This week, Rosie sits down with chef and filmmaker, Elizabeth Falkner, who is a multi-award winning celebrity chef and author, a Food Network and Bravo TV regular, and has appeared as both a competitor on Iron Chef America and The Next Iron Chef, and as a judge on Top Chef Masters and Top Chef Just Desserts. She also happens to be Rosie's personal chef! Together they speak passionately about and Chef Falkner's first documentary SORRY WE'RE CLOSED, food in general, families (blood and chosen), and the actual love involved in the restaurant and service industry that very few people even notice.
SORRY WE'RE CLOSED, a film by Elizabeth Falkner and Pete Ferriero, is an insider's perspective on the state of mind of chefs, how the independent restaurant business deals with crisis, and how food systems must evolve. It's just been released on multiple streaming platforms for your viewing!
LINKS TO HELP MAUI:https://hawaiifoodandwinefestival.com/kokua-restaurant-and-hospitality-fund-for-maui/
https://www.hawaiicommunityfoundation.org/strengthening/maui-strong-fund
Well, hello, everybody, it is me, Rosie o'donalds are the Flintstones here while summer is still with us. I have had a great summer, I really have. It's been kind of like the summer of women, don't you think, like all the women on tour that I am so excited to see. I'm going to see Pink in October. I'm seeing Brandy Carlisle again. I'm seeing Beyonce. I'm trying to get Taylor Swift tickets. They're as impossible to come by as one can imagine. You know, I wanted to take Dakota, but she's so not interested in going to a concert. She said it's too loud and there's too many people, and I don't want to go. They said it sorry boy, oh boy, mommy keeps messing up, but they don't want to go, so I want to go. Still though, it's been an amazing summer. And Madonna turned sixty five and hard to believe, right, but it's true, and she's feeling so much better. And she's over in Europe working on the tour. They're going to launch it there in Europe and then bring it to North America sometime. I think in January. I'm not totally sure, but I'm going to get all the tour dates and hopefully going to fly in and see her where opening night is because I just want to support her and I want to see her and all her glory. I've seen almost all of her tours in her career.
And.
What an amazing thing, what an amazing thing her career, what she's meant to women, what she did for AIDS, what she's meant for gay people, who she is as a person, And you know, I have tremendous admiration and respect for her. And I love your happy birthday, Momo, if you'll ast anyway? What else is going on? The situation in Maui is relentless. It doesn't seem to end, you know, It's so far from over and stands as like a stark warning of what the future could be. And I know people are saying climate change isn't real, but I don't believe those people. It's very real. The Gulf of Mexico is eighty four degrees. I saw in the news last night. Eighty four degrees. That's unreal.
I lived.
I had a house in Sarasota on the Gulf of Mexico and it was always very warm, but it was not eighty four degrees. So something is happening and we have to pay attention before it's too late. We really do, really, And the news of Trump's fourth indictment is all over the place, and some threats are coming to the judges and some threats to the people of the grand jury. And this cannot be tolerated. I think anyone who does that should be arrested right away and put in jail. And you know, Trump has violated his order from the judge to not disparage or intimidate witnesses. And you know, let's see, let's hope that he gets treated like an actual indicted person, would you know, put him, put his ass right in jail for doing what he's been doing and inciting other people to do the same.
I mean, I.
Think America has finally started to wake up to the truth of who he is. And it can't be that everyone in the country is wrong and he's right. It's not how it works in America. So looking forward to seeing what happens with him and all of his outrageous behavior as we get closer to possibly the final chapter of his relevance in the world, which would be wonderful for me. As for the show today, I have a friend, my chef, Elizabeth Faulkner, who has done so much good for so many people with her new documentary Sorry We're closed. It's her first documentary. Not only is she a chef, but she's an amazing filmmaker. And she showed me a copy of this about six months ago, eight months ago, and I fell in love with it. And she's here today. So we're going to discuss that and stick around after the interview because we're going to take some questions. All right, But Elizabeth Faulkner, renowned chef, internationally known, and she is here to talk all about food and her documentary.
Sorry we're closed, take a listen.
Well, hello everybody, and hello Elizabeth Faulkner.
Hello Rosi O'Donnell.
I see you every day, but it's special because we're in the podcast room.
It's also really special because I finally just watched The Flintstones you did, and I just love you as Betty Rubble so much.
That's so funny. I'm so cute. You know, Roseanne Barr.
I have told the story, but Roseanne Barr was on Saturday Night Live with Madonna playing me, and she had a backwards hat and she kept saying, it's me Rosie O'Donnell star at a Flintstones And that's where I got that from that. It always got sticked in my head from that. But yeah, I mean, it's so interesting how we met. Can I tell the story? You want to tell it?
I want you to tell it.
Well, I got you know, I had moved to La I was here for about a year. I was cooking for myself and Dakota. It wasn't going well. Decided to move to the beach for a year and try to get healthy and hire a chef. So I said, I'm looking for like a gay woman over forty that I want to come and be a part of the family, like hang out with me in Dakota. And Heather who's here helping. You know, she doesn't live here, but she's here and she has dinner with us. Somehow one that got in touch with you.
Yeah, that's right.
So I got a text message saying, do you know anybody who would like to be a private chef for Rose O'Donnell, And so I was like, Okay, who do I know? In the Private Chef World, and then I really woke up like the next day and thought, wait a minute, I want that job because I was like, I'd never been a private chef and I was like, uh, that's kind of an interesting and it's also you, and I thought I am kind of the perfect person for her, because I was trying to think of other people and I really was like struggling because I don't really know that many private chefs that come.
From restaurant world exactly.
But I had just recently moved to LA and was like, you know, jobs have been so different since COVID and right right had been working on this film, and like was you know, doing some events, but they were far and few between, and so I was like, wait, I need that job actually, And I went to meet you on July fourth, that's right, and you said, oh, I was asking for lesbian not too young, and I was like, well, here I am exactly.
And you brought the crew de Tay, which was looked like Starry Night from Vincent van Go. It was an extraordinary But I Elizabeth, as you know, never watched a cooking show in my life because I have such an aversion to cooking because my mom got sick when I was very young, and then we all had to cook, and it just felt like such a constant reminder that she was not there that it never kind of brought me joy to think, Oh, I'm going to feed these children who are also motherless, Like it was so connected to that for me, and so I was not familiar with you or who you are. And it wasn't until a friend came over, like literally the first week we were working together. A friend comes over, sees your face, goes white, asked to talk to me in the other room.
She don't know the fuck that is.
I'm like, her name's Elizabeth, she's my chef. She just started. She goes, that's Elizabeth's fuck marriage. She's been on every goddamn show or David, She's a world renown chef.
I was like, I had no idea, which I love that. I really didn't.
I just think it's so organic, Yeah, how everything happened.
It really is, yeah, and it's it's for us, And I think I know for you, it's been like such a great fit and such a wonderful helpful thing in my family and my own life, you know. And I love how you and Dakota have got your own thing going on that you know what they want to eat and what they won't eat, and you sometimes try to push them a little bit to try something new. And yeah, but she's come along, They've I got to get that, right.
I know they have come a long way, don't you think, food wise?
Yeah, I mean it's also just their age.
You know, it's just a time in.
A kid's life where they're just not really excited about a lot of things out there.
So it's the combination.
Yeah, I mean I think I have I believe that it will.
Shift at some point.
I know it's always going to be kind of particular for Dakota, right, But at some point everyone gets bored with the food totally.
I mean even you do. Yeah, it's true.
I'll try something new every once in a while. Let me ask how you got into cooking to begin with. Was it baking, because I know you had that very famous place in San Francisco, Citizen Cake.
Right, Yeah?
And was that your entree into restaurants? Was that your first?
No?
So when I first started cooking, I worked at a little French beastro called Cafe Claude in downtown San Francisco.
And how did you learn Did you go to the culinary Institute? Did you go to I mean I went.
To San Francisco Art Institute and studied experimental film.
If you can believe it, I can believe it because we're here to talk about your new documentary that is streaming right now, which we're going to get to in a minute, and it's about chefs and what they survived during COVID. It's a beautiful film, Elizabeth. It's so important that we're able to make art based on the reality that happened during COVID. And I think this is a beautiful work of art that really expresses what many people never even considered, because before I saw the film, I didn't think about restaurants and how chefs were affected. I didn't think because you were really the first chef chef that I knew. Yeah, and I learned about chefs through watching your film and through being day to day with you for over a year now, you know, Yeah.
I mean I studied film because I had grown up in southern California and I had a couple semesters at Pepperdine, where my dad used to be an art professor.
I had always loved San Francisco. I was born there.
And then when I went on a summer trip and walked into the art institute that my dad used to talk about, and I just felt like, oh, this is the perfect school for me.
I mean, I really wanted to study.
Not Hollywood filmmaking, but more experimental film. And I loved so many installation and you know filmmakers who weren't exactly just trying to make prescription movies basically correct and or I would say formula movies.
And I loved that school so much.
I mean that unfortunately, that school actually just went out. It's not doesn't exist anymore. It's a beautiful school. It was on Russian Hill in San Francisco. And then I had made kind of some really fun installation films, with my final piece being called black Espresso, Black Sorbet and it was very jazzy, and my brother wrote the score, he's a rock musician. I served espresso to the audience before and chocolate covered sorbet bond bonds afterwards, because I liked that whole interactive vie that happens in a theater and very much like theater. And I had studied with some really cool people. They're really amazing artists, and then found myself really loving the food scene in the Bay Area and working at Williams and Oma part time. I was looking at people's cookbooks, and celebrities in the Bay Area at the time were chefs, not movie stars, right, so it was just kind of like I had been working in a little production company during the day. And then I found out about a part time job at night in Cafe Claude and took that on as a dishwasher and player, and then I really just took over a couple months later as the chef, and I knew I didn't know enough, and so I started work staging at different restaurants.
And staging is the word we use.
For It's a French term for just going to work, and back in the day, worked for free because that's just what people did to sort of see how they were operating and if you could fit in there. And so when I heard about an opening at Massa's, this is the best restaurant in San Francisco at the time, and I just ran up the hill and said, I really want to work here a chef, and so that's I mean, that's really where I started. Then I worked for Tracy deser Den, who's a still a really great friend of mine, amazing chef, and we were like in our twenties and we opened up a restaurant called Rubicon, and that was such a big deal because it was owned by True Neaport, who's a big New York restaurant tour He started Nobu, his favorite restaurant. Wow, Yes with Nobu, and he had Montrachet and.
A couple restaurants in New York.
And this was his first California venture and he did it with Robin Williams and Francis Coppola and.
Robert de Niro. Wow. So it was a big deal. Is a really cool.
Restaurant in downtown San Francisco, and I was the pastry chef. So you asked me how I got into baking sort of first, and that was just because at Massa's, I was thrown into the pastry kitchen. That's kind of where women started traditionally and back in thirty years ago. And I never really thought of myself as just a pastry chef. I started in that, but that's kind of how people started cooking, and I was really good at it. And so when I went to work for Tracy. They were very excited about all of the pastry stuff I had been doing, and I just had so many ideas to go with the food. But then when I went out on my own Citizen Cake, it was a bakery and a pastry shop, and then we became a restaurant in a bar simultaneously.
And how long was that open? Fifteen years?
Wow, that's a very successful run in a restaurants.
Especially in San Francisco and a big city.
Right, stay tuned more coming up with Elizabeth Faulkner.
So where were you when COVID hit? What were you doing? What was your life like?
So I was I had been in San Francisco for twenty five years. I moved to New York for eight years. I won a pizza competition in Naples, Italy in twenty twelve, and so I moved to Brooklyn and opened to pizzeria. I mean, it just seemed like logical, and then opened a restaurant on the Upper West Side. Left that in twenty fourteen, and just I decided that it was just I was having a really hard time with business partners for my last three partnerships, I would say, from the last one in San Francisco to the New York ones were kind of just I just really wanted to be a chef, but I was finding myself sort of in the owner role again.
Yeah, and it's a lot of pressure.
It was a lot of work, and I just wasn't agreeing with the owners. I didn't like how they were carrying themselves around, and so I was like, I'm out of here. I needed some time off from the restaurant business. And that was I had a friend who had to point that out to me and said, you know, you're really.
Good at that, but you need to stop a little bit.
Sure, And then so I started focusing on you know, I was like, well, I still love doing all these food and wine festivals and other events and charity things because I've always done those, and I like cooking all over the place. I learned so much about people and culture from cooking everywhere.
Yeah, you go a lot of places, to different countries, and yeah, do wonderful like biking and eating events, and it's pretty amazing. Your life is very full of interesting turns. At every corner. You got to know the way to go.
Yeah, I mean it's kind of amazing because you know, I've been asked to cook in France, and I've been able to go to China and Thailand from cooking, I've been all over Italy. Even if I've been invited to come and just be a guest, I'm like, I got to get in that kitchen and use some of their ingredients and talk to the chefs. And so I'm always finding myself in the kitchen somewhere and I love that, I really do.
And so COVID hit and you were home and you were in between things.
I was in the middle of a pizza pop up tour doing some work with Emmy Cheeses from Switzerland. Really fun like for a few years, I was doing a lot of work around, you know, just coming up with recipes and doing events in New York, and then we decided to do this pizza pop up tour. I'm a pizza maker and a pizza fanatic, right. My last event was like two weeks into after the you know, like end of March, and I was like, oh, I'm going to fly out to la just because this thing is coming and it seems so scary and I'd rather be quarantines, yeah, than New York. And my parents live out here, so I found myself and my dog in La and then we were trying to figure out if we were going to be able to do this last event at Moza, and then.
It was like everything shut down.
And then I just ended up staying at my mom's house for you know, a couple months whatever, like three months, crazy nuts, and I just went to the you know, I want I didn't want her to get COVID. So I went to the farmer's market every week, every Saturday in Calabasas and picked out stuff and just that's how we're going to live for the you know.
Unforeseen future right now.
Nobody was prepared for what happened with COVID, no one. I remember initially they said, you kids were going to have off for a week, maybe two weeks, and then before you know it, it was years.
You know.
Yeah, it was crazy time.
And Peter, the director of our film, and I had been talking in January before the pandemic hit about making a film about mental health and in the chef community, what is the state of mind of a chef these days? And you know, because we have been through a lot in the last several years, we've been talking about tipping and the me too movement, you know, impacted everybody in the restaurant industry because everybody, you know, we figured out there were a lot of crazy, wild times for people and tough times, and and then the pandemic hit and we were both finding ourselves in la thinking we might need to start talking to these chefs because I told Pete, I said, people are sending me dark messages about their friends of yours, friends of mine in the restaurant business, like I can't taste I think I have COVID. I'm not really used to putting my food in a to go box? Like, how am I going to do this? How is this going to work?
You know?
How much wine do you have to drink? Like somebody said that in the film. We got on a zoom with a bunch of chefs and they all seem really really sad, like really depressed.
And it's interesting because what you come to explain in the film, which I think most people don't know because they don't have chefs in their life. I'm very fortunate to have a chef cook for me, you know, never mind you, but a world renowned chef. But I would not have known the nature of chefs had you not really explained it and shown it so beautifully in the documentary. And basically their job is to love and nurture, right, that's the nature of a chef. Right That cooking for someone is an act of love.
That's right.
And it's like the one hundred percent about hospitality. It's really like you welcome somebody into a restaurant like you're in their home. So you know, it's interesting coming to you in your home where I've been this restaurant chef my whole life, but I feel like I'm part of your family. Right at the same time, Yes, that's the kind of nature that you have to have to be a really good chef.
You got to really.
Want to love the ingredients and love the space so much that you invite people in and take care of them.
Right. And so when the world stopped, you know, in twenty twenty in March, right, the world just stopped. All of these people, all of their lives, years and years of lives intertwined with staff, and all of a sudden, there was nothing. There's no work to go to, there were no people to see, there was no one to cook for. Everything disappeared from their reality.
Yeah, and so many people got furloughed at different restaurants. I mean it was so dangerous to like everybody had to wear a mask. It's very different than the nature of a restaurant or like an extended family everywhere, and everybody's very you have to be able to be close to people. And it's like a kind of choreography in a in a kitchen. You know where you're dancing behind the line, and you know everybody's got sanitized and everything, but everybody's touching everything.
You know, it's very personal. Yes, and do you watch the Bear? Yes? Oh, I love the Bear. The Bear?
Is that an accurate representation of a of a chef's kitchen, of how a French laundry chef, so to speak, trains chef would run a place?
Is it accurate?
I think it's a really good slice of what it's like in restaurant kitchens. I love how it's gone from the first season of The Sandwich Shop into a fine dining restaurant.
I love the psychology of every character, especially like the.
Cousin character and the pastry chef and the sioux chef, their chef to cuisine.
There are so many realistic things that are happening.
You know, coming from sort of this crazy, abusive family. It's a typical story. It's a typical story of a person working in the restaurant. It's not everybody's story, but it's I think all the characters cover different personality.
And I think for comedians too, you could say that they usually have sad childhoods. You know, not all the time, but a vast majority. I would say that they learned to be funny and to use that as a weapon or armor in some way to protect them to get out. Very interesting to see the personality type of a profession now. I know from having made my own documentaries that when you start a documentary, you don't necessarily get what you think you're going to get. Right when you started this, what did you think you were going to get?
Well, when we started it, it was like, you know, the conversation that Pete and I had was let's talk to these different personalities, and we had different opinions about who we should talk to, and I said, I want to bring in a group of chefs that some people you've seen before and heard of, but I wanted to get everybody's voice.
And then it just became more and more apparent that I needed.
To really collect a good mix between not just celebrity chefs and Michelin starred chefs, but like mom and pop shops and different kinds of ethnic cuisines and different parts of different neighborhoods. And I really wanted to kind of capture everybody, which is really challenging totally. Nobody makes a film with fifty personalities are going to talk that I really want you to hear each one of their voices. So we started out with you know, okay, we'll start in LA with this group of people, and then we'll get to the Bay Area. Remember, because we didn't even know if we could travel right, everything was mysterious and unknown.
Yeah.
And then also what happened was this personal story of mine came out in it that wasn't part of the conversation. After speaking with Lincoln Carson, who's a chef in Los Angeles who had just opened a really, really cool restaurant in downtown LA, I really had a moment where I was like, this is way too close. This reminds me of two thousand and eight and the stock market crash, and my own restaurant in my mind was I was a failure and it took me a long time to get past that feeling of I failed my restaurants.
Even though there was an extenuating circumstance. Absolutely Wall Street collapsed, right, and it was for you to do it was impossible, And the same with COVID, and that a whole world wanting to eat outside in public was done and they were left alone to nothingness, right, and some of them filled it with not such great things.
And it was I kept hearing their stories as we were going along and thinking, I actually need to help coach them that it's not the end.
They're going to be fine.
They have to figure out how to redo this. And I was very curious about how each of them, you know, was responding to everything, or if they were in fact reevaluating their priorities and taking extra time off. And so I got a really interesting mix of different reactions and different kinds of personalities. But I didn't expect my own story to come out in it, and that was kind of a it was a really good part of the filmmaking surprise. Yeah, which I also I think filmmaking is a fascinating journey because I knew going into a documentary or probably any film, that things would happen, and you'd have to allow them to happen, and that might be the beautiful point of the whole message.
Right, What about your own story? Were you aware that that was your story? Were you aware that going in, like, oh, I have this thing I'm working on and trying to figure it out, or did it come to you as you saw it on film.
Well, it's interesting because is like when I stopped working in restaurants full time, I started writing, and I had been working on a manuscript for a while where this story was in it, but it was so many details about the falling of it all and how it just all unraveled and felt like it just flew out of my hands, and I never published that book. It was interesting because Anthony Bourdain really liked that early manuscript. But now I'm kind of happy that that message what I really needed came out in the film. And now I'm like, Okay, now I can set that I've done that right, so I can focus on some other things that I think are probably more important in a book for me to write about.
So I'm still working on that. Excellent.
Your whole family is very creative, right, Your brother plays with who did what?
Band. Did I just see with him?
You saw Jason playing with Saint Vincent right now with beck?
Oh? Yeah wow.
And then my other brother, Ryan lives in New York and he is a storyboard artist and filmmaker and writer, and so he works on all different aspects of the filmmaking.
Yeah, your family get to celebrate in the success of this film. Sorry, we're closed.
My parents are extremely supportive of all of us. And my dad, like I said, is an abstract painter. Or I said he was an art professor, but he is still an abstract painter and paints all the time. And he and my stepmom and my mother are all very supportive of this film. And they you know, it's I think it's they're just kind of like blown away by their kids often. I mean, I love that they love the creative side of us, because really we're successful creative people because.
Of them, don't you think because of having two artists parents who are that's the lens they see the world through. It allows and encourages kids to find their own artistic path.
I think, yeah. Yeah.
And my mom is also a really good cook, and she doesn't cook very much anymore, but she loves to bake.
I think that's where I got that, oh right, exactly.
So this film has been getting rave reviews everywhere. Everyone I know who has seen it has had the same effect. There's one other piece of work. Bo Burnham, who is a fantastic comedic actor, writer, producer, director. He did this one man show called Inside about what it felt like to be inside for COVID, and he produced the whole thing and did the whole thing himself alone.
Inside. I saw some of that and it was just amazing. It was so cool.
It blew me away because I thought there is so much art that's going to come out of COVID, because it was such a strange experience, and for someone to get in there like Bo did, and like you did with this film Sorry We're Closed, it really allows you to feel your own feelings of loss and confusion and uncertainty that happened during COVID and what it did to the ground beneath our feet. Everybody got shook in a way. But but there were professions and Chef is just being one of many that were locked out of doing what they had done their whole life. There was a woman in the documentary who you interviewed who was talking about how she knew all the smells of the waiters and the kitchen staff that she's like and I missed those smells like of her people.
That's what I mean, You're so close to people. That's Gabrielle Hamilton, Yes restaurant in New York.
Right, she was fantastic, what a great yes.
Yeah. And then also.
Alice Waters is in the film, who's you know, an iconic person chef restauranteur in San Francisco, Berkeley actually, and she says something so important. I think it's one of the best lines in the film about this is just a dress rehearsal for climate change. And you know these this fire in Lehina in Maui recently just kind of it should be a high warning like the smoky the bear science size extremely high right to every city because we have all different wind pressure, climate pressure. Now, you know, like this thing that we experienced last winter here in Los Angeles with this atmospheric river, I'm like, never heard of that before me either, And I mean we had torrential downpours like it was New York rain here.
Yes, it was unbelievable.
Really, it was like I'm like, it's just the beginning, I mean beginning.
You're right, you know, if I hear the Atlantic Ocean is warming up, I mean this all sounds so gloomy and crazy, you know, Like I've started looking at books like Surviving Climate Change, like, you know, yes, but it's it is scary, and I think that that's a really good, somewhat prophetic point in the film when Alice says that, you know, like, I keep thinking, Okay, everybody kind of thinks we're back to normal with restaurants and stuff. I'm like, but I have a friend in Maui who's restaurant burned down. I just think, whoa if that ever happens in like in Los Angeles and this whole area gets wiped.
Out, I mean, what the heck?
I mean, we're in a desert here, in a bowl, you know, especially in the alleyside.
Bro We're not in tropical middle of the Pacific Ocean.
You know.
I've seen all of these weird kind of conspiracy that it's a weapon from the government that started the FI I'm like, please, people, you're gonna look everywhere else except for what has happened to the world with climate change, what our own way of living has done to the existence.
Of mankind in general, right, and.
You know, we just dody out do do keep getting those cars filled with gas.
And I hope for people is that in some way we kind of do have to go Like we say this in the film, we have to go back to some ways that we I think Chris Cosantino says this, the ways we did food before. The truth is we need to like plant our own vegetables. And I know that sounds like Rosie. I know you're not going to do that, but I might have to plant some vegetables.
Well you could do it for me. I gladly take your fresh vegetables, but totally have to.
I mean it sounds so like I always feel like, not unlike Alice, but like I feel like when I talk like that, that people somewhere out there think that this is really snotty food talk. And it's not snobby food talk. The farmer's market is not elitist. It's not liberal elitist. It's how people have survived for so long. Is people understand seasons and vegetables and fruits and what can grow in certain regions, and you know what.
People need to stay healthy. Yes, it's cheaper to do it.
You know, I grow a bunch of herbs and I have a couple of citrus trees at home.
I don't have like a huge yard or anything.
I just have a deck and I have to fight for things with the squirrels.
But right right, I can imagine what has the response been from other ships who've seen this film.
Oh it's so great.
I mean, I have you been getting a lot of comments and everybody's saying what it meant to them, because I can imagine if this is your line at work, what a beautiful love story and love letter this is for the industry of restaurant tours and chefs.
Yeah, it really is a love letter when I think about it, because I really do love the food business so much. I you know, screened it in lots of different places last year in film festivals and different chefs all over.
Some people have walked out on.
It because it was too recent, too emotional.
Yeah right.
We were like I had to shut down my restaurant, right and this is too much for me, yeah right, and had to come back and say, but I'll want to watch it again, and you know, and then as time has moved on, because this has been.
You know, it's three years later.
I think the timing is good, particularly because you know, we did talk about loosely like a few points. We really used Trump as like comedic points in the film. I think we used him as a good character in it in a lot of ways.
Well, he was a prominent figure during because of and you know, listen, he's he's a prominent feature in the last eight years of the life of this country and we're still recuing and I don't.
Want to give that person any more airtime either. Yeah, you know, for it to be a good documentary, it has to have some of that, you know, the reality in it, right, And I mean everybody will recall this time where we were like stuck on our phones and listening to Sarah Cooper do you know imitation imitations correct, And so we had to use some of that flavor of what it was really like.
Right now, it's available everywhere.
Well, you can dream it on iTunes, Apple, TV, Voodoo, Amazon and I think Google Play.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, And was it hard to do that to go through, to go through that whole I mean it's new for you because you're not a documentary filmmaker. This is your first try. You hit it out of the park. You totally did. It's a beautiful film. I hope you make another one on something else that moves you as much as this did, because that's all you have in a documentary is the passion of the film maker and point of view that you come upon as you shoot it. And and it's very, very beautifully done. It really is.
I love food because of its artistic.
Everything about it, Like it's it is such a beautiful artistic medium. It's not just feeding people and taking care of people. It's I can be really I've learned this. I can create gestures and food. I love saying something I've I've I've actually made dishes before, not lately because you know, I want to make you happy, but I live.
Make me happy, make me a surprise dish, come on.
I mean, like, it's an interesting medium because you can't actually do so many you can. It's it's kind of like all different kinds of art in one Yeah, especially in a restaurant. But I'd like to do follow up stuff on not so much like what people are doing post COVID, but you know how people are dealing with you know, I think this climate change piece of it might have a lot to do with other things to investigate. I also really love to talk about like this very creative, artistic side of food that I feel like we don't really talk about that very much. People always ask me how I got started, but ask me what I'm really interested in cooking today.
I am very happy that you made this documentary. I'm very happy that people get to see your artistry and in ways that you know you hadn't expressed it yet, to know that you're this wonderful, unbelievable chef in all different genres from baking to every kind of ethnic food and specialty, that you also have this ability to make a beautiful, wonderful, humane, emotionally resonant documentary about a group of people that I wasn't very familiar with.
It's not an easy job being a chef. Obviously, people do it because they love it. And then the sad part is that we don't even have you know, we don't really have guild like right like Hollywood does, so we don't have this four oh one k you know, insurance thing going on for any of it. I mean, we can do that as a small business, but it's usually for the employees, and like you're the employer and you're kind of like, I don't know if I can afford that for myself.
Right exact, it's messed up. That's messed up.
And Gabrielle Hamilton says, you know, I really just need health insurance, like if I was in Europe. This stuff is like part of the deal. It's part of the package. Well, and this is just the thing that I think we really need to like band together and figure something out, because you know, rightly so, the writers and actors are striking, and yes, of course, and.
That is a question that comes up in the film.
It's like what if the restaurant industry went on strike? I mean people would like what would people do?
I have no idea, you know, and you know that's why the unions are important and this country made, you know, strong by unions. Well listen, Elizabeth Faulkner. The movie is everywhere that you stream iTunes. I saw at Amazon, Apple, Apple TV. You can watch it. It's called sorry We're Closed.
I just need to add one more thing. The restaurant.
I mean, filmmaking on this first time out documentary filmmaking business is just as challenging as opening a restaurant.
Is it really Oh yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, trying to get someone to look at it and see it and see it's worth and then trying to get someone to buy it and stream it. It's not easy, but I'm so glad you did. It's a quality product, so I knew it would get out there.
Thank you so much, Rosie. You're welcome.
Sorry, we're closed. Go watch it and stream it and send us a little note of voice memo and let us know what you think. Hey, everybody got to take a break. Don't go anywhere. We got questions coming up. Hey, we're back, and I hope you enjoyed Elizabeth Faulkner as much as I do every single night when she makes me dinner.
I will tell you that.
Now we have some questions. Here's the first one.
Hit it.
Hey, Rosie, this is Brittany again. No, not Britney Spears, but I do get that a lot. Anyway, I have sort of a lighthearted question for you today. What is the most rock star thing you've ever done? I know, obviously you've been a celebrity for a long time, so I'm curious to hear what you have to say.
Loving you thank you. Britney not Spears, who's getting a divorce apparently, which I don't know, sounds like might be a good idea.
I hope that she's going to end up okay.
I hope that she gets the treatment and the support and love.
That she needs in her life.
I think about Britney Spears often and I remain in support of her and loving of her in every way. But yes, what was the most rock star thing I ever did? So it had to be something with Madonna? Like I remember, we would fly and her plane to some destinations and you know, I would see her on stage and rehearsal at the O two Arena in London, and you know, it was being in her presence and hanging out with her and all of the people that she knows, which is pretty much everyone. But I do remember one time I flew my best friends and their spouse is over to Europe on a private plane. And that was pretty wild in my mind that I did that. You know, we went on vacation. A lot of us, all my friends, had not been to Europe, and so we went on an extended stay in Europe and flew there and back private. Not something I would do today, but back then I did it, So there you have it. Thanks Brittany for the question. We have one more coming at you hit me.
Okay, I figured this voice memo thing out. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a little old here anyway. I live in London, happy to hear you again. I had little babies when I first used to watch your show back in Long Island City and now I'm in London and to hear you is like being with a sister. So I'm really appreciating your guests and your sensitivity and your questions and your intelligence. So please continue onwards, don't stop, Let's keep going.
I like it. Bye. I love that. I loved that. I didn't get your name at the beginning. Did you say it?
I'm not sure you did, but I'm glad you figured out how to leave a message and then next time put your name in there and you know, ask me a question. But thank you for loving me and for your sweet comments, and for the fact that I feel like a sister to you. That really means a lot to me. I don't really have a relationship with my sister anymore. It's been many, many years, and it's a heartbreak I have to tell you. Still still a heartbreak, but onward, right, what other choice do we have?
Onward?
And I just want to say thank you to all the people who are leaving comments, because ninety eight percent of them are so unbelievably loving and complimentary that it's almost embarrassing for me. Like sometimes Laurie will send me a chunk of them in the email and I will listen to them and go, it's too.
Much love, It's too much.
I don't know. Can I really play this with somebody just saying how much they love me? And I appreciate it so much. I have to say I'm smiling right now. I feel the love from everyone, so thank you so much. But remember if you have a question or a comment or something other than I love you, you know, although I love you is nice. I'm not complaining. Thank and thank you everyone. If you want to leave a message, here's how you do it. All you gotta do is go to onward Rosie at gmail dot com. How do you make a voice memo? People say, well, I can only tell you if you have an iPhone iPhone, type in voice memo, little microphone comes up, Go press the button, record it. Then it says where to say mail? Onward Rosie at gmail dot com. Attached file. You're done.
That's it, so thank.
You everyone, Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoyed today's Today's Showed. Next week we have Maria Bamford, who is an amazing comedian, so unique, so creative, so funny. Not only is she a wonderful stand up, but she just wrote a memoir, Sure I'll Join Your Cult, a memoir of mental illness and the quest to belong anywhere. She really has written a beautiful, honest, touching memoir and I loved reading it, and I loved getting to know her. Maria Bamford. Next week on Onward with Rosie o'donn