iTunes Exclusive Episode Jeremiah Tower The Last Magnificent

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You have listened to the Clubhouse podcast, your one-stop shop for all things pop culture,
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it is time for another, Autine's Exclusive.
The 283rd one of these things, man, we're going strong, keep it moving, welcome.
My name is Rob, I'm the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast, and I'm a big fan
of the food.
But I'm not alone for this episode, joining me across the desk as he does time as the
official fact checker of this show, and a man that knows a lot about food service.
You may know him as Fondongo, but his mom and even Don Ford, I'm going to call him Don
Ford.
Welcome, sir.
Well, 25 years in the restaurant business, you can say it.
You learn a few things.
Yeah, come on.
Whatever we do, one of these things, it is to review something in this particular episode
is no exception, brand new documentary.
It is called Jeremiah Tower, The Last Magnificent.
Well, before we start this whole thing, you guys are ready to sing?
Let's do it.
In a great marketing, got to thank them, Melissa, the whole crew, they are best friends.
We've up in for a reason.
Had a great time watching this film, it is a documentary, runs about an hour, 40-ish somewhere
in there.
It is the story of its title.
This is directed by Lydia Tengalia.
She's known for directing a, there's a project called a Cooks Tour with Anthony Bourdain.
So she knows a little bit about directing shifts.
Jeremiah Tower is seen by many as the first real celebrity chef.
He's a guy that really kind of stumbled into being a culinary genius.
And they really kind of talk about that.
This is done by CNN films.
And as it goes on, you see the first third of it that they talk about is childhood.
They kind of tell it in parallel.
You've got the interviews with people that know him, whether they're fellow chefs, whether
they're friends, they've had a couple of his family members, they interview.
So they reenact some of it.
And then as of course, as he gets older and people have more availability to film things,
you actually get real footage from some of the places that he's worked.
And again, as well as his colleagues, that of course all admired him because he's the
guy that really, he's one-half of the duo, really.
That really made California cuisine a thing.
I mean, it just had Martha Stewart, James Puck, Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batalli, absolutely.
I mean, and you're also a guy that doesn't chipotle.
He is in this.
I mean, yeah, it's all these people, these celebrities are raving about this guy.
He did have one bad thing to say about him.
What I thought was interesting about him because I didn't really know anything about
him before going in.
Oh, maybe they're.
Is he's a very interesting dichotomy of a person because when you first meet him in the
beginning, and I'm paraphrasing the first line of the film that he narrates, where he says,
I do not, I distance myself from humans because I am not one.
So he's very reclusive in that sense, but he seems to know when he's on, he has to
be on.
There's people about how he's so congenial, and he's charming, and he's swath and
debin there, but when he doesn't have to be around people, he ain't around people.
Whether he's hanging out, just walking the grounds of where he lives in Mexico, or he's
scuba diving, and and this goes all the way through him being hired on to be the head chef
when tavern on the green was reopened a couple of years ago.
I think this film gives a really, really good look into this man who I knew very little
about, and I felt like I learned a ton in our 36 minutes.
Well, I'm him, hold on a second.
This is two hours.
No, it's a hundred and six minutes.
IMDD does not have it right.
Oh, really?
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
So my bad.
Because even they said it's about two hours.
Right.
Yeah.
But no.
When they came out, so they said this is a hundred and six minutes.
So there may have been some things cut out between when IMDD put it up, and when we saw it.
The thing about him is it's kind of reminds me of some people I know, and I'm looking
at one who sometimes is that quite inside person, sometimes when he's there alone.
But when he gets out in that group, he's one of the most charismatic people there.
Oh, well, they're talking, talking, talking, talking, and I think for me, I would never
put myself on that kind of a level, because I got no, but I'm saying is I can't
speak for him.
Yeah.
But a lot of people have asked me that over the years, like they see me quote unquote
in real life, and they're like, dude, are you okay?
I'm fine.
Yeah.
First of all, because nobody, nobody can hold that kind of energy all the time.
Oh, I know that.
You know, when I'm on stage or whether I'm on a microphone or if I, you know, when I have
to be, it's that I'm the same guy, I'm just kind of turned up to 11.
Yes.
Where has, when I don't have to be, if I'm just hanging out with a we're watching a
pay per view or whether we're at the movies or just kind of hanging out, hanging out,
I can be more low key and just be more reserved and decompressed.
And, but with him, I think it's more, he's more the recluse that does this because he
knows it's part of his success, and that's why he has to do it.
He noticed that.
And that's why he might be recluse, but he talked about him working at stars and
starting that in San Francisco.
He was always out on the forecast.
He was the, was his place.
Yeah.
I mean, he knew that it was on him and to be there and, and rub, you know, how many pictures
does he have with all his different celebrities?
And we're talking all day less to all, we're not talking to stage.
We're talking politicians absolutely, the whole kitten caboodle, it was the place to be
seen there.
And when he came out, he always made the rounds and, and whether it was just a
Joe Schmo, who had a place at the bar, or, you know, a big, high list, a list celebrity,
or politician, you know, he really knew the business and how to play it.
Now, I will say this, you know, there's no actors, it's, it's, it's just a documentary.
I mean, because it's a lot of, it's, it's either interview footage, like I said,
there are some actors because they do some reinactments of what he does younger.
But most of it comes from that interview footage that helps tell the story.
I liked that, but what kind of disoriented me for lack of a better term is in the third
act, which comes post stars, deals mostly with the tavern on the green stuff.
It jumps around a lot.
And that kind of disoriented me a little bit, which kind of weighed it down, where it's
like we're telling this story.
Oh, no, now we want to go back because a different person has a different theory of
why stars shut down.
Okay, but now we're back here, but now we want to go back and talk about this again.
It got, the timeline got kind of funky for me in that last 20 or 30 minutes.
It could go backtracking and stuff like that, but they did it too much too often and not
right.
Now, I will say this, there were some scenes and I understand why they did it, but they
were not needed, like him just walking up on the pyramids and Mexico and kind of home
here and just blabbering about nothing, but it is, but, but I think that we're trying
to say we're trying to get into his personality of when he's alone in a recluse, but
they did it wrong, I thought.
There's other ways to do it.
I totally respect that.
So there was some stuff missing and here's the thing, I probably saw this, me and
Faith went in and I told her, we are eating before we go and see it because I did too.
Because I thought this was going to be like chef and big old sandwich for I went in.
Yeah, we did the chick play and all that.
Just just like with the chef, you were just starving afterwards.
But it was kind of weird, isn't it?
Watching this by, it really didn't show that much of the food.
There's one sequence where they show him cooking an entire meal for himself.
But outside of that, yeah, you're absolutely right.
And that's something where it shows, you know, it shows the money, kitchen, does that
line look right?
Does that look, no, it didn't show him what he's done for the food, the food, the food,
the food.
I wanted more food.
And see, were you talking about where it weighs down?
That didn't really bother me so much.
And we'll differ on that and that's okay.
I kind of like that part of it where you saw the non-public side of him where he's narrating
himself from the journals that he's writing and you see him just kind of doing doing him
and being in his house.
But I think it, they put that much on that.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I wanted more of the food.
I would have liked to see more of the food, more of this, more of that, more of that.
I would have been into this more in that aspect.
I thought this film dragged some.
I really did.
I thought I had a lot of that could have been cut out and been either cut out or
been replaced with more of the food.
We saw a film last year about a food critic that I thought was better than this, like
yes.
And I put in my written review, which is conveniently located at www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
Believe it or not, I empire that's our website.
I put in there like this isn't the worst documentary I've ever seen.
Is that even the worst documentary I've seen this year?
Yeah.
But it's still not the best thing I've seen.
You know what I mean?
You could have been better.
It could have been better.
But I thought for what it was, I can say I learned something about somebody I didn't
know about.
I can say I learned a lot about it.
I can say that.
Yes.
It wasn't filled with fluff.
And you got to see the admiration that his peers have for him.
Because he's the one that started that celebs thing which now, these chefs instead just being
into kitchen.
They talked about it.
These are just shrubs and the kitchen.
He comes out.
Now they're known as the chefs.
And now that these people are getting into this.
And that's what the people are coming to see is that chef.
And now that these people get these multi-million dollar contracts for TV and everything
else.
Oh, this is, you know, fracquoise, you know, restaurant.
This is Bordeaux restaurant.
This is pucks restaurant.
You know, these are now celebrities because he's the one that really impine near that, you
know.
And they just kind of, people like Emerald just kind of took it to that next level.
But if you don't have Jeremiah tower, you may not have these guys.
Yes.
Anything else you want to cover before we get to the final analysis?
No, I think we're good.
All right.
The way we do the final analysis on this show.
We'll give you a thumbs up thumbs down.
We're not going to give you a letter grades, numbers.
We're not going to give you a bunch of pans or forks or forks.
Let's look, reference the one sheet.
We're going to ask two questions.
Question number one is, would you see this film again if the answer is no, then we're
done here.
But if the answer is yes, the question then becomes, how far are you willing to go to
see it?
And here's the spectrum from best to worst.
Full price at the theater, twilight, matinee, early morning, second one at the dollar
theater, actually leaving your house to go get it from red box, streaming it on Netflix
or watching it on television.
Don, would you see this again?
Yeah, I didn't hate it.
Okay.
But yeah, I'd say the end might, but I would say Netflix, because I didn't love an
act.
I thought I could have been a big thing.
So I wouldn't, I wouldn't, now you can give it to go out of the house for red box,
but in Netflix.
On this show, the way things tend to go is that don tends to rate things a little more
harshly than I do.
This is going to be the opposite of that.
I would see this again.
Okay.
But I would wait for it and watch it on TV because the pacing kind of weighs itself down
in certain places.
CNN made it.
So you know they're going to show it on the top.
Yes, of course.
Wait for one night, maybe you're at the house chilling and it comes on, check it out
then, because I mean, there's some language that they'll beep it out.
And that will stretch it to two hours with commercials, you know.
But it's worth it to learn something about someone very interesting, but I'm not sure
that I would get in the car and put the pedal to the metal to go see.
If this showed more of the food, I'd be saying so.
I know you would.
I know you would.
You would be saying at least past red box, possibly, you know, a matinee, you know.
But yeah, I mean, that's kind of where we're at with it.
And it's okay.
But again, we still got to think our best friends.
We love them.
It is Jeremiah Tower, the last Magnificent, directed by Lydia Tengaliah.
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We have talked about it before.
We will talk about it again.
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So until next time, for Don, for the Empire, I'm Rob, Clubhouse's close and I guarantee
you bring you Palmishment to one of these joins and you could have gotten her on camera.
She could have been a really great interview for you in this thing.
You really should have gotten her.