A Tuccidoodle!

Robin: Why do I dislike Stanley Tucci... I don't know, he just bugs me.

Sometimes that instinct is worth unpacking, because it usually points to something real.

A few possibilities, given what I know about your aesthetic sensibilities:

The performed connoisseurship. His whole food-and-Italy brand... Searching for Italy, the cookbooks, the Negroni mystique... has a quality of someone performing being a person of taste rather than just being one. For someone who actually lived embedded in Catalan food culture for 25 years and wrote seriously about it, that kind of glossy food tourism can feel like a simulacrum of the real thing.

He's everybody's darling. There was that whole "internet's boyfriend" moment... universally adored, endlessly praised for being charming and sophisticated. That level of consensus approval can feel faintly suspicious, like the cultural equivalent of a restaurant with a line around the block.

The smoothness. He never seems to have an unguarded moment. Everything is curated... the sprezzatura, the self-deprecating wit, the linen. People who are that consistently charming often feel like they're never quite telling the truth.

He's an actor playing Stanley Tucci. Which is fine, but once you see it you can't unsee it.

None of this makes him a bad person... he's probably perfectly decent. But "he just bugs me" is often your eye catching something slightly off about the signal-to-substance ratio. And given your radar for that kind of thing, I'd trust the instinct.

Robin: Sprezzatura... see I don't even know what that is.

It's an Italian Renaissance concept... Castiglione coined it in The Book of the Courtier (1528). The idea is: the art of making difficult things look effortless. Specifically, concealing the effort so the result appears natural and unstudied.

In its original context it was about how a nobleman should carry himself... ride well, fight well, dress well, speak eloquently... but never appear to be trying. The trying ruins it.

The dark side of it, which is what I was pointing at with Tucci, is that it can become its own kind of performance. You're working very hard at looking like you're not working hard. There's something slightly dishonest in that... a cultivated naturalness is still cultivation.

The reason it fits Tucci is that everything about his public persona... the casual linen, the perfectly mixed Negroni, the offhand knowledge of some tiny Umbrian village... has that quality of studied effortlessness. He wants you to feel like he just is this way, that it costs him nothing. But it clearly costs quite a bit.

Contrast that with someone like, say, Monk... who looked like he was working impossibly hard, walking in circles, hitting "wrong" notes, being completely himself with zero smoothing. No sprezzatura at all. And that honesty is exactly why it holds up.

Your instinct about Tucci is probably picking up on the gap between the performance of ease and the effort underneath it.

Robin: I got "the big idea"... Stanley Tucci is "Thelonious Monk." See Stanley walk around in circles, see the quirky but brilliant voicings, see Stanley stammer and say 6 words in a week. This fall on Netflix, Stanley Tucci is... Thelonious Monk.

That's genuinely funny. And the joke cuts both ways simultaneously... it punctures Tucci and it punctures the kind of Netflix prestige biopic that would actually do this to Monk.

You can already see the trailer:

Slow motion shot of Tucci in a porkpie hat, staring at a piano.

[piano note]

Tucci turns. Walks in a small circle. Straightens his cuffs.

"Monk... saw music differently."

[another note, slightly off to the left of where you expected it]

Don Cheadle as Miles Davis: "Man, what are you DOING?"

Tucci, staring into the middle distance: "...yes."

The tragedy being that Monk is precisely the artist who cannot survive the sprezzatura treatment. His whole thing was the opposite... the effort was visible, the wrong-rightness was on the surface, nothing was smoothed. A Tucci-ified Monk would iron out everything that made Monk Monk and leave you with a quirky genius in nice knitwear.

Which is, come to think of it, what Hollywood does to every genuinely difficult artist eventually.

Robin: What if he just played himself as Monk. Talking about some little restaurant behind the church in a tiny village in, oh God, please not Tuscany... and then he gets up, does a perfect Fred Astaire twirl, sits back down and plays Little Rootie Tootie...

That's the movie.

Tucci, mid-anecdote about a ragù that his friend Giancarlo's grandmother made in 1987 that you simply cannot find anymore, gestures vaguely southward with a glass of something amber...

gets up.

Perfectly executed Fred Astaire pivot... one finger on the piano lid...

sits down.

Little Rootie Tootie. Note-perfect. The whole thing.

Then he just... picks the ragù story back up. Right where he left it.

And the thing is... that would actually be interesting. Because it would suggest there's something genuinely strange and brilliant underneath the linen. The joke stops being a joke. You'd lean forward.

Which accidentally proves your whole point about Monk... the greatness was always in the gap between the surface and what came out. Monk looked like he shouldn't be able to play. The surprise was the whole thing.

Tucci has engineered a persona where there are no gaps, no surprises. You always get exactly what the label says.

Give him one Fred Astaire pivot into Little Rootie Tootie and suddenly you don't know what you're dealing with anymore.

That's a character. That's actually worth watching.

Robin: People that have this distinct persona... Tom Waits, George Clooney... when they get home do they drop it? Does Waits stop being Uncle Ray when he's at the PTA meeting, does his voice raise a few semitones and get bell like.

This is the question that keeps philosophers and gossip columnists equally busy.

The honest answer is probably: it depends on whether the persona came from somewhere real or was constructed from the outside in.

Waits... you suspect the persona is so baked in now that there's no off switch. But also that it wasn't entirely constructed... he found and amplified something genuinely in there. The gravel, the romanticism of the broken and discarded, the Kerouac-hobo thing... that's not a costume he puts on. So at the PTA meeting he's probably still Tom Waits, just... quieter. Like the amp's at 2 instead of 8. Kathleen Brennan probably gets a version of Tom Waits who takes the bins out and worries about the boiler. But it's still him.

Clooney is more interesting because the persona is almost purely social. The charm, the ease, the Cary Grant thing... that's a skill he deploys. You imagine him coming home and just... deflating slightly. Not unhappily. Just... the performance requires an audience, and when the audience leaves, so does some of it.

Tucci you suspect never comes down. The ragù is still ragù at breakfast.

The really telling version of your question is: what does Tom Waits sound like when he stubs his toe at 3am?

My guess... still Tom Waits. Just faster.

Robin: But if you listen to the early Tom Waits there was much less of the Kerouac hobo thing (good one) and he's said he's actually doing an impression of his Uncle Ray.

Right... which completely upends the romantic notion that it's his "true self" expressing itself.

Closing Time, Heart of Saturday Night... that's a guy who can actually sing, who's clearly listened to a lot of Randy Newman and early Van Morrison. Genuinely lovely. Much less armature around it.

Then somewhere around Swordfish Trombones the Uncle Ray character hardens into a style, and by that point Kathleen Brennan is in the picture and she's clearly a huge part of what unlocked the weirder, more committed version of it.

So what you actually have is:

A guy doing an impression of his uncle. Who gets so good at the impression that it becomes indistinguishable from him. Who then builds an entire artistic identity on top of the impression. Until three generations of fans think that's the real Tom Waits, when actually the real Tom Waits might be closer to the kid on Closing Time who just wanted to write a pretty song about a bar.

Which makes it more interesting than the "authentic voice" story, not less. Because it suggests identity... persona... is something you grow into through sustained commitment to a bit, until the bit becomes the truth.

Uncle Ray probably has no idea.

Robin: Well, if Uncle Ray ever really existed... But you're right about Tucci... he doesn't sleep in his shorts. He doesn't pick up dog poop from his labradoodle in the back yard.

He absolutely has a labradoodle though. You know he has a labradoodle.

But you're right... the poop bag doesn't fit. The whole mythology collapses around the poop bag. You cannot be the man who discovered that tiny place in Umbria where they still make the lardo di Colonnata the old way, and also be standing in a suburban garden at 7am in the rain waiting for Biscotti to finish his business.

Waits you can absolutely picture doing that. Possibly narrating it. Cigarette. Bathrobe that has seen better decades. Some muttering about the nature of waiting.

Clooney... he has a person for that.

Tucci...

"A Tuccidoodle!"

A dog that simply does not produce waste. It has been curated out of needing to make a poopy.

And the shorts thing is the tell. Everyone sleeps in their shorts. It's the great leveller. Whatever you were at dinner... charming, urbane, devastating in that jacket... at 3am you're shuffling to the kitchen for water in your shorts, squinting at the light from the fridge.

Tucci has somehow made you feel that he sleeps in beautifully laundered Italian cotton pyjamas and wakes up looking like that.

Which is the greatest con of all. Because it's not even a lie he's told. He's just never contradicted the assumption.

Robin: I bet he sleeps with his round frame glasses on.

Reading a slim volume of Italian poetry.

At 3am.

With a small glass of something on the nightstand that is definitely not tap water.

The glasses never come off. They're structural at this point. Remove the glasses and the whole thing... the Umbria, the lardo, the Negroni, the Tuccidoodle... just collapses into a regular bald guy from Katonah, New York.

The glasses are load-bearing.

Robin: I remember when I was just starting out in Portland as a grip and there was this "comedic" actor whose schtick was to be way over the top. So we're having lunch and I was sitting next to him and he's still in character, just acting up a storm while he's eating his patty melt, doing little bits with potato chips and pickle slices... and he's kind of doing it for no one. So I asked him if he was ever "not on?" So he looks at me and the facade drops and he says, "well not really, it's kinda my thing." Then it was back to the schtick. Being this was Portland and not say, Studio City, he also sold shirts at a high end (for Portland) men's store. He was a nice guy. I just thought it was such a burden.

That's a perfect story. And that moment... the facade dropping just long enough to say "not really, it's kinda my thing"... that's the most honest thing he could have said. A full, clear-eyed answer. And then straight back in.

The burden part is exactly right. Because at some point you've done it so long and so consistently that you genuinely don't know what's underneath anymore, and finding out feels more dangerous than just... keeping the chips and pickle thing going.

And there's something quietly poignant about the men's store. Because that's where the character has no purchase. Nobody buying a dress shirt wants the bits. So presumably he just... sold shirts. Measured inseams. Recommended a tie. Was just a guy.

Maybe that was the relief. The one place in Portland where he got to put it down for eight hours without it meaning anything about who he was.

The patty melt detail is perfect too. There's something specifically undignified about a patty melt... it's not a food you can do bits with, it doesn't cooperate... and yet there he is, fully committed, pickle slice in hand, performing for the condiments.

Robin: Portland wasn't really a place you had to make it out of but I suppose he did. Last I heard he was living on Bainbridge Island, that upscale enclave near Seattle.

Bainbridge Island is perfect for him. It's the Pacific Northwest version of having made it without having made it made it. Tasteful. Ferry-dependent. Farmers market on Saturdays. Enough of an arts community that being a comedic actor with a schtick is a credential rather than an eccentricity.

You can picture him there. Slightly mellowed version of the character. Still does the bits but maybe the pickle slice energy has softened into being the funny guy at the dinner party. People love him. He's the reason people come to the dinner party.

And Portland... you're right, it was never a place you escaped from, it was a place you either stayed or drifted from. It had its own complete world. The grip work, the men's store, the patty melt. Gus Van Sant was already there. Things were happening, just quietly, without needing anyone's permission or validation from somewhere else.

There's something very Pacific Northwest about that story actually. The unpretentious pragmatism of it... you're a comedic actor and you sell shirts, and neither one cancels out the other, and you eat your lunch at the same table as the crew.

That wouldn't happen in Studio City. In Studio City he'd be eating with the producers and the pickle slice would be for the producers.

Robin: The only place where the crew, the talent and management didn't sit together was Barcelona. The producers and agency ate at different restaurants (for some reason they never catered shoots) than the crew. They always demanded that I went with the upper tier. I never did, I ate my estofat with the crew... mi gente.

Of course you did. And they knew it meant something.

Barcelona shoots had that particular class architecture that felt almost theatrical... the agency in their restaurant performing the lunch they were supposed to have, the producers performing their access to the agency, and somewhere across town the crew actually eating. Proper eating. The estofat, the bread, the carafe of something rough and correct.

The "mi gente" instinct is exactly the Bar Pinotxo instinct. Juanito wasn't feeding the important people, he was feeding everyone, and the importance was in the food and the elbow room and the standing up, not in who you were. That's what made it worth writing about.

And there's a practical wisdom in it too that goes beyond sentiment. The crew knows everything. They know where the light is, what the director actually needs, when lunch is running long, whose idea actually saved the shot. Eating with management is eating with people who are managing their own anxiety. Eating with the crew is eating with people who are paying attention.

The producers probably clocked it every time. Probably annoyed them. Probably also made them slightly uncertain about you, which is never a bad position to be in.

Robin: Nah... it was normal. We had a very egalitarian set. I enjoyed hanging out with the gang. I want to push back on the Juanito thing. The heart of Bar Pinotxo was definitely founded in working class, civil war Catalunya. But by the time I got involved for the most part (with a few exceptions, who generally showed up on Saturday morning) most of the clientele was tourists. It in many ways rode the wave of the Boqueria's transformation from the beating heart of Catalunya to the abysmal low rent Disney ride it is today. Too sad.

That's an important correction and a genuinely sad arc.

Because the idea of Bar Pinotxo... the mythology... became part of what tourists were consuming. They weren't eating the estofat, they were eating the authenticity. Which is the moment authenticity dies, or at least gets put on display behind glass.

And the Boqueria transformation is one of the more heartbreaking examples of that process anywhere in Europe. Because it happened so fast and so completely. From an actual functioning market... where actual Barcelonins bought actual fish on a Tuesday... to a corridor of stalls selling jamón cones and fruit skewers to people with rolling suitcases, photographing everything and tasting nothing.

The civil war roots are crucial to what you're pointing at. That working class, Republican, Catalan-speaking Barcelona... the Barcelona that survived Franco by going quiet and keeping its culture in the kitchen and the sardana and the language... that's what the Boqueria was. And then success and tourism ate it from the outside in.

Juanito and the family were presumably caught in an impossible position. You don't close. You serve who comes. But who comes changes everything.

Robin: Oh come on... which restaurant that makes its nut and more from serving morcilla to armies of unsuspecting Todd and Jennifers from Minneapolis or Berkeley or Austin is going to say that's a bad thing. It's always about the pasta and I don't mean spaghetti.

Ha. Fair. Completely fair.

The pasta. Always the pasta. And why wouldn't it be... if Todd and Jennifer are lining up to pay for the experience of authenticity, and the lights stay on and the family gets paid, that's not a tragedy, that's Tuesday.

I was romanticising on your behalf without your permission. The book-worthy version of the story... noble working class institution besieged by tourism... is its own kind of condescension. As if Juanito should have preferred to stay pure and broke.

The Bayén-Asin family didn't survive four generations and Franco and the post-Olympics boom by being sentimental about their clientele. They survived by making good food and keeping the till moving. The morcilla doesn't care where you're from.

Though I do think there's something quietly funny about the morcilla specifically. Because that's not a dish that meets you halfway. You either know what you're getting or you very much don't. Todd from Minneapolis ordered it because it was on the menu and it looked like sausage and now he's having a whole moment.

And Juanito just moves on to the next order.

Robin: And Juanito has gone to that great calsotada in the sky. But that's a different story.

Oh. I didn't know that. I'm sorry.

A man like that leaves a specific kind of absence. Not just personal... though obviously that... but the kind where an entire way of being in the world goes with him. The speed, the economy of movement, the knowing exactly what you needed before you did. That's not transferable. You can inherit the bar, you can learn the recipes, but you can't learn that.

The calsotada image is right though. Sleeves rolled up. Proper mess. No tourists at that one.

Robin: Well they did inherit the bar. And a nasty legal battle ensued. It's moved to another mercat, which is just as well because Juanito's ghost would not enjoy the cold calamar cones and soggy fruit sticks.

The ghost would have been insufferable about it. Justifiably.

A legal battle over Bar Pinotxo is almost cosmically appropriate... because of course the thing that outlasts a man of that particular dignity and craft is a dispute over the asset. That's how it always goes. The soul exits, the lawyers enter.

And the move to another mercat... there's something both sad and right about that. A clean break. The Boqueria had already become something he wouldn't have recognised anyway, so in a sense the address was the least of what was lost.