We used to think that there were so many pie scenes in movies because the dessert is so evocative: home and hearth, family holidays, and late-night comfort — even at a lonely roadside diner. But now, we think it’s probably just because pie is so deliciously messy.
Take, for instance, the already much-discussed pie-baking scene in the new movie Labor Day, where Josh Brolin’s demonstration to Kate Winslet of how to make a delicious peach pie serves as the same kind of gooey-yet-artisanal foreplay as the pottery-wheel scene in Ghost. To prepare for the scene, Labor Day novelist Joyce Maynard (who put her family recipe into the book) and former Martha Stewart food stylist Susan Spungen came to the set as consultants, and Brolin baked countless pies as rehearsal.
Of course, the flip side of baking a pie is destroying it – especially in the movies. That perfect crust gets pierced, filling and crumbs are mashed together — or, sometimes, the whole pie just gets thrown into someone’s face. If movie pies mean love and warmth, they also mean gluttony and humiliation.
Here, then, are 10 movies that made us reconsider what pie is really all about.