TO POPCORN & BEYOND
Food from films a chance to sample a wide range of intriguing dining fare, Chris Knight writes.
At a recent dinner shindig, we partied like it was 2001.
Or maybe it was 1968. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. My friend and fellow critic Peter and I saw the film three times together in 2018: at the fancy Lumière theatre in Cannes, where the festival welcomed “astronaut” actor Keir Dullea; at Toronto’s Lightbox, where it remains a popular 70-mm offering; and at Toronto’s Cinesphere.
Somewhere along the way we hatched a plan for a 2001-themed meal. Not all that difficult when you consider how many references to food pepper the science-fiction film. The repast started with “Space Station Five cocktails” — vodka, to honour the Russians in the film — followed by freshly clubbed tapir (all right, ham) from the Dawn of Man sequence.
This was followed by lunar sandwiches and a Star Gate main course of chicken and veggies — our best guess as to what David Bowman is eating in one of the film’s final scenes. (Peter once scored an interview with the actor and grilled him on that question, but Dullea couldn’t recall.) For dessert, we had icecream “monoliths” resembling the space food the astronauts eat on their way to Jupiter. But tastier! It was all I could do not to throw chicken bones in the air.
The link between movies and food isn’t new. We weren’t even the first to come up with the 2001 idea. Back in ’68, Kubrick inserted a reference to Howard Johnson’s in the film. The hotel chain responded with a comic book/children’s menu, although its choices weren’t exactly out of this world. “The Happy Clown” (85 cents) was spaghetti and tomato sauce, roll and butter, dessert and a beverage.
The 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s opens with a scene of Audrey Hepburn enjoying a croissant and coffee in front of the famed jeweller. In 2017, Tiffany’s opened the Blue Box Café inside the store, where a coffee and croissant (plus seasonal fruit and choice of sides) will set you back $32. “Fifty dollars for the powder room” indeed!
Some reactions were quicker. In 1980, Hershey introduced Canada to the peanut-butter-flavoured oblate spheroids known as Reese’s Pieces. In 1982, audiences saw E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial chowing down on the candy — this after Mars (the candy company, not the planet) had declined to let M&M’s appear in the film. Sales of Reese’s Pieces that year went sub-orbital, to say the least.
More recently, the internet has provided an ideal venue for movie-inspired recipes. The YouTube channel Feast of Fiction includes step-by-step instructions for Scooby-Doo sandwiches, Hunger Games “Peeta” and Lord of the Rings Lembas — and that’s just the bread recipes. I was introduced to the site by my Deadpool-obsessed son, who convinced me to make the superhero’s favourite snack, chimichangas.
Meanwhile CinemaSins, which is most famous for its Everything Wrong With ... videos, also makes a series called Movie Recipes. Rather than recreating foodstuffs featured in films, these cheeky recipes are for things like Forrest Gump casserole, “a casserole that tastes exactly like the movie Forrest Gump.” It includes shrimp, Cheez Whiz (for cheesiness), Tang (nostalgia), marshmallow fluff — and a warning not to try this at home.
But some movies seem to be daring viewers to do just that. Big Night, Stanley Tucci’s 1996 directing debut, featured an incredible construction called a timpano, rivalling a skyscraper in size and complexity. Even Tucci’s character tries to talk Tony Shalhoub out of making this concoction of pastry, meatballs, eggs, pasta, cheese and more. When it’s finished, he kisses it in awe. And no amateur cook is ever going to make a ratatouille that can transport a food critic the way one does in the 2007 Disney-Pixar film. There’s also Julie & Julia, which should carry the subtitle: A Cautionary Cooking Tale.
Another YouTube channel, Binging with Babish, includes movie-related recipes divided into difficulty levels — if a Courtesan au Chocolat from The Grand Budapest Hotel strikes you as too much work, then perhaps the sandwich from Spanglish is more your speed. (I still remember a critic telling me Adam Sandler’s snack was her only take-away from that film.)
Sometimes the best-intentioned movie recipes can seem a stretch. A year ago, U.S. food magazine Cooking Light recommended paninis and a cheese board, inspired by the word “billboard” in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Delighted by the success of 2001: A Gourmet Odyssey, Peter and I have decided to take on a new film this year: Blade Runner. Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic is set in November 2019. And while it’s not quite the food-apalooza of 2001, there are enough culinary cues in the film to construct a menu.
When we first meet Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, he’s at a noodle bar, arguing with the counterman over an order of fish. (He wants four pieces; he gets two.) Appetizers could be boiled eggs, from the scene where J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) is making them in his apartment. (Unless you’re a replicant, best not to take them from the water with your bare hands.) And for dessert, there’s a line in which Sebastian goes to visit his boss in the middle of the night. “Milk and cookies kept you awake?” the old man asks.
Of course, Blade Runner wouldn’t be the same without a large dose of whiskey. Deckard drinks the stuff like water, both at home and on the job, and Scott had a futuristic bottle crafted for the scene where police captain Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh) offers him a slug: “Drink some for me, huh pal?”
The sequel, Blade Runner 2049, goes a step farther in creating a special bottle for use in that movie, and then produced a limited run of them for sale. Dubbed Johnnie Walker Black Label: The Director’s Cut, it was created by director Denis Villeneuve and a master whiskey blender, the aptly named Jim Beveridge. In a nod to the year 2049, the new whiskey is a powerful 49 per cent alcohol by volume, as compared to the standard 40 per cent. Tasting notes include “dystopian smokiness and neon sweetness.”
Villeneuve also got to choose the final design of the bottle. “Like many fans, I remember the Johnnie Walker bottle from the first film, so it was a unique privilege to collaborate ... on designing a totally original, custom bottle for the new movie,” he said at the time. “That for me was a bit like unwrapping a gift at Christmas.”
If we assume that a whiskey can mature — and in reverse no less! — then The Director’s Cut seems an appropriate accompaniment to the meal. (Teetotallers can drink Coca-Cola, which is heavily marketed on billboards and the sides of airships in the original movie.) And if we’re allowing for some time slippage, Deckard’s appearance in the sequel suggests a final course. Quoting Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, his first lines to Ryan Gosling are: “You mightn’t happen to have a piece of cheese about you now, would you boy?”