Joyful Food Documentaries With Morgan Neville

Recipe Club

In this episode of Recipe Club, hosts David Chang and Chris Ying are joined by Academy Award-winning documentarian Morgan Neville to explore

Key takeaways

• Morgan Neville categorizes food documentaries into two types: those about how food is killing us and those about how food brings life.
• The film 'Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers' explores the counterculture of garlic lovers and the history of the Gilroy Garlic Festival.

Main topics

• Food Documentaries
• Culinary History

Notable quotes

There are basically two types of food documentaries: the ones about how food is killing us, and the ones about how food brings us life.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a nostalgic tribute to the artistry and human co

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:05) Today on Recipe Club, we're talking about food documentaries with our good friend, award-winning documentarian, Morgan Neville. We have Christopher Yang here. Morgan chose three films for us today. I Like Killing Flies, Garlic, As Good As Ten Mothers, and Elbow Lee, Cooking in Progress. So we're going to deep dive into all of these right now. Speaker 5 (0:29) This episode of Recipe Club is presented to you by olive oils from Spain. Welcome to a world of flavor. Pull up a chair and discover the recipes, traditions, and centuries of craft behind every golden drop. From two-hour lunches to dinners at midnight when Spain is at the table, it's something to experience. So the next time you're reaching for extra virgin olive oil, reach for Spain. Taste the flavor of a country all in a drop. Learn more at oliveoilsfromspain.org slash all in a drop. Speaker 4 (1:08) Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Recipe Club. I am one of your co-hosts, David Chang. Today, we're going to go deep into the world of food documentaries. That is sort of the topic of the soup of the day, right? Sure. Soup du jour. Soup du jour. And again, this season of Recipe Club, we're going deep into the world of cinema and food. And we are blessed today to have... Mr. Morgan Neville, one of the best ones to do it, filmmaker, documentarian, our partner in all things good and serious and fun, and join with Chris Ying. Speaker 5 (1:44) I can't believe it's taken us this long to bring Morgan to our movie podcast. I mean, I don't think he really wants to be here. Speaker 3 (1:54) I'm low-hanging fruit. I'm an easy get for you guys. Speaker 4 (1:57) We made ugly delicious, next thing you eat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We've been around the world multiple times. Multiple times. In a lot of meals. We have a new upcoming CNN show, which is also a good reason as to why Morgan is Speaker 5 (2:11) here right now. Sorry, Netflix. Speaker 4 (2:14) Promoting another show on another network. The Detour. The Detour. The Detour. With David Chang. With me, unfortunately. But Morgan's chosen three films for us today. Three films that I have never seen before. Wow. The first is LBE, Cooking in Progress, about Ferran Adria. The last sort of last days of LBE, for those that don't know, one of the greatest. I think the greatest restaurant ever. Speaker 4 (2:46) I like killing flies. Speaker 5 (2:48) Which also about the final. The last days. Speaker 3 (2:53) The last days. Of a legendary restaurant. Shopson's in New York. Speaker 5 (2:56) Yep. Right before they Speaker 4 (2:57) moved from their original location. Speaker 3 (2:59) And Speaker 4 (2:59) then garlic is as good as 10 mothers. Yes. Speaker 4 (3:05) I really think you should watch all three. This is like a cousin Sal betting parlay. You could never hit all three in one day. And if you do, you'll change. It would be like taking DMT or something. You're not going to see the world in the same way. Speaker 3 (3:19) I can't believe you hadn't seen any of those films. None. Which is why I Speaker 4 (3:22) was glad. I was like, oh, food documentaries. We'll do Super Size Me. So Speaker 5 (3:27) before we get into the... particulars of each of these. Obviously we have Morgan here because Morgan is an Academy Award winning documentarian. Speaker 4 (3:35) I'll rattle them off for people Speaker 5 (3:37) so they know. 20 Feet from Stardom, which won you the Oscar. Won't You Be My Neighbor, Lauren, Steve, Speaker 4 (3:45) Roadrunner. Which Speaker 3 (3:46) was the Speaker 4 (3:46) highest grossing documentary of all time. Biographical documentary. Speaker 3 (3:50) The penguins made more money. Speaker 4 (3:52) The Speaker 5 (3:52) penguins made more money. Something that Morgan has had to clarify before. We've obviously made Ugly Delicious with you, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. We've got this new show called The Detour coming on CNN in a couple days' time, in which we sent this guy on the road yet again. This time, the idea was, how do we make a food and travel documentary show with as little of a plan as possible? Speaker 4 (4:19) I mean, the producers worked very hard on a plan. They did. Speaker 5 (4:21) But Speaker 4 (4:22) we were Speaker 5 (4:22) like, let's lean into Dave trying to undo the plan. And that would be the show. Speaker 3 (4:26) And we succeeded in that. He certainly undid the plan. I Speaker 4 (4:30) was very clear to everybody working very diligently on creating a schedule. Yeah. That don't be mad at me if this never gets used. Speaker 3 (4:41) I mean, the producer's nickname for the show was the Heartbreak Show. Because they would talk to all these restaurants and then we'd blow them all off. I told Speaker 4 (4:50) them, don't tell me. I don't want to know. So I don't know if people realize that this is like not a WWE scripted thing where we just didn't know what was happening. It Speaker 3 (4:59) was improv. Speaker 5 (4:59) Yeah. The idea being there's already too many places, too many people and voices telling you where to go. What if you just listen to the person sitting next to you? Speaker 4 (5:09) Yeah, in a simple way, it's just like imagine this is 1992 and there's no internet. There's Speaker 5 (5:14) no Speaker 4 (5:14) internet. Yeah. And you're just trying to figure out how to go to like an old school travel show where there was no internet. You could not get any aggregator. There was nothing. So the only way to do that was not to do any research whatsoever. Talk to people. Talk to people. We had some real crazy moments. That's for sure. Yeah. Speaker 5 (5:35) And some great finds too. I mean, it did have that spirit of getting out and hitting the open road. What's insane to me is that this is now, I mean, Morgan, you said it earlier, you've been working with Dave for 10 years. Speaker 3 (5:48) Yeah. Speaker 5 (5:49) At no point did we just sit down and talk about food documentaries before we started making them with him. Speaker 4 (5:54) Yeah, no. Speaker 5 (5:55) No. At no point did we ask Morgan, hey, what are your favorite food documentaries before we started doing it? Speaker 3 (6:00) Well, you know, food documentary, when we started talking about doing this and thinking about food documentaries. Speaker 3 (6:08) Going and looking at the list of what are all the food documentaries, they really break down into two categories. It's all the documentaries about why food is bad. So it's Big Corn, it's Food Inc., it's, you know, all the bad stories. Everything Speaker 5 (6:26) that's Speaker 3 (6:26) food is all the things that are killing you. Yes, all the things that are killing you. And the others are all about... Speaker 3 (6:34) kind of mad geniuses of, or the eccentricities of food. Speaker 5 (6:40) Yeah. All the ways in which like food is keeping you alive and bringing you life. Yes. Bring you joy in Speaker 3 (6:45) life. The culture part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the, yeah. But the other ones, you know, I don't know how many of those you've seen, all the food inks and all that Speaker 4 (6:55) stuff. I don't want to watch it. You don't? I don't. I don't. I think I've seen food ink. I think. I don't think I have. I Speaker 3 (7:04) accidentally showed one of those documentaries to my wife, and she doesn't eat chicken anymore. Speaker 5 (7:10) That's the thing. You can't leave one of those documentaries with your full diet intact. No. Speaker 3 (7:15) Because they're Speaker 5 (7:16) telling you not to eat something. Yes. I feel like as doom and gloomy as Chang gets a reputation for being, our projects are squarely in the second camp of how food... brings you happiness and joy in life and connects us. Yeah, connects us Speaker 3 (7:34) to other people. That's like the main thing that we've been doing for 10 years. Yeah, Speaker 5 (7:38) food Speaker 3 (7:38) is part of culture and it's, you know, surprising constantly. So, Speaker 5 (7:44) Garlic is as good as Ten Mothers. I had never seen this one. I had seen I Like Killing Flies. I had never seen El Bulli, Cooking in Progress. This movie is 51 minutes long and for me it was a true delight. Bite Speaker 3 (7:58) size, it's great. Speaker 5 (7:59) It is a treat. It is. It Speaker 4 (8:02) is. Speaker 5 (8:02) It's like proto Speaker 4 (8:03) -Ugly Delicious. It's proto Speaker 5 (8:05) -Ugly Delicious in like the most intense way. It is like you said, Chang. It's like a little best in show in that it is about this kind of like underworld, just weirdo culture of Speaker 4 (8:17) garlic lovers. There's so much going on in 51 minutes. It's packed. And there are a lot of messages that are trying to. Yes. be, I wouldn't say overtly, but there are a lot. What are the themes here? All the different themes. Environmentalism, originality. Yeah, iconoclasm, yeah. Speaker 3 (8:43) Kind of cultural bias. Speaker 4 (8:45) Authenticity. Speaker 5 (8:47) Yeah, like there's a whole like social class thing happening here with garlic. People looking down on garlic eaters. It is, yeah. It is like, there's like an enlightenment thing happening. And then it is also. But I don't want to scare people off because this movie is just like a hilarious, insane time the entire time. There's Speaker 4 (9:03) a little bit of like Eyes Wide Shut in here. There's like some, I'm Speaker 5 (9:07) going Speaker 4 (9:07) to say undertones. There's Speaker 5 (9:09) some like overtones Speaker 4 (9:09) of sexuality here. If you play the movie backwards, it's Fidelity. They say Fidelity every five minutes. Speaker 5 (9:16) So, Les Blank. Yep. Who is Les Blank? Speaker 3 (9:20) Les Blank was kind of a legendary... Bay Area documentary filmmaker who was known for doing these very offbeat portraits, but even as you can tell the way they're told like this the the Leon Russell film like very Counterculture, you know, he came out of the 60s counterculture His most famous film is probably burden of dreams, which is the making of Fitzcarraldo. Yes, which is an incredible film an incredible film and You know, that film, in some ways, I like it more than Fitzcarraldo, but that's the, you know, the kind of the doomed Werner Herzog, who was a friend of his, who was also living in the Bay Area. Speaker 3 (10:08) had, you know, went to South America to make this movie and they shot half the movie with Harvey Keitel and Mick Jagger and then they threw that out and brought in, you know, Klaus Kinski. They tried to drag a ship through the jungle. And he actually dragged a ship over a mountain. That's an incredible documentary. I met him once at a screening and, you know, fascinating guy, but definitely a counterculture guy to the end. Speaker 5 (10:35) So he was mostly based in Berkeley. So this movie is 51 minutes of garlic. And it is a celebration of this subculture of the Gilray Garlic Festival, which went on for decades and decades. A lot of this takes place. The two main places this takes place are in Spain. Yes. And then at Chez Panisse, where they would have these garlic dinners. And it's like Werner Herzog shows up in this. Alice Waters Speaker 4 (11:01) is in it quite a Speaker 5 (11:03) bit. Young Alice Waters, just like wearing garlic garlands and tiaras and just having these crazy garlic dinners where the Berkeley. weirdo set would come out for these dinners. It'd be live music in there. So Les Blank was mostly very focused on music, like traditional American folk music and things like that. Yeah, Speaker 3 (11:22) he Speaker 5 (11:22) did a Speaker 3 (11:22) number of music documentaries. So Speaker 5 (11:24) garlic at this point was, for a lot of history actually, Western history, garlic was regarded as low peasant food. Yes. And then it became associated with sort of anti-immigrant Speaker 4 (11:38) sentiment. Do Speaker 5 (11:38) you remember where it originated from? garlic comes from was first cultivated in Siberia. That's right. Really? And traveled through China and then spread around the world. Silk Road. You did watch this thing. I did watch this Speaker 4 (11:49) thing. Speaker 5 (11:49) Okay. But then in America, you know, it was like. Good Speaker 4 (11:54) job, Chachapichi. Speaker 5 (11:56) Anti-Italian, anti-immigrant sentiment was like, ew, you guys stink. Their food is stinky. Everything, garlic is disgusting. And then you've got this counter-cultural thing where they were just like in love with garlic and eating so much garlic. These people are insane about garlic. And some of the dishes they have, you know, these garlic dinners, there's this intense scene that Chang and I were just talking about, like suckling pigs in the beginning. Yes. It is just a pile of suckling pigs, which are like how young are... sucklings. I mean, those are probably three weeks old. It's intense. It's intense. It's at Chez Panisse. They're being stuffed with rice and tons and tons of garlic. They're Speaker 4 (12:29) like Speaker 5 (12:29) really Speaker 4 (12:30) tiny sucking pigs. They're football sized. Yeah. Speaker 5 (12:33) And then stitched together and then roasted. There's this insane scene in Spain where they're making this sausage by hand with all this garlic and paprika. There's garlic. garlic and red wine soaked figs. It's just garlic up the wazoo. And I was thinking, is, do you remember like there was a period of time where like, oh, you like garlic. That's your first like foodie cred. Speaker 3 (12:59) Yeah, I mean, what's interesting is that, you know, we've, for the most part, come of age in the garlic is omnipresent part of our culture. But going back in the time machine of this film, you start to understand that it wasn't always, you know, so. And, you know, of course, in the 80s is probably when restaurants like the Stinking Rose came about. In fact, they interviewed the author of the book, the Stinking Rose. I don't know if there's an association or not other than the name, but just this idea of almost the kind of the embracing and fetishization of garlic that by the 90s, garlic was omnipresent. It was Speaker 5 (13:38) like rebellious. It was the indie to be into garlic. Do you think Chang garlic is one of the great ingredients? Speaker 4 (13:45) No. Actually, I think it probably is a little overrated. So many things that I love, I've learned that you don't actually need garlic. You don't need garlic to make kimchi. You don't need a lot of things. There are other flavors out there that can actually, you know, potentially replicate it. Like like a ramp can be there's other things the Speaker 5 (14:09) whole Allium family. Yes, so Speaker 4 (14:11) I I think it's great I think it's a little overdone like black pepper you sometimes you know, it's just become this The staple that you always have but it is also incredibly important to certain cuisines But the older I've gotten it's not like I'm anti garlic. I use garlic all the time all the time But I don't think it's a necessary thing Speaker 5 (14:33) But there was a point where it was, there was so much, everything, everything today is like, everything is roasted garlic. It Speaker 4 (14:39) was all garlic. That was like the first. It Speaker 3 (14:42) was Speaker 4 (14:42) post the sun-dried tomato phase. Was it post the sun-dried? That was the first time I remember. Now in Speaker 3 (14:46) my cabinet, in my house, I saw my wife had a giant bag of Trader Joe's. Dried garlic just chips that you know, she'll throw a handfuls into things. Yeah, like Speaker 5 (14:57) that's where we're at now I I will say this for this movie though. I I'm with you in that. I'm not a garlic head I'm not just oh I need garlic, you know What Speaker 4 (15:08) no, I was just like you probably love the stinking rose. I Speaker 4 (15:16) I made Speaker 5 (15:17) a dish. You're going to hate this if you don't love garlic. I made garlic with 40 cloves. I made chicken with 40 cloves of garlic for today. I'll bring that in a second. I wanted to go to, I wanted so badly while watching this movie to be there. I wanted to be at Chez Panisse in 1977 or whatever it is. It looked, it was wise, wise, shoddy. It was like a little sex party-ish, but it was just like, it looked like such a good time. Like the restaurant looked. like barely a restaurant. Like, are there places like that you can think of that are like that? Did you, did you find that attractive? No. You didn't want to be there at all. I mean, Speaker 4 (15:55) listen, like it's hard because like Alice is sort of like a mom. So it's, it's, you don't want to see your parents. I just was like, Oh no. Once I heard her voice, I was like, Oh, Alice is in this. I knew Alice's voice. I was like, Oh no. And I saw the. you know, the outside. I was like, oh, this, I was like, no. And then you see Alice and I was like, no, you don't want to see a documentary of your mom, you know? In her Speaker 5 (16:22) early Speaker 4 (16:22) craziest days. Yeah, I know. Or like Speaker 5 (16:24) craziest. It looked, I mean, what about you, Morgan? Like, you saw those scenes where you're like, that looks fun or were you also like, that looks like my mom having a good time? Speaker 3 (16:31) Yeah, not quite my scene. You Speaker 5 (16:33) know, so. Shit. Speaker 3 (16:35) I mean, Timber Speaker 1 (16:36) on Speaker 3 (16:36) the West Wing had my clients. But you wanted to be there, I can tell. I wanted Speaker 4 (16:38) to be there so badly. It looked so Speaker 5 (16:39) fun to me. Orgy. Orgy. Speaker 3 (16:43) I've just been chanting it Speaker 5 (16:44) all the time. Speaker 3 (16:44) Get the garlic paste. Speaker 5 (16:45) I mean, I'm having a different reaction than you guys, because I was watching this and I was Speaker 4 (16:47) like, Speaker 5 (16:47) this looks awesome, this looks fun, this looks great. Yeah, let's have a garlic fest. I want to go to the Kiloway Garlic Festival. I want to go to Spain. I want to go to Time Machine back to Chez Panisse, where they're just like, just. thousands and thousands of cloves of garlic. It's just being like spent everywhere. Slaughter Speaker 4 (17:02) more baby pigs. Slaughter more baby pigs, Speaker 5 (17:03) stuff them with garlic. Just garlic is being used in such intense quantities. And then there's a hard pivot at the end where it's like 10 minutes of mesmerizing. but excruciating footage of how garlic is harvested and processed by Speaker 4 (17:17) immigrants in this country. And it's like, support the people. Che Guevara's narrating silently in the background. Speaker 5 (17:24) And I was just like, oh shit. I just had it all flipped on me where I'm just like, yeah, garlic party. And then I was like, oh shit, we should really be more thrifty with our food. We should really care about where it's coming from. It's a Speaker 4 (17:35) crazy movie. It Speaker 5 (17:36) is Speaker 3 (17:36) a crazy movie. I mean, listen, I'm glad Speaker 4 (17:39) that I watched it. It's hard to express. how this movie makes any sense. Like, Werner Herzog, it's like, what the fuck's going on? This movie is, it's like, it's like a David Lynch film at the same time. I don't know what's going on. I