Episode Details

On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with David Gelb, the creator of Chef’s Table and director of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, who shares his Five Rules for Creating a Body of Work You Love. We discuss how his early dreams of making sci-fi blockbusters shaped his unique documentary style, how technology shifts helped his early food storytelling, and why his five rules—such as making what you want to watch and surrounding yourself with collaborators you actually like—are essential for any creative looking to go the distance.

It’s always a pleasure catching up with David. He’s someone I’ve known for years and whose work has helped shape how people talk about food on screen. Hearing his insights on how to sustain a long creative career—while staying true to one’s taste and values—is a reminder that the inside track is rarely a straight line. This episode is a great listen for anyone who wants to understand how things get made, what it takes to keep going, and how to build a life around telling the stories that matter to you.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.

I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.

I’m always excited to sit down with today’s guest, David Gelb, creator of Chef’s Table, who’s here today to share his five rules for creating a body of work you love.

He talks about the importance of making a thing you want to watch to be the base of anything you create, a tactful way to ask for and receive feedback, and that to ensure for a long career, always work with people you like.

It’s a great conversation for anyone who’s starting to think about the projects they want to make, create, or get going this year.

So let’s get into the rules.

David, so good to see you. Congrats on the Chef Table podcast. Always great to see you putting out new work into the world. And thanks for making time for the show.

Of course, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Last time I saw you was at the Chef Conference in LA. We were actually chatting about the projects that— which I’ve seen from so many people these days, whether it’s a newsletter, social series, something like that. What do you think is driving this creative push for people to do their own thing?

Well, I think that a lot of it is a technology thing. It’s sort of like when YouTube first started or whenever something becomes accessible, people are excited to do it. I think that’s great. It’s easy to get a microphone, a headphone. You don’t need to get into this specific studio space or can record nice footage on an iPhone now versus needing to get a big camera per se, or even being able to edit on a computer at home, which was something that was not attainable right before my generation of filmmaking. So I think the technology makes it possible and people have a lot to say. There’s an audience of people that are not watching TV and they’re on the internet.

I know that advancements in technology and cameras has come so far since you started studying film in college. Did you ever think that these changes would allow you to make your first documentary?

I suffered, or in some ways benefited, but mostly suffered from what I like to refer to as film school delusion, which is where you think that you are going to exit film school and then immediately go do a blockbuster, big budget movie, like a Star Wars reboot or Indiana Jones or something like that.

Yeah, of course.

I think it is specifically afflicts those who graduate from USC