From The Archive: Sam Taylor-Johnson

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0:39This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Welcome to Ruthie's Table 4, a production of iHeartRadio and Atomize Studios.

0:52I would like to remember exactly when I met Sam Taylor Johnson. Was it at the Tate in 1998 when she was awarded the Turner Prize? Or the day she entered the River Cafe, a beautiful young woman with her first baby, Angelica, in her arms? Was it when she came to see Richard with a book of her astonishing photographs? were we just invited to a wild and glamorous party in her home that was part of, as Sam says, the blur of what London was in the late 90s. And when was the last time I sat with Sam? Was it in a bar with the love of her life, Aaron? Or recently when they missed a flight to Sicily and joined a lunch?

1:36And how often have I asked, where is Sam? in London preparing to direct her Amy Winehouse movie, trekking in Nepal in the south of France with Elton, or looking for a school in Somerset for her young daughters. The one thing I can always know is that wherever she is, whatever she is creating, Sam is an extraordinary woman. I love her. Aww. How do I go into that without tears streaming down? Well, we go into it with food. We can start off with a recipe that you chose, which is? Risotto with porcini and gerold. One kilogram of mixed fresh porcini and gerold, cleaned and chopped. Extra virgin olive oil.

2:27One garlic clove peeled and finely chopped. One teaspoon of fresh thyme. One liter of chicken stock. 100 grams of unsalted butter. One medium red onion finely chopped. 300 grams of risotto rice, 250 milliliters of extra dry vermouth. Now, that's the thing that sends me running around the house when I'm about 10 minutes into cooking it, just like, do we have vermouth? Do we have vermouth? Read a recipe twice. 200 grams of parmesan, freshly grated. I actually cooked this last night, so I'd practice just to remind myself what happened about five minutes in. Aaron, Aaron's here. What happened? When?

3:04Where the f*** is the vermouth? Do we have vermouth? I can't make this without the vermouth. That's so annoying. Everyone was running around trying to find the vermouth. No, no, no. But it's what makes it. In a frying pan, heat three tablespoons of olive oil. Add the mushrooms with the chopped garlic and thyme. Season and fry for a couple of minutes until any liquid has evaporated. In a saucepan, heat the butter with the remaining olive oil. Add the chopped onion and cook until the onion is soft. Add the rice and stir. Now, what's so great about this recipe is it's really good. if you want to have people around for dinner but not necessarily engage with them the entire time.

3:40Yes. I can't talk to you about the latest movie. I'm stirring a risotto. Exactly. I'm stirring a risotto. But it sort of also gives you something to do so you're active if you're not sure what to talk about. It's sort of a perfectly sociable, unsociable meal to cook. Pour in the vermouth and cook until it's been absorbed, stirring all the while, then adding the hot stock, ladle by ladle. Continue to cook until the rice is al dente. Add the wild mushrooms, the remaining butter, the parmesan and the chopped parsley. And muah! The best risotto ever. Good. It's comforting risotto too, isn't it? But this was the first thing I ever cooked from your cookbook, which is why I think it was in one of the earlier ones.

4:20Yeah. I'm going to be brave and attempt a risotto. Did you cook when you were a kid? Did you? No, not at all. I didn't grow up in an environment where cooking was celebrated. Food was made to eat, to live. Frozen pizzas, margarine, you know, that was food to put in when you come home from school, make for yourself and eat just to, you know, survive. So make for yourself. So would you sit down to a family meal or was everybody kind of taking care of themselves? I almost can't remember family meals. So I think that's again why I feel so excited about a kitchen very alive with food being cooked and bread being baked and aromas and activity.

5:11Because ours was definitely not that environment. Sometimes I talk to people who grew up with the romantic idea of the family sitting down to a family supper and sitting and talking about the day. and some people described having a mother that worked the night shift or a mother or father who came home from work and were exhausted or they came home from work and they would prefer to do homework with you than cook. I mean, there are many reasons why the image of the family meal perhaps is somewhat romanticized, but it is important, something that, as you say, we try and create for our kids. But you didn't have a role model for that, So you had the reverse, but you changed it for your own family.

5:57I did have the reverse. And, you know, sometimes, especially doing something like this, you sort of look back and try and find that memory. Now, I definitely remember my mom made a dish that she would be proud of, which was a rabbit dish with mustard, I think, la pande de du moutarde. That's quite sophisticated. But that was something that would come out, I don't know, it would be a big thing. But the rest of the time it was more survival. What was she doing or your father doing? Was your father there? It was my stepfather, really, who my sort of that part of my life is more of a memory. And so do you think they were doing other things rather than cook or did they just not have that?

6:39It's a complicated history and it's hard to go into, not because it is sort of full of sort of trauma and pain, but it's more that I actually have this sort of almost blackout of I don't actually have that much memory from that time in my life. And also, if I do go into it or I talk about it, I sort of feel or hope that I've evolved to a place where I don't want to sort of talk about it with malice. It's not that they were working. I think it was more struggle, survival and mental health, to be honest, and a lot of just difficult scenarios. Did you have grandparents? Were your parents good grandparents involved?

7:21Yeah, but they died when I was quite young, so I don't really have a memory of them in terms of, you know, I had a great Auntie Gladys and a great Uncle Les, who I felt very close to, who lived in Shepherd's Bush. There was a lot of time around their house in Shepherd's Bush, and they were very much the sort of meat and two veg. Were they? And I remember going home one day and saying to my Auntie Gladys, I was like, I can't have roast chicken, I'm a vegetarian. and she said, well, chicken's not really an animal. Is that really an animal? Of course you can eat it. I was like, I can't. But that was a sort of stability for me.

7:57They were the stable hold, the home, where I would go to as a student and know that I could be fed. Did you struggle with food? Did you enjoy it? Did you have school lunch? I did, but I was a free school dinners kid. So I was in the opposite queue to my friends. Were they different queues? They had different queues. That's disgusting. It was the queue on the left, which was the regular queue. That sounds like out of Dickens, isn't it? And then there was the free school dinners line. And I wasn't always in the free school dinners line. There were moments where I was in it, and there were moments where I could bounce over to the other side.

8:36And I just always remember the dread of, oh, today I have to go in the free school dinners line. and that feeling of just like, you know, feeling separate from all your friends and just that sort of feeling of a little bit of shame that comes with that. Yeah, a little or maybe a lot. So you had school lunches and then came home. Yeah, school lunches and then home, yeah, mostly frozen pizzas. Where did you go out? Firstly in London until I was 11 in Streatham and then after that we moved to the countryside, to Sussex. But that was a big shock. I was terrified of trees. It was so funny because I was such an urban girl until then.

9:16And then the idea that I had to walk down these country lanes with trees was quite funny. Interesting because a lot of the people that I've talked to think about the way they struggled in their youth, whether they were from another country, whether their parents were uncomfortable in being in England, whether they, or in the United States, wherever they were, people who struggled with money, with divorce, and all this is to do with food and how those memories evolve. And also, I don't know if you feel, but they measure, and I don't know if you do, measure almost their success by being able to order something delicious on the menu.

9:58Paul McCartney being able to order a good glass of wine was something a way that they measured their own success. Do you feel that? Totally. I mean, we never ate out, so eating out really came to me in adult life. And I think that the first time I realized food was for pleasure was actually a college trip to Rome or post-college. I can't really remember, but we went to a small little restaurant and I ordered something because I had absolutely no idea what to expect. It's a tagliatelle with lemon pasta. And I remember eating it and just having this sort of total explosion of flavor and thoughts and feelings about is this what food can be?

10:50And that feeling of tasting something which just kind of completely opens your mind into potential, I guess, and that, you know, it wasn't expensive, it was affordable, and that I could eat this amazing food and not frozen pizzas was a revelation. Yeah, that's right. And probably in my sort of, probably when I was about 19, I think. And you went to art school. Then I went to art school in Hastings, which was like a massive turning point of excitement in my life. Yeah. And then after that, into London for art school. I always think it's another conversation about artists that creating art is a very solitary activity that you are in your studio and you paint and everybody sort of had this kind of wild nights of eating and drinking together because it was so solitary during the day.

11:41Did you find that or was it? Yeah, I think art school for me was like a huge door had opened into a world of so much possibility and excitement. And I feel like for the first two years when I was at Hastings, I was just sort of wide eyed and in sort of slight shock that I was in this environment and just kept very quiet. and then I went to North East London Polytechnic which was a very robust sort of shipbuilding yard feeling because I was in the sculpture department and then I left there after the first year and went to Goldsmiths which by comparison felt like a sort of Swiss finishing school because people were very elegant and they were talking about ideas and again I felt very like I was sort of sitting on the outside watching and feeling this environment being so alien.

12:35Was that the days of Michael Craig Martin and Damien and Tracy? It was. And the freeze had just happened, so there was a lot of debate around this huge exhibition that had sort of thrown all these young artists that were still at art school onto the map, and there was a sort of freeze and an antifreeze. And I just sort of sat again and sort of listened and felt the debate between everything and everyone, but sort of also knew I was in the eye of a storm, an eye of a very exciting transitional moment in the art world because these artists, like Damien had a studio outside of art school and was already, you know, functioning as an artist and selling and having exhibitions and Gary Hume and Sarah Luca, you know, it all was just this sort of bubbling energy that I felt but didn't quite know how to access because I was still sort of feeling a bit quiet on the outside.

13:26it really took going to tracy emin and sarah lucas had a little shop in in the east end just off of brick lane and it really took going to that little shop to feel that anything was possible that anything they made was art and they were artists and they were allowing themselves to be there and it was that moment for me that's quite pivotal in understanding i could allow myself to be an artist that I could actually sort of say it out loud and actually be creative and I think up until then you know you sort of feel like you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and you're not meant to be there feeling.

14:05Were you as adventurous in your I guess development as an artist as maybe in food did you go to Chinese restaurants or Indian restaurants did you drink tequila drink like whiskeys or wines. No, Indian restaurants was absolutely where we all went because once I became friends with Tracy, we all would sort of be in that neighbourhood and we'd all go in and out of all the different Indian restaurants around that area and find our favourites and that's where we would gather. I felt like exactly how you said earlier about McCartney saying it was a measure of success I'm growing into my own person because I understand food I'm growing into my own person because I can take myself to a restaurant and I can actually order something that's completely different to anything I've ever tried before and I think it is it's a feeling of one you're sort of stepping into being an adult but also you're stepping into sort of a feeling of new success not necessarily you know huge financial success but beginning to be able to take yourself places

15:25my first job as a waiter would have been when I was at school I worked in a local beef eater steakhouse and used to have to wear a beef eater uniform little apron and then um vick nailers in clarkhamar do you remember vick nailers in clarkhamar it was a great restaurant and i i mean it was just fun fun fun but it was also terrible because i used to we all used to get absolutely trashed and i remember going to a table and someone said do you have any bread and i said yes let me go and get it and then it was just up the road fromst john and i said quick where's the bread? They're like, oh, we don't have any.

16:03Can you run to get some from St. John? Absolutely. I ran to St. John and then my then manager was sat at the bar. He said, come and have a drink with me. I sat down and had a drink, which turned into two. And I was like, oh, the bread. Quickly got the bread from St. John and ran back. I was like, I've got you some bread. And then they finished their like half an hour. It was about an hour ago. This place is terrible. Let me see the manager. Let me go and get him. I run down to St. John, pull him out the bar. And the whole story is that he then went up and said, you asked to see me. Yes, the service is terrible.

16:36He said, yes, I agree. Now you should leave. What year was that? That was right after I left art school, so 90, maybe. Times have changed, I think. Yeah. Maybe there's still those places, but we've all become much more. Do you know the story about Damien? Which one? Which one? The one at the Groucho Club where he and Ant got completely trashed. Do you know this? I banned somebody from the River Cafe for being rude to one of my waiters. And I was telling the story, I was telling Ant, and he said, well, Damien and I went, and we got completely trashed. They closed the doors, and we were kicked out, and we went on the street.

17:24And then we found a ladder, and we climbed up, and we broke a window. We came in, and then we got sick over the pool table, and then we went and got some alcohol out of the fridge, and we drank that. Then we took something, and we crashed out on the sofas. And Marianne, the manager, came in the next day, and she said, you know, I could call the police. You broke and you enter. You damaged my property, and you stole stuff, you know. But instead of calling the police, I am going to ban you for 24 hours.

17:5724 hours those were the days and I had a customer who just was slightly rude to somebody and I said he could never come back again you know that's the difference it is the measure of a person well that's why it's good too I think people date people in restaurants you go on a date and see how they are to the waiter or you interview lots of people have you ever interviewed anybody for a job in a restaurant? totally yeah yeah i had on this morning before i came here i met with someone to hire for the movie actually yeah oh perfect perfect perfect and brilliant oh good good good and so from from being in art school and then being an artist what was it like in the once you were all working and and i hate to use the word successful but successful when you and jay lived in that house and parties.

18:52Was food, did you care about food then? Did you think that you all wanted, or was it important to you? It's hard to sort of cast my mind to that era because it's that thing, I think Coco Chanel said it, it's, you know, I'm six people away from the person I once was, I think. I sometimes feel like that. And so when I think back to those times, I think of myself as a very different person. And so, so much sort of shift and change within myself happened during that period I was suddenly sort of living in this very sort of grand house and living a very different life and and it was all sort of fast rolling and high octane and fast rolling and high octane is fun and then you can't it's so hard to maintain and and I couldn't maintain it and I definitely sort of felt like you know would throw these parties and then I would disappear off at about 10 o 'clock.

19:47I remember. Do you remember? The part that you didn't talk about or we haven't talked about in terms of food and being an artist in that lifetime was when you were ill and the diet that you then, and I remember very well your rigor in dealing with your illness in the way you ate. And I think it was really before a lot of us thought about food and health. And you were unhealthy and you used food to think about health. And you also took, you know, you went the scientific route. So you went for the medicine and for the, but it wasn't alternative. You did it, but you did do a diet. I remember you very clearly talking to me about no dairy.

20:40yeah I mean I have to sort of almost step outside of myself to talk about it but yeah in 1997 six months after I had Angelica who's my eldest of four daughters I got diagnosed with colon cancer and of course it was you know a shock but there was such an urgency in my mind to be well and to get back home and be a mother and be present that I just sort of you know almost jumped out of the hospital bed and I'm back, I'm fine. And then three years later, I got diagnosed with breast cancer. And then I didn't leap out of bed and I didn't say, I'm back, I'm fine. I sort of quietly retreated into myself, I think.

21:23And I went to a very, sort of almost a totally different personality to somebody I knew myself as in a way, in order to figure out a way to get through it. And it's a trauma, and in that trauma, you have to sort of figure out, what are my options? What are my options of survival? And obviously when you're in it, you're not thinking clearly in that way. But, you know, it was very much the first time I didn't take it seriously almost. Second time, I'm going to take this very seriously. You know, I want to live. I want to be a mom and be around. And that was my, you know, that was the thing. I had Angelica as my purpose and goal to survive for.

22:11You know, it was chemotherapy, mastectomy and everything medical that I could. But at the same time, I knew that I had to support that for myself with, I had acupuncture. I gave up, I gave up drinking and the party life and I gave up, you know, anything that I felt was detrimental to my health. Sugar, I gave up dairy and I've pretty much stuck to that. Is that still, do you still not have? Yeah. Okay, let's not be too puritanic. Sugar, yes, there's every so often, but it's, I'm conscious about eating. And I'm conscious about if things have, you know, I'm very strict about milk, very strict about cheese.

22:49Butter, I'll allow it. And, you know, and I'm not going to be too, because there's also a point where you just have to, you know, you have to function in the world. And, you know, there was probably at least five years where I was absolutely, I would read every ingredient and nothing could be, because I was frightened, you know. And fear is a very good reason to make sacrifices and changes in your life. I just shifted into a completely different person in a way. Would you tell somebody who came to see you if they had cancer in any form? Would you say to them to try to do this diet? It's hard because you don't...

23:25It's difficult because also, you know, there's varying... You know, your case is different to the next person to the next person, to what level you have it, or, you know... It's hard to advise people in that way. We talked about food. But I tend to people who are in it. I try to be, you know, get up in the morning, put on a great song, move around, call people when you're feeling down. I try to sort of keep it, you know, let's keep it in a place where we're going to get through this. It's a job. It's a job. And, you know, it's also, you can't, people say, well, you're so brave to have gotten through it.

23:59But it's not bravery that gets you through it because it doesn't mean that people who haven't survived aren't brave. Getting through it is, you know, an amount of medical intervention, amount of luck in terms of diagnosis and what you can then do to support all of that. But when you talk about the energy or the, you know, the getting up and doing, that has shown that actually that kind of activity with any illness, with grief. You know, I say that having been through grief in my life that I sort of know the drill, you know, which is you get out of bed I mean, you can stay in bed and cry all day too, that's fine.

24:35But the activity and that. It is in the support of friendships. When I would have chemo, I'd have like Gary Hume and Georgie and Johnny Shankid and friends would, you know, they'd bring food and sit around and sort of laugh and sit with me for a few hours. And, you know, you'd sort of feel, you know, the chemo going through your veins. But on the other hand, you could be eating some strawberries and chatting with friends and watching everyone just support you in that way. And I think, and yeah, and that's also, you know, that was definitely sort of food related in the sense that, you know, chemo can taste bad in your mouth.

25:11It's sort of metallic-y. And my friends had researched that a little bit. And I've always heard if you have, you know, some boiled sweets or if you have this or, and then another friend, mango. Mango's really good. Rose ate mango. Yeah. That's interesting to say that because Rose Gregg started the River Cafe with. and had breast cancer, just found that she, I always say that she ate her way through chemo. You know, she just ate everything. But she was careful as she was before she got sick. But she loved having mangoes. Yeah, serotonin I think is good for. But I think it's also, I mean, still now really education around nutrition and what's good for you to live.

25:53Like I said, keep the machine at optimum level. Definitely. And maintenance, we maintain our cars sometimes better than our bodies.

26:12Hi there, my name is Hamish. I am one of the chefs here at the River Cafe. One of the sauces or dishes that I think is very special to us and is coming back onto the venue a bit more often is our banya cowder. we make this sauce by reducing down a bottle of Italian red wine or champagne or prosecco and then we melt in about 12 to 15 cloves of garlic anchovies and this creates a really intense salty amazing base to a sauce then copious amounts of butter to make it extremely smooth silky and just rich and delicious

26:58I love anchovy and butter. I would have anchovies on sourdough bread. It's the saltiness of the anchovy too, isn't it, but... But I think growing up, what it equates to, see, that would be my... I'm successful and knowledgeable and I can eat anchovies on toast. It comes from growing up with marmite on toast. Oh, yes. It's one of those. And Mame on Toes for me has been a constant, constant from child all the way through my student life, artist life. So I was talking about the solitariness of being an artist, but what about as I go back to the cinema? When you directed Nowhere Boy or when you directed Fifty Shades of Grey, do you think about how you feed the people on the set?

27:48Is that important to you, the way you stop for food break? was was anderson said he hates a lunch hour because it makes everybody stop and then you have to get tired and then you but you know he tried to give everybody soup but then the crew wanted meals how do you deal with uh it's interesting i feel absolutely with west in that way that i don't like when everyone stops for lunch but at the same time i do like the communal break of everyone sitting and sort of literally digesting what we've done and talking around food and I always try to make sure we have reasonably good caterers so that everyone's just sort of enjoying that time rather than just complaining this is disgusting was there a difference in doing nowhere by and 50 shades of grey from I'm sure there was I can't remember 50 shades of its own trauma but um but we we Aaron and I made a movie in 21 days um we did We made a million little pieces and it was the smallest, smallest, smallest budget, but we had the best, best food.