Favreau cooks up road trip in ‘Chef’
AUSTIN, Texas — His search last year for the coolest cities in the country led filmmaker Jon Favreau to a hot Austin.
The affable New York native directed himself in his latest film, Chef — to be released on Friday in theaters.
The movie tells the story of a celebrated chef suffering creative paralysis. Favreau plays the frustrated Carl Casper, who reinvigorates his career after embracing what he loves most — his family.
After rebelling against a controlling restaurant owner (Dustin Hoffman), Casper jumps behind the wheel of a food truck and heads crosscountry with his 10-year-old son (Emjay Anthony) and sous-chef (John Leguizamo).
“Bottom isn’t a bad place if it makes you take inventory with your life,” Favreau said of his character. “It’s really a matter of finding your mojo.”
Casper re-connects with his son by sharing his passion for cooking and introducing the precocious youngster to colorful towns with rich culinary narratives.
The movie premiered in March at the South by Southwest festival, given that Austin serves as one of the backdrops for the trip from Florida to California.
“I wanted the coolest cities
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in the country,” Favreau said. “As a kid, what would be the coolest places your father could turn you on to? I figured Little Havana (in Miami), New Orleans and Austin.”
The 47-year-old filmmaker, who launched his career as the screenwriter and co-star of the low-budget 1990s indie cult hit Swingers, has spent much of the past 10 years raising his profile with a roster of bigbudget films such as Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Cowboys & Aliens.
Asked whether he considers the microbudget Chef his cinematic food truck, the filmmaker said, “I think so. Because I think when you have a restaurant, you have a lot of investors and you have to serve a lot of people and there’s a lot of overhead. And on a food truck, you can take one chef with an idea. . . . So this is very much a personal vision compared to the other films I do.”
Casper’s departure from the restaurant is hastened by a scathing review from an influential critic (Oliver Platt aping his brother Adam, a restaurant critic for New York magazine).
When the review hits, an inebriated Casper makes his initial foray onto Twitter and starts a humiliating war of words.
Favreau has used Twitter for years to interact with fans and respond to rumors but has wisely maintained a healthy relationship with the social-media tool.
“I’m not a drinker, and I don’t tweet emotionally, so there aren’t tweets that slip out,” Favreau said. “I don’t treat it like my own personal bullhorn.”