WAKE UP AND WATCH THE COFFEE
No need for sugar when coffee and the movies collide. The results are always sweet enough already Chris Knight
Every film fan knows Clint Eastwood’s line in Sudden Impact: “Go ahead; make my day.” But did you know Dirty Harry only got to say that because a waitress tipped him off to a burglary by messing up his coffee order?
“Every day for the last 10 years Loretta there’s been giving me a large black coffee,” he explains to the surprised crooks as he re-enters the besieged diner. “Today she gives me a large black coffee only it’s got sugar in it. A lotta sugar. I just came back to complain.” He does a lot more than that.
Coffee has long had a place in the movies. Charlie Chaplin’s last “silent” film, Modern Times, makes a joke of the percolating noise it produces on an empty stomach. More recently, switching sides of the coffee shop counter signalled a lifestyle change for Emma Stone in La La Land. A coffee run-in the opening credits of Baby Driver introduced the smooth moves of Ansel Elgort. And a “colored” coffee pot was shorthand for segregation in Hidden Figures.
How someone in a movie orders their coffee says a lot about them. Eastwood, like a lot of tough guys, takes it black. Steve Martin in L.A. Story asks for the quintessential west-coast brew: “I’ ll have a half double-decaffeinated half-caf with a twist of lemon.”
And in The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep’s fashion editor demands a no-foam skimmed latte with an extra shot, plus three drip coffees with room for milk. And heaven help the assistant who brings it late: “Is there some reason that my coffee isn’t here? Has she died or something?”
Some filmmakers have a special relationship with coffee. Quentin Tarantino seems to make a point of including a coffee reference in every one of his movies, from Steve Buscemi’s Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs explaining his refusal to tip (“When I order coffee I want it filled six times”) to the poison coffee pot in The Hateful Eight.
Jim Jarmusch famously made an entire movie, 2003’s Coffee and Cigarettes, out of vignettes that take place over a smoke and a cup of joe. This is not to be confused with 1993’s Cigarettes and Coffee, an excellent early short by P.T. Anderson that opens with Philip Baker Hall telling his
nervous companion that he won’t listen to the man’s story until the coffee has been poured and the cigarettes lit.
But other movies slyly celebrate coffee culture without calling undo attention to it. Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day has Bill Murray’s character starting every day with a query from his hotel host about whether he’d like a cup. Later, in the town diner, we see him quaffing the stuff straight from the carafe. And what is one of his first acts of kindness in his endlessly repeating day? Bringing hot coffee to his colleagues.
Here are the 10 best supporting roles by coffee in a movie.
10 You’ve Got Mail ( 1998) Tom Hanks explains that Starbucks is all about allowing “people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.” 9 Two or Three things I Know About
Her ( 1967) A cup of coffee in swirling close-up becomes a metaphor for existence. Oh, Godard, you!
8 Moscow on the Hudson ( 1984) Robin Williams plays a Russian immigrant whose first experience of the choice in a U. S. supermarket coffee aisle sends him into a seizure of joy.
7 Best in Show ( 2000) Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock explain how they met, not at a Starbucks, but from seeing in other in adjacent Starbuckses.
6 Airplane! ( 1980) Two strangely grown-up kids discuss coffee, with one declaring: “I take it black. Like my men.”
5 Role Models ( 2008) Paul Rudd tells a Starbucks-type barista that he wants a “large” coffee, not a “venti.”
4 Elf ( 2003) Will Ferrell notices a sign in a diner window and bursts in to proclaim: “You did it! Congratulations! ‘ World’s best cup of coffee!’ Great job everybody!”
3 Amélie ( 2001) Audrey Tatou gets so distracted by a man in the café where she works, she literally melts into a puddle of water.
2 The Usual Suspects ( 1995) Chazz Palminteri as a customs agent realizes what’s up and drops his cup, which we see hit the floor three times in a mini-montage.
1 Breakfast at Tiffany’s ( 1961) Audrey Hepburn enjoys a coffee and a takeout pastry in front of the famed New York jeweller, which responded last year by opening a café inside the store.
CANADIANS PREFER AMERICANOS AND LATTES THE MOST, AND TEA AND ESPRESSO THE LEAST, ACCORDING TO SQUARE.