Luca Guadagnino

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1:34See you there. What I know about Luca Guadagnino is, of course, the films he's made. But what I know from Luca is how passionate he is about food. Meeting him over lunch just last week at the River Cafe, we went straight into not what movies he was making, but what food he was cooking. He is Italian, and he cares. Friends tell me in his home in Piemonte, Luca has three kitchens, including one elaborately equipped for pastries and a special room for keeping vinegar and dried herbs from his garden. It's always full of people, everyone gathering around the table and kitchen. He genuinely loves cooking, with friends participating and enjoying the process.

2:17Our mutual friend, Lorcan O 'Neill, says Luca has a true instinct for friendship. Food not only plays a strong role in his home life, but an important role in his films, conveying sensuous desire and transformation. The prawns in I am love, the peach in call me by your name, the churros in challengers. We're here today in the one kitchen I have in my home to talk about food and memories, food and film, food and family, a beginning to a new friendship, one cook to another. Wonderful. I'm so happy to be here. It's so nice to have you here. It was so fast. We just saw each other two weeks ago, and you're back in London.

2:56Are you going to come back more often? This is the first time I'm back since I saw you. Well, you're going to come back more. When's the next time? That's what I can say. I hope very soon. I might be coming back and stay because I might do a movie in London. I did a movie last year. Yeah, what was that? It's After the Hunt. Yes. Starring Julia Roberts. Yes. I.U. Debery, Andrew Garfield, Chloe Sevigny, Michael Stuhlberg. And it was a great experience, and I loved to be in London. What was great about it? You know, like, first of all, to be in the summer in London is good for me, because I cannot stand the heat.

3:31So I like the temperature here. Okay. And the quality of work was great. That's what we don't like about London summers. Oh, my God. I can trade place. Yeah. And then what else? Quality of work, amazing. Amazing crafts. Yeah. They used to say that independent films used to be made in Europe, the small films, and the big ones in L.A., and now it's changing. Everybody wants to make a movie here. L.A., I don't think they do any longer any movies, basically. It's like impossible because of the very expensive nature of the business there. Gordon Brown, who's the prime minister here, what, 15 years ago, maybe?

4:08He brought in the idea of lowering the tax for making cinema here. Yeah, tax rebates. And if you walk into the River Cafe, you know, you see everybody. You know, Noah and Greta are here. You were here. Julia Roberts is making another film now. Alejandro is here. And J.J. Abrams is here. It's like walking into a kind of canteen, you know. Yeah, it's unbeatable. Quality of work. It's so nice for us. And good prices. What about in Italy? Are they making movies? The problem with Italy is that the quality of life is very good. And we have very good craftsmen in Italy. but unfortunately we don't have a very, we have a short-sighted politics at play there.

4:50Because the tradition in Rome, the Cinecittà, I mean, was amazing. I shot a movie in Cinecittà, which is my previous one, Queer. Yeah, I'm going to talk about that. I fulfilled this kind of fantasy of making a movie entirely shot on stage in Cinecittà. All interior, all. Everything, no, interior and exterior. I think we had like 10 stages. We built in the back lot, in the front lot. We even, there was a sort of big hill of dirt that we took over and we created a jungle over there. And it was fascinating, but almost for the remembrance of things past and more than the energy of the now. Because did Fellini and Antonioni, did they make all their music?

5:29Fellini for sure. Antonioni, I would say maybe not, but Fellini for sure. So we would love to read. We always try and start even the beginning of the conversation because that's how this podcast started. It was during COVID. The idea originally was just to read a recipe every day. And then the idea was to say, well, how do you segue from the recipe to the story of your life through food? So we want to talk about cinema and we want to talk about Italy and we want to talk about everything. But it's the kind of getting to understand who we are through our experience, memories of food. Which is everything.

6:06Do you think it is? I think so. Memory of meals, memory of food, memory of the tactile experience of food, the smells, the texture. I think it constitutes, and I'm not talking about fancy food per se. I'm talking about the idea of nourishment or the deprivation of nourishment. It's really like one of the things that makes us universally linked as people. So I do agree with you completely. And memory, you know. Yeah. When my father was dying, I flew... When was that? In 2020, during lockdown. I flew to Sicily where he was born, in his village. And I walked toward the building where he grew up, where he was born and grew up, and where I spent a lot of summers when I was very little.

6:56And I could distinctively remember in my mind, and still now I can, and the smell of mold and grapes being dried coming from a storage place in the building. So I went into the building, and I could enter, and the smell came back to me in its physical presence and was incredible. And your father was dying in a hospital somewhere else. Yeah, he was in Milano. I could come back home and see him going. Did that help? I don't know. It never helped. No, nothing helps. Nothing helps, but the smell that you could feel. Now it's like a legacy and something that makes me have him close, even the memory of that.

7:41You went to Ethiopia. I was supposed to be born in Ethiopia, but I came out earlier, so like at seven months in August. I had to be a Leo. There was no way around it. I'm a Cancer. Oh, so we're close. Just before, yeah. I like Cancer women. I don't like men. I have a friend that went to, she went to L.A. And she called, that's the hotel, to find her a babysitter. And the baby said, well, I can babysit, but I need to know the sign of the baby first. I agree. Oh, come on. I mean, Scorpio woman, impossible. My mom. Yeah? Okay, well, get back to the signs. You were born a Leo in Ethiopia. Yes, and then we moved to Ethiopia in September.

8:25You were born in Palermo. Palermo. And then we flew to Addis Abeba when I was two months. Wow. And I spent the first five years of my life there. Can you remember the smells of Ethiopia? Oh, yeah. What were they like? Well, I mean, I can... I don't know how to describe a smell, but I remember very well the smell of the garden. I remember the smell of the pets we had, which was also a big turtle. We had a big turtle as a pet. I can remember the smell of the coffee being roasted outside. I can remember the food, ngera. What was it like? Ngera is very tangy smell. Very good food, Ethiopian food. Oh, yes.

9:02Amazing. The Dorawat smell, the sweetness of the onions mixed with the powdery smell of the berbere. It's fantastic. The berbere, what is that? Berbere is a mixture of spices that is typical of an Ethiopian kitchen. It's very red. And it's used for Dorawat, which is a chicken stew, or for the lamb or beef stew called zigini. I wonder why Ethiopia has that. My father was really restless. He met my mother when he was teaching. He was a professor in Casablanca. And my mother was living there. She grew up in Morocco. She's Algerian, but she grew up in Morocco. And then once I was born, he wanted to do another adventure abroad.

9:47So he got a post in Addis Ababa. Are you an only child? No. I am the last of three. Three. So all three of you went to Ethiopia? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I see. We grew up there. Do you cook Ethiopian food? Every now and then I do, yes. And you get the ingredients? Yes, yes, yes. Is that what you keep in your special kitchen? I do have a lot of berbere. I'm very interested. You know that I have like a collection of spices? Yeah, you have a whole room for it. Very large, yeah. And then I have made with the wonderful people at Nymphenburg in Munich. they sourced from their archives those jars made for apotheke in porcelain.

10:26And I asked them, how many sizes you have? And they had every size, because these Nymphenburg, it's 400 years. So they used to make them for apotheke. So they had from, like, I don't know, 10 kilos to 10 grams. And I made 200 of them for my kitchen, from 10 kilos to 20 grams. How long does the 10 kilos stay good? I mean, do they stay... I cook a lot. So if you put 10 kilos of flour, maybe it's going to last two weeks or even less. I think the only... We use a bit of dried thyme and a bit of dried oregano. But I don't think we... In our kitchen, we do the fresh herbs. We don't use the kind of cooking we do.

11:08Yes, but you do use spices. You use nutmeg, you use cloves. We use cumin, we use coriander. The world of spices is so wide and amazing. Yeah, it's beautiful, and the smells. So the recipe that you chose to read today is fresh. I chose from the book, the beautiful book. That was our 30th birthday book. So beautiful. Combining. I chose tagliarini with asparagus and herbs. There's a wonderful lady on the picture on the left side. Who's this lady? That is Vashti Armit, who is the manager of the River Cafe. The River Cafe is an incredible table. You eat so well there. Oh, good. Thank you. We have to eat more.

11:46So would you like to read the recipe? I read the recipe and then I give some tips. And we'd like to talk about some fresh pasta, wouldn't we? Yeah. I mean, you call them taglierini and they are technically called taglierin. And it's Piemontese pasta. And as you said before, I live in Piemonte. And the typical way of using taglierin is with truffle when the season is right. It's very thin and very sturdy kind of pasta. So tallerin with asparagus and herbs. This is for 675 grains of thin asparagus pears, which could be also wild asparagus if you can find them. We try and get that. It's not so easy here.

12:27My friend Camillo, who is the gardener in my house, his father, who collects from nature's wild herbs, brought me wild asparagus last week. So already? early. Yeah, I have it in my fridge. It's very early the season now because we just got green asparagus today from Italy. Everything is so early. Everything's early, I know. Four garlic cloves. I think this is too much. I would say one. Okay. Can I? Yeah, I love it. I am nothing like an Italian teaching me how to cook. I really appreciate it. I'm not teaching you. I'm saying just the balance. No, I'd like to do so. If I put the proportion of the number, the grains of asparagus, I think one garlic clove will be enough.

13:04Okay, that's fine. Four tablespoons of chopped. I love it. Wait till I go see your movie. I'm going to give you some advice. I want all the advice. Four tablespoons chopped mixed fresh herbs, basil, mint, parsley, oregano. Fantastic. One millimeter double cream. And in England, you have the incredible double cream. That's one thing we have. In France, we have creme fraiche. Italy, you don't have it at all. No. You get the cream that's in those packets. It lasts for years. Yeah. But even the fresh one is not as thick and good as the one you find here. Fair enough. Two tablespoons of olive oil, 50 grams of unsalted butter, 250 grams tagliarine or tagliatelle, 120 grams of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

13:49Trim or snap off the tough ends from the asparagus spears. Finely chop the asparagus all together with one of the garlic cloves and the herbs. Bring the cream to the boil in a saucepan with the rest of the whole garlic cloves and simmer until the cloves are soft. Remove from the heat, discard the garlic. So I changed my mind. It's actually good to have four garlic cloves by treating them this way. And then throw them away. I apologize. Take it. You know what Bernardo Bertolucci used to say? What did he used to say? Only assholes, they don't change their mind. I agree. So you see? Or admit. But I have to say that I haven't looked at that recipe for a long time, so I accepted that.

14:26I forgot that we took it out. We do that quite often when we use a cream, like when we do prosciutto. You make the cream beans. So we take... The aroma. Yeah. I think it's great. Okay. Heat the olive oil and butter in a separate large saucepan and fry half of the chopped asparagus for five minutes, stirring. Add the rest of the chopped asparagus, followed by the flavored cream. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the cream begins to thicken, about six minutes. Season, remove from the heat and keep warm. Cook the pasta in a generous amount of boiling water, salted, and then drain too roughly.

15:00Add to the sauce along with about half of the parmesan and toss together, serve with the remaining parmesan. Great recipe. When you cook, do you think, when you're in Piedmont and you're making me lunch, what would you make if you were saying, Ruthie, I'm going to show you something from the region? I would make you, do you like the sweets, desserts? Oh, yeah. I would make you a coppa di crema di serras, which translates into a cup of serras cream. Serras is a ricotta cheese produced only in, again, in that part of the Piemonte where I live. And it's super thin and almost like double cream kind of texture, but it's ricotta.

15:40And I found this in this book, this old ancient aristocratic recipe where you mix the ricotta with raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, a little bit of double cream and then you break some souriardi biscuits and rum. It's super good. Do you soak the biscuits in rum or do you add the rum to it? No, I add the rum to the cream. I think the biscuits to be broken and put with the cream makes this crunchy thing that is good. Oh, nice. So what do you think about that recipe then? Do you approve of the garlic? I totally approve. I approve the recipe. I love the way in which you You thick the sauce. You make the cream thick.

16:25I like the way you chop the asparagus because that bleeds into the cream and makes the cream being riped with the taste of the... which is like sweet and slightly bitter, which I love. And you have an amazing, incredible palate. So when you were growing up, just tell me, going back from Ethiopia, and you described the smells and the food and the recipes which have stayed with you all your life, but you went back to Palermo. Palermo. And what was that like there? Did your mother cook? My father. Your father did the cooking? Oh, very much. A lot. Really, what did he make? Everything. He was cooking every day.

17:06Really? And he was cooking a lot, like more than what we needed. For three children, though? Three children. Five of you. Yeah, but it was large meals or large recipes. But he was a teacher. He was teaching, he was coming back home at 1, and he was cooking all day. And what about your mother? My mother was more like shy in the kitchen, probably because my father was very... Yeah, she cooked a lot of Moroccan time to time. She taught me how to do crepe, which is the dessert that I love. French crepe. CREP, French crepe. What was the technique, do you remember? Yeah, I think you have to do it so that once you have created the batter, butter, you say butter?

17:47Butter. With the milk, eggs, a little bit of sugar, a little bit of butter. You let it rest for one day near a, like, how do you call that? A radiator. A radiator. So the heat makes the butter ferment. Did you ever have farinata? Oh, I love farinata. How much do we love farinata? We do that a lot because that's again a batter. I had the great farinata at the River Cafe when I was there. I did last week, yeah. It's really, I think we often give people pizzas to start, but there's something about a farinata, which is just... Farinata is an incredible recipe. It's just chickpea flour, olive oil. Very good, nutritive thing.

18:29A lot of protein in it. Yeah, farinata is incredible. I mean, we have so many different ways of farinata in Italy because you have farinata in Tuscany, and then you have panelle in Sicily. Do we have farinata in Tuscany? Yeah. You have farinata in Tuscany. You have it in Liguria, and you have the panelle in Palermo, in Sicily, which is chickpeas flour mixed with water, boiled. Boiled? Yes, and then put on a thin layer, cut in slices and fried. That's panelle, pani e panelle, which is a typical street fare. Street food. Yes, but it's another variation of the farinata.

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20:34Plus, 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. How long did you live at home for? I think I left home when I was 21. I left Palermo. I went to Rome to study literature.

21:18Did you know that you wanted to do film? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was torn between two directions for myself. One was to be a director, a film director, and the other one was to be a chef. I was cooking. I had my little mini pans when I was in Ethiopia growing up. I had my little corner in the kitchen where I could do what I wanted. and I grew more and more into this. And then when I was like 14, I realized that if I had to go into that direction, I would have probably abandoned the intellectual part of my upbringing because I was also a very avid reader of books. You were quite academic. Yeah, I felt like that between the two, probably I could have kept being passionate with food, but I would have made my life more intellectual.

22:11And that's why I choose. How did cinema, did you have a, have you had little pans from Ethiopia? I had a camera. Did you have a camera? Yes. You did. I had a Super 8. My first Super 8, I had it when I was like nine or eight. Your parents gave it to you? My mother. My mother gave me a Super 8 and I started shooting my little short films with these, You know, like you could get this 8mm little box where you put into the camera and then you had to ship it to Germany and wait like two months to get it back. So I had my camera and I had my projector. And I started to learn that if you wanted to not tell a story but communicate something, you didn't have to just film, but you have to create a juxtaposition.

22:56But I didn't know how to actually cut. So I started to cut on camera. So I was doing a shot, and then I was thinking what I want this to be followed by, and I was shooting another thing. And I was doing these mini-movies about juxtaposition of things. Do you have them? My mom must have in some boxes, yes. I think you should find them. We should find them. We should find them. But you still cook. When you went to Rome, someone told me that you... I became friends with great chefs like yourself, and I cultivated the cult of food all my life. I was for one year and a half, I was a gastronomic critic for Vanity Fair Italy.

23:32Oh. Yeah, yeah. Every week. And you reviewed restaurants? Yeah, all over the world. Wow. And it's interesting because at the beginning, of course, it was like, we start. But then I became very consistent because I was doing once a week for like more than 70 weeks. For Vanity Fair? Italy. It came out weekly? Yes, it's weekly. Wow, I didn't know that. And there was a great director, Daniela Amawi. She was great. Then she left and the new director fired me because he said to me, you know, we don't like criticism because we want to be friends with everybody. So I said, okay, bye-bye. You should meet Adrian Gill.

24:10I'm gone. And actually, the conversation started because I sent a review of a very important restaurant. In Rome? In Bergamo. Three-star Michelin, so now everybody who knows who's the restaurant. Still there. Oh, yeah, yeah. Super important. And I sent it, and they said to me, we can't publish this because we're friends. And I said, yes, and send your friends, but journalism is journalism, right? No. Then I made another review of another restaurant, two-star Michelin, and it was another skating review. And they said, we can't either. So I went to see the director, the editor of the magazine, and they fired me.

24:49We parted ways. But I made like 65, 70 reviews. I should put them in a book. That you could put in a book. It was nice. You could put that in a book. But then I started to go to places and people were like, ah, they were like treating me in a different way. And that was bad. And sometimes they were asking me, can you come and review us? Even if it's a bad review, we want the review. You must have well written them. There is a, I wonder, you know, I just, we did a podcast recently with Francis Coppola. The divine Francis Coppola. Divine, yeah. Do you see him? No, I never met with him. Well, we could do.

25:21I'm a friend with his daughter, the wonderful Sophia. He's living in London now. I would love to meet Mr. Coppola. And he also, you know, you talk about the parallels between making a movie and making a recipe, running a restaurant, directing a film, you know, how you, of course, it's in one way not very similar at all, but in many ways it is about creating something, something perhaps temporary, the response of the critics, how you do it, do you think? I mean, did you find directing films and writing about food or cooking food? I think directing films and cooking or in general running an enterprise like a restaurant are very close.

26:02They are. Because the director is the entrepreneur who is putting together all the elements, including the ingredients, to make the experience be. So I think they are very close. And I think there is a lot of savviness in the entrepreneur who knows life and habits and behavior. So a director should be someone who does know that. And when you made your first film, what was your first film? A movie called The Protagonists that I shot in London with Tilda Swinton. And it's a movie that I'm not very happy with, that the Cinematheque in Bologna restored. I met with the director of the Cinematheque, Gianluca Farineri.