's like it takes a lot for me to talk freely like this about it but i feel like a weird shame why do you why do you feel i don't know i don't know because i feel this i kind of wear it as a badge of honor in a way because i run into so many people who who also had that shared

experience well i think i've grown into it, I think I'm accepting of it now. But it was such a way I had been defined myself for the first few years, like for like a freshman and sophomore year in high school. And that was like what, and then when I didn't do it anymore, you're so quick to say, because I find that there's nothing more embarrassing than whatever the last phase you just went through was. I continue to feel that way. You know, god my life is not you know all the things that ways you embarrass yourself all the haircuts you've had the ways that you dress the music

you listen to i used to have a rat tail growing up exactly years and now you know i'm of the age where you know for for the the children's generation of this age that's all going to be well documented and very hard to escape. Every single Facebook picture you've put up will be there on some level. But you're right. I think that there was tremendous value in it. I have an affection for it. I remember too much of it. It really took up a lot of my brain space when I was around that age, whatever, 15 or 14. I forget what age I was playing. But it also created

a set of... I think it encouraged a set of skills that is not that unlike filmmaking. Because you're telling a story and the people who are experiencing that story, especially if you're like a dungeon master, you're telling the story in a way that where the people who are participating, who've signed on, are experiencing it in a very subjective way and there appears to be a certain level of spontaneity or free will and

there is built into it but you're creating a context in a world and experience that's very specifically curated so you're guaranteeing a sort of experience regardless of what they do within it i think when you're watching movies the the um the illusion is that you're you're you're subjectively experiencing the film as an individual, and you're kind of making those decisions in a de facto way through the character that you're following the film through. If a character in a film ever makes a decision that the audience doesn't feel that they agree with, it changes the experience. It becomes like a horror movie where, don't go in that room. It becomes a much different type of experience. Or if you're watching a character that's not, that you're watching because they're an anti-hero. When you're watching Travis Bickle is a different experience than most films because most films, you're going to walk through it,

experience the things that the characters do. They're going to do a smarter version, usually, of something you would have done, and they're going to be facing a lot of consequences, and you're rooting for them, because you and them are kind of riding next. You're the co-pilot of the protagonist. And in role-playing games, it's a similar experience,

but a different medium. Did you have a particular race of preference? Were you a dwarf, an elf? I liked all those. I didn't like the elves so much. I liked the dwarves. I liked the hobbits. I was always a gray elf.

Were you? That makes sense for you. I don't remember what's the gray. It's a gray different color. I like the... Those wood ones? Yeah, they're also... I think it was the dro- those were the dark elves the dark ones they they were the i remember more from the tolkien stuff now yeah it sort of replaced it because i i was introduced

they do they do blend together they do well yeah we're very close but i like the hobbits because i read the book the hobbit before i ever played the game it was an important book to me and i always liked i i kind of relate to the relate to that character because he just wants to be comfortable and living in like the nice environment but then is never jumped into the stuff uh you know i guess i guess maybe there's been a little bit of boredom or unrest and earlier in my life but but generally i kind of like i i like some kind of things kind of boring but then every once in a while i, there's a little bit of that adventure blood in me that forces me out of it. I think we're different people from reading. You have more self-preservation instinct, I think. Isn't that? It's worth complacency or something. But I do it kind of in spite of who I am as

opposed to because I have this wanderlust and I can't sit still. I just get bored sometimes and I want variety or I get something captures my fancy and I get really curious and want to try something new. I'm an only child. I tend to do it more for me, I find, than to show other people. I tend to be very solitary in that way. What is the itch that you're

scratching would that that that novelty satisfies do you think i don't know you know i think it's different as i get older because now it becomes about what impressions i had from younger in life and things you know on that checklist of you know how people buy the car that they never could afford sure later or they you know where they date the girl they couldn't date. You know, there's a sense of somehow, you know, working on your scorecard. But for me, it's like, as I get older, especially, it's like I wanted to try to sculpt. And I started doing it. Sculpting, literally.

Yeah, yeah, literally like sculpting. And I'm lucky that I work with such talented people of all different diverse skill sets in the movie business that when i want to sculpt i talk to somebody who's an expert sculptor sculptor and they and they put together a little package for me of and a list of tools i need and and next thing you know without a lot of wasted time um i'm sculpting i always drew yeah And I always would sculpt a little bit here and there, whatever, if I was in like a class or playing with the kids, play dough.

And daddy was always good at, at, at making. Step aside, kid. Let me show you how it's done. Well, yeah,

you get a lot of, you get a lot of, you know, when you go parent teacher day or whatever, the kids would bring dad to school, whatever that thing is. When daddy could make something cool out of play dough, you get, you get, you know He'd get respect around the school year.

Yeah. So what material were you or are you using? Now, Chavant, something called Chavant, which is one of those, I think it's petroleum-based or wax-based clays that doesn't dry. And you have to heat up to get it to be pliable. You have these blocks that look kind of like plastic explosives i guess kind of i know what you're talking about yeah and it was developed i think for the automotive industry so you get some really nice textures out of it and uh it's just fun to do

because you you're doing better than you thought you could now why sculpture as opposed to i wanted to be a comic book penciler for about 10 years so i did a lot of illustration why uh why sculpture as opposed to uh something else like watercolors or oh because uh i don't know there's something fun i did it because you could uh give it to people yeah okay it's like a thing it's like a substantial thing that you have or you could display or you could give or cast into a metal. I don't know. It just seemed kind of cool. I was messing around on the set of Jungle Book.

We had blocks of wax because there's a sequence where we have big beehives that we had to cast, and we had to cast it out of wax so it interacted in a way that was realistic. And so we had blocks and it out of wax so it interacted in a way that was realistic and so we had blocks and blocks of beeswax around and so while i was on the set on the many hours sitting at the uh in the director's chair i had a block of wax sitting there for about a month and then next thing you know i i asked for something to carve it with it carve it with and i got like some little carving tools and next thing you know i was carving a bear and next thing you know it's like i pull over the all these artists that are working on those so

well what's how how should i well the bear the ears are a little far back move this a little and so i was getting pointers and and everybody who passed by oh it looks like a bear yeah so it's it's um a little bit oh what a good boy am i and something of to see at this age honestly it's like um i'm very happy to be working in the field that I am. I feel like I'm learning constantly. But I understand why. I think like Nick Nolte I heard loves glassblowing. I get it.

I get why that's exactly the type of thing to be doing. And I did – actually, my experience was with cooking. I read your book, by the way. I know I've told you this, but let me tell you this on the podcast. I appreciate that. The the four hour chef uh when i was preparing to do chef uh i always loved watching which blew my mind i've said it to you and i've said it on the internets but we're going to dig into that okay lovely movie thank you it was a great movie an important film for me because it it it just you know, it allowed me to

deal with themes that I felt were important, but also it gave me the excuse to learn from great chefs and work in the kitchens of great chefs to prepare for acting in the film. And I loved cooking. I loved, and I never, Roy Choi, the chef who really was my partner in this, as he was preparing me when we first started, he said, you'll – a chef when a chef – because he was telling me these things to teach me but also to understand insight as I told the story to make the film one that he and the community would like. He said, when a chef sees a bag of shallots, they get excited because they're going to get to peel all the shallots. And which I thought was, it was confusing at first. But then after going through the culinary training and everything, there's some, it's true. There's something very meditative about preparing your mise en place because you're dealing with sharp implements and you have to get it perfect and you can't hurt yourself and you can't really do anything but this thing, but it doesn't require all of your brain at the same time.

So you get into this really cool zone where everything's so thoughtful that you're doing. And by the time you actually prepare a meal with all of this means that you prepare, that you get ready, there's a tendency to be very tuned into what you're tasting or what you're presenting to your guests because they know the work, they've been watching you put work into it. And so the mindfulness that it implies and demands in its preparation, but it also asks of the people who you're sharing it with. It creates a nexus point of all the people where you're all sharing a common experience at one moment, which is something I've grown to appreciate and is a very elusive dynamic as, as a dad. It's, it's very, you know,

being very, very present as, as you, you know, spend time with your kids, making sure you're not checking your emails when you're tucking the kids in, you know, it's,

and, and with friends and, and as a husband, there's a, it's not something I did effortlessly a decade ago. And it's something that I've grown into. And I find that people, as they mature, they start to value that more. And so everything I look to do, whether it's sculpture or, you know, I would be a glassblower.

I would love to play with that. It seems fascinating. Or, you know, any of these hobby type things or the cooking is all about being very present in that moment. And it's a good counterbalance to the intensity with which I approach the work that I do. I think the word mindfulness is so appropriate for cooking. And I found that what used to create so much stress, such a stretch response in me, which was preparing food, has now become, like you said, almost this meditative practice where I could meditate in the mornings and I tend to do that. But I also find that if I just make food, make dinner two or three times a week, and you have these knives, so you have to be state aware it's it has a tremendous decompressing effect um are there any particular ingredients that you're playing with these days or anything

well i like ever since i made chef and met aaron franklin down in austin i've been over and over again refining uh my smoked brisket the central texas style smoked brisket and to me that's like alchemy you know it's it's there, there's a certain amount of technique in the trimming and in the way you – but mostly it's about leaving it alone. It's almost like baking in that way. Like it's chemistry and changing little factors. But it's taking whatever it is, 14 hours, to see how it turns out. There's something really rewarding about that. And it's also a flavor that people don't get anywhere else.

So when you do it right and people get to taste it, it's kind of a fun thing to share because it's special. And it's only good for a short amount of time too. It's like a coffee and then it kind of goes away. And then I like that. I like simple pasta dishes, very simple ones. You know, like there's a pasta, Scarpetta. The restaurant Scarpetta makes a really good pasta that's just in a tomato sauce from Roma tomatoes that you blanch and peel

and slow cook and mash down into a sauce and then mixing it with the infused olive oil. And then cooking that with the pasta water and getting the right texture. And again, it's amazing, but it's only good for just a few minutes. And the pasta dishes is great because you pull together a group of people who are interested in doing it. It's a great thing to do if the family's all vacation someplace or you're over at a relative's house, especially because I have less and less things to talk about

because my context is so different from everybody else's that if we talk about movies, it's not, I'm thinking about other things than the people talking to me were thinking about. And there's so little overlap with most people that I meet that cooking is great because it creates this context where everybody is on equal footing and everybody has a different skill set and it becomes a real – a task that you have to be you're interdependent with and and it it i find i have endless patience to spend time with people that i don't know very

well if you're working on a really exciting cooking project and at the end we all serve it together and we really feel like we fought a war together it's a great it's a great bonding thing i'm working on a kitchen at my, in my house. That's geared towards having like groups of people cook. That feels more like a restaurant style, big tabletops. Yeah. And all like open shelving and you know,

everything that you'd see, you know, beautiful in a way restaurants, beautiful, not beautiful for a house, but, but the people who like to cook, it's,

it's like the perfect, like a, like a lab. And it's, it's fun the perfect – like a lab. And it's fun because, you know, you're all gathered around. And I did it – my experience – the first time I did it like that was at the Skywalker Ranch, which is where we mix the sound for a few movies. I've been working with them, I think, since Iron Man. But for those of you who don't know, it's a 5,000-acre ranch in Northern California in Marin that George Lucas put together and oversaw the architecture for. And it started off as just a sound facility.

It looks very low-tech. It looks like a winery almost, but beautiful rolling hills with cattle grazing, Victorian house on the hill where he does his editing and where he uses his home base, and other technical buildings that have cropped up around it. And it's state-of-the-art mixing facility, sound facility, recording stages. So it's this very strange, and then a bunkhouse with themed rooms for the people who work there, because you stay there when you work there, because it's so remote. And so each room is themed for either a director or a writer. And so you have like the John Ford room that's Western theme,

the Akira Kurosawa room, Dorothy Parker room. And so you stay there. And during the day, there are restaurants that are open on the facility. At night, everything closes down. But there's a commercial kitchen in the common area and a walk-in fridge. And so as we were making Chef, you're looking at these scenes over and over again, listening to the crackling of the frying food and the pasta and the olive oil and the garlic simmering, and your mouth's watering all day.

And each night, we would pick another recipe from the movie, and all of us, me and the editors, the sound crew, we'd all get together, and we'd cook together at night, and we'd cook all the dishes from the movie. And it was so much fun because here we were in the middle of nowhere, really, in a very remote spot. And just together, the fireplace going, all of us cooking together. And then you sit down for the meal and you sleep good. And then we hit it the next morning and we would do the next reel. Sounds like a hell of a routine.

It was great. It was really wonderful. So that's why I want to try a, a hell of a routine. It was great. Amazing. It was really wonderful. So that's what I want to try to see if I capture some of that at home. Yeah. The, uh, the,

uh, the one thing that's always struck me about a well-designed kitchen, it's just the elegance and the economy of movement that it provides for a chef, uh, where they're, they're, they're never reaching too far for anything.

Everything. I mean, you have everything in its place, right? The mise en place. Right, right. And how quickly a good line cook or chef can work if they have all their items in the right place. Yeah, it's true. It's interesting because I did, part of the training I did was working. First, I went to some pretty accelerated culinary training that Roy sent me to off with a French chef to get a context before I ever entered a professional kitchen.

And so I went through all my mother sauces and my knife cuts and basically an overview of what the first year culinary students would deal with. Then I got to come into his kitchens. He has a few different restaurants and food trucks, too. And I spent time floating from restaurant to restaurant first they let me like prep cook so i was picking parsley and you know what i mean i've done that micro basil yeah they're like you're holding up my station first i'm like oh god like that's all they'll trust you with and it's so like labor intensive and so you finally do that and then uh then eventually I worked my way up to the hotline.

And on the hotline, then I started working. And then I worked the pretty – about midway through, I started working on one of his Kogi trucks. And it reminded me – because there you're in tight quarters too. It reminded me very much of bartending, which is what I did to make a living in college and after college when I moved to Chicago as a bartender. And there's that dynamic of getting in the weeds. It's kind of halfway between being a chef and being a server because you're preparing things, but you're also dealing with the public and you're not doing anything that complicated. So you don't have the – there's not the elegance of being a chef, at least the type of bartender I was.

I wasn't like a mixologist like you see now. But there is this – you do get into the weeds and you have to do this dance with the people in a very small space. And I found that that rhythm was coming back to me as I was working, especially on that truck, where you know how to get out of the way. You pop in. You pop out. You reach around on somebody's left, on their right you're behind them you're not crashing into each other and you're helping each other out and you're becoming like this big octopus together and when you're working on the hotline it's even more that way because there's you know behind you

you know there's like hot food coming through people are speaking different languages you're um you're being asked to do things you're're being instructed to. That's the other weird thing. It's not like they prepare you ahead of time and say, here's how you make everything. Let's train. Maybe when you first open a restaurant, it's that way. But when you're working in an established kitchen, they basically just throw you on the line. And then the rush comes. And then they show you once how to do something. And then you just copy copy them and maybe they show it to you again. And then the chef's watching you from a distance and saying, hey, you only put mayo on one side of the bun. It goes on both.

There's a certain quality control aspect that the chef's – that's really what the chef's job is, is overseeing other people doing the work and keeping the standards to a certain consistency. And so there was working and little by little, you know, first I'm just doing the popcorn at A-Frame, and then next thing you know I'm pulling the burgers out or doing the, you know, assembling some sandwiches. Next thing you know I'm plating. And so by the end of the Saturday dinner rush, you know, there's a half dozen plates I'm helping with.

And you start to appreciate how good these other people are you know the people who work the broiler or the saute cook you know who the grill station is just nailing them you know making it perfect and timing it just right and then and then the one that i remarked at the most was the was the was the bus boy who knows just went to walk up to you with that with that deli container full of ice water and like it's the best water you've ever had like i didn't even know i was thirsty and then this guy hands me this like 16 hours you know the quart size you know like you get wonton soup in that clear container so those are all over kitchens right those deli containers and they

they'll give you one full of ice water and you'll drink it in like one sip. And it's the best thing you've ever had in your life. And, and as I was mentioning that to Roy, he says, yeah, you're ready to make the movie. That's now you've had that, that experience is what, how I know you're ready. So speaking of, of moments, when did you decide to write chef? I'd love to talk a little bit about the writing process. Chef chef was okay. So I i i you know it's kind of hard out of context with with what the swingers experience

was sure well we can we can about well let's talk about both so with swingers it was um that i had i had not known i was going to be a writer i had received from my dad uh um final draft which was a program that is pretty user-friendly and formats your writing to look like a screenplay. And for people who are writers or want to be writers, a lot of it is there are subtle things that much like, let's say, a job, like a resume for a job. There are certain standards by how you're going to put that together so that when somebody receives that resume it looks professional the formatting the formatting all that stuff i don't know that much about just regular uh jobs but but i know like a lot of effort goes into the resume a headshot for an actor for a screenplay

as people receive the script they're making a lot of little subconscious calculations and decisions about you based on what they're seeing. And a screenplay that's not formatted properly is something that's completely dismissed. And what was fun was when I received the program, I just typed a little bit. Next thing I know, it looked just like a real screenplay. And I've read enough of them from being an actor. And this was after I had already done Rudy. I had moved to Los Angeles. I thought that was going to be my big break.

But things weren't really popping for me. But I had read enough scripts and knew enough about acting to feel comfortable tapping away at a screenplay, never thinking anything was going to happen with it. More to show my friends. And you type for a half hour, an hour, two hours. Next thing you know, you've got like a stack of eight pages. And it feels like you've got a piece of a screenplay there. So then it becomes like I just want to try this. It kind of goes back to the earlier conversation we were having

about why do you do things. For you, it's that you can't sit still. That's part of it. And you're super curious, and you've got a lot of energy, and you kind of hunger for it. I think with me, it's a little bit more erratic than that, where I just get something bites me in the ass, and I want to try something.

Like I'm just curious about something, if I could do something. But it's much subtler, and I just tap away at it and pack away at it. And then it starts to look good. And as it looks better, you start to build up, um, like with doing sculpture, like messing around a little bit.

Next thing you know, Oh, it kind of looks like a bear. Well, let me carve it a little bit better. Let me try a little bit more. Let's see how far I could take this thing. And,

and so with the screenplay, it was kind of like that and, uh, showed it some friends, showed it to the acting agent. I had people felt good about the swingers screenplay. was kind of like that and uh showed it some friends showed it to the acting agent i had people felt good about the swingers screenplay and then we how long did it take you to get it to a first draft let's just say very fast because there was no pressure i didn't have any i didn't have any i would i would outline maybe a few pages ahead of where i was i came from an improv

background from chicago so it was really just characters talking to each other the improv that i did was something called the herald which was adele close had invented it was really just characters talking to each other. The improv that I did was something called The Herald, which was Del Closet invented. It was a great improv teacher. The Herald. The Herald. Okay. Like the name. Yeah, okay, got it. And it was one of those things like, what do you call it? Harold. It was one of those,

that's how it got its name. Like the Beatles haircut, I think. Okay, got it. Had a name. I forget what the name was. But, but there's it's long form. So you would start off and take one suggestion and do three different scenes with different characters that were unrelated, all inspired by this one suggestion. And then you would have three beats of those scenes. And by the end,

they would all interweave and connect and come to some greater statement about the the um the suggestion than just a short form joke oriented improvisational skit would so it's looking to bring improv into revealing as a higher form to reveal greater truths about about the suggestion by forming a group mind with a team of improvisers who are used to working with one another. That was the aspiration for that. But it did give me a set of skills, having done that in Chicago for a while, that, you know, you're self-editing, you're knowing when each scene should end, you're bringing the next scene to begin maybe after some time has passed or with a plot point that had occurred.

And you're learning story. You're learning story the hard way. You're learning a story in front of a bar full of people who paid $4 to be in there and they want to be entertained and laugh. But the laughter doesn't last if there's no story. Story is the king. And you think it's about the last, but really it's about investing in the story being drawn in. is the king and you know you think it's about the last but really it's about investing in the story being drawn in and um and so i i guess i had enough skills from that and also read enough

screenplays and maybe the dungeon of dragons and stuff and being a storyteller knowing how to create a little bit of a world that uh you know here here i was uh unfolding the story about this group of friends in Hollywood set in the same world I lived in. I had broken up or been broken up with at the time about a year earlier. So I was still, that was fresh in my mind. So that was one of the character's dilemmas. And, you know, although it wasn't really autobiographical, there were enough things that I could draw from, you know, what's the expression from Glengarry Glen Ross, always tell the truth, it's the easiest thing to remember. Yeah. Draw upon, you know, if you're going to talk about a neighborhood,

talk about the neighborhood you grew up in, talk about the neighborhood you know, even if it's not you. But you're going to have a more consistent world that you're developing than if you're putting them on Mars and you don't understand Mars. So, you know, a lot of things got slugged in, and I wrote it fairly quickly, about two weeks. Two weeks. It was very quick.

And it didn't change really that much after that. Did not change. Did not. But I had written my sketches and things. Did you write it start to finish? Yeah. You wrote it from the beginning to the end? From the beginning to the end.

A few things changed, not much. 10% over time. And that was in final draft? Yeah, yeah. Was Chef the same way that you did it start to finish? So Chef, I'd written Made after that a few years later, and then I had been hired as a writer based on swingers to do script doctoring and things. And that's where it gets tough because when you start getting paid to do something that you used to do for fun, you don't want to do it for fun as much. And what was nice about it is

that you can make a living enough for a single dude to be able to buy a house over a few years and drive a new car or new-ish car. But you can make a living just being a writer for hire because they're always looking for people with fresh takes and new ideas in the writing area because the very established writers are all, you know, they're busy. You know, you get hired to do one thing that could keep you busy for a year. So there's always room for another writer once you kind of make that list. Unfortunately, if you're not on the list, you can't get in the door.

And swingers put you on the list. Swingers put me on that list. So I if you're not on the list, you can't get in the door. And swingers put you on the list. Swingers put me on that list. So I went from an actor, and also people kind of knew me for my acting from Rudy. And so there's a bit of a novelty of being an actor that they recognize and know, and you're already used to being in those rooms. People know who you are, you know who they are, you already have representation. So it's easier to get into that system. So that was a bit of a, I wouldn't say it's a life hack, but it's, am I using that term properly? I think that you could. I'm trying to sound like I fit on your podcast here.

Oh, you already fit on the podcast. You're doing great. I think it seems like you gave yourself sort of more tickets in the raffle so to speak than a lot of people because you had the writing acting directing well irons in the fire not not all necessarily that's eventually but in the beginning remember i'm trying to break into another field right right so i'm like seeing how far i could take this thing and the acting thing got me more raffle tickets in that sense. But it was an interesting way into writing and much like how acting was a

really interesting way into directing, because in directing, one of the disadvantages that most people other than me had was that if you're going to direct, the only way you can show people you're a director is by directing. There's no apprenticeship per se in directing. It's not like assistant directors.

There's an apprenticeship. You could work your way up from a PA, work your way up to second, second, second AD to first AD. You will hit the top of the food chain by learning from other people who are better than you. There's no room on the set for another. The director's assistant is not another director. The director's assistant is somebody who was a PA, somebody who worked in development, somebody who's most, I don't think I've ever met a director whose assistant was a

director in training. And even then, you're not getting that experience. But as an actor, I got to have front row seats for every director that I worked with. So by the time I ever directed, I already, you know, there were a half a dozen directors that I thought were great and half a dozen that I thought weren't great. And I emulated the ones that were great. And being an actor, you're kind of modeling yourself, imitating what the people you respect do. And that's kind of what musicians do too, right? If you, you know, everybody practices Hendrix licks first and then they come up with their own style.

But there is this mimicking phase of learning, and it's tough to get those 10,000 hours under your belt just by going to film school. Now maybe it's different because now people can literally take a camera, go out, film something, edit it, put it up, get feedback, see if people like it or they don't, and they could hit the drawing board again. It does not cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. They can do that thanks to technology. But by the time I was coming up, that wasn't even an option. Swingers was done as cheaply as you possibly could for that quality of a film, and that was almost $200,000. And Clerks had been done even cheaper than that.

The budget was $200,000? $175,000, something like that. But clerks had been done for, I think, $10,000 or something ridiculous like that. And that's a, you know. That's a feat. Oh, yeah. Because that was done at a time

when it wasn't quite that straightforward. It was very inspiring to us. It was before we had done it. And we were like, why can't we just do it? Because instead of trying to sell swingers, we ended up making ourselves. So by the time I had done Chef, it was like I had been wanting to do something.

Everything I was developing, I was trying to work as a chef into because I wanted to be something I wanted to learn about. So if I was working on a TV pilot or working on a – developing something for – producing something for somebody else, it was like, what about in a restaurant? What about a chef? Because it seemed like it was a very, from watching Top Chef and following chefs, reading chefs' biographies, reading Kitchen Confidential, which is the first one that I read by Bourdain. Great book. Great book. And it seemed like there's something here. But it didn't seem like something that warranted its own, I couldn't see the way to make it

into its own thing. So that was kind of bubbling around my head. And then something about, by doing something about being a dad, being, we're talking about mindfulness, about mindfulness and parenting, about how a few simple, overseeing a few important things in your life

over the course of many years can ruin your life if you don't invest enough into the things that are important but not pressing. So if you put everything into your career and not into the things that aren't the squeaky wheel but are important but not in the short term, over time, you'll find yourself in a situation that you don't even understand how you got into. And you see it a lot in the chef world. You see it a lot in the movie world, a lot of families where it doesn't work out. And a lot of it's because the career demands so much time, so much effort.

And creating that balance, which, you know, fortunately I've done, you know, the older I get, the better I get at it. And now things are, you know, I think well-balanced for me. But I want to make something about somebody where they weren't well-balanced. What if I had made different decisions in my life early on? And then looking at it through the idea of the culinary world and having really stories about growth spurts. It's about, right, coming of age. I'm a big – I mentioned Joseph Campbell before. I'm a big hero of that.

The monomyth. Huh? Sorry? Oh, no. I was saying just the monomyth. I find, you know, just. The mono. Mono.

Well, see, he talks about, I've become fascinated by Joseph Campbell in the last few years. Also, the, how these archetypes. Right. Translate across all cultures. And indigenous tribal. The hero of a thousand faces. Mythology. Exactly.

Yeah. You ever seen, speaking of Skywalker, I think the first time I ever saw the Skywalker Ranch was on the Power of Myth with Joseph Campbell's interviewed by Bill Moyers. Oh, I haven't seen that. I haven't. That's one of the first, when video first came out, that was one of the first things that was available in that realm. And it still holds up. It's great. I'm sure it's easy to get your hands on The Power Myth.

And he's sitting in the library at the Skywalker Ranch being interviewed of everything back from Adam and Eve and earlier all the way through Star Wars. And it's like a four-part or six-part series from PBS, I think. And it was great. That was my introduction to, to Joseph Campbell. And then there's books about relating that, uh, archetype rise of the hero storytelling to screenplays and how there's less variation than you, you might think. And the more you stick to it, the better it just is. It's, it's,

those are great instruments to fly with and with jungle book, I really am, you know, going back and doubling down on that, on just going back to the old myths. And it works so well for Lucas. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm fascinated by screenwriting, and I haven't spent a lot of time looking at the format, but I took the story seminar by McKee

and have read a handful of books. That's pretty intense. That is intense. Even that book is... It's intense. I don't know if I've ever gotten all the way through. I found it very dense. I found it difficult.

There are a handful of others like Save the Cat that I found very helpful for me personally, just to think about the storytelling mechanisms. There's one called, if I may... Oh, of course. The Writer's Journey. The Writer's Journey. The Writer's Journey. The Writer's Journey. The Writer's Journey. And I'm sorry, I'm at a loss.

I could look it up while we're talking here. Oh, I'll put it in the show notes as well. Okay, you'll put it in? Yeah. Because what it does is it takes Joseph Campbell and refines it down from the perspective of somebody, I think it was a story executive at Disney, and breaks apart what those archetypes are and how they apply to movies that you would have seen, breaking down movies using that, and also talking about the three-act structure as it pertains to the mythic structure that Campbell talked about with the calling, the refusal of the call,

the entering into the extraordinary world, the entering the inmost cave, the killing the dragon, taking the elixir, going back and healing the land. And even back when I even looked, I had already read the book by the time I had done Swingers and looked at Swingers. Oh, The Writer's Journey. So it's been around for a while. It's been around for a while. And I remember reading that book and seeing if I was structurally correct with Swingers and I was satisfied that I was. But the trick I think is not to use it as a map

to write because you have to write. I think you just have to brain dump when you write. I don't think you could try to control your writing too much for me. Some people are very different. People who come out of where they're creating series arcs for a television show it becomes you know you have to develop a group mind and you go you use the dry erase board and you plot things out it may change but it's very well thought through and and i find that people that have come from that background tend to like to outline a lot and then there are other people who just come from prose and creative writing or short story writers where they just want to – the routine has more to do with what time of day they write, how much coffee they have before they do. Getting into that – getting into the creative routine, that's where their structure is.

There's always some form of structure. Sometimes the structure is in the writing. Sometimes the structure is in the writing, the act of writing. But I find that for me I like to outline a little bit. So here's getting back to Chef. So with Chef, those two thoughts of wanting to write something about the chef world and wanting to do something about mindfulness and parenting both crashed into each other.

And I got the idea, the epiphany hit me, that this could all come together in a project. Let me write this thing. And I took out, I like composition. I know you like the minutia. I do. I love the minutia. So composition, Mead Composition Notebooks, the black and white flecked cover cardboard.

Sure. Sewn spine. Looks kind of like a zebra, the black and white on the cover. Exactly. I like those because I find, I think it's from my drawing days when I used to get like a really nice leather bound drawing paper sketchbook. I'd be so reluctant to. Defile it. Yeah. Like, is this drawing good enough for my, because it always felt like a showpiece, whereas the notebooks seem like, because everybody grew up with them, like as their first notebook,

that there's a freedom in marking it up, but you can't rip pages out, right? So you can't self-edit, because if you do, the book falls apart. So it's not like a spiral. You can't use a spiral. For? So you can't self-edit because if you do, the book falls apart. So it's not like a spiral. You can't use a – for me, you can't use a spiral. So I have for everything I've done, and there's a lot of incomplete projects, I'll get a composition notebook. I'll date it, title it, and then just start filling it with sometimes stream of consciousness, sometimes a list of movies that I want to look at that relate to this, a book, an image, something, and it becomes my, you know, that's where I just brain dump.

And so for Chef, I was actually meditating. I was meditating, and the two things hit each other. And usually if I'm meditating, which I try to do at least once a day, although I don't always, but I find that in part of the distraction of meditating, creative thoughts might pop into my head, but that seems to be a distraction. So I have to push past those. It's kind of like on the highway entrance. First you have everything you're worried about hit you. Then you start to have um creative thoughts that are interesting and inspiring but those will those will trick you into not meditating too

so like these are all obstacles that you have to kind of pass by um and then and then you get into the the good part if there's such a thing i know you're not supposed to judge it or think about it any but but you get into that brain wave or whatever that that thing is that seems to be the experience that that when you meditate that you that you seek um that kind of baseline thoughtless mindful the void sort of floating in the void i don't know if i get as far as the void uh but for me that's how i feel but yeah that's good i don't know if I get as far as the void. For me, that's how I feel. Yeah, that's good. I don't know if I'm that good at it. How do you meditate?

What type of meditation? Just, you know. Do you focus on your breath? Do you focus on something else? I do that, TM, or breath, or I try different things. But now, you know, honestly, it's like I don't even, it's more of like an exercise now. Like I know how to get to I think it might be a brainwave pattern

I don't know But it's a state of mind that I could hit Without really tricks It takes me about five or six minutes And I could get there Do you sit in a chair with your feet on the floor? Or are your legs folded? I try not to lay down as you fall asleep

But I try to do that. I used to do it. I haven't found a place. It's nice when you can do it at the same time every day. I just switch from production to post-production on this, so I haven't gotten into my routine. I haven't been doing it as much as I should, or as I'd like to. But in the middle of it, I got the idea for Chef hit me,

and I let myself stop, which I don't usually do. And I took out a pad and I just scribbled out like eight pages of ideas and thoughts and left it alone and then read it. And it had, you know, if I look back on it and read those pages, it really had 80% of a heavy lifting done as far as what it was about, who was in it, who the characters were, what other movies to look at, what the tone is, what music I would have in it, what type of food he was doing, the idea of the food truck and the Cuban sandwiches and Cuban music. And he's from Miami. And so it all sort of grew out from that. And then I went ahead, and I have enough half-written screenplays that I just force myself to keep writing every day.

And so this only took me a few weeks, too, to get the first draft. But the big thing was I was so scared of it's like the Kublai Khan dream, the poem Kublai Khan, right? It wasn't the story that it was a dream and only part of it was written down because he forgot it all. The poet, I think I have that right. Going back to school, I don't remember if I'm getting the details right. But the idea that sometimes you feel like when you're writing a story or a screenplay,

if you let enough time pass in the first draft, you get off of that kind of creative run you're on. Yeah, because I don't think it's something you control. I think it's something you access. Not to say it's from some other mystical place, but whatever that part of your brain that it comes from is not a part of your brain that you necessarily can force to do what you want.

It's not, not fully domesticated, right? Yeah. You gotta kind of, you gotta kind of trick it into doing its thing. And when you did the, the brain dump down into the composition notebook,

do you take then, I'd imagine these are not necessarily in chronological order. It's just a full on brain dump. It is. It's what, you know, some of it's chronological, then you go back and hit another part of it and then run it through again and so it does it does

go on little tears it's like a pitch session except you're alone and when you said tone what would be an example of of tone for a movie how how would you sort of write that down or describe that like eat drink man woman opening like that that Like that stuff, right? Fantastic movie. Big Night. You know, a lot of it's movies. A lot of it is Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack. Food truck. Cuban sandwiches. Cuban sandwiches.

The son. There's a divorce. They've been separated, but they get along. Get along, and he's stuck. There's a critic coming. You know, this is Brattatouille. There's only so many cooking restaurant movies you can make. And the guy is preparing.

He goes to the farmer's market and brings his kid with him. So there's moments. There's vignettes. There's images. And some of them are sequences and some of them are movies. And sometimes it's movies that are in your memory and then when you see the movie, it's not that. But it's the version in your head from what you remember of a movie. And then Kitchen Confidential, I remember referencing that a lot.

And who the characters are. And I wanted a lot of Latino cast members because that's what was really – Kitchen Confidential, I remember, like that's really what kitchens were and what I saw and what it was and never what was depicted. And how does that, the, the, how does the vibrance of that culture with the music playing in the kitchen and then they're cooking food that's not that. And then in, in being re inspired, he's inspired by that, who the people that are surrounding him, the music he's listening to and where he came from in Miami.

And maybe that's the type of food he used to cook, and now he's cooking very trendy, user-friendly food that wasn't inspiring to him. And being frustrated by not being inspired by his art is no longer inspiring him, and he's hit an impasse. And also the impasse is affecting both his professional life, but in a way he's not aware of his personal life too. He's stuck, spiritually stuck. And on the show business side of things, this is something I know very little about. But in terms of the actual making, selling, distributing of the film.

And feel free to correct me if I get this wrong. But I've heard you refer to, I think, making Chef as going back to basics and sort of constraining the size or the budget so that you could do certain things, like have the language you wanted to have in the movie, for instance, be authentic. That's right.

How did you make this movie? And I know that's a very novice question, but I've talked to people sort of indirectly who've gone through the big studio process and have had a very rough time of it. What made Chef different? How did you, or Swingers, you could comment on that. Different times.

Yeah. You know, again, I think it's all a matter of, it's all a matter of adjusting to what the, of what the environment is at any given moment and adjusting in an art of war kind of way. I don't think about it in those terms, but acknowledge what the terrain is. And I think a lot of what seems like in my career in general as though I've had this vision for how my career was going to change and things I would try to do and to get things accomplished was more a reaction to what the circumstances were. So, for example, I thought swingers would open a lot of doors for me acting-wise. It didn't.

I got to do a little bit of stuff here and there. It was't. I got to do a little bit of stuff here and there. It was fun. But I was very sought after as a writer after that. And so the writer door opened up. The actor door was more of a small, a little cracked open door that occasionally I could poke my nose through. But it wasn't receiving me. but the writer door was wide open. So I started to do that and I learned a lot about storytelling and interacting with executives and what the system was by being involved with projects and none of which that ever got actually produced with the versions that I

wrote, but I was part of a chain of writers on certain projects. So I was pretty good at adjusting to what path was available to me and finding something interesting about what was available, but without ever feeling that I was compromising, but just trying to check out something that could be cool and not getting in my own way of saying, why shouldn't I be a writer on this? Why not pitch this take on a movie? Even though I've never done a rewrite, why not go in there and talk to them about this?

And so I think I've had enough confidence to not be scared to try something new, which I think is something that gets in a lot of people's ways. I think people get in their own way a lot. And there are certain things that I have been scared of, but for some reason, career-wise, maybe it's my early upbringing. I don't know what, but I never feel intimidated when I'm in a room with people or if I'm on stage in front of people. I don't get that. My heart doesn't race in those situations. And that was even before the improv?

Yeah. I've always been comfortable like getting in front of people and talking. And I've been a bit of a ham when I was little, like loving to jump up in front of the family and put on shows. I just think certain people wire now that I have three kids.

For sure. You're just kind of wired a certain way and certain people are, you know of you know they kind of have certain things that they like and certain things that they're good at and you could adjust them and change them but you're kind of you're kind of working with uh you know you're kind of handed it's like it's like poker you get a you know you get you get dealt a hand and you can play those cards well or poorly. But you're definitely working from, you know, you're definitely inheriting your properties in risk at the beginning of the game. You know what I mean?

You're starting from a certain vantage point. And then what do you do with that? With a movie like Swingers, for instance, and again, these are just things that I i've heard quoted so feel free to correct me if i'm wrong it seems like everyone has seen swingers i mean it gets it gets quoted all the time um the box office was around six million it was if that if that so it was considered you know so so just to give you a perspective we you know trying to get it made for a year, nobody gives us the money. Doug Liman is able to raise the money, and we make it together. What is his –

He's a director. He's a director. He's the director of the film. But when I had met him, I was trying to set it up as a director. I was trying to direct it, and he had already done a film. He was just part of a circle of friends. I wasn't very close with him, but I knew him through somebody else. And he was somebody who had directed.

And so I had bought him a cup of coffee. He talked me through lenses and was preparing me for when it was time for me to direct. And then in that process had said, look, I know you – hopefully you will get to put this thing together. But I can raise the money. And so we agreed to creatively be partners on this thing. And, and, um,

and we made it a much smaller budget than I thought was possible. This was the 200 K. This was the 200 K that he was able to bring and figure out how to bring that movie to the screen with that budget, with the experience that he had had. So, uh, so that it happened.

We tried to get into Sundance. And not to interrupt, but was he that financing from sort of independently wealthy individuals or was it from companies? I think it was more like that. I think it was more of the connections that he had from growing up in town and being involved with, you know, there were people that he knew that were willing to bet on him. Some of it was based on stuff he had done already. And some of it was, you know, that done already and some of it was um you know uh that he you know had passion about this thing but he was able to get the the secure the financing

got it so uh so the first experience was that um then then we made it and that was real seat of the pants and then we didn't get into sundance which was our goal was to get in that was real seat of the pants. And then we didn't get into Sundance, which was our goal, was to get in. That was the be all and end all for us. And I don't know if it was that it wasn't finished enough or we had just pulled a cut together for them or it was screened on videotape versus a screening. Who knows what it was? It was incredibly disappointing to us. So it felt like all was lost. Then we put up, after that Sundance festival, when everybody had gotten back, we had done our own screening in Los Angeles for the cast and crew and invited some distributors to it as well. And it played extraordinarily well there.

And then we had multiple buyers. And you don't have to be in Hollywood to know what that means. More than one person is interested. it's a whole different dynamic and now there was a bit of a bidding war over it ended up selling for five million dollars and those are distribution rights distribution rights and um and so we were we were riding high it was you know in all the all everybody wanted to interview us and everybody wanted to feature us in their magazines. And we were like the next thing. And so in like the year between when it was acquired and when it came out, we were riding very high.

Vincent, I think, got cast in the sequel to Jurassic Park, which is about as big as you can get. And everybody who was nobody was now had a seat at the table, had another shot. And then by the time the movie came out, the first weekend is in whatever, two theaters, four theaters. It was a huge box office. And then a few weeks later, cared and it made five million dollars and and it was considered a failure at the box office wise because you got to figure out one side of us was like sling blade that made 100 million dollars and won oscars on the other side

was um goodwill hunting that won oscars and made like 100 million dollars so we were kind of the disappointing uh underperformer at Miramax at that point. And so all of it kind of ebbed away. But again, it was enough to get my foot in the door as a writer. And I had already, now I had not just been the guy who was in Rudy as a character actor, but now I had been in this movie that, as you said, everybody has seen. So thanks to video and later DVD and earlier on Laserdisc, everybody had seen this film and it become part of our culture. And that's when I kind of learned that it's not always the movie that does the best, that has the most impact or is the most rewarding or does the most for your

career for that matter. Even though in the short term, success is celebrated here and failure is unforgivable. But over time, I think that it, that shifts a bit. And I know, for example, like Vince had gotten Jurassic Park on the heels of Swingers. He's far more recognized now from Swingers that grossed one, you know, not even a tenth, maybe a hundredth of what that movie made. But for some reason, this one has had more impact on his career, even though, uh,

far less people went to see it in the movie theater. So you never know what's gonna, and I, and I find in my own career, the same thing. It's not always the things that make the most money. It's the things that the performances were, there's something about

certain projects that stick in people's memories more yeah the staying power i mean i was i was astonished as i started studying film more and looking at movies that had a huge impact on me or were these landmark iconic films among the you know high school and college males who were the majority of my friends in a fight club for instance and i was astonished that it wasn't some massive massive raging bull you know was you know all these movies that are sort of failures in the who were the majority of my friends, Fight Club, for instance. And I was astonished that it wasn't some massive, massive hit. Or Raging Bull. You know, all these movies that are sort of failures in the beginning end up...

Well, Rudy was my first experience with a movie coming out. It didn't do well at all. It didn't even do number one at the box office. It was considered also an underperformer. But now everybody knows it. It's a cultural point of reference. I hear the music everywhere. People refer to it constantly.

So those are the ones where you make the ripple, the cultural ripple, and that's honestly the thing that is most exciting, that's the most appealing to me, is how can you make that kind of impact and affect people and either touch them, entertain them, make them laugh, make them feel connected. You know, that's the, that's the part that's the most rewarding at this point in my career. And I am keeping an eye on the time. I know that you've been very generous with your time and I'll,

I'll only take a few more minutes. The, I would be remiss of me if i didn't mention that a number of my fans have said to thank you for chef they've rented it five to ten times just to show friends so i think that that's awesome i think that's going to be one of the movies i think that's what that's really what that's was kind of the thing i know what within like the the chef community they accepted it the ones that i've met so that was a big scary part of it for me because if if everybody if people had liked it who didn't know about that world and but then the people who are in the world didn't like it it would have been a mixed it wouldn't have felt good to me um but the fact that people are seeing it and they're like, I'm spending more time with my son after seeing the movie. Or, you know what, I'm going to try to open up my own business that I've been putting off forever.

And that's when you feel really humbled and good and flattered because you feel like you're connecting. It's selfishly just a very good feeling to know that you're – me being on this planet has changed somebody else's experience, like in a good way. And it feels – you feel connected to people, which I think is kind of part of the trip here. It's kind of part of the goal. Oh, for sure. Well, I think anything with a basis in storytelling at some point,

I mean, you're making a lot of connections through this. I think we are hardwired for this Joseph Campbell-like experience, even in our own lives. I'd love to ask just a couple of rapid fire questions the first is when you hear the word successful who is the first person who comes to mind wow oh i like listening to this on your show i don't like answering it um let's see I guess just a knee-jerk. Knee-jerk. Gates.

Okay. And not, you know why? Because, not because of the richest guy, but because of his, because of how he shifted his priorities. Because he's now making tremendous impact with the hand he's been dealt or the, the pot that he's built up, um, that he's making,

uh, that there's one, there's like, there's like the Bill Gates from, there's the Microsoft Bill Gates and there's the post Microsoft Bill Gates. And to me, there's something fascinating about that and that he was able to be effective in what his goals were for the first chapter, and then what his goals are now, which are very different. So he was able to shift his entire agenda and be effective, be completely effective. Yeah, very similar metric-driven, hardcore approach.

And I don't know a lot about, honestly, this is purely layman's perspective of, hey, this is how many lives have been saved by this, or this many people have agreed to have charitable donations. But it's just, there's something that, he's just the first name that popped into my head. Any particular director

who comes to mind? Director or writer in film? There's a few, you know, and they're all different. Like, I worked with Scorsese and I think that he's been,

I think there's a certain, there must be, when I came up and what he represented and I got to meet him and see him work. And so he's inspired me as far as what his body of work and who he is as a person. But I also think of like the Coen brothers who've managed to tickle their own fancy and enjoy everything they're doing and have tremendous variety and entertain people as well, but seem to have maintained a certain balance, a healthy balance between their work and their private lives. And I haven't dealt with them that much, but they seem like genuinely like well-adjusted, normal, nice people

who happen to make really exciting, cool movies. And then Jim Cameron, who's sort of the other end of the spectrum, who's kind of the guy who's reinvented aspects of the industry over and over again with tremendous enthusiasm and also just a sharp intellect that's into solving problems and changing the way we do the magic tricks. And I've certainly inherited a lot of the ground that he broke with Avatar, with Jungle Book, a lot of the same technology, a lot of the same people I'm working with.

So there's a healthy respect. And then Walt Disney is another one who I had researched quite a bit back around the time of Iron Man 2 when we were referencing him in the Stark Expo and the old Stark archives. But he was a bit of a techie at his time and a bit of a storyteller too. And so he was doing the – what he was doing at his time is like, it seems like what Pixar is doing now. It's like cutting edge technology, great stories, great emotion, telling stories with a different set of tools that nobody ever had before. And there's something really, to me, I think he's one of those key figures. Oh, a total hacker. They display a bunch of his old cobbled together MacGyver like rigs at the

Disney family museum in San Francisco. Yeah. Which is amazing. What is the book that you've gifted the most to other people? Actually, the writer's journey was one of them. I've given your book, I've given four hour body to people.

Thank you for that. I've given that. Those are the biggies. I'm trying to think Body to people, too. Well, thank you for that. I've given that. Those are the biggies. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. Hmm. When I first started off in acting, I gifted Grodin's book to my family, his first book, It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here, because it really told the story about how difficult it is when you're first starting off trying to be an actor.

And he had such a great voice. Other than that, I can't, none are jumping to mind. That's three, though. That's plenty. That's plenty. Last question. Actually, there are two. They're pretty quick.

The first is, what advice would you give to your 20-year-old self? Wow. Oh, he won't listen. The 30-year-old self. what advice would you give to your 20 year old self? Wow. Um, Oh, he wouldn't listen. 30 year old self. Uh, um, I think

to not confuse how you feel about something with how that thing really is. I think you think you're being more objective than you really are. And you're colored by emotion more than you think you are. In positive ways and negative ways. But perspective is much more subjective than you think. You think you're a lot more objective than you are. To me, specifically at 30.

And 20, I don't even know. I wasn't even a human being yet. I don't know what I would say at 20. Because part of it is just the ignorance of walking into the forest and not knowing where I was going. And whatever was getting me through it, thankfully I had enough. Something in the back of my mind told me to just take that road and walk not knowing where I was going. And so I'm very grateful. I like where I am.

I like what the experience of my life is. Every year I like better. I like who I am better. I like what my experience of my life is. I like every year. I like better. I like who I am better. I like what my life is better. So I'm very reluctant to interfere with the way things were. But I think a lot of it is how I feel about things and what I do to how I kind of balance things out in a way that I'm proud of, that I like. Well, I love your work, and thank you so much for the time. Where can people find out more about you, find you online?

Hey, let's see. I don't know. I'm on Twitter and Facebook, at John underscore Favreau on Twitter, and then Facebook, I think, is just John Favreau, And Instagram, Jon Favreau. It's pretty. Pretty consistent. I've been working, so there's not a lot of stuff up there. I'm on there where we do pop-ups once in a while in Los Angeles.

Maybe we'll do one up north from the food from Chef. Oh, that'd be great. So we've been doing that. I've been dying to have not only Cuban, but the grilled cheese sandwich. I'm sure you must hear about that a lot. Yes, I've cooked them. I cook them for the crew of the movie. I cook them for my kids.

I cook them here in the editing rooms. But I enjoy cooking. And we've cooked together. We have. Can I reveal that? Definitely. You and I have cooked beignets together. Beignets.

That was an amazing experience. That was for a Super Bowl party. That was so good. You had never done that before. I had. I was. That was what we were talking about. Here we were. We didn't really know never done that before. I was, that was what we're talking about. Here we were,

we, we didn't really know each other that well. I read your stuff, you saw my stuff. And then lo and behold, you put some, some hot oil there and the focus is no longer on one another. That's not keeping your,

your fingers out. He's called it keeping all your fingers. Well, John, thank you so much. There's, there's tons more to explore everybody. I'll put links in the show notes to where you could find John. And thanks so much for your fingers. Well, John, thank you so much. There's tons more to explore. Everybody, I'll put links in the show notes to where you can find John. And thanks so much for your time.

Great, great. And thank you, too. I love the podcast. But I know this is about me, not about you. But I got to know you through your writing. And you're very Intriguing I get pulled into your work You make it very easy to read your stuff

It had been recommended I think For Our Body was recommended to me And one of the things You just pick a chapter here A chapter there Next thing you know You're reading the whole thing And your approach to

Questioning things And curating research And fact-based But not being You know it seems like there's always you always are either dealing with a scientific method where something has to have been through a double-blind study or a completely anecdotal there's there was no middle ground and what's interesting about about your stuff is you'll say hey look here's what i've experienced here's the sample that i've seen this experience with. It's not something that should be looked at scientifically, but there are certain indications that this is worth looking into more.

And here's what I do and here's what I've done. And it makes it much more inviting than either the very walled-off world of traditional academia and then also this, I don't know science that's more based on on anecdotal information that doesn't take science into consideration as much but to acknowledge that science has an importance to it but also looking at how uh what has not yet gone through that machine might have some truth to it too. And giving full disclosure of your context and why makes it not intellectually offensive. You know what I'm saying? It feels like you could be responsible intellectually,

not flying in the face of science, but you're also opening it up to new ways of thinking. And, you know, I think it relates to the way your context, the whole world that you're, the whole Northern California way of ethos of looking at things and how to be more effective and efficient in approaching problems that we still face. So I love looking at your stuff. And like I said, the four-hour chef was really, was a great counterbalance to the other chef biographies that I was reading or autobiographies or cooking books and documentaries I was watching. And then here was a very concise version of a lot of the same information that was a really good counterbalance. Well, I really appreciate it.

And I love watching your experiments. I love watching you do the huge blockbusters, then do Chef. I can't wait to see what you do next. Well, I know, I guess I'm waiting to see. Jungle Book. Jungle Book. It's going to be amazing.

It's going to be something different and cool. And just like everything else, doing one with this level of technology, which I got a taste of here and there with iron man and but to really throw the throw the whole thing into you have the whole movie rely on that magic trick working is uh it's it's um exhilarating but if it all works as well as it looks like it will it's it'll be something nobody had seen before so it's it's exciting stuff. I can't wait to see it.

Well, John, to be continued, thank you so much for the time. Great. My pleasure. And this was fun. It was quick and easy. Quick and easy. All right. Thank you. Take care.