Food Stylist Reviews Food Scenes From Movies | Vanity Fair

i was the food stylist on julian julius i was the hand double for meryl streep in this film so in the black and white segments those are actually my hands i had on meryl streep's watch and her shirt and that's me sewing up the duck hey vanity fair i'm susan spungan today i'll be reviewing food styling in tv and film [Music] this next clip is from the princess diaries in any situation ice cream is definitely the hardest thing to shoot whether or not this is real ice cream or sorbet is is an open question um because they're eating you would have to make something that looks like sorbet but doesn't melt you also could just keep resetting the scene but it would be ideal to have something that that doesn't melt because by the time you started shooting it could be melting i thought it was a cruel she didn't realize it was frozen if it was me i would do everything in my power to create something that looked like what they wanted it to look like but also could be edible for the actors and you know it can't be like crisco which is a common way to make fake ice cream because they're eating it it's very possible it's actual sorbet because i did see a little bit of melt around the edge in the bowl acting like monkeys this scene is from matilda [Music] this cake really had to have a lot of screen presence smells chocolaty and one way that they did that was just by making it huge it's a really really big cake i don't want any thank you it looks to me like it was just made in giant wedding cake pans and also they're using camera angles to make it look even bigger and scary actually eat it it's hard to make something like chocolate look unappealing or unappetizing part of what's helping that is that you can see that the actor doesn't want to eat it but they've also tried to make the cake just look um kind of just really messy and sloppy and then the cook is wiping her nose so it just seems kind of disgusting and very like kind of sloppily made when you see an actor on screen eating or seeming to eat a lot you'll know that they cut away a lot and there are plenty of opportunities for the actor to spit out the food which is often what they have to do i can't look usually you want the actors to eat as little as possible unless they want to eat it this next film is eat pray love working on eat pray love was definitely an adventure we did not have a set kitchen and we were really shooting on location in rome and if you've ever been to rome you know the streets are small and only a couple of trucks were allowed to get near the set and a food truck was not one of them in this case the pasta would have been pretty warm because the doors that you see behind her that's where the kitchen was and i was right inside and so i would have tried to plate this as freshly as possible for this scene i don't believe that they specified the kind of pasta and i just wanted something simple and iconic because this scene was all about her deciding to give in to her impulses and just live life but i didn't really understand how important this scene was going to be until i saw the final edit and i think we did it with one plate of pasta and then they said okay we're done we're rapper moving on to the next location company move they say so you clean up and you throw everything away and they're like wait a minute wait a minute we need to shoot um an insert it says was the parmesan cheese falling on the pasta as much as i hated taking it out of the trash i took it out of the trash i replated it and we did the parmesan cheese falling on the pasta but don't worry i didn't feed julia robert's pasta that had been in the trash this is sex in the city the truth is you wouldn't prep any differently for this scene as you would for sushi that was sitting on a table it looks like it's real sushi on a real body she probably also had certain modesty garments on underneath the sushi more likely than not the prop team ordered sushi from a restaurant and they probably wouldn't have brought a sushi chef on set because it's pretty easy thing to source they probably had trays and trays of it in a refrigerator because it might have taken multiple takes to get the shots that they needed [Music] 40 minutes later sushi samantha still no smith if they have to eat what do they want to eat that becomes almost the most important part of a scene like this i got wasabi in places where one should never get wasabi this next scene is from julie and julia you may think that boning a duck is an impossible feat i was the food stylist on julian julius don't be afraid no fear julia we had a sort of makeshift kitchen um right on the stage it was actually a little bit difficult because we couldn't make any noise while the cameras were rolling down the back of the bird all the way from the neck to expose the backbone is it hard to bone a duck well it isn't the easiest thing in the world disgusting oh maybe the eggs aren't fresh julie says the eggs have to be fresh they are fresh if you watch the film closely you'll realize that amy adams is actually doing most of the cooking i would teach her some basic knife skills chopping and peeling onions and cracking eggs just to kind of get her more comfortable in the kitchen we had live lobsters because there was a scene where she had to actually pick up live lobsters and yes they were real live lobsters look at that julia it looks just like yours i was the hand double for meryl streep in this film so in the black and white segments those are actually my hands i had on meryl streep's watch and her shirt and that's me sewing up the duck in the wide shots merrill is doing a few things but you don't see the more intricate parts and then i was trusting the pulley roti and it fell on the floor you always have to have a lot of backups for resetting i think we had eight of those actual finished ducks for the dinner party i mean it's not like a super expensive item believe it or not that would affect how many you get if it's something that's kind of cheap you might just get 10 just to have them but if it becomes expensive i mean you do always have a budget that you're working with so you don't want to be wasting money i have to bone a whole duck when at some point this next scene is from emily in paris ugh this steak isn't cooked at all um excuse me pardon monsieur in this scene we are to believe that emily has received a steak that is very rare but you never see the steak you barely see the food so it's it's totally the actor's reactions and the dialogue that is um giving context to the food and we're just kind of buying it is there a problem no no i love it everything is perfect you haven't touched it the fact that there's no real close-up of the food in the scene tells you that they're not really so concerned about the food you know i'd be happy to burn it for you but promise me you'll try it first yeah try his meat emily it's much more about the dialogue and the characters and even the humor of the scene nothing is real i mean the way that this chef it comes out of a small little bistro kitchen perfectly clean and his sleeves are rolled up uh on his biceps i mean it's just it's definitely not real it's all there to serve the story and it's it's not about the food see i knew you'd like it if you give it a chance next up eat drink man woman this is probably one of the best cooking scenes ever shot you see so much real real food here this is an expert chef it's the very beginning of the film so it's the introduction to the character and the story and this this is how it all starts and you are immediately just drawn into the rhythmic cooking that's going on there are so many different actions in the scene and any action is more difficult to shoot because you only get one chance and then if you didn't get it you have to just reset and do it again a scene like this would have taken a long time to shoot it would all be charted out on a shooting schedule so the person doing the food would know what to have prepared and when all of those kind of things would kind of dictate how you would source your ingredients and how to basically prep your job as the food style is to be ready you never want to keep this very huge and expensive crew waiting this next scene is from inglorious bastards this scene is very interesting it's part of this long uncomfortable conversation between these two characters and they go to the trouble of showing you how beautiful and delicious this apple strudel is the whole point of kind of building the strudel up was to show how menacing a character he is because in the end he thinks nothing of putting out his cigarette on the strudel this is a really good example of food sort of playing a character in a scene because you know it was there to really tell you something it was no accident that you saw these loving close-ups of the strudel and the cream just so they could show you a close-up of the cigarette at the end this next scene is from marie antoinette the asparagus tower is very central visually in the scene and in the 18th century food was both of decoration and something to eat it just sort of really helps set the scene and it sort of adds to like the absurdity of what we think of as marie antoinette let them eat cake the idea is to sort of find this sweet spot between historical correctness and theatricality to help tell the story and paint a picture everything is just kind of pretty and flouncy and ruffly and and so are the clothes so it's all of a piece this next scene is from the grand budapest hotel this was also when i met agatha from what i understand about the way wes anderson works there's sort of elements of reality and fantasy kind of interwoven together and i think these pastries are kind of a perfect example of that when trying to figure out what exactly a pastry like this might look like in the film most likely you might start with sketches they would have auditioned different versions of the pastry since it's so important it's really like almost like a character in these scenes not only was agatha immensely skilled with a palette knife and a buttercream flourish she was also very brave in a case like this where the pastries are just set dressing i would do whatever i had to do to make these indestructible and last as long as possible although they're spoiled holder mendel's is the best this next scene is from crazy rich asians forget about these girls camp out here and order room service it's highly likely that these two shots were shot at different times if there's no reason to have the actors in the room with this probably smelly fish why would you i would think even for the film crew they would have tried to keep the smells to a minimum you wouldn't really want like smelly rotten fish in the room with the crew this it definitely looks like a real fish in the scene to me the guts and blood are probably fake but you never know it could be anything it could be paper towel soaked in fake blood this is sometimes where the special effects department would actually get involved usually they can create like fake growth stuff that isn't as gross as it looks next up is willy wonka and the chocolate factory hurry up pilot this way grandpa each of those props that you see all of the supposed candy and the garden and they're going crazy over it if you look at it it really it just looks like plastic and vinyl and it more creates this fantasy world and if you look closely at what they're doing they've just opened up one of these plastic mushrooms and put something inside and even the chocolate waterfall doesn't really look like chocolate it just looks like brown water you've ruined your watershed wonka it's polluted it's chocolate none of it really looks like food or really like anything but you kind of buy it and again the actors reactions are having a big effect on how you interpret the scene next up is the founder speed that's the name of the game the first stop for every mcdonald's hamburger is the grill i feel like the scene is very successful because i really did feel like i was in that kitchen back in the first mcdonald's because it really showed you a lot of detail behind the scenes burger crossing you see hamburgers that were clearly made by hand that is probably how they were made in the beginning before they became a huge conglomerate that lends a real air of reality to the scene because if they showed burgers the way they look now at mcdonald's these sort of perfect circles i would have a harder time believing that that it was real like to me just the shape of the burgers really is the one thing here that tells me that oh wow this is like the first mcdonald's next time you see a plate of food in a movie think about all that went into it and remember that nothing is accidental when you see it on the screen thanks so much for watching and thanks for having me vanity fair

Channel: Vanity Fair

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Keywords: expert food stylist, food expert, food from movies, food in movies, food movie scenes, food plating, food scenes, food scenes in movies, food styling, food styling expert, food stylist, food stylist reviews, food stylist vanity fair, foods from movies, inglourious basterds dinner scene, julie and julia, movie food, movie food stylist, movies food, princess diaries, princess diaries ice cream, reviews vanity fair, vanity fair, vanity fair reviews, vf

Id: tvB5TNa26Fw

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021