Saw MISTRESS AMERICA today, the new film by Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig (GREENBERG, FRANCES HA).
There's a subplot about a collegiate literary magazine that has a sort of "hazing ritual" wherein they inform writers they're going to be published in the elite magazine by waking them up in the middle of the night and pieing them in the face.
This wonderful idea leads to a great female pieing (and funny moment). About 70 minutes into an 85 minute film, I'd say.
Not playing heavily in the US, but I'd imagine will be on VOD in a couple months.
I didn't ask before, but I'd beg it was her the pied lady Great news! Anyway, how the "hazing ritual" is introduced in the movie? there is another pie scene or people just talk about it?
It's actually interesting; you hear about it first and of course being the WAM/pie fan that I am I was like "oh please let that happen to her, rather than someone else getting it...".
At first, she hears it happening down the hall to a neighbor or two, comes out into the hall in the morning and there is pie on the walls and i think a tin -- she did not get picked. She even mentions to a friend, "and there was pie on the walls and everything...".
Then, at about the 3/4 mark of the movie, she submits something else to the literary society and then gets pied/picked.
Here's an interesting quote from Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the film, as well as producing it and co-starring:
Gerwig said, "If I'm anyone, I'm Tracy [the character played by Lola Kirke]. I made Lola wear things I wore at 18. That giant blazer - that was mine. It was even bigger. We had to tailor it down to fit her. I wore a lot of berets. I wanted to be a writer and moved to New York. And I wanted to be a part of a club where they put a pie in your face. That's real - that happened."
The satirical details of college student delusions of grandeur are expertly observed by Baumbach and his co-writer Gerwig, particularly the competition to get into a literary society that taps its new members by hitting them in the face with pies and then hands them briefcases to carry around as emblems of their specialness. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mistress-america-2015
Just found an interview with Greta Gerwig (co-writer, co-star) and Lola Kirke (star) about their new movie "Mistress America." The character Tracy, played by the lovely Lola Kirke, gets surprise-pied in the middle of the night as an initiation rite for joining some literary society at her college. Here the two actresses discuss this scene.
Gerwig: The whole thing of the pie in the face - about that being the way you found out you were in this lit society - that was actually the way you found out that you were a part of this really nerdy comedy thing at Columbia that I always wanted to be a part of. [laughs] I didn't get in my freshman year or my sophomore year, but I did get in my junior year. I remember hearing pie stuff and you were like, "Ugh. I didn't get into the pie club!" They would put a pie in your face, drive you out of bed, make you sing and do all this stuff, and you were inducted into them.
Kirke: I love the moment when Tracy gets the pie on her face.
Gerwig: And she just screams! That was so fun.
Kirke: I smelled like vomit for days. I don't know if you've ever had rotten milk in your hair, but it's horrible.
Love you, too
