Forget the stale popcorn and overpriced soda at the concessions counter for a while and feast instead on this article from UK’s the Guardian on food portrayed on the big screen:
What is the most famous food scene in all cinema? Could it be Samuel L Jackson interrogating the men he’s been hired to kill about European hamburgers and the metric system in Pulp Fiction? Or might it be Debbie Reynolds jumping out of a cake to do the charleston in Singin’ in the Rain? Hannibal Lecter’s serving suggestion for human liver in The Silence of the Lambs is among Hollywood’s best-remembered lines, while dedicated foodies might plump for any of the scenes celebrating food connoisseurship or gluttony in Babette’s Feast or La Grande Bouffe. Ever since I learned as a teenager that the blood spiralling down the plughole in the shower scene from Psycho was actually chocolate sauce, I’ve been intrigued by the way food is portrayed on screen.
Feel free to leave your own nomination for All Time Best Food Scene in a Film in the ‘Comments’ section. My vote goes to the final scene in Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott’s ‘Big Night‘ (1996) and particularly the last scene/shot. Food as redemption. Some suggestions can be found here and here.
The article’s author Feargus O’Sullivan has spun an entire book out on the subject, called ‘Pulp Kitchen: Recipes for the Good, the Bad & the Hungry‘. Arf, arf, but the article’s title (‘Meals on Reels’) is better.
