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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Jon Favreau talks about "Dinner for Five," where Denis Leary eats with Famke Janssen, and Marilyn Manson terrorizes Daryl Hannah with stories about his amateur porn movies.
Apr 18, 2002 | Jon Favreau is perhaps best known for writing and starring in the movie "Swingers," released in 1996. Since then, he's written, directed and acted in a number of films, including "Made" and "Love and Sex." On Monday, the Independent Film Channel premiered a new series created by Favreau called "Dinner for Five." Each week, Favreau invites four guests from the entertainment industry to have dinner with him at a Los Angeles restaurant. The meal is filmed in its entirety, then edited down to a half-hour episode. There are no topics prepared beforehand. Favreau says the idea is to make the stars feel comfortable, so that they don't feel like they're performing for an audience. Guests like Ileanna Douglas, Vince Vaughn, Cheri Oteri, Jeff Goldblum, Rod Steiger talk about what makes a good director, discuss doggie play-dates and consider the ideal suicide note. "Hopefully, it's a fly-on-the-wall experience," Favreau says. "Dinner for Five" can be seen on the Independent Film Channel Monday nights at 8 p.m. There is also a Web site. I talked with Favreau on the phone earlier this week.
How did you come up with the idea?
I just thought it would be really interesting. I thought about it years ago, and at first I wanted to put it on the Internet, to do live streaming. I thought it would be really cool for an emerging medium to have a show like this. But that didn't work out, because the minute I would talk to somebody and they would want to do it, that company would get bought by another company and I'd have to talk to somebody else. Then I did Ted Demme's show on IFC, called "Escape from Hollywood," which was a lot of fun. And I met some of the people who were producing that show and I presented my idea to them, and IFC said they'd give it a shot.
How do you go about matching to restaurants?
I don't really do a good job of that. For example, the Saddle Creek Lodge is all wild game -- with elk and boar and shit -- and I invited Sarah Silverman and I didn't know she was a vegetarian, so they had to find some vegetables in the garden for her. But more important is how you match guests with each other. I try to get people who I think would get along, because unlike, say, "Politically Incorrect," where you try to get people who are going to try to create controversy on the show, I try to get people who will get along and create a much smoother chemistry.
Will that get harder as it goes along -- to keep finding people? Or do you just know a million people?
I think it will get easier because people like the show and want to do the show. Then the trick becomes who knows each other. You go down people's résumés and talk to them and see who they would want to go on with and hang out with. Like we had Denis Leary and Famke Janssen, because I knew that Famke knew him. And we had Michael Rappaport and Saffron Burrows; they had worked together on "Deep Blue Sea." I try to find people who know each other because that's when the interesting stories come out, when two people are buddies. Ray Romano and Kevin James, Andy Dick and Marilyn Manson ...
As I understood the idea, people were going to get together to talk about mainly independent film. Was that the idea?
The idea didn't really come from independent film, and it wasn't created for the Independent Film Channel. It was an idea that I had, and then I thought it would be a good match. I mean, I come from independent film and I come from comedy. So the people that I know are primarily independent actors. About 90 percent of the people on the show are people that I knew or worked with.
So was part of the idea to provide some insight into the world of independent film?
It's not that noble an endeavor. It really was more of an experiment. As a filmmaker, it's interesting for me to see the raw footage of the whole evening and then see if I can edit it down to an entertaining half-hour through-line. Independent film doesn't need my help, and I have a real love-hate relationship with independent film. On the one hand, it gave me my start and most of my favorite movies are indies, but on the other hand there's a very snooty, exclusive sort of fraternity within the independent film community. My films tend to be a little more commercial in their sensibilities, so they aren't embraced by the community in the way that the more eccentric movies are.
I was curious about that. In the first episode, you said that you make most of your living from writing. I was wondering if you wrote for the studios, and then made an independent film whenever you wanted to make a film. Is there a split in your work life, between studio work and independent work?
There is. And I think that all the successful people do it. I mean, Mel Gibson will do personal films and then he'll do "Lethal Weapon 5." The irony is that you need the heat that comes from being associated with mainstream Hollywood to be able to get the small projects off the ground. It's a constant dance that you're doing.
What kind of studio work do you do?
Writing-wise, I'm working on a script for Imagine right now, for Universal ... I've worked on about 10 different scripts since "Swingers," or more. A lot of times they just want me to do a rewrite of an existing project, other times they want you to adapt a book, sometimes they just want you to do a little tweak. I also started directing TV pilots. I did a pilot for Judd Apatow, who did "Freaks and Geeks" and "Larry Sanders" and "Undeclared." I directed the last episode of "Undeclared," and now I just directed a pilot for him.
So do you just get to a point where you say, "OK, now I'm going to make my own movie"?
Yeah, it's a balance. But the thing is, I'm working on "Daredevil" now as an actor, and it's the biggest movie I've ever acted in. ["Daredevil," with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, is based on the classic comic book about a blind superhero.] It's really nice to be able to mix it up and move between both worlds. I also adapted a book called "The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest," about four years ago. It eventually got a director and it was completely rewritten from Page 1. And now it's a movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I know that I'm going to go into a movie theater and see a movie with my name on it that has absolutely no resemblance to what I wrote.
