Josh Brolin

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1:00at washablesofas.com. Authors are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4, in partnership with Montclair. Arriving home yesterday after a busy night, a book was waiting on the table. The book was a memoir from under the truck, and the author was my friend, Josh Brolin. I say friend, but for full disclosure, Josh and I have only met once, when Glenn Close called me to say she was bringing him to the River Cafe, and would I be able to stop cooking for a bit and join them. I did, and right away there was a connection between us. Josh is a storyteller, and I sat there listening as he described what it was like to be a 14-year-old chef in an Italian restaurant and the way food and love for his family sustains him today.

1:49He also told me about filming with Glenn in London on Knives Out, working with the Coen brothers on No Country for Old Men and making Gus Van Sant's movie, Milk, with Sean Penn. Josh was leaving for L.A. the next day, but before he did, a text arrived on my phone. Ruthie, let's do a podcast. I think we'll have fun, or at least it will be beautifully revealing. Very nice. I thought it was very moving on the last pages of your book, the last chapter, really, that you end with a recipe of your mother's, with Oreo cookies, which I brought. But you also wrote a very moving paragraph, which I thought perhaps you could read.

2:32I'd love to. Let's see. But the one thing she could do without any hassle was cook. She'd leave food on people's fence posts at the start of their dirt driveways, and they'd wave at us the next day as she was taking me to school. She'd help start small local restaurants in the area, then talk about starting her own. Hell, she even filled the fridge with six dessert dishes the night she died. Three days later, when we had the gathering at the ranch to honor her, that's what everyone ate, her sweet creations, the only sweet she could muster. She moved insides, my mother, even when she was dead. And from these strewn scraps of recipe ingredients comes a history.

3:20Wow. I haven't read that for a while. it's funny because I thought of this on the way over here which I never do I never prep for interviews or podcasts or any of it and on the way over here I started to write on my phone different foods and different things that I kind of have a history with or that resonate within me and then that moment of uh banoffee that's what she made the night before banoffee and key lime pie and these rectangular glass trays, and there were six of them, and those were the desserts for the gathering. Food and music bring back memories, doesn't it? You hear a song and you know where you were when you heard it.

4:02You know, it's one of those things with books that I'll say that it's like the one thing that I've heard compliment about the writing is that it's very vivid, and my mother lived very vivid. And you go, so what is it about that? with music, what you just said, with food. There's been these things in my life that have been extremely vivid. So tell me about the early days, when you remember her, in terms of the way she fed you, the way you ate, or the way where you grew up. You grew up on a ranch. I grew up on a ranch. My mother's from Corpus Christi, Texas. She ran away from home when she was 19.

4:42She came to Hollywood, and the first people she met were Clint and Maggie Eastwood. and that's who took her under their wing. Did she run away from home because she was unhappy? Well, I don't know. No, I don't think so because she always talked of her parents fondly. And then I just found out, I just did a book reading and somebody came up to me and kind of handed me six pages that were stapled together and they said, I went to school with your grandfather, my mother's dad. And I said, wow. And I started looking through, this is very my mother. I started looking through the pages before I went on stage, and it turns out that my mother was married before she left Texas.

5:22I never knew that. I just found that out. So age 18 or something. I guess. Really, yeah. For a week. Wow. But she had to run away to do what she wanted to do. I just think, you know, it was one of those innate things that she just felt like she needed more. I get it. Yeah. I get it. Maybe she ran away from her husband age 18. I don't know. I just think she needed more vivid. she needed more music, she needed more food, she needed more something. So when she came to L.A., I think that it was what she was looking for, but I also think it was overwhelming. So she started, I think, sleeping with a bunch of married guys, and she was religious, and she'd been told to go to church all the time.

6:06So then she came to L.A., she starts getting into this Hollywood thing, and then she ended up taking some pills and driving into parked cars, and she got kind of hauled off to Camarillo State Hospital, which was the local funny farm. She wanted to be an actor. No. Animals were always her thing. So she started a wildlife way station. She met my dad. She was assistant casting the series for Batman, and my dad did an episode of Batman. So that's when they met. But they got married 12 days after they met. My dad was more of a subservient type, and my mother was not. My mother just made things happen.

6:50She was always making things happen, whether it was food, whether it was whatever she was involved with had a high-octane gasoline involved. So you describe, Josh, living on a ranch at an early age, your mother taking you out of an urban existence and into the wild. And that includes animals and her passion for animals, her protection of animals. Can you tell me a bit about what that was like as a child? We moved out of L.A. to a place called Paso Robles, California, which is about 200 miles north of Los Angeles. I think I was five at the time. And she always had animals before that. She had cages.

7:33So she ran a wildlife weigh station. She would take animals who had illegally been taken out of the wild, and she would have those people jailed. and she would nurse those animals back to health. If they'd been defanged or declawed, she would find the most habitable zoo. You know, she would find those Lion Country safari type places. But, you know, there were a lot of, there were wolves. My brother got 60 stitches in his leg from a wolf. We cleaned the cages. There were mountain lions. I have a picture right here. I'm going to say. I mean, you want me to show you the picture? I have a picture of an adolescent mountain lion in my crib.

8:11Oh, my God. Crib. In my crib. Oh, my gosh. Is that you? Is that you? That's me. That's a mountain lion. God. I mean, that's me. If you look at every single picture of me as a kid, if you swipe, my face looks like the attempt to eat it off has been had. It makes me kind of crazy to think of that. No, I, yeah. I'm sorry. This makes me crazy. Oh, it's insane. Yeah. It's insane. That's nothing. And there was no protection for you. There was never anybody around who said this can't happen. I would, and I don't victimize my book. No, you don't. When you read my book, I don't victimize myself, and I don't feel victimized.

8:54No. But there is an indictment. I was talking to Howard Stern about it, and he said, you don't indict your parents? I said, I do. Yeah. The reality is they're incredibly irresponsible because that was the least of it. We had to clean those cages. You go in there at eight years old and you have a rake and you're looking at a wolf in the eye. But if you look down too much, it's going to see you as prey and weak. But if you confront too much, it's going to see it as a confrontation and attack. Do you remember domestic life? Would you sit down to meals? Would there be food on the table? Always. That was the one thing.

9:34It's the one through line that I remember in my childhood because, you know, I'd wake up sometimes, my brother and I would wake up 3 o 'clock in the morning with my mother shaking us and saying, I want a Whataburger. And then we'd drive, you know, 1 ,500 miles with us in the car, even though we had school. 1 ,500 miles. Oh, yeah, 1 ,500 miles. My mother didn't fly. She had been a stewardess. What is a Whataburger? Whataburger, Texan burger that started in Corpus Christi. What is it made of? It's like our In-N-Out burger in America. So it was the name of a brand. Yeah. And she had a craving for it.

10:11That was it. You'd get in the car and you'd be in the car for four or five days. What would that feel like? It was good. There was something that was great about the adventure of it, which I think is still in me. My brother, it's interesting because my brother didn't have, as my dad describes the fight in him that that I had so my brother was much more quiet you know and and so he his life is very simple it's quite the opposite me I was just writing about it on the on the way over here not in thought of coming over here but I was like I love I'm ready to go home right now I've been traveling I've been doing this book thing but I was like I started describing the light and this and that and the constant adventure is great because it's like being born again and again and again and again you're like a child you know where everything becomes a new discovery you're like what's that wow look at the way that's hitting that the English light is different than the Italian light which is different than the Middle Eastern light or whatever it is.

11:14So she would with waking you up at three in the morning or having the animals that you describe so vividly in your book or the ranch, there was a kind of structure that we would always sit down to a meal? Always. Yeah, that's why I say it's the only kind of domestic reality within our family. My dad was constantly traveling because he was working. My mom was always looking for something to do and something to kind of mix up, and then there would be her cooking. So describe her kitchen and the house. The house was just put up for sale, So I was able to see an actual picture because the ranch is three miles from the ranch that we're on now.

11:57So where I grew up is three miles away from where our ranch is now. And where is that? Paso Robles, California. Where is that? Central Coast, California. How far from? Four hours north of L.A., three and a half hours south of San Francisco. Salinas Valley, close to Steinbeck country and all that. So I could see what my memory was. But it's a very Spanish type, you know, Spanish tiles, all handpicked by her. Yeah. And the stove was always, I always remember the flames, high flames in the stove. And then I would get up. I don't know why I started doing this. I'm thinking about it now. I would get up on Saturdays usually and I would cook breakfast for my whole family.

12:40And by yourself, you let the flame? I still make a great breakfast. You let the flame? I had the flame, the eggs, over medium, over easy. I had the toast. I had the bacon. I had biscuits sometimes. But I don't know why. I don't know what it was about there was some meditation. Obviously, I wanted to please them. I loved the, maybe that was just me trying to extend that thing. Like, you stay in bed. I'm going to take care of you. Together. Yeah. I'm going to take care of you. It's funny. I haven't thought of that in so long. Do you think you used recipes or did you just instinctively know? No, it was instinctive.

13:15It was always instinctive. And my kids, my older kids who are 36 and 31 now will tell you that I made either the greatest food or the worst food that I would eat. Because if we were out at the ranch and it was like, look, this is what we have. Like I didn't go to the grocery store today. This is what we have. So you have to experiment with what you have. And sometimes that kind of experimenting would turn out brilliant. And sometimes it would turn out like regurgitation. I remember my daughter crying and saying, it tastes so bad. I'd go, you have to eat it. And I think that was the kind of connective tissue I had of my mother because the one time that my family was a family family, the kind of family that you see in Leave It to Beaver, even though it was as far from Leave It to Beaver as you can imagine, was dinner, and my mother always cooked.

14:08My mother cooked every day. Cooking was her thing. Cooking was her art. Cooking was her canvas. I'm reading your book last night, and the amount of times that telephones were slammed down or noise was made or people running away, or the anger or the fury or the... Looking back on that, you know, and then sitting down to dinner. Would dinners calm, though? Would she kind of want the food eaten properly, or would they also be a place for dramatic interaction? No, it wasn't. No, even the thing that you're referencing is the phone being slammed down and her throwing cups through a window at my dad and all that, which was immediately followed by a breakfast.

14:56Immediately. I say I didn't even pick up on that. It didn't happen. It was just where the breakfast was. Which just went literally right back to this default of the semblance of normal, some normalcy. There was nothing normal about it. Yeah. but when you look around and everybody's kind of got this kind of gorgeous morning smile, like we were outside and, mm, vitamin D. Yeah. Getting ready for the day. And it's like, do you remember what we were doing just like for the last four hours? Yeah. Which was total insanity. And I think that's why when I went out into the world, that was the shock. The shock wasn't what I was experiencing because I didn't know any different.

15:42And then I got older and went out into the world and started dealing with people on the level that I had gotten used to. And then you see people reacting. I think that's why I like being in Italy. Because? I think people are just less, they're more animated. Yeah. It seems to vibe with how I was raised. Without the chaos. Without the chaos. Yeah. My husband came from a very Italian family. He could stay out until 5 in the morning. He could do everything that he wanted to do. He didn't have to dress in a certain way. He had to be home for mealtimes. It was us. That was the structure. And Jake Gyllenhaal said he opened up his podcast saying that food was the only functional thing in a dysfunctional family.

16:29And I know him and his parents. And his parents. But he said it. I said, can I say that? And he talked about going to the market in, I don't know, Westwood or Pacific Palisades with his father and seeing the food. And what about your mother's dinners? Her dinners were, there was a lot of Mexican food. There was a lot of Italian food. There was a lot of Southern food. Did she read cookbooks, do you think? So my mother at our ranch now, we have an entire very large bookshelf of just her cookbooks. I would love to see those sometime. Oh, my God. I would love to tell me about them. I mean, they're all original cookbooks from decades, you know, different decades.

17:12Of hers that she cut out. Of hers that she cut out. She would do these collages. There's handwritten. I mean, that's only one. That's just one that I picked. I actually called my daughter and said, send me a couple of handwritten recipes. There's literally hundreds, if not thousands, of recipes that she copied. You know, I have in the book, too, let me see if I can find it. There's a thing that in the beginning where I say. You said that she introduced herself in restaurants. She would go into restaurants. No, she would always end up in the kitchen. And always say that she would end up in the kitchen.

17:45Always. Yeah. Always. I think that, let's see, Dusty Files, she made it. And the cook in the back, a lanky 28-year-old who didn't know that he was her prey for the evening. She showed him how to better stir the sauce. She made him hold his hand over hers as they flipped a dish in a pan. She asked him who his favorite country western singers were and if he had ever been to a proper rodeo. He was toast as far as I was concerned. I knew it was going to be a long night and that I might as well go back out into that parking lot and see what I could find in the desert beyond it. Parents are the bones we cut our teeth on, but they never talk about the parents' own teeth.

18:24They never talk about the bite you learn to see coming. I dreamed about her last night, and I awoke happy but sweating. Because every moment with her was exciting. You couldn't just go have a meal in a restaurant. She had to take over the entire restaurant. Did you find it exciting or sometimes embarrassing? Both. Yeah. Yeah, I think both. Because why wouldn't it be embarrassing as a child? Children. You know, like, don't bring attention to us. But then at the same time, I could tell, I mean, it was like living with Salvador Dali. It was like, I remember hearing my dad saying, I saw Salvador Dali running down the street.

19:05It was like running down Lexington Avenue with a pork chop cape on. It's like, there's just those people. Why him? Why did he do that? Why did she do that? Why did he dress that way? Why were they, you know, somebody wears jeans and a black t-shirt every day and somebody dresses in the nicest dresses they can get Versace and this and that. My mom just acted the way she was unapologetically herself. And there's like growing up on the ranch when you have to feed 48 horses or 58 horses every morning. When you're doing it, it sucks. It's horrible. It's just labor. But when you look back on it, you go, thank God for that upbringing.

19:47Thank God I had to get up and get out into the elements every single morning before I went to school. It made me who I am.

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20:50Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200 ,000 happy customers. It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablesofas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Paso Robles is considered wine country now. So it's a very famous wine country. And when I was growing up there, there were two wineries.

21:31So it wasn't known for its wine. Napa was known for its wineries. But it was a farming community and a horse community. So people would take their kids out of school for two or three weeks when the farming happened, when the harvesting happened and all that. School was not a priority. What year was that? 76, 77, 78. So what was it like? Well, first of all, before you left home, you worked age 14 as a chef, as a cooking, right? No, I wasn't a chef. No, but you were in the kitchen, right? I was in the kitchen. I started at 12. You know who told the story of that very similarly is Wolfgang Koch. Really?

22:10Yeah, because he was like 12. But that was economic. They just said, okay, you're living in Austria. We don't like you very much. You're going to go peel potatoes in a... And that's the thing with kids is you had kids in order to earn back then. Yeah, he found it. He almost tried to jump off a bridge. But for you, how did it actually be a 14-year-old at home one minute and then working in a restaurant the next? I was 12. You were 12? I was 12. Wow. And we knew the owner of the restaurant. It was called Rocky Galenti's. It was an Italian restaurant. and I started literally, did I start doing dishes in the back or just like picking just crap off the walls or whatever I was doing?

22:51And then I started getting into it and then I started doing salads and I started doing chopped salads and then you'd do like drum rolls with the two huge knives. So they teach you knife skills? Oh, yeah. At 12? No, that was like 13. By the time I had hit 13, but I was already smoking cigarettes in the back and taking breaks and, you know, little sips off glasses of wine that were left on tables. Big restaurants, small restaurants? No, it was a fairly small restaurant. It felt like when I think of Italian restaurants now, like authentic Italian restaurants, they're small. Yeah. They're all small, small tables.

23:22And there was a guy who would go from table to table and sing arias. There was a guy who was hired, and he would sing these arias. Sounds like that. Right? And then there was somebody else who would do caricatures on the wall, kind of drunken, awful caricatures on the wall that you'd pay him, and then you were forever stamped onto the Italian restaurant, Rocky Galenny's. Where was this? Santa Barbara, Lower State Street. Wow. And Lower State Street now is a nice place. Lower State Street then was not a nice place. Were they kind in the kitchen to you? They were very kind to me. Yeah. They liked me because I was also, you know, some version of misfit.

24:01All the cooks were misfit. Yeah, well, you know. Men and women alike. There was no gender in there. There were women in the kitchen? Oh, yes. Oh, really? Yes. There was like being around, because I grew up around drag racing and racing because of my dad. So we were on a lot of tracks. It reminded me of that. It reminded me of people who went 300 miles an hour. Yeah. The stress of working in the restaurant business, I loved. Did you? Yes. And I think it's the only thing that with acting, it was like, do I love acting? I don't know. Sometimes. Do I like the idea of having to live up to something?

24:38Yes. Do I like the fact that, you know, back in the days before digital, there was film and before that that last bit of film went in the magazine. You only had that much time. You only had that take left before the sun went down. That's a lot of pressure, you know, but I think having grown up in a kitchen, not only my mother's kitchen, but that restaurant's kitchen. there was something about that pressure that I fed off of. I liked, you know. And then at the end of it. Order! I know. It is. It was a lot of yelling. It was great. That's the thing about having the, you know. Open kitchen. The open kitchen is you can't, it's more like a ballet.

25:21Yeah, it's a ballet. You move around to talk to somebody rather than shout. Because, you know, kitchens, old-fashioned kitchens are cruel. But these young people, do you know what, Josh? They won't take it anymore. They don't want to work. They don't want to work in a place where they're bullied or they're made to feel they're just not going to put up with it. What was it like leaving home, and how did you eat? Did you cook for yourself? I did. I cooked for myself all the time. I was a teenager, and I left because I left when I was 16. So you've switched school. I had finished school early. I did the Goonies during school.

25:59Yeah, I was going to ask you that. So how old were you? When did you think? Well, I was kicked out of my house in Santa Barbara by my mother. Oh, she did. And I went down, and I think it was very temporary. I think both of us didn't think it would last, because I'd been to jail a couple of times already. Before you were 16. Yeah. Do you remember the food in jail? Do I remember the food in jail? I do very well, actually. I think you're the first person I've asked that question to. 140 people. Have we had a, I don't think we've had a. Because you have a different echelon of people. I come from a different place.

26:38Oh, you have a highest echelon, but just an experience. So what was the food like in jail? The food was always stale, always. 100 % of the time, there was Rice Krispies. There was warm milk. There was a piece of white bread. Are we talking about breakfast? Are we talking about all day? That's when you wake, you always wake up in jail. We can talk about the rest of it, which is when you stay in line and you get the slop. There's cafeteria slop. So let's go back to the Rice Krispies. That's like runny stuff. That would be your breakfast in your cell? That would be your breakfast in your cell, which is put on a tray, and that's a little opening that you have in your door.