Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the current release in theaters of the new 70’s-set biopic The Stunt Driver, starring Jay Baruchel, Laurence Leboeuf, Dan Bakkedahl, Ben Foster and Ed Helms, fan-favorite actor Baruchel shared some of the things that bring him joy in life. — N.D.
Hamburgers
I love a hamburger. I spend a lot of time thinking about hamburgers and I watch a lot of videos about them. The algorithm has blessed me with George Motz’s videos many times, and I've learned a lot of burger history from him, but also other people. I like comparing different burger traditions and one of the things I'm most excited about is that, at age 44, I've still somehow maintained curiosity as a day-to-day thing. One of my favorite things to do is to Google something incredibly mundane, like windows, so I've Googled hamburgers before. I've gone down that Wikipedia rabbit hole.
My love of hamburgers starts with, “Oh, that looks tasty,” or “Holy shit, that tasted good,” but now I am interested in unpacking why that is. Previously, I never gave a shit. I used to just like put a thing in my mouth, and that was that. Since Covid, I also started doing the lion's share of the cooking in our house, and I'm very fortunate to have married a woman who also appreciates hamburgers and will often request them. And I'm also lucky that said woman is pregnant and so she's been asking me to make hamburgers and we've been ordering them like they're going out of style. Which has just been spectacular.
My interest in learning about hamburgers is a function of my love for them. Like most people, I buy food from the grocery store or sometimes a farmer or a farmer's market if I can, so I'll buy whatever beef is available, but it's a point of pride that I can make any fucking piece of meat taste good. I used to like over-season burgers, but I realized that, in my opinion, beef only really needs two things: salt and lime juice. So, that's all I do on hamburgers now, and I don't put a bunch of breadcrumbs or eggs in them.
I always hated homemade burgers when I was a kid because I grew up in the ‘80s with a lot of propaganda on TV about how hamburgers should look and what they should be. My parents would say they were having burgers and I’d get excited and picture something from TV, but then it would be this big black baseball in between two fucking crackers, and then I'd bite into it and there'd be half a garlic clove or something. And I'd be like, “What the what? Who is this for?” Smash burgers are fine, but this fad will pass; we'll return to our senses. I don't want a hamburger to be too big, but it shouldn't be thin like a piece of paper, either. I also prefer a pan or a griddle to grill. That’s a very unpopular belief, but it's my personal favorite. So just take some beef, take care of the patties, roll them, massage them, get them nice and shapely. And then just add lime juice and salt, plus some cheddar, and then Bob's your uncle!
Reading Books on My Porch
I love reading books on my porch with a cup of tea and a joint. That's pretty close to bliss for me. I’m a creature of habit and I’ve been doing that for quite some time now. I pretty much only smoke sativa, because I like to read and it helps me get into whatever I'm reading – which is fucked that I would want to, because I typically just read history. Right now, I'm reading the second volume of a two-volume series about Canada in the First World War, so it's a weird thing to want to get in the trenches …
I used to be a real night owl in my younger years, but I stopped doing this when I got married, because I felt too under the microscope. There was a good chance you could find me at 3:00 in the morning reading about the Hundred Years War and listening to a soundtrack I’d specially made for the book. I tend to read a bunch of books in a row on the same subject matter, then get it out of my system and move onto something else. So if I was interested in, say, who Robin Hood really was, I'd read four or five books about that subject or era, and then go to ancillary things like books about forestry and groundskeeping in medieval England. And I’d make a soundtrack that was equal parts cues from movies set in the medieval period, like Ridley Scott's Robin Hood or Branagh’s Henry V, and then also put in actual medieval music, because there's extant sheet music from that time period and there's bands that just play that music.
I like to read when I’m alone and have no obligations. So the night will always have my heart, because that's when the world is mine and no one can steal me from my reverie, and all that shit. Especially in the cottage – cottage hours are the best for that.
Curated Movie Nights with My Wife
One of the things I look forward to the most is my wife and I curating our film choices for each other. We have a rule in our house where we don't want to lose an hour just scrolling and hoping we find something that we're both lukewarm on, so in lieu of that, we alternate who picks movies for us to watch. This means that we each get to see a lot of stuff that we wouldn't have otherwise watched, and my film diet is far healthier as a result.
My wife says that I just like things about cops or drug dealers shooting each other, or mobsters, or anything that's crime adjacent. Which is not wrong, though it feels very reductive. The truth is that if someone's not at least getting punched in the face, I kind of get bored easily. Heat is my favorite movie and I'm lucky enough to have come of age when Goodfellas and Casino and Carlito's Way were new releases at the video store. So I like all that kind of stuff, and then her taste is more like Studio Ghibli movies or The Virgin Suicides. Meathead that I am, I don't know that I would have given her kind of movies as much of a chance as I really should have.
Featured image, showing Jay Baruchel in The Stunt Driver, courtesy IFC.
