Food for thought

Small, buffed, bald and Italianate, Stanley Tucci will never be one of Hollywood's romantic leads. Best known here for playing evil billionaire Richard Cross in the television series Murder One, he's spent his film career slogging out swarthy baddies in second-rate movies such as The Pelican Brief and Undercover Blues. By last year, the 35-year-old actor had had enough. Deciding that the only way to land a decent role was to write it himself, he cooked up Big Night, a deliciously understated movie about two Italian immigrants struggling to make a success of a gourmet restaurant in 1950s New Jersey.

For someone who'd never been behind a camera before it's a remarkably assured directorial debut, distinguished by a languid pace and sincerity rare in today's style-conscious and action-oriented industry. Shot for $4m in 35 days, the film was a surprise hit in the States, where it recouped production costs in the first four weeks of release, won a screenwriting prize at Sundance and even made it into the top 10 grossing movies.

Still trying to digest the media feeding frenzy that greeted the film's "sleeper" success, Tucci is clearly pleased that his unformulaic sensibility (which doesn't even serve up the obligatory happy ending) has been vindicated. "I like watching small movies that take place in their own time," he says. "So that's what I set out to make. If you know the story you want to tell and you create your characters fully enough you don't have to worry about plot."

What story there is came partly from Tucci's background as a New Jersey Italian, and the almost spiritual love of eating bred into him by his parents. "I'm obsessed by food, as anyone who's been out for dinner with me will tell you" he admits. "Part of the reason Big Night was made in real time was because it's about taking the time to slow down and enjoy life, enjoy the company of people. I find it very hard to stay still. The only time I unwind is at the table. There I allow myself a state of grace."

In the tradition of Babette's Feast and Like Water for Chocolate the film invests heavily in the ritual preparation and symbolism of food, building towards a ceremonial feast, sensually consumed by a circling camera. However mouth-wateringly observed, the movie's gormandising is really just metaphorical garnish for a story about the age old contest between art and commerce. It's a battle fought out between brothers Primo, the perfectionist chef and Secondo, Tucci's pragmatic businessman who's willing to compromise authenticity for profit. The brothers' rare customers break Primo's heart by ordering indiscriminate side dishes of spaghetti and meat balls. More often, they head across the street, where Ian Holm's tasteless grotto thrives by ladling tomato sauce on to TV-dinner palates.

Making Big Night turned into a family affair for Tucci. Written in collaboration with his cousin Joe Tropiano and co-directed with Campbell Scott, his best friend from high school, he even employed his mother as technical advisor for the Timpano, a huge drum of pasta and sauce that forms the piece de resistance of Primo's culinary art. Tucci himself spent a year training at a New York restaurant to learn the part. Wasn't he ever worried that he might not get the money to make the movie? "Well, yeah," he laughs, "but at least I learnt how to cook. I also became very good friends with Gianni Scappin, the chef who taught me. In the kitchen he'd talk about how he was unhappy with his job, and about how he just wanted to have his own restaurant and do things the way he wanted, and I'd talk to him about how I just wanted to make a movie the way I wanted. When he finally saw the movie he said [adopting a thick Italian accent], 'This is incredibol, youa biga movie star, I had no idea your movie would be so uge.' "

Luckily, Tucci's research found sumptuous expression in the film's final symbolic spread, which includes capon stuffed with pomegranates, and a roasted pig. "What we're trying to say in that scene is that there's an absolute place for art and the artist. That we can all reap the benefits if we open ourselves up to it and support that kind of creative person," says the director. "In America that's not usually done. Artists are forced to be beggars, spending most of their time and energy raising money for what they want to do. So the meal is really a metaphor for that."

In Primo's beleaguered idealism and Secondo's sharp-suited aspiration, Big Night also raises questions of national identity, ethnicity versus assimilation. "A lot of people tried to persuade us not to set the film in the 1950s," says Tucci, "but it just seemed right. That was a time when mass production was really shifting into gear and fast food was coming into being. Everything was getting bigger and more homogenised. Everyone was going to eat the same and have the same. America had made a very clear decision as to who it was. So to take the basic tenets of that period and to place among them these two alien guys working on something handmade, on a very intimate, human level seemed right."

Big Night's immigrant brothers must adapt to survive, which is something Tucci the Italian-American actor knows all about. His despair at being offered stereotypical "mobster" parts was another reason he decided to create his own film. "I, and 15 million other Italian-Americans suffer from stereotyping all the time. I'm always getting scripts with guys who come from Brooklyn and talk like, 'Hey, whattayadoin?' It's the only way Italians are portrayed in American film. The only way."

Was it revenge then that made Tucci cast the English Ian Holm wildly against type as the Piloggi brothers' Corsican nemesis Pascal? "He came on board at the 11th hour," Tucci laughs. "We'd offered the part to a famous Italian American actor who dropped out at the last minute. We had to find someone fast and eventually somebody suggested Ian Holm. I said, "Hrr?" Then looked at Chariots of Fire and said, 'Uhh [slaps forehead], of course'. When we first met to rehearse he was doing this New York tough- guy gangster thing, but I said, 'No. Do it in a French accent. I want him to be absolutely refined but very coarse and base.' Two days later, he had a perfect Corsican accent."

Other actors tucking into Tucci's feast include Isabella Rossellini, Minnie Driver, Liev Schreiber, and Campbell Scott, in an inspired cameo as a Cadillac salesman. "That exquisite, revelatory meal was shot in a couple of hours," says Tucci. "It was the end of the night, the last night everybody was all together. I was going to lose the whole cast the next day and there was no way we could afford to bring them all back. I didn't know how to film it, but someone came up with the idea of putting the cameramen on a dolly, so then I just pulled them around the table. Campbell and I had to jump in and out of the shot and direct at the same time."

If being behind the camera was enough to bring on indigestion, eating the set menu was sure to. "The actors got full after a while and the food wasn't very tasty," explains Tucci apologetically. "It can't be. If it's seasoned it goes bad quickly. So while they were making those rapturous faces they were eating this horrible stuff. When the shot was over they'd just spit it out. Thank God we did have to shoot it fast because otherwise they really would have gotten ill."

After the final feast, drooling audiences will leave the cinemas starving for an Italian meal, and hungry for more of Tucci's elegant film-making. Happily, he has set up his own production company (called First Cold Press, "like the olive oil") and is already busy trying to raise money for Ship of Fools, an old-style farce set in the 1930s. It's an uphill struggle. "Studios are handing out more cash to independent movies," says Tucci, "but they all want the deadpan violence of Tarantino, or films like Fargo. Those films are all about the style; you don't learn anything about the characters." Whatever happens, after the success of Big Night, the talented Tucci should be able to stop eating Hollywood's humble pien

Ryan Gilbey reviews 'Big Night' on page 7