21/10/2024
This is a fantastic movie!
Jon Favreau; the writer, director, and star of "Chef" (2014), wrote the film's script in about two weeks. He had long wanted to make a film about food and chefs, and felt that the subject was suited to a small-scale independent film rather than a big-budget production. He cited "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" (2011), "Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994), and "Big Night" (1996) as inspirations for creating a food-centric film.
The script was semi-autobiographical, incorporating parts of Favreau's life into the main character, such as being a father while having a busy career and coming from a "broken home." Favreau also drew a comparison between his career as a director and Carl's career as a chef; he stepped down from directing major studio films to go "back to basics," and create "Chef" on a smaller budget, much like Carl's resignation from a popular restaurant to work in a food truck.
Favreau did his own cooking in the film by training with food truck chef Roy Choi. Choi sent Favreau to a week of intensive French culinary schooling, where Favreau sharpened his knife skills and learned how to make sauces. "I brought him into the kitchen, and he just kind of fit in," Choi recalls. "I threw him a couple of tests, like a case of chives, or a case of onions, or peel two cases of avocados. Just to see where his mind and his situation and his abilities were and how interested he was in these things. He just attacked them. He really became a part of it."
Choi only agreed to train Favreau to cook, if Favreau promised to be absolutely authentic in his portrayal of a professional chef, from the way that his character Carl folds the towels at the beginning of the film, to the way in which he cleans his station. Choi also put Favreau to work in several of his kitchens doing repetitive, menial tasks, such as picking parsley. This training was designed to keep Favreau focused on the smallest of details, and to serve as a method acting exercise, in order to understand the mindset of a professional chef, who must be persistently detail-focused in a pressurized environment, which requires repetitive tasks.
Eventually (five years after this films release) Favreau and Choi teamed up again on the Netflix cooking/documentary show "The Chefs Show."
"It was nice to work on a little movie like this again, where I have so many responsibilities between writing and directing and acting, and you live and die by your own talents. I missed the feeling of doing something small and personal, where I wouldn't have to explain my vision to anyone but the people I was collaborating with." (Wikipedia/IMDb)
Happy Birthday, Jon Favreau!