Though Chef may appear to be about cooking, it’s actually about Favreau’s career as an actor and director from Swingers to Iron Man 2 . And what we can all glean from his growing pains.
Open Road Films
Let's be clear: Chef, the new film written, directed by, and starring Jon Favreau, does not shortchange food. If you go into it hungry, you may end up gnawing on your armrest (or the arm of whomever's unlucky enough to be sitting next to you) in frustration. In lusciously shot sequences, Favreau's character Carl Casper makes carne asada and grilled cheese, plates exquisite-looking prawns and whips up a gorgeous pasta, munches on fresh beignets and nibbles on Texas-style brisket, and prepares countless Cuban sandwiches in loving detail. Carl's a chef who flames out of the high-end L.A. restaurant scene and builds himself back up by running a food truck, and the movie is also careful to prove its foodie bona fides with scenes of him working in and out of the kitchen, butchering a pig, or buying plantains at the market.
But underneath all the deliciousness and the divorced-dad-bonds-with-adorable-son storyline is an unmistakable meditation on Favreau's own movie career, from his 1996 indie hit Swingers (which he wrote and starred in) to his more recent career as a director of giant (and not all universally loved) studio films, like the first and second Iron Man installments and Cowboys & Aliens.
Here are four lessons to take from Chef, which opens in limited release on Friday, about artistic integrity — whether it be in movies, in food, or otherwise.
Selling out's a personal problem.
Open Road Films
Carl begins the film as the head chef of a high-end restaurant called Gauloises that offers popular but unimaginative luxury food — caviar eggs, French onion soup, chocolate lava cake. When he tries to put more daring and "artsy" fare on the menu, like sweetbreads, no one orders it. The place is a neat stand-in for the studio system in which Favreau's been working, where Carl might be the talent running the show, but he's not the one footing the bill. That responsibility falls to Riva (Dustin Hoffman), the owner of Gauloises whose focus is on getting asses in seats and who pushes Carl to serve the "greatest hits" on the night a famous food blogger is coming in to review the place.
Chef is actually refreshingly even-handed about the balance between commercial appeal and artistic fulfillment, which is only fair coming from someone who's responsible for one of the best and one of the worst installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It'd be hypocritical for Favreau to completely damn the structure he worked his way into and has experienced so much success with, and so Riva's not really a villain, just the intractable voice of the business side of things ("Be an artist on your own time!").
Carl's frustrations are the result of his own situation, not the system — his boss wants him to stick with what's working and to give the people what they expect (explosions, special effects, ahi tuna). His desire to prove he can be edgy and innovative is ultimately his own problem.
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