Tampopo

“And this is Tampopo, which is my father's favorite film of all time. Yeah, and I remember when we were kids, me and my brother, when we were kids, he would say, "So tonight, are we going to watch Tampopo?" And me and my brother are like 9 and 12, and we're like, "We don't want to watch a Japanese ramen comedy, Dad." And he was like, "One day you'll watch Tampopo and you'll appreciate it." And about 10 years ago, in my early 30s, I finally bit the bullet and stopped resisting, and I watched Tampopo, and I realized that my dad had incredible taste. And I think one of my favorite scenes in cinema history of an egg yolk being passed back and forth between two lovers. I love this film, and I love my dad. And actually, I have to thank my dad for my presence in this closet because my dad is a cinephile, and my dad introduced me to movies. His love of movies became my love of movies. And I just want to give a shout out to my dad for introducing me to Tampopo.”

“Tampopo is one of the movies that… well, for me shared the gift of cinema, in terms of what movies can do, what they can be. It's a food comedy, drama, love story, entrepreneurial journey. But this will make people fall in love who kind of don't know what cinema– or, you know, they might wonder what cinema is: is it stuffy, something stuffy? This is not stuffy. This is very exciting.”

“Okay, I just I just need to be the one to talk about Tampopo just because this is a movie that like I feel like is very much like a reflection of my soul. I love food, I love absurdity, I love yeah, I love the way that it's like really sweet and also really horrific sometimes. The sexuality in it is just bizarre and beautiful. And the one fun fact: one of our good friends, Hiro Murai, who's another music video director who now Atlanta and stuff like that, he's incredible, his father was the composer and he was also at the beginning of the movie. He's the guy who's eating chips really loudly and gets beat up by the Yakuza. So this place, that was when I first heard about it was like Hiro posted online. I was like, maybe I'll watch that, his dad scored it. Yeah, no, this is this is the best movie ever. Yeah, it's amazing.”

“[Translated] I'm especially happy to pick up this film. This is one of my favorite films. On the surface, it looks like a story about ramen, but it's actually about what lies in the depth of the human heart: that warmest, most beautiful thing. That's why it's one of my favorite movies. Every so often, I go back and rewatch this film. At one point, I even imagined myself making a film like this.”

“I’m going to take Tampopo. Tampopo is hot and a really good food movie. I’m going to take this. I actually watched this when it was on the Criterion Channel during a Thanksgiving– Covid Thanksgiving, right after we made The Lost Daughter, oh, I got to say, as a double feature with Babette’s Feast, which was the first time I ever saw Babette’s Feast, and then we named my dog Babette.”

“I will start here with Tampopo. The egg? Crazy.”