Mr. Gelb, many of your documentaries have featured chefs on a quest to perfect their craft. Are you a perfectionist in the same way as your subjects?
The term I’m using these days is passion, not perfection. It’s moved over to passion! My first documentary feature was Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and when I met Jiro, I was taken by the fact that he’s spending his life doing the same thing, and each day he's working to improve it by just a little bit. The humility of that… It’s really amazing, because he seeks perfection, but he knows that he'll never achieve it. But with my series Chef’s Table, some of them are real perfectionists, but some of them are just like doing what they feel, they don’t even think about the idea of being perfect. So as the show as gone on, the real unifying factor is passion. Passion is part of perfection of course, you know, if your goal is to make the one perfect thing, that's one kind of passion. But there are other ways too!
Okay, let me rephrase. Are you passionate in the same way as your subjects?
(Laughs) I'm definitely passionate! I want everything that I do to mean something, it has to have intention, it has to have purpose. When I was working on Jiro, I was trying to do what he's doing! I worked on every part of my craft, the cinematography, the music, the editing, everything. I shot it myself. I did the sound. And I was very obsessive about all of it. I wanted to raise the bar of what I was doing to match what he was doing as best as I could. And that’s still true today, I want to be there to make it. I want to spend the time doing it, I want to be working with a great team, helping them to make something.
“Pursuit of improvement is really infinite in that way, and we feel that. We want to keep getting better so that we can see what else is possible.”
And like Jiro, are you trying to improve as a filmmaker just that little bit each day, or with each season of the series, for example?
Sure, but I also don't know how to qualify that. We just want to do the best that we can, keep just trying to get better. It reminds me a bit of the eel salesman in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, you know, his family has been doing this for generations and he’s one of those craftspeople that just wants to get better. He says something like, “Just when you think you've made it, you've like mastered it, you realize how far away the next level is.” That pursuit of improvement is really infinite in that way, and we feel that. We want to keep getting better so that we can see what else is possible.
You’re just trying to tell the best possible story to do justice to your subjects.
Yeah, I think about this new season Chef’s Table: Legends — I directed the Alice Waters episode. I hadn't directed an episode of Chef's Table for a minute, but I came back really refreshed for it, and I really loved doing that episode. And I just really wanted to make something that was worthy of her and her legacy. We’re always just trying to make the best thing that we can.
What about when it goes wrong? Are you losing sleep over mistakes or problems, or have you gotten used to the challenges of filmmaking over the years?
I’m not losing sleep so much anymore, because I’m very comfortable with what we're doing. Especially in documentary, you have to accept that what happens, happens. I can't force an outcome one way or the other. And we also try to put it all into our episodes or our films, including the trials and tribulations of life. It can't just be like a hit parade, because that's not realistic, that's not what life is. I mean, even when I was making and planning Jiro, I couldn’t get anybody to finance it. I borrowed the money from my grandparents and my dad, and they all thought it was a bad idea. Even Jiro thought it was going to be boring because he was afraid that, you know, nobody would want to watch him massaging an octopus for three hours. But I persevered. I kept filming that octopus from like 25 different angles, and I just knew that there was something special there. But we powered through it and managed to make it work, we found a financier that cared.
Apparently when you were making the first Chef’s Table episode ever, Massimo Bottura ended up walking out of the interview because you asked a personal question too soon.
I definitely lost sleep over that problem! During the interview, I was keeping it quite casual, and I didn’t even know what was going to happen, so I just asked him a question about his father, you know, “Tell me about your dad.” And immediately, something changed in his posture and his whole vibe. And I realized that I hadn't earned the trust to ask about those personal things. Massimo, and all chefs really, is very passionate about speaking about his work. That's what he's used to talking about. Nobody was asking chefs challenging questions, right? So yeah, he walked out of the interview, and I thought we were screwed. In the end, we were able to find a way to fix the thing, we all had lunch together and I laid out my intentions. After that, we were closer than ever. Our approach now is to really build trust. You start with easy questions, and build up to it.
In the past, you’ve called that journey of openness and self-discovery for your interviewees “finding a new truth.”
Yeah, absolutely. You let them talk about the things that they're used to talking about, and then through time and by sharing stuff about ourselves, they feel more comfortable opening up and sharing things in a way that they might not have ever done before.
“You can fully open your heart and be with someone and trust them, and you can do more together. You don’t have to be a tortured solo artist all the time.”
Are you also finding a new truth for yourself when you work on these projects?
Oh, yes. In the case of Massimo, for example, I was really moved by how he works with the team. There are a lot of chefs in his kitchen. They all kind of are like an orchestra for him. He’s conducting it, he's inspiring everybody, he is trusting them in a way that I was just starting to get comfortable doing. As I said before, I’m a micromanager! I was obsessed with everything, like, down to the exact color correction. And I would go around to all the different cinematographers we worked with, and I would correct their stuff, and send them back out to reshoot things. But I saw how Massimo was with his staff, I saw how he trusted people, and I was so moved by that, and it changed how I work with my team. And his partnership with his wife, too — I was going to get married the following year, and through them, I learned you can fully open your heart and be with someone and trust them, and you can do more together. You don’t have to be a tortured solo artist all the time.
I do think your obsession with the cinematography has paid off — Chef’s Table is so celebrated for its camera work. I’ve heard it called “food theater.”
I’ve heard “food porn” quite a bit, but I say food romance. I actually like theater a lot! But you’re right that the style is really well established, and we have a style guide of camera settings, because I do care deeply in what I'm doing in terms of visual language. That are certain kind of camera moves, certain things that we do, some things that we don't do, time lapses or slow motion… We have an incredible camera crew and people that have come up with us in the institution of Chef's Table. We have a whole family of people who have grown up with us, editing assistants that have become editors, camera assistants that have become cinematographers, production assistants are becoming producers and stuff. Their dedication has allowed us to stretch what we do and try new things but have it still feel like a Chef’s Table episode.
Do you feel like you guys have revolutionized what food-based documentary filmmaking is all about?
Well, I wouldn’t say that about myself, but a lot of people say that, sure. I think what’s always at the heart of it is just the ideal of making the thing that I wanted to watch. I knew I wanted to make a kind of Planet Earth style food show, and it just didn't exist yet. And now fast forward to today and I think food-based documentaries have definitely become more cinematic thanks to Chef's Table. People have kind of taken our visual style and applied it in their own way. And I love that. I feel very fortunate that I was able to make that a reality. It’s a dream, to be able to watch the thing that you imagined come to life and get to enjoy it.