Save the Cake

We all have our pet peeves in cinema & TV. See if you agree with these examples:

A guy in a movie goes to the fridge, grabs himself a beer, and… leaves the fridge door open!!!

What happens from here on makes no difference. He can save the world from nuclear disaster for all I care, but it doesn’t matter because the damn fridge door is still open!

Or:

A guy enters the room, does his best not to find out who’s present, but proudly declares: ”It’s done, I killed him with an axe, and buried him under the old oak tree. Now we can finally take his money, and… Inspector, what are you doing here?!”

Not plausible. Have you ever done that in your life? Of course not, you check the room first.

How about a comedy classic?

Someone goes to answer the door in middle of a rant. Opens the door, but looks the other way while doing it, ranting on:

”John is stupid, I hate him, you should have never invited him to this party!”

(only then turns to see to who’s at the door)

”John?! Welcome, so good to see you.”

We could go on. You have your pet peeves, I have mine. Out of mine, there’s one high above others. Something that makes my blood boil – Seeing a perfectly good cake destroyed.

Seriously, when you see a cake in a movie, there’s a 96% probability (totally accurate) something bad will happen to it. A smaller pie will land on somebody’s face, but larger cakes get knocked over, sat on, or slammed against a wall...

Why is this? Why do filmmakers hate cakes? The film industry’s undying crusade against cakes goes way back to the early days of cinema, and shows no signs of stopping.

Cake-hate is also hard to justify. I’ve yet to meet a person who enjoys watching cake-destruction. Wasting cakes was not funny yesterday, so there’s no reason to believe it will be funny tomorrow. Still, the onslaught continues.

I needed to get to the bottom of it. Why has the industry destroyed cakes for so long, when it clearly has no entertainment value? I left no stone unturned, I went through tons of material in dusty old archives. I found nothing of substance at first, but certain scripts were labeled: ”Approved by ACC”. What did this mystical acronym mean? It kept coming up, was it real? I reached out to hundreds of people, oddly, no one wanted to talk...

The trail lead all the way to the top. Using a clever excuse, I finally got in touch with Mr. John Moviebusiness, CEO of Hollywood. When confronted, he made little, or no apologies.

JM: ”Our hatred for cakes is no secret. I’m proud to announce, this year Hollywood will produce no fewer than 70 movies where delicious looking cakes are wasted.”

ME: ”Wait a minute, am I to understand you’re not only aware of the problem, but are actively contributing to it?”

JM: ”Problem? The cake is the problem, we in Hollywood do our very best in fighting cake.”

ME: ”Mr. Moviebusiness, are you a member of a secret organization called ACC [Anti Cake Coalition]?”

JM: ”I… I’ve said too much… gotta go.”

The line went dead. Listening to Mr. Moviebusiness sent chills to my bones. I needed to dig even deeper.

I finally managed to get hold of a document long thought lost. A complete manuscript of the first meeting of ACC from 1925. Up until that moment I had thought the whole thing was an urban legend. Surely the ACC couldn’t be real?

But there it was, in black and white. The highest ranking people in the international movie industry getting together, organizing their efforts, pledging their undying hate for all things cake. It’s a scary read, you have to take my word for it.

Finally it made sense, all the pieces locked together. What I had mistaken for a cliché, or lack of creativity, was something much larger. A conspiracy, a secret plot to… yes, what exactly? Since there is no reason to suggest destroying cakes has anything to do with comedy, there must be a more sinister motive behind it all. It is obvious, the industry simply cannot repeat the same ”joke” for a hundred years without some sort of an ulterior motive. That would be nothing more than tolerated vandalism.

But here we are, a hundred years later, cake-bashing is just as rampant, if not more so, than ever. How long are we going to let cake-haters run the movie business?  Together we can stop them.

People, do your research, it’s very easy to tell which filmmakers are a part of the ACC. The evidence is right there, wake up!

Death to ACC! (not to be confused with American College of Cardiology, Asian Cricket Council, etc.)

Long live cake!

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Sarcasm aside, as with anything, there’s always an exception to the rule. There are two (2) counts of acceptable cake-destruction in the history of filmed entertainment (aka art).

1. Forgotten Silver. Peter Jackson’s… well, if you know, you know. If you don’t, see it first, and google it afterwards. Peter Jackson found a way to make pie-in-the-face funny.

2. Monty Python – Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Again, a pie-in-the-face can be funny, when the joke is about how unfunny it is.