Frank Gehry

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

0:31Parental instincts built right in. So your kids are always protected online. It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart. It's brilliant. And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use. Xfinity, imagine that. Welcome to Ruthie's Table 4, a production of iHeartRadio and Atomize Studios. When I phoned Frank Gehry to ask him to do this podcast, he immediately said yes. For years, every time a new Frank Gehry building opened, Richard, my husband, and I would make a pilgrimage to visit. The Disney Center in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and more. But one summer, in 2008, a spectacular Gehry building came up to us in Hyde Park, just 10 minutes from our house.

1:23It was a serpentine pavilion, a temporary structure designed with his son Sammy. For those few months, we met friends there almost daily, watching the sun set, listening to people play music, eating and drinking. This brave and beautiful structure made Hart Park a better park and London a better city. Today, I've made a pilgrimage on my own from London to Los Angeles, not to see a new Frank Gehry building, but to see my much-loved close friend, Frank.

2:07Six slices of prosciutto or pancetta. I really like that. One pheasant plucked and cleaned. Americans don't have... Yeah, no, we don't have game. They don't have pheasants. Canada, I bet, does. Canada, but it's a long time ago I was in Canada. Half a cup of olive oil, I like that. Three garlic cloves peeled, yes, I'm still in. Three fresh rosemary sprigs, great. Five fresh sage leaves, great. Half a bottle of Josephine Doré. Qu 'est-ce que c 'est? Qu 'est-ce que c 'est? C 'est un vin? It's wine. It's a fortified sweet wine, rather like Marsala. Uh-huh. So you could use Marsala as well, but I love the name Josephine Dory for wine.

2:54Okay, I like the name too. A 175-millimeter chicken stock. Mm-hmm. A 125 milliliters of heavy cream. Place the prosciutto or pancetta slices over the pheasant and tie on with a string. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and brown the pheasant on all sides. Add the garlic and herbs. Cook over medium heat for about 40 minutes, adding the wine and stock in stages. You do not want to boil the bird, but braise it in the liquid. remove the bird and keep warm add the cream let it simmer and then season pour the juices over the pheasant and serve yum yum I'm shocked you didn't bring me some I know, it's not the right season there aren't pheasant anymore can you imagine me getting into customs in LA saying I've got a pheasant we could do a replay okay we'll do it when you come to London and we'll make it and then eat it.

4:01Did you ever do the cooking? I cook matzo braai. Oh, do you? What is that? On Sunday mornings. And I have matzo braai bake-offs with people. Matzo braai is unleavened bread that the Jews crossed the desert with Moses a long time ago. And it's used for Passover. It's used mostly for Passover. It's unleavened bread for Passover. I break it up underwater and get it sort of moist. I salt it and stuff. And I take a bunch of eggs and I beat them up and put them all over the matzo brai, and it absorbs the egg stuff, and then I fry them. that's called matzo braai. Okay. So I grew up with that. Yeah, why did you grow up with?

5:03Tell me, first start from the beginning. Where were you born? Toronto. And where were your parents born? My mother, Poland. My father, New York. And his father and mother? His father, Russia. Russia, Poland, yeah. Pinsk, I think. My mother, Lodz, L-O-D-Z. Yeah, Lodz. And what was their story? They came in 1913, I think. There was a pogrom in Poland. I found out later that the Jews were being rounded up and beaten up. And my grandfather, who delivered coal, he had a wagon. I went to Lodz and saw where the rail tracks were and where he was. When did you go? I was invited to do a film festival called the Kamaraj Film Festival in Poland.

6:04And I went with David Lynch. Oh, David Lynch. David Lynch and I went to Poland. I love the people. And I went to the city hall there, and they asked David and I to sign our names on the wall. And I wrote, my grandfather left in 1913. If he hadn't left, I wouldn't be here. I was immediately called by the mayor's office, and they became very solicitous. They found all my grandparents' families. They all of a sudden became like to show me they really loved the Jews and blah, blah, blah, which was a bunch of bullshit, I guess. So I did get a pretty deep, and I found out my grandmother, actually ran a foundry.

6:56There was folklore about it when I was growing up, but it was true. The grandmother did. She ran a foundry in Poland. They came across on a Dutch ship that got stalled mid-ocean, which was the reason my mother would never cross a bridge in a car. she had a phobia so she would get out of the car and walk across the bridge and meet us on the other side because of this experience I guess she was a 9 year old or 6 year old I don't remember but obviously they got here they got to where? where did they land? to Canada and they landed in Toronto my grandfather got a horse and buggy He was delivering bread, I think, and stuff.

7:51They lived in a little house, tiny house, that just got torn down. Did it feel like they were a very Jewish community within the country? Yeah, it was a Jewish community. My grandfather went on to have a hardware store, which I worked in as a kid, with him. He's the one that got me to read Talmud. He wasn't religious. It was interesting. He was the head of his little congregation because he was a business guy. And so he managed the money for them. But he read Talmud to me. That was interesting. You know, Talmud starts with the word why. Yeah. Curiosity. And curiosity is the feeder for all of our work, right?

8:37All creativity. Somebody always asks me what I look for in a new chef or anyone I take on at the River Cafe. and I always say curiosity. Yeah, right. And that's where it came from originally. And so you went to school every day and, you know, you were probably... So we were in Toronto. I went to Bloor Collegiate until 47, and then we... But in between, my family moved to Timmins, Ontario, 500 miles north of Toronto. and I lived there from 8 years old to 13 years old. So you've sort of set up a picture of what, where you were. If you were to kind of close your eyes and remember the smells of your mother's kitchen or the food in her kitchen, can you visualize it?

9:28Was it a big room? Was it a small kitchen? Yeah, it was a small kitchen. She wasn't a great cook. That's okay. Yeah, my grandmother made, on the cook stove, made all the fish. Yeah. And I used to, that's why everybody says I do fish sculptures, because I used to go pick up the live fish and put it in the bathtub, and then at night, I would, as a kid, I would play with the fish in the bathtub, and then the next day it was gone. They'd kill it. Did you ever watch them kill the fish? No, I didn't know what happened. Right, you'd bring it home. I finally figured it out. Do you think there is? Because that is interesting about why the fish.

10:14When did the image of the fish begin? Do you know? That's a whole other story. Do you want me to get into it? About the fish. Yes. You know, I started practice in 64, my own. I'd worked on shopping centers with Gruen and stuff like that. I got some houses to do. I did some small buildings, and I got to know Peter Eisenman and your husband, and Norman Foster, and Michael Graves, and Charlie Moore. I wasn't a big force in architecture, but they sort of paid attention. I was doing enough stuff, they paid attention. From the very beginning, I hung out with the artists because I always thought of architecture as an art.

11:12And I thought they were coming around to my buildings and looking at my stuff and inviting me for dinner. They being the artists. The artists in L.A. So would that be Ed Ruscha? Ed Ruscha, Ed Moses, Billy Al-Bangston, John Altoon, Peter Alexander, a lot of people you know. and became close friends. And I would go to their shows, and they would come to my... At a point, Arthur Drexler, do you remember who that is? He was the architecture guy at MoMA. He was at MoMA, yeah. Did a show called Beaux-Arts. And it was 60, right? 60, I think. Everybody went to that show. I went to it. It was a knockout.

12:03The Beaux-Arts buildings, the models they showed, were so seductive. It was incredible. Everybody, it was after that show that Philip put the top on AT &T. Right as a director did that show. And Graves came out, and Stern came out, and they all, okay, so postmodernism became the siren song. And I remember I was at a, and I couldn't buy it. I wasn't buying it, but I thought there was more to life than copying the past. So I was at a conference with a lot of those guys, and I can't remember where. And when my turn came to talk, which I never prepared talks. I would get up and just say what was on my mind.

12:56I looked at them and said, what the hell? Is there only one way to go backwards? Isn't there something new? Isn't there any hope for the future? I forget what it is. And I said, damn it, if you've got to go back, I mean, you can go back 300 million years before man to fish. I said, fish are very architectural, and their movement is beautiful and they suggest movement and it goes with cars and trains and planes and stuff. So just copy that. I had no idea why I said that. After that, I started to draw fish on all my little drawings. I've got stuff all around with fishy. They're on those drawings too.

13:46So I started playing with it. I was doing that project with Klaus Oldenburg in Venezia. The sponsors were a fashion house in Florence asked me to do a fish sculpture for their show. And so I went to Cina Citta and did a drawing, and they made it. I never saw it. In Torino, they were just getting ready to open the Castello de Rivoli as a museum. And they had their first show, and they invited me to be in the first show. And so they gave me two galleries. And one gallery, I put all my models, and they said they had something for the other gallery. They didn't tell me what. I walk in. The other gallery was this wooden fish made for the fashion show.

14:45It's the biggest piece of kitsch I've ever seen. It was so embarrassing. I stood beside it. I was just freaked out that they were making this part of my show. And standing beside me was a guy from the Stedlick Museum who had spoken ill of my work many times before. He's standing beside me, and he said, How'd you do that? And I said, What do you mean? He said, How'd you do that? I want to talk to you. then I realized what he was talking about the thing looked like it was moving this piece of egregious kitsch had the movement that a fish has and how they had made it in that way they didn't know it was just an accident this guy said that's brilliant how did you do that I said it's pure I told him I was interested in the fish because of movement Do you think that relates to the carp in the bathtub?

15:48I don't know. Maybe. Maybe that a psychiatrist would say that image of the carp in the bathtub. I think that the next thing I did was a show at the Walker, and I cut the tail off the fish, the head off the fish, and I made an abstract and it still moved. It still had the sense of movement. And that's when I got hooked on the shape, shaping and using that to express an architecture. It's kind of iconic, yeah, the image of a holy. So I think that experience made Bilbao. Yeah.

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17:25For terms and conditions, visit www.PetsBest.com backslash policy. Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company, or MS Transverse Insurance Company and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services, LLC. $1 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets age 0 to 10. I love the food in Bilbao, by the way. Yeah, let's talk about that because San Sebastian, which is right next to Bilbao, is a mecca for food. People go there, the chefs are really interesting. So when you say you love the food of Bilbao, tell me about it.

17:58It's the cod, fish, what do they call it? Yeah, the bacalao. Bacalao. Bacalao, yes. You know, don't you? You're a cook. Anyway, bacalao. I love bacalao. And I love the wine. Yeah. You would go for these site meetings. Did you spend a lot of time there in Spain? Bilbao reawakened my food. Whatever fruity I was happened there because that's what we did. We went out to restaurants with them. Yeah. The wine was special. because the life that you're describing of working all day whether you're Cassavetes your friend or actors or writers or artists in their studios there was a real momentum to go out to eat at the end of the day because the work was solitary and so was that true here as well did you go out to restaurants all the time in Los Angeles yeah with Benny Gazzaro we used to go to Italian restaurants so we had a lot of pasta and a lot of red wine.

19:02There was one that somebody told me there was one in like a train carriage. The Pacific dining car. Is it still there? Downtown I think it's still there. Is it? It was in my neighborhood. So we used to go there because it was around the corner from where we lived. And you didn't need a reservation. You'd just walk in. And it was never filled. and I mean I used to see Spielberg, he used to be there and a lot of Hollywood people but they would come at 6 in the morning for early breakfast when nobody was there or real late at night. The thing about a restaurant in a city is that as we found out when restaurants were closed in London is that they do provide a social life to the city that you can go there and see people that you didn't know were going to be there.

19:54There's a spontaneity about meeting a friend or sitting there for hours. Yeah, Pacific Dining Car was more private. People didn't go there to meet other people. It was very... The booths were spread apart, and it was never filled. Did you, as a kid, did you ever go out to a restaurant when you were a child? Not very much. They couldn't afford to go out, yeah. I do remember going to restaurants with my father in Toronto that had signs, no Jews allowed. No. I do remember that. Really? Yeah. Really? Wow. And he always knew the owner because he was a gregarious guy, so we would go in anyway. Wow. So he would actually be friends with an owner who actually had a sign on his door saying no Jews.

20:44He wasn't friendly with him, but he had some kind of business relationship with him. I don't know. Was your father alive to understand your success? He died before. My success? No. No. My mother did. Did she bask in the glow of your success? She tried. But when she died, I found a box with every article. Yeah. I didn't know she was doing that. And it was from way back. but she always used to compare me to other people's kids you know like Hilda's son does why can't you be more like that so I had a bad time I think you had a bad time and they had a bad time imagine leaving your country and having a ship stalled in the middle of the ocean and arriving in a city that you knew no one.

21:46When you left your home, where did you go to architecture school? USC. So you came to California. So my father lost everything, had a heart attack, had to leave Toronto. He was penniless. His brother brought him to California. My mother came, my sister came. We lived in two rooms the size of this in an old building downtown. Sisters and brothers? Do you have sisters and brothers? Sister, Doreen. I got a job as a truck driver. My father got a job as a truck driver. I delivered breakfast nooks and furniture. He was a soda pop delivery. My mother got a job in the Broadway Hollywood in the candy department.

22:40and she stayed there all the way to the end for her. She worked in the Broadway. She ended up in the decorating department and she was selling draperies to Hollywood people. So would she cook? Would she come home and cook for you? Do you remember sitting? Not very much. So would sitting down to a meal in your house be something? My sister would probably remember, but I can't. I don't remember that being. You know, family meals didn't kind of fit you. No, everybody talks about how sad it is now that we don't all gather around a table every night. But for some people, quite a few people, it was quite hard and scary and stressful to have to sit around a table with your family.

23:27That's what it was for you, was it? Yeah. Because? He just had a temper and couldn't control it. Took it out on me. because he saw me as not understanding business. I was the kind of artsy type. So he didn't understand that. And my mother also supported that, that I wasn't really interested in... I mean, I was interested in going to the symphony and going to art galleries, but not in things that would make a living. And so mealtimes were a kind of tyranny, were they? It was difficult, yeah. And then when you went to architecture school and college, you kind of fended for yourself? Yeah, then I got married.

24:20Yeah, became domestic life? That was domestic life, kind of, yeah. Yeah, but this was a first marriage before birth. When you designed the canteen, the cafeteria for Sai, Newhouse, did that make you think more about food? Was that about space? Was that where people could stop working in the magazines and go and have a meal? I did think about food because we did the cafeteria part, and we had to set up where you go through the line and get used to it. That's a radical canteen. I mean, there's no other space like that to have as a place to eat when you're working all day. It was the hottest ticket in New York was to be invited to lunch.

25:01Everybody was trying to figure out how they could get. Wow, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, huge. Everybody wanted to go there. I remember going with Victoria took me, and people, friends of mine, call up friends of theirs who worked. They remodeled it. They've totally done it over again. What was Sai like as a client? Was he the client? He was the client. Did he know what he wanted? Really did. Yeah, yeah. I took him to, the best thing I did with Sai as I took him to Japan for a week with Greg Walsh, who was my partner, who had spent a lot of his life in Japan. So Greg knew Japan, really fantastic.

25:43And Victoria and Sai and Berta and I and Greg spent a week together. And so I ended up in the same little cafe with a typical Japanese dish, pork noodles or something. And that's what he ordered every day. And he wanted to go back to the same restaurant every day. No, so I, months before he died, I was with him in Paris for the opening of the Louis Vuitton building. He called me over. He was sitting there kind of not totally with it. And he said, Frank, the trip he took me on to Japan, I think I'm going to cry, he said, was one of the best ever. It was so sweet what he's in.

26:42Shh! You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs. Is your child having conversations you never imagined? Are they learning without realizing it? It's not a tablet. It's not a toy. It's Meeko Mini Plus, the AI-powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning. Hear the future of playtime. Meet the extraordinary Meeko Mini Plus, only at Costco. Protect your pet with insurance from PetsBest. Plans start from less than a dollar a day. Visit PetsBest.com. Pet insurance products offered and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services, LLC, are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company.

27:25For terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com backslash policy. Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company, or MS Transverse Insurance Company, and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC. $1 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets age 0 to 10. Do you like sugar? Do you like sweet food? Oh, boy. Oh, boy. What's your go-to sweet? My friend Stephanie Barron makes the greatest lemon drops, And I invite her to go sailing specifically because she brings the lemon drum. So sailing, yeah.

28:00So the boat. Sailing, now you're talking. The boat, yeah. And when you're on the boat, do you eat? We order sandwiches or something. Yeah. And drink wine. Are you interested in the wine? Yeah, I got a lot of it, but I don't. One of my clients is the Southern Wine and Spirits owner from Vegas. Okay. And I did his little building in Vegas. And so he sends us all the wine and stuff. I mean, I get to like some of it. I pick stuff that I like, yeah. And Berta likes some of it. But we're not winos. Tequila. I like tequila. We've been drinking tequila a little bit. and so we do tequila for dinner. And what other sweets apart from the lemon drops?

28:51Do you like chocolate, Frank? Oh, yeah. Yeah, me too. Is there something that when you're feeling kind of low or kind of worried that you might reach for in terms of food, is there something that you would say, there's a kind of sense of comfort in some food? I guess just plain pasta sometimes. Pasta, yeah. Do you know, I ask this question to everybody. And they always end up with pasta. Everybody loves the pasta. Yeah, I think it is. Well, you don't have to eat a lot of it, and it's kind of filling. Yeah. And you can drink some wine with it. Yeah. And then there's so many varieties of pasta that that gets exciting.

29:36And when you go to a restaurant, an Italian restaurant, the varieties are incredible. So I like to try stuff. Well, let's go. Next time I'm here, are you going to restaurants? Are you avoiding them? A little bit, not much. Okay. I'm going to come to the River Cafe more. Frank Gehry, you are invited to the River Cafe. Okay. Invited. That means you don't have to pay anything. And by the way, Jews are allowed. Jews. Oh, my God. That's terrible. Well, I will be coming because of... And also, you know, food is a pleasure. Yeah, it is. It is. it's so good and it's so a great thing to give yourself and just eat it and have delicious things okay so in the morning for breakfast I make I take toast and I fry an egg yeah and I put it on the toast that's good and that's what I have for when I fry if the egg is good and the toast is good yeah and the butter is good yeah and it's hot then that's a delicious meal but you need to put a lot of salt and pepper on it and you need to eat it yeah with pleasure yeah No, no, I do.

30:42Food is, you know, it's important. And artists and architects and designers, everyone, it's part of the aesthetic process. No, but I do make salami and eggs as well as... Oh, now it's coming out. Okay, now it's coming out. It's not just the matzo. Salami and matzo. I do both of them. That's my specialty. All right, I'm coming. All right, thank you, Frank.

31:06What's Frank Berry Ice Cream? Frankberry Ice Cream. Somebody named an ice cream. Is that right after you? Did you know that? Yeah, I saw something like that.

31:18I think having an ice cream named after you is pretty cool, I have to say. You know, you can have a building named after you or, you know... Snickerdoodle, I guess. Snickerdoodle, Frank Gehry. What the hell? Maybe we'll have to go get one.

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