I have no idea how to make an apple pie or a lemon pie or a peach pie or a nesselrode pie. I don't even know what kind of tree a nesselrode grows on. But I do know how to make a throwing pie…and you only have to look as far as YouTube to see that nobody else does these days. The site is full of videos of people throwing pies and they're almost all terrible. In about half of them, the pie-e (that's a two syllable word denoting the recipient) and the pie-r (another two syllable word and it refers to the thrower) is saying, "Okay, get ready. I'm going to hit you in the face with this pie."
Right there, they don't get the concept.
The person being pied is not supposed to act like they're aware the pie is coming…or at least not at that moment. They usually do know — Soupy Sales, the greatest pie-e of all time, certainly did — but half the joke is that they act like they don't know. And they usually should know. I am very much against pies as an assault weapon for reasons I covered here yesterday.
The recipe for making a pie to hit someone in the face is deceptively simple. There are two ingredients: A pie shell and shaving cream. Do not use a real pie. For one thing, they can ruin clothing and furniture. A guy I heard about once pied someone with genuine coconut custard at an art gallery opening. He not only ruined the fellow's suit but the pie got on several pieces of artwork and damaged them. For another thing, real pies either stick too much to the recipient's face or not at all.
If they stick too much, clean-up becomes a hassle. Soupy usually did his show live, remember. White Fang would smack him in the kisser with a pie and then they'd go to two minutes of commercials…and Soupy didn't have time to go shower and have his make-up completely redone before he had to be back on camera. Shaving cream wipes off easily and his crew could get it right off the walls and floors using one of those "wet vac" vacuum cleaners.
The pie shell can be real and it should be store-bought and brittle. "Moist" is fine for eating but if you're throwing, you want the pie shell to shatter on impact. The last time we threw pies on a TV show I worked on, the prop man bought pie shells at the supermarket and then baked them longer than one is supposed to bake a pie. That made this particular brand very fragile. The shell was kept in an aluminum pie plate, filled in that plate…but removed at the last possible moment before it had to be lobbed.
The shaving cream should be the kind with nothing in it…probably the simplest, cheapest brand. Do not under any circumstances use one that says "menthol" or "aloe" on it. It can sting the eyes so the fewer ingredients, the better. Fill the pie shell with shaving cream at the last possible minute. These do not keep well. Some brands of shaving cream turn (the pun is unavoidable) soupy within five or ten minutes. Then follow these important pieces of advice…
Very important and I can't repeat this often enough: Remove the pie plate. If you are stupid enough to throw a pie with the plate, especially if it's aluminum, someone should be throwing a pie in your face. The funny visual is to see the pie-e with cream and pieces of pie shell on his or her face and to see as much of their expression as is not obscured by shaving cream. It is not as funny to see a paper or tin plate stuck on their face hiding the entire expression.
Throw it, do not shove it. You may need to get close for reasons of aim but make sure the pie leaves your hand before it connects with the face in question. There are two reasons for this. One is that it feels more like assault and less like comedy if your hand comes into contact with the person. The other reason is that you want the pie shell to shatter on impact.
Establish the pie. In whatever scene you do, there should usually be a reason why someone has a pie…like it's part of a dessert buffet or something. The oft-pied Mr. Sales was able to get away with the pies just coming from nowhere but he was Soupy Sales and you're not. On his show, it was just taken for granted that everyone, house pets included, had a pie at their disposal whenever one was needed.
Establishing the pie is hard to do convincingly as audiences get instantly hip. They see a pie — especially one of those shaving cream deals — and they think, "Ah, that's going in someone's face." The easiest way to retain the all-important premise of surprise is to bait-and-switch. Set up a scene where it looks like Person A is going to throw the pie at Person B and then instead, it winds up in the face of Person C. And onlookers love it when instead of A hitting B, B somehow turns it around and pies A.
If you're making a video or film, a perfectly-timed sound effect is essential. Watch any clip of Mr. S. Sales and observe the expert timing (and remember, they did almost all of these live) as the sound of a bullet ricochet accompanies the delivery of the pie into Soupy's kisser. Half a second later and that pie would have been half as funny.
The pie-e is not supposed to laugh. They're not supposed to look like they wanted it to happen. They're supposed to look into the camera like Oliver Hardy or Wile E. Coyote with an annoyed look of punctured dignity. And lastly…
Less is more. Ten pies is not ten times as funny as one pie. It's like throwing someone into the swimming pool with their clothes on. Once they're wet, they don't get any wetter. The joke is the first time they get wet. If you're going to hit someone with ten pies, you need to have ten variations on the joke. And you need to not linger forever on the image of them covered with goop.
Follow these rules and you too can follow in the footsteps of Buster Keaton, Moe Howard, Clyde Adler (he was the main guy who threw 'em at Soupy) and other great Sandy Koufaxes of the Pie. And who knows? You may even get a laugh or two…though audiences have seen a lot of this so I wouldn't count on more than two. Thank you and class is adjourned.