Over on this website, you can see a little video interview of folks who attended the recent memorial service for Soupy Sales. And wouldn't we all love to have Joe Franklin and Professor Irwin Corey at our memorial services?
One of the interviewees, Barry Mitchell, gets the recipe exactly right for Soupy's famous facial-pies. He used non-menthol shaving cream placed in a pie shell…and he was always experimenting with different brands of shaving cream and different brands of store-bought, pre-made pie shells. The shaving cream had to be of the right consistency (the cheapest brands are usually the best) and the pie shell needed to be properly thin and brittle. At times, he used a double shell, one inside the other, to give it the necessary heft and weight. You can't lob something that's too light.
Ignorant, foolish people make throwing-pies with straight supermarket whipped cream. It doesn't last long out of the can, especially under hot studio lights. It doesn't get as fluffy as shaving cream and some brands are oily or have other additives that make clean-up a bitch. Shaving cream easily wipes off the person and washes out of clothing, and Soupy's stage crew used to get rid of the excess on the set easily and quickly with a wet-dry vacuum cleaner. I won't even comment on someone who's so mind-numbingly ignorant that they attempt a pie-throw with custard or lemon meringue or any real pie filling. There are studio prop guys who've developed good recipes for throwing-pies made of edible substances, but they're not pies you'd really want to eat.
Also, you have to be brain-dead stupid to put your filling into a foil pie pan or paper plate. A foil pie pan or paper plate won't shatter when it hits the person like a baked shell will. They're usually too light to toss with any accuracy and half the time when you do hit your target, the foil or paper clings to the victim's face and hides it. I mean, Jesus Christ, people! What's the hell's the point of hitting someone in the face with a pie if you can't then see their face covered in cream?
Finally on the subject of pie-throwing, it's stunning how many people leave out the most important part of a pie-throw on television: The sound effect. You need a good, loud rifle shot ricochet sound effect, perfectly timed. That generally isn't necessary when you pie someone in person, like at a party. The sheer act of seeing it live (and the fact that live pies are usually a surprise to the recipient) will make up for the lack of sound effects punctuation. But on TV or in a movie, a pie-hit without the right sound effect is like Glenn Beck with a moment of sanity. Why even bother?
Inept pie-throwing repulses me, as it should sicken all of you. The other night, David Letterman — who you'd think would know a little about humor — did it all wrong on his show. They had pies in foil pie plates, first of all. Then, whatever they put in them — whipped cream, I think — had gotten flat and watery by the time they got around to the segment. Dave, Paul and Regis Philbin couldn't even throw the damn things; they just kind of poured the soupy (no pun intended) contents of the pie shells over each other. Someone should be extorting money from Letterman for not pointing out to the world that he claims to be a professional comedian but he doesn't even know how to hit someone in the face with a pie. Disgusting.
