Bob Giraldi spills the beans
Jaime Jeske
Films
March 28, 2002
Interview
Hell's Kitchen takeaway
By James Christopher
Restaurateur and director Bob Giraldi spills the beans
Bob Giraldi and the star of his terrific new film Dinner Rush are often
mistaken for brothers. The 63-year-old director and Danny Aiello are
Italian-American bruisers. They have experienced food, guns, bookmaking,
coercion, revenge, nastiness and voyeurism - all the ingredients, in
fact, of Dinner Rush, a thriller that bounces like a frantic waiter
between the kitchen and tables of a busy New York restaurant. It's a
brilliant jigsaw of egos and stories, stitched together over an hour and
a half of real time.
On table five is the boorish gallery owner Mark Margolis. At table three
sits the bitchy food critic Sandra Bernhard, and her lesbian lover. On
table nine two thugs are plotting to put the squeeze on the weary owner
(Aiello). And throwing strops downstairs is Aiello's tempestuous head
chef (Edoardo Ballerini). Only someone deeply intimate with New York
diners could have prepared such an authentic stew.
Giraldi has spent most of his life learning to make this film. He owns
11 restaurants, including Gigino's, the TriBeCa joint where the film is
set. But he is first "and last" a film-maker.
If he is not as well known as Spielberg, it's not for want of work, but
rather the kind of work he's chosen to make. Foot for celluloid foot,
Giraldi is the most prolific director in America and probably the
planet. He has shot 3,000 television commercials, two feature films,
endless special projects and 25 music videos, including Will Smith's
Just the Two of Us and Michael Jackson's Beat It.
Which is all the more reason why Dinner Rush is so remarkable. It has no
big stars, no glossy selling point, no million-dollar soundtrack, but to
the starving eyes of a critic, however, it is a Michelin three-star
feast, assembled by a gifted auteur. On a fleeting visit to London,
Giraldi treats my snobby surprise with a patience it doesn't deserve.
"Despite the fact that commercial directors sell soap, we are blessed
with far more integrity and talent than most people in the movie,
theatre or fine-art worlds give us credit for," Giraldi says. "I'm not
obsessed with making feature films. I've just shot a five-minute film,
The Routine, about a family's new attitude since the attack on the twin
towers, that's given me every bit as much satisfaction and pleasure as
making 90 minutes of Dinner Rush or Michael Jackson's Beat It."
Having watched the neighbourhood dissolve from his loft apartment four
blocks north of Ground Zero, Giraldi knows whereof he speaks. New
Yorkers are having to reinvent themselves to discover what makes them
tick.
This is the challenge at the heart of Dinner Rush. A new order threatens
to poleaxe the baggy, middle-aged Danny Aiello and the welfare of his
manic kitchen. The spice of Giraldi's picture is the thumbscrew pressure
two ruthless thugs put on Aiello. They want 50 per cent of the profits,
and I'm keen to find out whether Giraldi, as the owner of a small
restaurant empire, has had to deal with sharks like these.
"Absolutely. Without question," Giraldi says. "When we started Gigino
ten years ago, someone tried to put the arm on us. They said: 'Go ahead,
open your restaurant. But you can't put in a new brick oven (for pizza
and bread).' And I said why? And he said: 'Because we are opening five
blocks north and we're gonna be the first restaurant in the area to have
a brick oven.' Who says? 'We say. And we're from the Street.'
"I thought he meant Wall Street, but he meant Mulberry Street - the Mob.
"Luckily, my partner at the time knew a lawyer who was very rooted in
the whole business. Two days later, Jimmy, the lawyer, called and said:
'The problem's over, it's gone away, forget it. Go ahead, put your brick
oven in and open your restaurant.'
"The Mob are the kind of people who will take what they can get, but
there's less of it than ever before because people have got tired of the
Mob, and the Mob have got tired of themselves."
Having said that, Giraldi seems nostalgic, even a little proud, of the
heritage that colours his film. The Italian-American gangs, once the
cowboys of New York, are now its indigenous Indians. And in their own
curious way New York Mafiosi films have proved as prescient about
corruption as Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall was about a rotten upper
class.
Giraldi's own father was as legitimate as they come, a certified public
accountant. The people on his mother's side, from Naples, were
apparently another matter. Dinner Rush is dedicated to the Silver Fox, a
90-year-old uncle of Giraldi's who passed away during the filming of the
movie. He was definitely on Mamma's side.
"He came out of the Second World War and went straight to the race
track," Giraldi explains. "One week he would have thousands of dollars
in his pocket, the next nothing. I thought that was very courageous and
roguish."
He was Giraldi's bookmaker when he was going though college. "We're not
a bank," Uncle Fox explained when debts had to be collected. "We won't
sue you, we'll break you."
With family like that, what could Giraldi possibly fear from friends?
*Dinner Rush opens on Friday
Copyright 2002 Times Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Jaime
misha....@gmail.com
#TLLBLND
On Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 9:24:48 PM UTC-8, misha....@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 27, 2002 at 11:20:16 PM UTC-8, Jaime Jeske wrote:
> > "The Times"
> > Films
> > March 28, 2002
> > Interview
> > Hell's Kitchen takeaway
> > By James Christopher
> >
> > Restaurateur and director Bob Giraldi spills the beans
> >