About Richard
Richard Parks III is a James Beard Award-nominated writer, filmmaker, cookbook author, and the host of Richard’s Famous Food Podcast.
Richard is the co-author of the Guerrilla Tacos cookbook (10 Speed Press) and The Boba Book (Clarkson Potter) and has written for Lucky Peach, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, McSweeney’s, and many other publications. His Lucky Peach story “Khmerican Food” was nominated for a James Beard Award.
Richard’s award-winning short films include Music Man Murray (a documentary about a man, his son, and hundreds of thousands of records), a micro-doc about Biosphere2 that was a Vimeo staff pick, and an underwater video entitled NOISE, with musician Nicolas Jaar. His clients for video work include Kraft, Google, Buick, and more. He was a producer on The Ballad Of Esequiel Hernandez, a documentary aired on POV and nominated for an investigative Emmy. He has worked with Matt Heineman (Cartel Land, City of Ghosts), he has shot films in India and Cambodia, and he is in post-production on his first feature-length documentary as director.
Richard has made a musical radio drama about a face-shaped growth in Wayne Coyne’s leg with The Flaming Lips for McSweeney’s and KCRW, he has contributed radio documentaries to Snap Judgement and KCRW’s Lost Notes, and he hosts Richard’s Famous Food Podcast, which has been praised in Mental Floss, Internazionale, Hot Pod, Eater, Vulture, The AV Club, and The Wall Street Journal. His story “A Million Dollars Worth of Plastic” was named one of the best podcast episodes of 2018 by both Audible Feast and IndieWire. RFFP has been named a Best Podcasts of 2019 by Vulture (and was featured in this full-length review), and a Best Podcast of 2020 by both IndieWire and Spotify.
Richard has appeared on stage at Pop Up Magazine. He once did the music to a chewing gum commercial. Occasionally, he acts in funny things.
In connection with RFFP, Richard has appeared as a guest in classes at USC and The New School, and he taught a course on using sound design and music in podcasts at Union Docs. He’s also done sound design for a Tame Impala music video and the podcast Home Cooking, under a story told by Yo Yo Ma, and contributed to programming at the 2020 Audiocraft festival in Australia.
He is represented by Rebecca Friedman at the Rebecca Friedman Literary Agency and by Neil Kreppel at Commercial Talent Agency.
Follow Richard @reechardparks.
Click here to read a recent interview with Richard in Voyage LA.
You can also hear Richard interviewed on the following shows:
Subscribe on iTunes.