How did soul music and exotic cuisine come together? Is the restaurant based on a real place?
The idea was to do something where music defines the rhythm, so the whole film feels like a wild DJ set. I love all kinds of music, but Hamburg is known as a soul town, so it made sense for the film. With Head-On, I started the system of writing to music, so I know what music I’m going to use to hit the emotional level the scene needs. It’s also practical because we can calculate the music budget accurately. The other thing is, Adam had a restaurant [bought after he starred in Short Sharp Shock] for 10 years. At night, he would mix on two turntables and it became a club. It was the melting pot of our social life, with artists hanging around. So we wanted to put our nostalgia into a film with music. How did you decide what to put on the menu? After a lot of research, we discovered Aphrodite by [Chilean writer] Isabel Allende, all about food you can cook, and then, after you eat it, make love. The recipes were so interesting, so we got permission to use dishes from that book. And that’s
