FOOD FOR ENTERTAINMENT: From left: John Leguizamo as Martin, Emjay Anthony as Percy Casper and Jon Favreau as Carl Casper in Chef.
Jon Favreau goes from Iron Man to stainless steel food truck in new film. By Jon Herskovitz
Actor, director and screenwriter Jon Favreau traded the high-flying super hero antics of his Iron Man movies for a quieter new film about a celebrated chef who quits his job at a top-flight restaurant and takes to the road in a food truck.
Chef, a small-budget, independent comedy with a big-name cast, including Iron Man veterans Robert Downey Jr and Scarlett Johansson, made its premiere at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin this weekend. It will open in the United States on May 9.
For Favreau, Chef helped cleanse his palate after directing the first two of the three Iron Man films, which have a combined world box office of more than $1bn. The movie also comes ahead of what will likely be his next expensive project, an adaption of The Jungle Book.
“If you are spending in excess of $100mn on something, you better make sure that you make that money back,” Favreau said. “When you are doing something for a fraction of that, the smaller you make the movie, the smaller the risk, and the more specific the audience can be.”
His new movie is more of a personal story about a chef named Carl Casper pushed out of his kitchen due to social media gaffes that spiral out of control and conflicts with the restaurant owner, played by Dustin Hoffman.
At the heart of the film is the troubled relationship between Casper and his son, who has been living with his mother after a divorce. “This movie deals with issues that coincide with the stage in life where I am, specifically fatherhood and the prioritization of family over career,” Favreau said.
To keep costs down, the A-list actors were paid the bare minimum and the special effects of his previous films have been traded for close-ups of the knife work used in preparing food for the kitchen.
Gratuitous shots of mouth-watering dishes take the place of massive explosions. To get the feel of the movie right, Favreau enlisted the help of Roy Choi, who rose to fame by starting up a food truck that served Korean influenced tacos. “Maybe the food truck does not have as much money as being a big chef, but you never have to compromise your visions,” Choi said.
Choi helped Favreau learn the tricks of the trade and said by the end of the film, the star was cooking all the food for the scenes in the movie. Favreau said putting the script together for this movie brought back memories of Swingers, the 1996 comedy he wrote about unemployed actors and a swing dance revival that helped propel him and co-star Vince Vaughn to prominence.
“I have a lot of really, really good eight-page scripts and then you forget what you are doing,” he said.
On both films, Favreau kept going — plugging away for about two weeks each and coming away with an entire story.
“The big movies have to appeal to everybody, young or old, male or female, every market around the world to get their money back,” Favreau said.
“But little ones like this you can make for you and an audience that can connect with it more personally,” he said. — Reuters
Dakota Johnson bullied at school over parents
Actress Dakota Johnson says that she struggled through years of misery in high school because she was constantly teased over tabloid reports about her celebrity parents — actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson.
Dakota, who has been cast as Anastasia Steele in the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey movie adaptation, was home schooled during her childhood, but she got her first taste of a more normal education in her teens when she was sent to a Catholic boarding school in northern California, reports contactmusic.com.
Dakota was initially a big fan of the idea, but her classroom dreams quickly soured. “I was just miserable there. It was a great school, but girls in that concentration are so horrific, just horrific,” she told Elle magazine,
She begged her father, Miami Vice star Johnson, to let her leave, and she ended up going to New Roads School in Santa Monica, California, where her parents’ fame really impacted her experience.
The 24-year-old reveals students would bring in magazine clippings of gossip about her mum and dad and their well-documented substance abuse issues just to taunt her.
Dakota said, “I think people, especially the press, like to pick on children of famous people, and I think that’s awful.
“Things get made up. It’s so, so sad. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it as a 16-year-old. You’re like, Why? What did I do?’”
The stress of her home life prompted Dakota to check into rehab as a teen, but she insists it was only to seek help in dealing with her family issues. She said: “My parents had some problems of their own that put me in a position of having to deal with very grown-up stuff at a very young age. I needed some help with that, therapy-wise.” — IANS
Brett Ratner steps into Cable TV Production
Filmmaker Brett Ranter says that he will start a joint venture with an unnamed cable network. “I’m about to close a joint venture with a cable network,” Ratner said in passing at a UCLA conference, adding that he would be deficit financing the programming. Ratner is doing the deal through his RatPac Entertainment, a partnership with Australian billionaire James Packer that supplies $450mn in film slate financing to Warner Bros, reports hollywoodreporter.com. “TV is a big focus for us over the next few years,” Ratner said, referencing the company, before then mentioning the new deal. The deal is expected to close in a few weeks, however, no other details were revealed. — IANS
Old rich dames, angry henchmen and one very punctilious hotel concierge make up the fantasy world at the centre of Wes Anderson’s whimsical caper that evokes a bygone era of aristocratic hierarchy and opulence. The Grand Budapest Hotel, out in limited US release on Friday, is in part inspired by Anderson’s own experiences of living in Europe, the works of Austrian author Stefan Zweig, and paying homage to an era where tradition reigned supreme. — Reuters
Crime caper American Hustle and financial greed tale The Wolf of Wall Street each landed eight nominations for the MTV Movie Awards last week, edging out dystopian saga The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and comedy We’re the Millers. Hustle and Wolf, which each went home from Oscars empty handed, will have a shot at redemption at the unbuttoned MTV event that hands out golden, popcorn-shaped trophies in categories like best kiss and best fight scene. — Reuters
Winona Ryder desperate to work with David Simon
Actress Winona Ryder is so desperate to work with The Wire creator David Simon that she is planning to send a letter of admiration in a bid to land a role in his future project. Ryder star admits she has been a fan of Simon’s for some time, but she has been struggling to put her feelings into words worthy of sending to her screenwriting idol, reports contactmusic.com. “I’ve been trying to write (Simon) a letter to tell him I want to work with him. But how do you write a letter to a writer? He’s the person that I hope to work with one day,” she told Britain’s Red magazine. Simon is also the co-creator of New Orleans-based drama Treme and gritty mini-series The Corner. — IANS
BELOW:
1) UNPLEASANT MEMORIES: Dakota Johnson
2) NEW DEAL: Brett Ratner