Oscar nominated director Scott Hicks (Shine) provides an inside look at the inner workings of an upscale New York restaurant in the romantic comedy/drama, No Reservations. While food is definitely front and center in the film, the story's really all about the restaurant's head chef, Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and her struggle to balance taking care of her niece (Abigail Breslin) while staying on top of things in the swanky restaurant's kitchen. Further complicating matters is the arrival of a handsome sous-chef (Aaron Eckhart) whose freespirited ways and easygoing charm quickly win over everyone in the kitchen - except Kate.
Interview with Director Scott Hicks
It’s refreshing to see nice character-driven story during this summer of action movies.
“I felt that when I read the script. I thought, ‘This is a studio movie?’ This is a movie about real people and life and love and loss and I thought, ‘I’m dreaming!’”
Is it tough to find a project like this?
“Yes, certainly a studio film. They’re very few and far between like this. I think Catherine [Zeta-Jones] has to take credit for that in the sense that she was so driven to do this film. But of course, that made them very interested and in turn made me very interested, so credit to her in the sense of wanting to play a real character who really carries the story. Of course, it’s a triangle of a relationship, of course, Zoe [played by Abigail Breslin] and Nick [played by Aaron Eckhart], but nonetheless, Kate is the central kind of the tent pole of the whole piece, isn’t she? So that was really down to Catherine’s desire to do it.”
There are scenes where the lighting isn’t perfect on her and she nails it. You don’t see her as the glamorous Catherine Zeta Jones.
“I’ll tell her you said that, she’ll be thrilled. You know she’s a very glamorous woman, she’s very beautiful, but she was prepared to roll up her sleeves and do the work as an actor and bold enough to do scenes without makeup, to have the messy hair, to be sweaty, to all those things which I mean, step back from that shear glamour side of being a movie star.”
Did you know from the very beginning that you would get such great chemistry on the screen between Aaron Eckhart and Catherine Zeta-Jones?
“I wish I could say I did, but I didn’t. You hope for it, do you know what I mean? It felt like a good combination to me, and then you just you make the choices and then you pray. And magic like that it either happens or it doesn’t. You can’t fake it. But you can certainly sense it and you see it in front of you. It’s wonderful. You can do an awful lot even when it doesn’t happen. But when it does, it’s special. [They] just sizzled. It was a really wonderful sort of feeling that would come back off and from in front of the camera. It was terrific.”
You’re both a director and a screenwriter, but you don’t always write the films you direct. How do you choose when you’re going to be involved in writing a screenplay?
“Well it depends on the circumstances. I mean, as a director you tend to get very involved anyway, so there was a lot of re-writing on this film and you’re a part of that process, inevitably. It’s just part of the game. But it depends on to what degree you do that and whether it reaches beyond the bounds of being the directorial sort of input, you know? I don’t know. I supposed with most of the things that I’ve done, I’ve had involvement as a writer or co-writer. This one there were sort of a number of people involved in that way.”
Were you ever tempted to put more of a back-story in for her character as to why she’s so talented and intelligent yet she doesn’t have anyone in her life?
“No, if anything I wanted to take it all out. I think we get obsessed with this idea of sort of back-stories and actually, you know, life and drama is so much about what is happening now and moving forward. What we learned about her past tells us enough, I think. That brief thing she says to the therapist when she says her mother was an amazing cook and then after she died her therapist asks if her father sort of take over the kitchen. ‘Well, he didn’t take over anything.’ You get the picture, you get it. ‘Oh, I see, the family was dysfunctional after her mother’s death.’ I think that’s it because otherwise, I mean, we never look at Macbeth and say, ‘What was his back-story?’ It’s Macbeth, the King of Scotland! (Laughing) Shakespeare was not obsessed with back-story and he was a pretty good dramatist when you think about it!”
The performance of the food in the film is just as important as that of your actors. I left the movie wanting to head directly to a restaurant.
“I think that’s great. There was a lot of attention paid to that. Obviously it was going to be such an important part of the movie and I had some very good people. We shot the film in New York and it put me within access of really good and talented advice. The French Culinary Institute helped us to devise the menu and create the dishes that would both be believable for that kind of restaurant but also work on camera so they’d be ready for their close-ups. And then in the process of shooting, of course, there was the dual complication of a) having a working kitchen in which we were seeing people really cooking - because there were real line cooks working there along with Catherine and Aaron and the others; but then outside of the set there was another kitchen which was our props people making the on-camera food that would come in at precisely the right moment so it would be looking great. If you put food to one side or put it under a heat light, it gets very tired after 20 minutes. It always had to be fresh and well-presented and real. There were a lot of details to accommodate there.”
Page 2: Creating a NY Restaurant, the Food, the Wine and Training the Cast
