624. The Animal No One Loves, Until They Do
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What inspired the creation of Ratatouille?
Not always. Do you happen to make a nice ratatouille? Yeah, I've made ratatouille before, but I don't have the skill, taste and feeling to make a great ratatouille. The thing is, it's just a bunch of vegetables, right? Well, yes, but no. Yes, but no, exactly. And that's the thing. Ratatouille as a theme and a title for the film, that was there from the beginning for a number of reasons. First of all, it's about rats and ratatouille. It tells you it's a comedy because it's a silly word. And ratatouille as the quintessential peasant dish, it's just vegetables, it's stuff that you can find easily. If you know how to cook it well, it's beautiful. I'm speaking here with Jan Pinkover. I worked on a couple of the early feature films of Pixar, including A Bug's Life and Monsters, Inc.
and Toy Story 2. And I got a break to develop my own feature film.
That feature film was Ratatouille. It's about a rat named Remy who lives in a farmhouse in the French countryside and dreams of becoming a chef.
How did Remy the Rat become a beloved character?
You found cheese? And not just any cheese. Tom de chevre de paix! That would go beautifully with my mushroom!
But then Remy, his family, and his entire rat tribe are chased into exile, and he winds up in the sewers of Paris. As he explores the city above ground, Remy comes across the legendary Gusteau's restaurant. The late chef Auguste Gusteau was Remy's hero. His famous book is called Anyone Can Cook. But Remy sees that Gusteau's restaurant is now run by a corrupt, tyrannical chef named And there's a new garbage boy in the kitchen named Linguini. Linguini does want to cook, but he doesn't have much talent. Remy has talent, but he's a rat. So the two of them become secret collaborators.
One look and I knew we had the same crazy idea.
Remy hides on top of Linguini's head under his chef's toque and becomes his puppet master chef. Together, they make beautiful food, potato leek soup, the perfect French omelet, and a twist on sweetbreads a la Gusteau. It turns out that Linguini is the son of the great Gusteau, and the secret collaboration between Linguini and Remy turns out to be a big hit. as was the film itself. Ratatouille, released in 2007, won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and it grossed over half a billion dollars. That made Ratatouille a big outlier in Hollywood. And Remy the Rat was an outlier, too. As we've been learning in this series on rats, it is a rare day when a rat is the hero of any story. Since the days of the bubonic plague, rats have been associated with death and disease,
Is it time to rethink our perception of rats?
To call someone a rat is a special kind of insult. It suggests they've behaved so badly as to be subhuman. But is it time to reassess the rat's reputation, perhaps even rehabilitate it? Today on Freakonomics Radio, we dissect Ratatouille with Jan Pinkova. In a way, Ratatouille is like ballet dancing with Nazis. We look at why rats have been so valuable to human science.
Like right all the way down to DNA.
And we hear a love story.
Not to say anything negative about the hamsters of the world, but I think it's a different relationship.
Come along for this third and final episode in our series, Sympathy for the Rat.
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.
We humans really love some animals. Two thirds of American households have at least one pet, most of them dogs or cats. We often treat them like members of the family. When we hear about an animal being mistreated or killed, the outcry can be as loud as if it happened to a fellow human, if not louder. And yet, in 2022, when New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared war on rats and appointed a rat czar to get rid of them, there was almost no outcry. The rat seems to have crossed some invisible border from animal to pest, even menace. But it wasn't always thus.
The first rats that were domesticated, they were pets in Victorian England, and they were not thought of as negatively as we think about even pet rats today. So it was revered to have a rat on your shoulder.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What inspired the creation of Ratatouille?
0:14–1:20
2
How did Remy the Rat become a beloved character?
1:20–3:24
3
Is it time to rethink our perception of rats?
3:24–5:33
4
What is Julia Zichello's personal experience with rats?
5:33–9:33
5
How are rats used in scientific research?
9:33–14:29
6
Why are rats preferred in certain types of lab research?
14:29–45:08
Speakers
7 identifiedMore from Freakonomics Radio
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