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How Pie in the Face Became a Comedy Classic, Part 2: The Fall (of the Pie) · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye
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Speaker 1: welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
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Speaker 1: always so much for tuning in. This is part two
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Speaker 1: of our Pia Escapade. This is part two of our
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Speaker 1: history are surprisingly long and interesting history of the act
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Speaker 1: of throwing pie at someone for laughs, specifically, No, I
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Speaker 1: feel like we should have said that earlier, specifically for laughs. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's it's definitely for laughs. But we also talked about
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Speaker 1: there's some political undertones behind it, the idea of cutting
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Speaker 1: down like the upper class, the upper crust. Perhaps it's
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Speaker 1: okay um down to size visually with a pie in
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Speaker 1: the face. By the late nineteen twenties, this thing, and
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Speaker 1: I think I used the term meme status in the
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Speaker 1: last episode, but it had absolutely overtaken the zeitgeist. It
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Speaker 1: was something that people recognized, and you know that we
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Speaker 1: would always talk about ritualization. There's something kind of comforting
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Speaker 1: and recognizing something and seeing it come back over and
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Speaker 1: over again, like the old gag of someone getting shot
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Speaker 1: in the butt and then grabbing the seat of his
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Speaker 1: pants and jumping up and down. All of these things
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Speaker 1: to me really remind me of Looney Tunes. I think
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Speaker 1: that's where I got most of my taste of all
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Speaker 1: of this type of comedy, because I certainly wasn't like
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Speaker 1: into like weird archival silent films and you know, Buster
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Speaker 1: Keaton films and stuff, But Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny
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Speaker 1: really took all that and took it to another level,
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Speaker 1: because you know, you can do more with cartoons than
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Speaker 1: you can with real bodies that you know, get hurt
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Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, and they are those cartoons, of course,
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Speaker 1: are heavily based on vaudeville. We want to shout out
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Speaker 1: our super producer ac pegrum Our, producers Max Williams and
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Speaker 1: Andrew Howard. I've been Let's get into it. No, let's
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Speaker 1: go straight to part two of the History of Throwing Pie.
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Speaker 1: I know, I think I jumped the pie a little
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Speaker 1: bit there on the beginning. But here we are in
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Speaker 1: nineteen with Hal Roach Studios and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
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Speaker 1: You've definitely heard of yes, yeah. At the very end
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Speaker 1: of part one we tease the most epic of pie
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Speaker 1: fights on film in Laurel and Hardy's The Battle of
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Speaker 1: the Century. So now at this point in the late
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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, everybody knows about pie fights. It's almost expected,
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Speaker 1: like it's just it's just one of the ingredients when
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Speaker 1: you watch a comedy. It was like you were describing
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Speaker 1: Nol similar to the trope of someone getting shot in
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Speaker 1: the button then jumping up and down like, Oh, I've
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Speaker 1: got shot in the butt. But I'm the duke, all right,
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Speaker 1: you know in there, my trousers are sins. Right. So
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Speaker 1: when this cliche became so familiar, and this is coming
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Speaker 1: from that historian Steve Massa we mentioned earlier, there's a
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Speaker 1: weird psychological thing that happens. The trope starts to recur
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Speaker 1: more often in the collective mind than it does an
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Speaker 1: actual film. So we're remembering examples of pie throwing, but
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Speaker 1: we might be remembering more examples than actually exist. Like
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Speaker 1: you said, Nol, how Roach Studio gets stand Laurel and
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Speaker 1: Oliver Hardy together. This is a prescient move. They will
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Speaker 1: go on to become the most beloved comic duo in
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Speaker 1: cinema history. They make several films that year, and one
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Speaker 1: of those is a parody of a boxing match known
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Speaker 1: as the Battle of the Century. That's right, and and
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Speaker 1: that was probably one of the big reasons that these
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Speaker 1: types of pictures were cash hours for the studio because
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Speaker 1: they were really easy to make, and they just had
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Speaker 1: kind of like a core cast of players, and compared
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Speaker 1: to like much larger set piece kind of things or
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Speaker 1: dramas or period dramas and things like that, you know,
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Speaker 1: it was really just some props and some costumes and
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Speaker 1: shooting these kind of sketches. But you're right then, by
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Speaker 1: this point the pie trope was so ubiquitous that high
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Speaker 1: level players like Laurel and Hardy who were trying to
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Speaker 1: like come up with the new next thing, we're almost
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Speaker 1: kind of like it's kind of been done right there
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Speaker 1: in the and the producers felt the same way. But
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Speaker 1: in the writer's room, I guess you could call it.
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Speaker 1: For that film, The Battle of the Century, there was
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Speaker 1: a discussion around a particularly physical comedy scene that involved
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Speaker 1: a banana appeal, like you said, and it's not nearly
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Speaker 1: as easy to just slip on a banana appeal as
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Speaker 1: one might think. But in the discussions, some you know,
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Speaker 1: bright eyed young writer said how about we put in
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Speaker 1: a pie fight, to which all of the executives and
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Speaker 1: writers in the room kind of let up collective because
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Speaker 1: there was it was kind of hackneyed at that point,
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Speaker 1: but Laurel and Hardy saw potential in kind of subverting
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Speaker 1: that trope, or at the very least taking it to
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Speaker 1: such extremes that it could literally never be done again
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Speaker 1: in any more grand a way as they were going
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Speaker 1: to end up doing. Yeah, it was brilliant. Laurel attributes
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Speaker 1: this to himself. He was talking with an author named
5:26
Speaker 1: as Comedians Are Wanting to Do. He he was talking
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Speaker 1: with an author named John McCabe, a guy who would
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Speaker 1: later go on to write Mr. Laurel and Mr Hardy
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Speaker 1: an affectionate biography, and he said, you know what, exactly
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Speaker 1: what you're saying, only said, let's give him so many
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Speaker 1: pies that there will never be room for any more
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Speaker 1: pie pictures in the whold history of movies. So the
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Speaker 1: way they have this workout is that Hardy drops a
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Speaker 1: banana peal and he wants, you know, he attends for
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Speaker 1: Laurel to slip on this in front of a place
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Speaker 1: called an a burst of creativity, Ye old pie shop,
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Speaker 1: but like coppy like spelled like the old English way
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Speaker 1: s h O P pe yes an old O L
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Speaker 1: d E. So there's a pie delivery guy he walks by,
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Speaker 1: he slips on the peel. He's p oed, so he
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Speaker 1: throws a pie at Hearty's face hard. He gets mad.
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Speaker 1: He throws a pie in retaliation, and instead of hitting
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Speaker 1: the pie delivery guy, he hits a young woman on
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Speaker 1: her bottom. She turns and then she gets another pie
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Speaker 1: directly in the face, and then she stomps over and
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Speaker 1: matters escalate from there. They really do to absolutely over
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Speaker 1: the top proportions. I think there's an estimate, you know,
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Speaker 1: and it's probably again it's one of these Hollywood lore
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Speaker 1: things that they used four thousand pies, the entire output
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Speaker 1: of a local Los Angeles I think it was literally
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Speaker 1: called the Los Angeles Pie Company, their entire I think
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Speaker 1: it was day's output or was it a week's output.
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Speaker 1: I'm not going to sure. How many pies can you
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Speaker 1: make in a day? Yeah, the whole day at least.
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Speaker 1: But like, if you're familiar with the wonderful for edicch
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Speaker 1: crescendo of classical work like The Hall of the Mountain King,
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Speaker 1: this is basically a slapstick version of that dun dunt
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Speaker 1: dunt on to because soon as soon as the young
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Speaker 1: lady gets involved, pies are going everywhere. There's a by
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Speaker 1: standards get involved. There's a guy in a top at
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Speaker 1: he gets hit. There's a patient in a dentist's chair,
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Speaker 1: they get smacked. There's a guy who's working in the sewer.
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Speaker 1: He peeps up from a manhole. Smack. There's a person
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Speaker 1: at a lunch counter smack. There's a guy who just
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Speaker 1: got a haircut. He's admiring himself. Smack. There's some lady
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Speaker 1: mining her own business, tending flowers. Smack, smack, smack. At
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Speaker 1: one point, Laurel is inside of the pie delivery guy's
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Speaker 1: truck and he's filling orders for people who are buying
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Speaker 1: pies to throw at other people. It's amazing. It's an
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Speaker 1: amazing melee. It also reminds me of that I Love
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Speaker 1: Lucy sketch, where they're she and Ethel are working at
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Speaker 1: the chocolate factory and they're like putting the chocolates into
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Speaker 1: these little tins or whatever they are as the assembly
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Speaker 1: line goes by, and then July they increase the speed
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Speaker 1: of the assembly line until they're like trying to keep
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Speaker 1: up their shoving chocolates in their mouths and down their
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Speaker 1: you know, dresses and stuff. It's that kind of your
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Speaker 1: right and that escalating frenetic pace and tension that just
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Speaker 1: leaves you kind of like with your jaw dropped, you know. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And even the literary crowd got on board with this,
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Speaker 1: the famous writer Henry Miller, Yes, very steamy writer. Yes yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: he was known as a perennial bohemian, so everybody have
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Speaker 1: fun with Google on that one. But so he describes
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Speaker 1: this a bit with a bit of hyperbole. I think,
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Speaker 1: as quote, the greatest comic film ever made because it
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Speaker 1: bought pie throwing to apotheosis. There was nothing but pie
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Speaker 1: throwing in it, nothing but pies, thousands and thousands of pies,
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Speaker 1: and everybody throwing them left and right. Oh. I can
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Speaker 1: see how that could appeal to a bohemian are kind
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Speaker 1: of a hedonistic type dude like Henry Miller, you know. Um.
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Speaker 1: And then this film critic, this top film critic of
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Speaker 1: the of the Age from nineteen forty nine, James A.
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Speaker 1: G commented, thus Lee for Life magazine, And this is great.
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Speaker 1: This is like such a poetic description of what's ultimately
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Speaker 1: an absurd thing. The first pies were thrown thoughtfully, almost philosophically,
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Speaker 1: then innocent bystanders began to get caught into the vortex
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Speaker 1: a full pitch. It was armageddon, but everything was calculated
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Speaker 1: so nicely that until late in the picture when Havoc
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Speaker 1: took over, every pie made its special kind of point
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Speaker 1: and then piled on its special kind of laughter. Wow.
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Speaker 1: Just like it also reminds me of like again, this
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Speaker 1: is such a trope, and a trope within a trope.
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Speaker 1: At this point, that's scene in Wayne's World where I mean,
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Speaker 1: I think it's Wayne's World two where he's on the
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Speaker 1: way to the wedding chapel to keep Christopher Walking from
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Speaker 1: marrying Cassandra, and there's like the two dudes with the
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Speaker 1: glass that are walking across the street and there's like
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Speaker 1: chicken coops or something, you know what I mean, one
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Speaker 1: of those scenes where everything that can go wrong does
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Speaker 1: in this Rube Goldberg chain reaction. It's very expertly choreographed
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Speaker 1: to you know, the if you look at the film, um,
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Speaker 1: it really is a thing to behold, and four thousand pies,
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Speaker 1: there's nothing to sneeze at. And like we talked about
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Speaker 1: earlier in the previous episode, doing one of these sequences
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Speaker 1: to get it wrong requires so much resetting, you know it,
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Speaker 1: Literally everyone would have to change costumes and shower off.
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Speaker 1: You can't get this wrong. It's like the scene where
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Speaker 1: you blow up the entire town. You get it's gonna
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Speaker 1: be an absolute disaster if you have to do it again. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: especially because you want to go with practical effects. A
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Speaker 1: c g I pie just won't cut it. And it's
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Speaker 1: weird because the world of comedy for a time reacted
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Speaker 1: against the pie troupe. By the time the nineteen twenties
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Speaker 1: come around, by the time Laura and Harder are doing
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Speaker 1: this brilliant work, the public is tired of the custard
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Speaker 1: pie bit. There were even comedies coming out that we're
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Speaker 1: advertising the fact that they did not have a pie
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Speaker 1: throwing scene, and like ads were so snarky back then.
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Speaker 1: They would say things like a custard pie and pretty
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Speaker 1: girl too in a bathing suit do not make a comedy. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: this would have absolutely become like the broadest comedy of
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Speaker 1: the time, like the way we would think of like
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Speaker 1: maybe gross out comedy today, like the Fairly Brothers movies.
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Speaker 1: There no not not to diss the Fairly Brothers movies.
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Speaker 1: Some of those are quite funny, but there are things
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Speaker 1: that are considered low, you know, like in terms of
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Speaker 1: critical circles. And obviously the Laurel and Hardy bit was
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Speaker 1: high minded enough and absolutely genre busting that even the
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Speaker 1: literati we're getting in on it and saying this is
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Speaker 1: kind of cool. But that really was the high water
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Speaker 1: mark for pie throwing, right and then after that it
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Speaker 1: kind of became ghost to do it. And of course
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Speaker 1: we're mentioning pies. A lot of our fellow listeners in
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Speaker 1: the audience today may have wondered why we didn't mention
11:57
Speaker 1: one of the infamous trios Triumvit of comedy, a Trinity
12:02
Speaker 1: of slapstick, the Three Stooges. Between nineteen thirty and nineteen sixty,
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Speaker 1: they made like two hundred and twenty films, and they
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Speaker 1: loved a pie gag, That's the thing. Then the whole
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Speaker 1: position I was talking about earlier, I think was more
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Speaker 1: like the critical perspective that this was, you know, sort
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Speaker 1: of like old hat or old pie or whatever. But
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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that the public didn't still kind of
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Speaker 1: love it, and there was what you could maybe call
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Speaker 1: a pie resurgence. Did it ever really leave? I don't know.
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Speaker 1: The Three Stooges were kind of at the core of that,
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Speaker 1: with those two hundred and twenty films, many of which
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Speaker 1: were like pie films in the the it even had
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Speaker 1: the word pie in the title films like in the
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Speaker 1: Sweet Pie and Pie Yeah in one and Pies and
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Speaker 1: Guys in nineteen fifty eight. And they even remade movies
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Speaker 1: that had pie in the title, right. Yeah. So there
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Speaker 1: was a nineteen five remake of Max Sinnett's The Great
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Speaker 1: Pie Mystery. They just changed the title to Spook louder So.
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Speaker 1: In this film, there's a segment where Larry, Moe and
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Speaker 1: Curly are trying to control this weird machine that appears
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Speaker 1: to throw pies out of thin air. And uh, it's
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Speaker 1: not you know, it's not maybe the best work and though,
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Speaker 1: but it's useful for our episode today. Well, they're catching
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Speaker 1: up with the times right now, robots are throwing pies.
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Speaker 1: This is like the brave new world of pie throwing.
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Speaker 1: They have to like take it to the next level,
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Speaker 1: right And Larry Fine would later recall that there was
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Speaker 1: some blood, sweat and tears involved in the pie business.
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Speaker 1: He said, sometimes we would run out of pies, so
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Speaker 1: the prop man would sweep up the pie goop off
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Speaker 1: the floor, complete with nails, splinters and tax and he said,
13:43
Speaker 1: you know, he still had what I'm just gonna arbitrarily
13:46
Speaker 1: called the Arbuckle problem from now on, which is you
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Speaker 1: had to get people to convincingly appear as though they
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Speaker 1: did not know a pie was coming your way. And
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Speaker 1: so he talks about how they would fake each other
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Speaker 1: out with this, the same way that maybe a nurse
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Speaker 1: might fake out a kid who's getting a shot. They
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Speaker 1: would say, Okay, we're gonna we're gonna count to three
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Speaker 1: and then we're gonna throw it. But then you'd lean
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Speaker 1: to the person throwing it and they would be like, okay,
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Speaker 1: throw onto diabolical Yeah, and then no, you're absolutely right then.
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Speaker 1: But it was really important to get that absolutely authentic reaction,
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Speaker 1: otherwise the comedy wouldn't land, you know. Yeah. And so
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Speaker 1: now we've got the stooges Laurel and Hardy. They're big, big, big,
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Speaker 1: and the pie throwing game, and a bunch of other
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Speaker 1: people are copying them. Children's shows like The Little Rascals.
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Speaker 1: They love a good pie throwing scene. Also to the
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Speaker 1: earlier point, Bugs Bunny being very much descended from vaudeville,
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Speaker 1: it's also throwing pies. And then you see you see
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Speaker 1: an attempt to get towards more of that Hall of
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Speaker 1: the Mountain King pie throwing madness. In a Little Rascal
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Speaker 1: short nineteen thirty called Shivering Shakespeare, the kids are doing
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Speaker 1: a play and then things ultimately to center into a
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Speaker 1: bunch of adults throwing desserts and pies at kids and
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Speaker 1: vice versa. That's right, Ben, And like we talked about earlier,
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Speaker 1: cartoons really started getting into the mix, because, as we know,
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Speaker 1: there was a time where cartoons would you know, proceed
15:16
Speaker 1: like the feature or whatever. I mean that even happened,
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Speaker 1: Like I remember a cartoon preceding Who Framed Roger Rabbit
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Speaker 1: and a couple of other like Warner Brothers features that
15:24
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, there would be a cartoon
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Speaker 1: before it. And obviously Pixar has kind of like you know,
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Speaker 1: continued that tradition with all their Pixar shorts. But the
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Speaker 1: Looney Tunes really kind of we're mimicking so many of
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Speaker 1: these tropes that were so big in Hollywood and kind
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Speaker 1: of like you know, making it even more absurd. And
15:42
Speaker 1: when you go back and watch some of the old
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Speaker 1: Liney Tunes cartoons, you can really see the different styles
15:47
Speaker 1: of pie and represented like in Slick Hair, the Liney
15:51
Speaker 1: Tunes cartoon where Bugs Bunny is, you know, torturing Elmer
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Speaker 1: Fudd as usual. They're working in some kind of bakery
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Speaker 1: and he's tricking him into baking pies, only that hit
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Speaker 1: him in the face with every single pie that he
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Speaker 1: finishes making. And in that clip, Humphrey Bogart makes an appearance,
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Speaker 1: of course, but those pies are custard. They're like dripping
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Speaker 1: off of their faces with this kind of beige liquid.
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Speaker 1: But there's also Bugs Bunny cartoons where you see another
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Speaker 1: version of the pie that for like contrast reasons and
16:17
Speaker 1: you know, costume coloration reasons, they used blackberries. And when
16:21
Speaker 1: you see like the kind of heavier crusted pies dripping off,
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Speaker 1: there's like different versions of it in all these Liney
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Speaker 1: Tunes cartoons. I think that's such a cool mimicking of
16:28
Speaker 1: kind of the history of this. Yeah, and they're also
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Speaker 1: something smart. They're mimicking the dependence upon pie throwing that
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Speaker 1: earlier comedic minds did seem to have during that era
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Speaker 1: proceeding the rise of Looney Tunes. But it doesn't in there.
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Speaker 1: If we jump forward to the sixties and seventies, we
16:48
Speaker 1: see the same kind of commentary happening again. In mel
16:51
Speaker 1: Brooks Blazing Saddles four, there is a pie fight, but
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Speaker 1: it's also satire, make in fun of Hollywood's reliance on
17:03
Speaker 1: the idea of the pie fight. So it became this
17:06
Speaker 1: sort of visual metaphor for unoriginal comedy exactly. Yeah, even Chaplain,
17:13
Speaker 1: you know, way back because he always kind of had
17:15
Speaker 1: his like finger on the pulse of what was going
17:18
Speaker 1: on in Hollywood and kind of trying to upend it
17:20
Speaker 1: and you know, sort of subvert a lot of these tropes,
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Speaker 1: like right when they were happening, finger in the pie
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Speaker 1: maybe a million percent um. And back in nineteen sixteen
17:29
Speaker 1: in a film that we mentioned in the previous episode
17:32
Speaker 1: behind the Screen, it is behind the scenes in a
17:36
Speaker 1: made up film studio showing this kind of like absurd
17:39
Speaker 1: dependence where like it's almost like a factory where large
17:44
Speaker 1: groups of actors are like lined up practicing their pie
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Speaker 1: throwing skills because it was such an important thing that
17:51
Speaker 1: you had to like have special training, like some sort
17:54
Speaker 1: of Navy seals operation and the interstitial in what was
17:57
Speaker 1: a silent film, you know the ones where like they
17:58
Speaker 1: have the action and then some lines come on, says
18:01
Speaker 1: the comedy department rehearsing a new idea. And the idea
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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen that it was a new idea was
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Speaker 1: in and of itself like kind of mocking the whole practice, right,
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Speaker 1: And now the pie fight itself doesn't just seem to
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Speaker 1: be waning in popularity. Even the idea of making fun
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Speaker 1: of pie throwing seems to have gotten a little bit old,
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Speaker 1: but it hasn't disappeared. You'll always see a shout out
18:23
Speaker 1: popping up in the oddest places. We mentioned children's TV
18:26
Speaker 1: and part one of the series. But you know, I
18:30
Speaker 1: think a good pie to the face is never gonna
18:33
Speaker 1: quite go away, just because it's so easy, and now
18:37
Speaker 1: it's inherently its own kind of commentary. And not only
18:42
Speaker 1: will pie fighting probably never go away completely, but you
18:47
Speaker 1: can also see it in some very high minded films,
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Speaker 1: perhaps most infamously in nineteen sixty four's Doctor Strange Love
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Speaker 1: by Stanley kober Yeah. Well, you might not be able
19:08
Speaker 1: to see it in the actual cut of Stanley Kubrick's
19:10
Speaker 1: Doctor Strangelove. Maybe there's a version where you can get
19:14
Speaker 1: This deleted scene might be a little too early. It
19:16
Speaker 1: might have just been lost to time. But there apparently
19:19
Speaker 1: was a scene shot between the generals and the politicians
19:23
Speaker 1: in the war room. Because it's one of my favorite movies.
19:25
Speaker 1: I love Dr Strangelove so much, where they got into
19:28
Speaker 1: like a massive pie fight. I'm kind of glad they
19:30
Speaker 1: cut it. It seems like that would have been a
19:32
Speaker 1: little over the top. It's it's kind of subtle the
19:34
Speaker 1: way it is as extreme and bizarre as it gets.
19:37
Speaker 1: But that's so funny to know that that happened. Yeah.
19:41
Speaker 1: The thing is that the reason Kubrick decided to cut
19:45
Speaker 1: this scene is because he felt the actors playing the
19:49
Speaker 1: generals were having too much fun. Their jubilation, he said,
19:53
Speaker 1: felt inappropriate. And there's another political reason didn't make it
19:57
Speaker 1: in there. In this scene, Peter Sellers plays President Monthly,
20:02
Speaker 1: and the President Monthly is hit with a pie in
20:05
Speaker 1: the face as a general yells out quote, our gallant
20:09
Speaker 1: young president has been struck down in his prime. This
20:13
Speaker 1: scene was shot before the assassination of President JFK in
20:17
Speaker 1: November of nineteen sixty three, but the film wasn't released
20:21
Speaker 1: until afterwards, so they felt like it would have been
20:23
Speaker 1: a bad look to keep it in. Yeah, it's sort
20:26
Speaker 1: of the past equivalent of like removing shots of the
20:29
Speaker 1: World Trade Center, for example, in films that were you know,
20:32
Speaker 1: in production before that event happened, and even for many
20:35
Speaker 1: years after. Uh, those shots were removed, even from like
20:38
Speaker 1: the openings of long running television shows. Yep. And if
20:42
Speaker 1: you want to see the Laurel and Hardy epic pie
20:46
Speaker 1: fight that is now acknowledged as the pie fight to
20:50
Speaker 1: end all pie fights, you are in luck because for
20:54
Speaker 1: a long, long time this battle was lost to history.
20:59
Speaker 1: For decade, half of the short was missing. It was
21:02
Speaker 1: twenty minutes on two reels, and that second reel had
21:05
Speaker 1: been lost. So film historians have been trying to put
21:10
Speaker 1: in the gaps of the Battle of the Century with
21:13
Speaker 1: exploratory title cards, but these could never really replicate the
21:18
Speaker 1: work the actors have been doing. And so it wasn't
21:21
Speaker 1: until twenty fifteen when a toxicologist named John Mer salas
21:28
Speaker 1: toxicologist by day, that's his part Kent stuff. He's a
21:32
Speaker 1: he's a film collector and scholar. That's his superman at night.
21:35
Speaker 1: He's like a film scholar like Dexter, almost you know,
21:38
Speaker 1: like by day he's like working for the man, you know,
21:41
Speaker 1: like trying to right wrongs and solve crimes, and by
21:44
Speaker 1: nine he's doing this completely other thing, a little different.
21:47
Speaker 1: But that's so great that he is the one who
21:49
Speaker 1: kind of cracked the case on this, right. Yeah, and
21:52
Speaker 1: he didn't realize what he had at first. He mentioned
21:56
Speaker 1: it at a film conference in Virginia. He put the
21:59
Speaker 1: real into his projector and he's played the film. And
22:04
Speaker 1: then as he looked at Laurel and Hardy walking down
22:06
Speaker 1: the street and has reported that New York Times article
22:09
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, he noticed he was seeing something he
22:12
Speaker 1: had never seen before. He saw the lead into the
22:15
Speaker 1: Pie Fight. He had seen the Banana Seller. And then
22:19
Speaker 1: right after that he started making plans to restore and
22:22
Speaker 1: reunite both reels. And so that is why now you
22:26
Speaker 1: can watch the Pie Fight as it was intended, thank god. Yeah,
22:31
Speaker 1: the article in the New York Times comedy Sweet Weapon
22:34
Speaker 1: the Cream Pie was from and that was when kind
22:37
Speaker 1: of efforts to restore this were underway. You can at
22:40
Speaker 1: the very least watch this on YouTube, and I would
22:42
Speaker 1: hope that it exists in some kind of you know,
22:44
Speaker 1: restored like four K version. This seems like the kind
22:47
Speaker 1: of thing you should see in four K, but you
22:49
Speaker 1: can't find it on YouTube. If you just searched for
22:51
Speaker 1: Laurel and Hardy Battle of the Century, it's like three
22:53
Speaker 1: minutes forty seconds. If you're for by the People is
22:57
Speaker 1: like me, You can also receivably recreate your own pie fight.
23:03
Speaker 1: Just have that that. How about that as a mass
23:05
Speaker 1: post pandemic party, you just sign up where we get
23:08
Speaker 1: We'll we'll rent out a park, We'll get like a
23:11
Speaker 1: hundred something people in thousands of pies. Ah, I mean
23:16
Speaker 1: this needs to happen. Then this needs to be a
23:18
Speaker 1: yearly thing. I think we should bring it back. But
23:20
Speaker 1: let's not. And without talking about something that we alluded
23:24
Speaker 1: to earlier but didn't really follow through with Buster Keaton,
23:28
Speaker 1: we talked about how he was kind of like the
23:30
Speaker 1: brain behind the sort of elevation of the pie hit
23:34
Speaker 1: as an art form, and as it became so much
23:38
Speaker 1: more popular and then kind of waned in popularity, it
23:41
Speaker 1: became really important to use it for much less slapsticky
23:45
Speaker 1: and much more kind of cultural reasons. Right, So there
23:49
Speaker 1: became this language of who was okay to hit with
23:52
Speaker 1: a pie? And who was not who was fair game? Yeah,
23:55
Speaker 1: this is the this is the matter of pie ethics
23:58
Speaker 1: a heast the very end of episode one. Yes, not
24:01
Speaker 1: only was this a preemptive two parter, but we also
24:04
Speaker 1: followed through what they're going to do. So Keaton is
24:10
Speaker 1: in this interview with a storian and broadcaster named Studs Turkle,
24:15
Speaker 1: which is an awesome name. That's nineteen sixty two, and
24:18
Speaker 1: Keaton says, you know, you could hit the wrong people
24:21
Speaker 1: with a pie and getting an audience mad at you.
24:24
Speaker 1: There are certain characters you just don't hit with a pie.
24:27
Speaker 1: We found that out a long time ago. There are
24:30
Speaker 1: just certain people you do not hit with a pie.
24:33
Speaker 1: That's all there is to it. And he provided an
24:35
Speaker 1: example of this, didn't he. Yeah, and this is in
24:38
Speaker 1: the sixties. This guy is kind of like, you know,
24:41
Speaker 1: in his twilight years, and he still talks like a
24:44
Speaker 1: cartoon character. I wish we had tape of this, but
24:47
Speaker 1: we should. I want to put it in like a
24:50
Speaker 1: weird mid Atlantic, you know, early film accent. But I'm
24:53
Speaker 1: just gonna read it because the words say enough on
24:55
Speaker 1: their own. If I had a grand dame who was
24:57
Speaker 1: dogging it and putting it on a gray haired woman
25:01
Speaker 1: but so overbearing and everything else that the audience would
25:04
Speaker 1: like to hit her. Then you could hit her with
25:07
Speaker 1: a pie and they laugh their heads off. But if
25:09
Speaker 1: she was a legitimate old lady and a sincere character,
25:13
Speaker 1: you wouldn't dare hit her. If she's a phony, that's different.
25:16
Speaker 1: The same thing goes for a man. It's the same
25:19
Speaker 1: thing with any character where you have to, you know,
25:21
Speaker 1: empathize with the character, and if you don't, it's sort
25:24
Speaker 1: of like a minor villain. Right, this gray haired old
25:27
Speaker 1: woman who's overbearing and Keaton's mind is a minor villain
25:31
Speaker 1: who deserves some sort of retribution in the form of
25:34
Speaker 1: a pie in the face. And of course there are
25:37
Speaker 1: real incidents of actual people, often prominent politicians, thought leaders,
25:43
Speaker 1: being hit with pies. One of them was Bill Gates
25:47
Speaker 1: get hit the pie by a pie thrower named Noel Goden,
25:51
Speaker 1: writer and uh and god And targeted Bill Gates for
25:56
Speaker 1: this pie because he thought the guy was getting quote
25:59
Speaker 1: too haughty and so so there was a meeting between
26:04
Speaker 1: like the there's a meeting Brussels, Bill Gates, the Flemish
26:09
Speaker 1: minister and the president at the time and go to
26:12
Speaker 1: and step forward through cream pies at Bill Gates face,
26:15
Speaker 1: and then he just said, my work is finished here
26:18
Speaker 1: and Bill Gates, Old Billy g responds and like a
26:23
Speaker 1: pretty strange and and somewhat impressive way. The reports say
26:27
Speaker 1: that Gates was initially really startled, but then he tried
26:30
Speaker 1: to react casually. A little bit later he got cleaned up,
26:33
Speaker 1: and then he said, you know, I was just surprised
26:35
Speaker 1: because the pie wasn't all that good. Yeah. Well, as
26:38
Speaker 1: we everything we know about pie throwing says that, you know,
26:41
Speaker 1: maximum impact in a pie throw, it is not necessarily
26:44
Speaker 1: a delicious pie. Equal God, I'm surprised that the guy
26:47
Speaker 1: that did this didn't get like sniped by somebody up
26:50
Speaker 1: in a in a tree or a turret somewhere. I
26:52
Speaker 1: mean Bill Gates. That guys like a government into himself.
26:56
Speaker 1: That's right. This was I believe when he threw the pie.
27:01
Speaker 1: So maybe it was a slightly different time. But shout
27:04
Speaker 1: out to you pie throwers of the world. There's no
27:07
Speaker 1: one who should be considered above it, but there are
27:10
Speaker 1: some people who deserve dignity. We hope that we have
27:14
Speaker 1: alongside a slice of comedy history, we hope we have
27:17
Speaker 1: also given you a little Ala Mode of pie Ethics. Yum.
27:22
Speaker 1: You can find us on the internet. We are Ridiculous
27:25
Speaker 1: History on all the places you find podcasts on the internet.
27:28
Speaker 1: You can also find Ben and I as individual human persons.
27:31
Speaker 1: I am at how now Noel Brown on Instagram. Throw
27:34
Speaker 1: a digital pie my way over on Twitter where I'm
27:37
Speaker 1: at Ben Boland hs W or you know, toss me
27:41
Speaker 1: some of your favorite bits of comedy history over at
27:43
Speaker 1: Instagram where I'm at Ben Boland. That's bow l I
27:47
Speaker 1: n big big pie in the face, well deserved to
27:51
Speaker 1: our friend slash nemesis Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister
27:56
Speaker 1: huge thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. He
27:59
Speaker 1: doesn't get a pie unless he, you know, is in
28:01
Speaker 1: the mood for a pie. Christopher A sciotis here in
28:03
Speaker 1: spirit our research associate extraordinary Gabe Luizier. You know I
28:07
Speaker 1: would throw I could see Christopher because he plays such
28:10
Speaker 1: an excellent straight man. I could see him being a
28:13
Speaker 1: pie victim in fiction, but I don't know a very
28:16
Speaker 1: dead pan reaction right exactly. Yes, I can visualize it now.
28:20
Speaker 1: Thanks also, of course, through super producer Casey Pegram our
28:24
Speaker 1: producers Andrew Howard and Max Williams and Noel. Thanks to you, man,
28:29
Speaker 1: Thanks thanks for not sabotaging with a pie low these
28:33
Speaker 1: many years. It's it's gonna be very difficult to do
28:36
Speaker 1: it through the zoom, Ben, But maybe I could rig
28:38
Speaker 1: up some elaborate device that would secret I could spirit
28:41
Speaker 1: into your home that on the push of a giant
28:44
Speaker 1: red button would slap you in the face with a pie.
28:46
Speaker 1: Or has somebody done this already a delivery service. That's
28:50
Speaker 1: like the old singing telegrams back in the day where
28:53
Speaker 1: someone opens up the door and you just say, you know,
28:56
Speaker 1: like you just say like kind regards from Ben and Noel.
29:00
Speaker 1: They throw a pie at you when they run away.
29:02
Speaker 1: That that would be a dangerous job. That's basically assault.
29:06
Speaker 1: That's a non consensual pie. Then we talked about this.
29:09
Speaker 1: You have you have to have you have to have
29:10
Speaker 1: consent for for the pie in the face. Man, this
29:13
Speaker 1: was a fun one. We'll see you next time, folks.
29:22
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
29:24
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
29:27
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.