« Stuff You Should Know

Short Stuff: Pie-In-The-Face Gag

2023-07-19 | 🔗

Throwing a pie in someone’s face was groundbreaking comedy once upon a time.

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
This podcast dynamically inserts audio advertisements of varying lengths for each download. As a result, the transcription time indexes may be inaccurate.
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com! Slash? U s! The hey and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh and there's chuck and jerry's here, two standing in for Dave, the short stuff. So that's right, let's go Yeah we're talking about the old comedy bit of getting a pie thrown in your face, looks like you've sourced this from a bunch of different great places, Yeah see Gary berman on medium wrote, a grey went to day. I found out mental false atlas obscure slate. All the old hits yeah exactly websites we blow for years. Now as you know, the idea that in comedy thing is funnier than somebody during a pine somebody's face right yeah they does something really special to the person who gets hit in the face of it. Billy demeans them momentarily and that's where it also gives an opportunity to little laugh at often suddenly shift gears with their personnel.
theme win the crowd over or it can drive them to really dig into their personnel and get really mad about something that is actually kind of comical. That's right and that looks like this whole thing started back in vaudeville in the late eighteen, hundreds with a canadian performer name duck. Ellie and kelly as the story goes saw a. I guess, a cook throw a piece at a stable boy. Everyone after the age old story. There were allowed to this. They will boy and jellies like now. That's funny a but you hit him in the shirt it be. HU I better. If you hit him in the face and just said you're sorry yeah yeah, whose head you have said and then before you know it. It became a thing and then, before you know it, it was in movies yeah pretty quickly up. There is a discrepancy over what movie was.
First there's a nineteen o nine film starring ben turpin, who was a really beloved cross, eyed comedian- and we were talking like these- are silent movies at the time right that came out and that that worked to his advantage right and it it was a movie called mister flip and the reason why we're not sure that that's the first one is because apparently the movie mister flip is totally gone forever. Yeah, no one preserved it and probably caught fire at some point The only descriptions like written descriptions of the film exist so we're not one hundred per cent sure. So you fast forward a few years, and then we know for a fact that the first movie that we can document were a pie in the face gag shows up, is in nineteen thirteen. A movie called the noise from the deep yan star dumb, send like this for the first female comedian of the day. Mabel norman shoes notice a female, charlie chaplin in a very
young fatty, our buckle in the movie and the key to this was it was produced by a keystone studios and they became very much known as the studio. That does a lot of this pie in the face bit such that they eaten Did their own bakery to bake all these pies for all their movies that they were pumping out yeah, that's the same keystone studios that made the keystone cops yeah or, I should say the keystone cops kind of made the keystone studios. You know what I'm saying. I know what you mean so there's another term for the pie in the face gag is called paying. I can't stand that word for some reason. It's just wrong, but regardless of that, it caught on really really quickly like people are like. I love that it gets a huge laugh and we're going to put this in every single film that
put out from now on and in just a few short years. It kind of became fairly trite gear movie from nineteen. Sixteen with charlie chaplin called behind the screen was sort of making fun of it already yeah so that we went from one nineteen, thirteen and nineteen sixteen and had been so overdone. So, the idea that a kind of went away or at loo out of fashion until nineteen twenty seven when laurel and hearty made battle of the century and stand laura, was like we're gonna do this so extremely and with so many pies were. Basically
the end it all and no one will ever be able to do this again, because we did the ultimate pie in the face bit right and they actually started with forty five hundred pies that'll. Do it probably the biggest order that the los Angeles pie, company ever filled and and yeah I mean like if you stop and think about that? That's so so many pies, it's just nuts and apparently they're. The versions of battle of the century today is so edited that the ppi, the ppi ng, sorry that happens throughout the movie and it's impressive, but apparently just doesn't even hold a candle to the original version, and they really did you know deliver on stan laurels
vision, you're right, it's on the cutting room floor. Actually I believe that they found they found either a second reel or the original version, or something like that not too long ago in the basement of some, I think- maybe u s c, oh cool yeah, so the ghetto forty five hundred pies, I believe so that's awesome and it went on to be kind of had a second life after that, in the late nineteen twenties and early thirties, little rascals were doing it. Three stooges were doing. It Buster Keaton basically explained that there are sort of unwritten rules for the for the bit witches if you're gonna hit some one in the face like it, it's gotta be someone who deserves it. Like a phoney someone that needs
I'm up since nobody, that's earnest like it was often times it was. I go as a very snooty high society person that Canada is away putting someone in their place. Yet there was a pie on the screen like on the table and there was a person wearing a tuxedo fat person. There was probably going to get a pie in the face, yet and the pies were pretty specific c right yeah. They had figured out along the along the way, there's like a certain way that you should bake a pie and you should bake it to brittleness for one because you wanted to shatter. You should also double layer, the crust so that you can handle it from the bottom yeah just the pie because they used to serve pies, are baked pies and like teen titans still do yes, and if you throw that at somebody, it can cut their face wide open. It's a really bad idea to do that. So you can only throw the actual pie, which is why they doubled up the crust and then also made it brittle and then, when it hits the face that crush shatters into spreads. The pie everywhere
yeah and before we get emails, I realize they don't still make them out of tin. We did our aluminum podcast recently answered. I know they're aluminum yeah, but you know what I mean: templates, but the biggest rip, though, is what is later on in like modern era, when someone would spoof this, maybe they just do they just put like they don't have filling as a reply, there's no crust, they would just like take a pie tin. and whipped cream in her shaving cream it up and thus to such a cheap way out like it so much better. It's a real pie. You ve got like blueberry all over your face. Yet that is a big distinction, but not all of us can afford blue if filling chuck was younger, I had a I had a pie in the face birthday party when I was probably ten or eleven the the little flimsy tins in a bunch of cool whips. No, you wouldn't have liked my birthday party that you know I would have loved it. I'm sure in that case it's a little different. I didn't expect like your mom to bake
now. I know I really just let you talk that one out it and now I have to say that just my memory of that is even at a young age. I was like this cool whip on the face. Feels really gross it's really oily. Yet this is not right. Culebra was a shaving cream. It was cool it also, at least it tasted. Alright. Yes, definitely it definitely tasted all right just doesn't feel right on the face all right. Well, let's, Take a break our apologised to judge more sincerely off my back cried after this I wonder. at ford pride ourselves on building strong, capable vehicles but we're only as strong as the people who drive them. People like you,
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It is a large use, africa stuff to say ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain square space or its we're talking about, but turkey, talking about some of the rules of the game of the bed. Another one was you know it: lotta times, someone would like turn around and get the pie right in the face that was gonna have a bit went and he was like you can't around too early or you're gonna flinch and a flint ruins everything has yet to refute it, which means we have to reset and you got burying your hair. So we do need a wash you up in here, make up and ginger wardrobe so the big pain to redo that so don't turn around too early or your flinch
Also, they figured out that like because mrs stuff was black and white or all of it was at the time black and white. The darker feeling works better if he a blonde hair right in that light, for dark hair right like a picture apple or something and you've mentioned it earlier before the break. When you asked if it was cool, whip or shaving cream, they figured out that, like you, actually don't want real filling. I mean sure you want something that looks like blackberry or something like that. But if you're looking for like meringue, you wanted to use shaving cream because it does. spoil that's a big one right. You can get kind of hot on a studio set in particular when it's in what late may prof yeah. So there's a film it came out in nineteen sixty three or sixty four, it's called the great race and it promised an even bigger pie, fight than the great battle or battle of the century. Had it didn't deliver, it's still pretty impressive, but nothing like that.
and they shot the this pie fight scene at the beginning of memorial day weekend and they took a long weekend and when they came back the pies that they had left on the wall cause they needed to pick up. The chute from that point on had all spoiled and apparently the cast and crew were gagging. It was that nasty yeah and at this probably when they moved to, a shaman greenpeace's right, so people were better at it than others? Are you you're? Real reputation is, as a champion pie, thrower. as legend has it fatty our buckle? Could throw one with each hand, The opposite directions and hit the faces. and apparently mohammed stooges was so good at it here all the off camera throwing and then, hired out to throw pies off camera just in other movies, Josie here man, that guy was just amazing through and through, but a specialty. So like. I was saying like what the reason my pies and the face started out as being funny and still
Funny today, but it's just been around for so long, it's kind of like a now and to the idea of being funny yeah. You know to me a great sure, but the whole premises that you're, just like you said you taking somebody down a peg and so its status pricing that it eventually can spilled out in real life where people have have taken to hitting powerful people in the face, it's with pies to kind of show them that there and show the world they're, not this god, god among humans. You know ye that which you know these days. If you approach anything any big famous person like that was something in your hand to hit them with his. It's never been a good idea, but it still less so now more than ever. But yes, in every one, for my bill gates to two rupert murdoch has been paid in the face very publicly yet and apparently the guy who did that first to as a guy named Thomas Forsayd
The hughes, the founder of high times and you get a seventy and eventually they got picked up. There is a group called the bionic baking brigade out of san Francisco. You were big into this like the eightys and ninetys air, and today you know their own way. Sing. Like you know about a neo nazi me neo nazi or clansmen like their great people, the pie air. Maybe a homophobic preacher go by one of the near. I think they had like what are termed pamphlets has suggested, who dubai here hutu pie, checks or that, of course, at meetings except that the stuff you should know is a production Have I heard radio for more progress my heart radio visit that I hurt radioactive apple had passed You listen to your favorite shares.
Transcript generated on 2023-12-03.