There’s an unexpected amount of screen time in “Nobu” devoted to Nobu Matsuhisa and Robert DeNiro, along with their business partner Meir Teper, inspecting the premises of a potential new property to purchase, when it is hardly what either are known for, but then again Matt Tyrnauer, who once made “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City,” the stirring profile of public spaces advocate Jane Jacobs, has always found architecture can be quite revealing. Regardless of the context, it’s a kick to watch DeNiro open every door he sees with a rabid curiosity to see what’s behind it as Matsuhisa, the renowned restauranteur, quietly stands back to use his imagination as to what a kitchen could look like on the premises, having entirely different temperaments. (It’s revealed that the partnership was forged only after Nobu initially couldn’t be bothered by DeNiro to talk business after a succession of dinners the actor enjoyed at his Los Angeles restaurant Matsuhisa when the chef had a tendency to keep his head down working the sushi bar, but ultimately relented.) But it isn’t only the scaffolding of the building that they’re inspecting that is of interest, but that this is how both spend the off-hours from their more famous creative pursuits, with Tyrnauer showing off the nuts and bolts of how they ended up creating a cultural phenomenon.
Although Nobu’s food has never directly reached supermarkets, the reason that California rolls and nigiri can now regularly be found at HEBs in Texas as easily as Tokyo superettes is due in no small part to the sensation that the chef’s Beverly Hills restaurant Matsuhisa became in the early ‘80s, leading DeNiro to partner with him on a number of restaurants and even hotels in his name that spread his influence far and wide. In Tyrnauer’s compelling portrait, however, that global effect is seen as a two-way street when Nobu, who transcended his early history as street tough to find discipline behind an apron, first became successful in Peru, realizing that there were new possibilities for sashimi after trying ceviche for the first time. The thought of the way his mother grilled fish in Saitama may never have been far from mind, but as international acclaim grew for his cooking, his palate broadened as well, innovating recipes with local ingredients as his restaurant empire grew. Tyrnauer follows Nobu to stops in Los Cabos and Las Vegas where the chef is brought around to check in on operations before opening, as well as down time in Hakone during his rare respite from the 10 months he spends on the road annually, as well as his duties at signature restaurants Nobu in New York and Matsuhisa in Los Angeles, holding onto his passion for the profession as the business part of it continues to increasingly take up his time and energy.
While an appreciation for detail is shown to have sustained Nobu all these years, it also buoys Tyrnauer’s portrait when the entrepreneurial and culinary pursuits aren’t portrayed as separate parts of Nobu’s story, much as the man himself may divorce them at times. The attention paid to what appears on a plate becomes no different than the demands he makes to create the right atmosphere in which people experience it, noted as an early pioneer of the idea of a chef as entertainer when the opportunity to open Nobu in New York offered the chance to present the sushi bar as a kind of central stage. His path hasn’t been entirely charmed as he recalls setbacks such as an early restaurant in Alaska that burned down before it could open (though the time spent around regional fish markets led to his signature black cod in miso dish, now replicated the world over) and the unthinkable suicide of one of his earliest investors and most beloved friends, but “Nobu” pictures success as a result of every part of his considerable history and personality traits, a recipe that can only be his alone. The same holds true for Tyrnauer’s ability to quantify the cultural impact of his subjects and consider them in various dimensions, and with the film rolling out into theaters, he spoke about how Nobu took him aback, being let into his inner sanctum quite literally as the chef showed him around Japan and how he handled interviews in a language that he wasn’t always fluent in.
How’d this come about?
I grew up in L.A. and when Matsuhisa opened in the ’80s, I was in high school. I was raised in a bit of a foodie house, so I remember the impact that restaurant had. It was an earthquake, food and culture-wise in the city and L.A. in the ’80s was sushi crazy, but this really was different. It was almost like a temple of Japanese food that had an impact that no one had ever seen before. Then Nobu was a giant seismic hit in New York in the ’90s when I was living here. I worked for Vanity Fair at the time and lived downtown, not far from where it opened. So I understood Nobu’s importance and the fact that no one had made a film about him before and that he is operating on a scale worldwide that I don’t think anyone else in the restaurant business is really, certainly not at his level. It’s a luxury brand. He’s the personification of it. That was interesting to me. My first film was about someone who was a fashion designer, Valentino, who was also a global brand and still at the top of his company and still working, so I saw am interesting parallel — an artist, top of his game, household name. No one had ever made a film about him, so it seemed like the right idea to me.
It reminded me of “Valentino” also and an unexpected similarity is that you’re entering a culture that isn’t your own necessarily when so much of this is in Japan as “Valentino” was in Italy. Do you end up engaging with the subject differently when that’s the case?
Well, you’re giving me an opportunity to say that I’ve been studying Italian since I was in college — and struggling with it ever since — but my Italian got pretty decent when I was making “Valentino” and I actually could understand a lot of what was going on. In this case, mercifully Nobu speaks English and one of the producers we hired would simultaneously translate what was going on for me for the heavy Japanese sequences. I’ve actually never worked like that and it worked great. For the interviews, I had simultaneous translation or Nobu was speaking in English first and then when he went into Japanese, I’d already heard the answer basically, so we used these tricks to get the dialogue because I didn’t want people that didn’t speak English very well to try to speak it and make it uncomfortable for them. There are really three languages in the film because Nobu started his career outside Japan in Peru and speaks Spanish. When he first came to L.A. when he didn’t speak English, he spoke Spanish because the restaurant many a kitchen in L.A. are Spanish [speakers], not English, so he actually had a little bit of an advantage there. I thought that was an interesting footnote about a guy who didn’t speak English starting out in Los Angeles.
You obviously won his trust when he takes you to Hakone, this place he says he often goes to get away from the world. Was that always on the table?
Yeah, one thing I realized about Nobu early was that once he commits to doing something, he goes all out. But he’s very careful and very thoughtful about what he says he’ll do and not do and he decided to make this movie and that to him, it became clear to me, meant that he was going to fully participate. I really appreciate that and he’s a public person who’s also quite private. I’ve dealt with a lot of people like that. He has a certain amount of celebrity. He’s recognized by people. It’s not like he can’t walk outside, but he needs private time because he’s giving a lot to the public. He goes to Hakone a couple times a year, which is a resort town near Mount Fuji in Japan, where he has a house, and he really relaxes there and unplugs. So it was a bit of a sacrifice for him to invite a crew of six or seven with drivers, to go on vacation with him.
For me, it wasn’t just going on vacation the famous guy. It was about showing a particular world and it was really extraordinary to just see his private world. It’s very Japanese in the sense that it’s a bathing town and he invited us to actually shoot him in his bath, which is a first for me, but it’s very poetic and quite lyrical. There’s something very holistic about Japanese living, and a beauty to life in Japan and a simplicity that I think is manifested in what he does professionally and relates to the world and the culture that he creates that spreads throughout his empire. There’s a coherence to it that I thought was relevant.
One of the other ways this felt unusually intimate was to get to see him prepare food in unconventional settings – there’s the scene at Matsuhisa that shows him in his element in a kitchen, but then a scene on the back of a boat in Los Cabos where he catches a fish and turns it into sashimi immediately and a private dinner he makes for friends at home. What was it like finding those more spontaneous moments of him as a chef?
That access can be very important for a film like this. I’ve made films about people that didn’t want to let me in as much. And it’s a dance [where] you want to insinuate yourself in the subject’s life, but you don’t want to become an unwelcome nuisance. There’s nothing worse than being an unwanted guest. And I didn’t actually want to do the boat scene, to be honest. Going out on a yacht in Cabo wasn’t high on my list, but showing up is 90% of the job sometimes and I’m so glad we did it because I didn’t know he was going to go fishing, catch a fish and then clean it and make sashimi out of it. That turned out to really be the opening sequence, which shows you that the unplanned things sometimes are the most important things in a documentary.
Then he’s built these sushi bars in his house and you see those and go, “Do you really use this? Who has a sushi bar in their own home?” Well, I guess a sushi chef might. But it was really quite wonderful. He had friends come over and we shot this sequence where he and another chef create a really elaborate dinner for really close friends and there was just so much real love and care that went into this and appreciation that it really was pretty remarkable to see. He said [casually] he cooked for his friends, but to see the act of devotion and love between the chef and the friends and the bond of friendship that is embodied in that I thought was pretty extraordinary.
That might’ve been it, but was there some element in this that you didn’t expect and made it into the final cut?
The emotion, which is exemplified by his absolute emotional torture over the suicide of his closest friend Sakai. I’ve never had anyone I was interviewing break down to the extent that he did. And that was the first interview and it wasn’t very far into it, and it’s an unusual position for a journalist or an interviewer to really to sit in front of someone who’s so emotional and not really be commiserating because it’s not my job, really. But while that was unfolding, I’m thinking to myself, “Well, this is profound and meaningful to him,” and when he said that he hadn’t been to see the grave of his friend, I thought, “I need to ask about that,” which was really uncomfortable for me even to think about, but after we stopped filming, he came up to me and said, “Would you come with me to visit the grave of Sakai when we’re in Japan?”
I was so happy that he brought it up. That was a first for me. And we did this very raw scene where he is mourning for the first time at the grave of his friend and he told me [doing the movie] was a way to make him commit to himself to go there because he made an appointment with me to meet him that day at the cemetery. He said that he might not have had the courage to go if he didn’t feel the need to fulfill the obligation that he made with me and with himself, so that was a very rare instance of reality blending with film that was unprecedented for me.
“Nobu” is now playing in New York at the Angelika Film Center and opens in Los Angeles on July 2nd at the Monica Film Center and will open around the country in the weeks to follow.