Playwright and screenwriter Jon Robin "Robbie" Baitz was brought up in Brazil and South Africa before returning to his birthplace, Los Angeles. In 1988 his first two-act play, The Film Society, transferred to an off-Broadway theatre, following a successful run in LA. His subsequent work for the stage has included The Substance of Fire, People I Know, an adaptation of Hedda Gabler and the Pulitzer prize-nominated A Fair Country. Baitz has written for television, with credits including The West Wing and Alias, and he made the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters, which ran for five series. Baitz's Broadway debut, Other Desert Cities, which received five Tony award nominations and earned him his second Pulitzer Pprize nomination, runs at the Old Vic until 24 May.
TV: True Detective
This is a brilliant, existential, American television series starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and Cary Fukunaga has directed all of the first eight episodes. It's really influenced the way I've been thinking about how you make television. It explores some of the darker recesses of the American psyche, and myths about religion and the south. It's very impressive. The other thing that's so great is that it allows both of those actors to be their best selves. F Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives but in fact American lives are filled with examples [where this is not the case] and McConaughey's re-emergence as a serious, formidable actor has been kind of great.
Dance: Pina Bausch
Pina Bausch was a great, now dead, German choreographer, but her company [Tanztheater Wuppertal] lives on. It's my favourite dance company in the world and they were recently at Sadler's Wells. They've re-created a seminal piece of hers called 1980, and it's the story of an entire life. It's almost four hours long and it explores childhood and innocence and the strange Freudian world of sexuality that intrudes on children's play. She is arguably one of the great choreographers of the 20th century. There's also a beautiful Wim Wenders film [Pina] about her, made in 3D, which is worth taking note of.
Film: The Counsellor
I think that The Counsellor, directed by Ridley Scott, has been given very short shrift. It's a small art film which was marketed, unfortunately, as a thriller. The author's voice is incredibly important to it; it's almost a poem. Cormac McCarthy, who wrote No Country for Old Men, wrote the original screenplay. I thought No Country for Old Men really started to explore the idea of how economies work and this film expanded on his critique of the American dystopia: the great American west as a catastrophe. I thought it was a beautiful little film with a great meditation on mortality – [especially] the soliloquy by singer/actor Rubén Blades – you can't take your eyes off it and you'll want to hear it again.
Book: City of Nets by Otto Friedrich
My reading list is an ever-evolving puzzle but I'm currently re-reading this beautiful book. It's about the German intellectuals, film-makers and writers who fled Nazi Germany and moved to the glorious sun of Los Angeles during the war. It describes the American Dream as told through the eyes of these refugees and exiles – these very smart people who are used to winter, roasting under the Californian sun. I'm really interested in the history of southern California as a place of ideas, as a place of the arts and as a place that painters love.
Art: David Hockney
In January there was a massive retrospective of David Hockney's paintings in San Francisco. It's a testament to his evolution and his curiosity – his greatest achievement, as an artist, is that he's never stood still. I've never seen a thorough retrospective before… I remember a show at the Whitney Museum of American Art where he did the narration for those recordings you can get as you go from painting to painting – he was very funny and English about his work. I love the landscapes he painted during his return to England – they're so remarkable and evocative. There's something in the landscapes that I found modernist and beautiful.
Restaurant: The River Cafe
One of my favourite restaurants in the world is in the UK. If I'm coming here to do a play, it's an opportunity to eat at the River Cafe a few times. Aside from loving the room, I love their great sensitivity to fresh ingredients put together in a very delicate way, using layers of flavours and not taking any ingredient for granted. I like to go to Sir John Soane's Museum, followed by the River Cafe – that's a perfect London day. I try to order something different every time… but if I see langoustines languishing on the menu, that's usually what I'll have.
