Since you guys appear to watch a ton of television and cinema, and there’s near-ubiquitous product placement in both, I imagine you all have been exposed to a great deal of subliminal advertising. Do the A.V. Club staffers ever crave certain foods after watching a particular movie or television show? The question comes to mind because after watching 2007’s Zodiac, I ordered a BLT and bought animal crackers every chance I could for about a month. —H
Keith Phipps
I can be succinct in part because anyone who knows the show knows exactly why: Twin Peaks. Cherry pie. (And, to a lesser extent, doughnuts, maple syrup, and ham.)
Tasha Robinson
As weird as this is, I can’t watch Akira Kurosawa films or domestic-story anime without craving white rice, which is a food I can take or leave at most other times. I blame The Seven Samurai, where the desperately poor villagers pay their protectors in rice, which is presented as the most amazing food ever, the height of luxury for the poor. The sequence where the mercenaries actually get and eat their rice strikes me as more food-porny than anything in, say, Like Water For Chocolate. I haven’t watched much anime over the past few years, but practically any movie or series that isn’t science-fiction or expressly about bad-asses killing monsters will at some point have a sequence focused on food preparation, awesome little bento boxes, and the intense pleasures of simple rice balls. At this point, I’ve been programmed to the point where just the sight of an animated Japanese character in a kitchen makes me want a rice ball wrapped in seaweed. Tampopo had the same effect on me, actually… it’s the only movie I’ve ever seen that made ramen look like a sensuous, sybaritic experience, and I think everyone I came out of that film with wound up really wanting some decent Japanese ramen.
Leonard Pierce
Oh, H, if you only knew. In spite of my longstanding hatred of advertising, I am incredibly susceptible to any mention of food in televisual entertainment, which is a big part of why I currently weigh one hundred thousand million billion pounds. It doesn’t have to be good food (Fargo makes me want to eat Arby’s) and it doesn’t have to be good entertainment (catching a rerun of That ’70s Show in syndication immediately makes me crave Fruity Pebbles and Coke in bottles). There’s just something about the combination of being hungry and being entertained that makes me highly suggestible, even at the risk of my reputation or my life; I once brought four fried chickens and a Coke to a work-sponsored pot luck because I’d watched The Blues Brothers the night before, and in the right mood, I, like Wee-Bey on The Wire, would probably cop to several murders I didn’t commit in exchange for a good pit beef sammy with extra horseradish. But the movie that gets me the most in this regard? Any viewing of The Godfather—and I try to watch it at least once a year—gets me in the mood for a big-ass authentic Italian meal. Having seen Coppola’s masterpiece at least two dozen times in my life has ensured that, while I may not have Pete Clemenza’s criminal skills, I at least will end up with his waistline.
Jason Heller
My girlfriend and I have been binging on The Big Bang Theory DVDs lately, and watching that gaggle of geeks sit around Leonard’s and Sheldon’s coffee table and wolf down Asian food every other episode has really started to get to me. Not that I usually need much prompting or pretext to pick up the phone and order some pad thai—but sometimes the characters will actually be describing their dishes and scrambling for the last dumpling, which really drives home in mouthwatering detail just how much I love Thai food and wish I were eating it at every meal, even at the risk of mitotic reproduction à la Sheldon. So far, though, this TV binge hasn’t made me want to run out and dine at The Cheesecake Factory, the place of employ of The Big Bang Theory’s female lead, Penny. And since I don’t want to sound like the show’s slimy, would-be Casanova, Howard Wolowitz, I’ll leave that far-too-tempting cheesecake double entendre untouched.
Noel Murray
Sorry, just don’t have an answer to this one. Asian movies make me crave dumplings and Goodfellas makes me crave meatballs, but that ground’s already been covered. I guess you could put me down for “ditto.”
Claire Zulkey
I am unnaturally obsessed with food (I start thinking about lunch the second I finish breakfast), so I try to avoid the Food Channel and anything like that, because I don’t need additional cravings. But most recently the food scene that stuck in my head for how much it made me want to track down the recipe, execute it as shown, and eat it right away was, maybe not surprisingly, in Julie & Julia. However, it wasn’t one of Julia Child’s dishes that had me salivating. Early in the movie, Amy Adams’ character Julie Powell makes a little off-the-cuff dish of oily grilled bread covered with what looks like fresh sautéed tomatoes and/or peppers. It looked so simple, beautiful, healthy, and unhealthy at the same time. I tracked down a similar-looking recipe and tried it and it was delish, but a pain in the butt to make. This is why I can’t watch food on TV.