As a fan of slapstick comedy (the constant pics of Laurel and Hardy should have tipped you off to that by now), I see a certain beauty in the placement of a pie into the face of someone. It is, of course, an art…and like all forms of art, it is possible to do it very, very well and very, very badly. Tomorrow in this space, I will be discussing the proper way to "pie" someone and I will give you this one preview: If the pie has an aluminum or even a paper plate at the moment of impact, the person throwing the pie is an ignorant douchebag who should be forbidden by law to ever again hurl any kind of pie or other replica of baked goods. In fact, this especially applies if it's a real baked good.
This ban should also apply to those who employ pies as an assault weapon and I'm not kidding about that. I actually once saw someone get hurt by a surprise pie-in-the-face…not seriously but there's nothing funny about attacking someone out of the blue like that.
It was one of the stars of a TV show I worked on — not a big star but a small star, someone whose name most of you would not know. I would like to think that is not unrelated to the fact that he had been an enormous and difficult jerk all season to the point of being roundly disliked by the crew and his fellow cast members. It was the last day of taping and the Associate Producer, who had been the recipient of much abuse, had ordered up a Pie Hit — to be delivered right after this star taped the last line he or anyone on the show had to tape.
Just before the director shouted, "It's a wrap!", a pie sniper was signalled to do what he'd been engaged to do. He was from a company that would "pie" the person of your choice and I thought at the time, "What an odd occupation." Can you imagine the conversation when this guy goes home for Christmas?
"So, Phil, your brother Mike just passed the bar and your sister Alice just got admitted to U.S.C. on a medical scholarship. What are you doing these days?"
"I work for a company that sends me around to hit unsuspecting people with pies." His family must be so proud.
I don't know what the call was like for his services but they did not come cheap. As I later learned, the customer had to sign a form that stated they would be present at the moment of impact. I guess that was so that if the recipient got angry, the pie-r could point to the client and say, "He arranged it! Slug him!" You also had to sign a guarantee that you would cover all costs if a lawsuit resulted and all medical bills if the deliverer got kicked in the groin or slipped on meringue or whatever.
Our A.P. decided he wanted to "pie" the star so badly, he agreed to all that, plus that pretty hefty fee. This was the same Associate Producer who kept running in and telling me, "You can't do a joke about Grover Cleveland! What if his descendants decided to sue us?"
The way this particular assassin worked was via what looked like a lovely gift box. It was open on one side — the side he kept towards himself — and the pie was inside. He would walk up to his intended victim as if delivering a present and hand it to the unsuspecting about-to-be-pied person. The person would (usually) take the gift and as it was transferred to his hands, the pie-r would extract the pie from it and shove it in the guy's face, ho ho ho. That was how it went on our stage.
Funny? Yeah, I guess for a second. The crew all laughed because they figured it was scripted and part of the show and that the fellow knew it was coming. When it was apparent that none of that was so, the laughter petered out. The reaction was thereafter more like if a stranger had walked up and punched the guy in the face.
The star was so startled that he fell to his knees. One of the dancers on the show was, as they say, "sweet on him." In fact, earlier that day, the Associate Producer had walked into the star's dressing room and discovered this particular dancer doing what he said was a fine impression of Linda Lovelace. Now, she rushed over to help him up, wipe off the pie and help him back to that dressing room.
I ran back there to see how he was and, I guess, to make sure he understood that despite our own arguments, I had nothing to do with him being custarded like that. The dancer was crying and she was putting some sort of contact lens solution she had into one of his eyes which was all red and swollen. The pie-r had hit him hard and apparently shoved crumbs of crust into and around his target's left cornea. Soupy Sales always knew to close his eyes at the last second…but Soupy Sales always knew a pie was coming. The star had hurt his knee too when he went down.
The dancer was probably more upset than the star. He looked up at me and said, "I guess I deserved that, huh?"
I said, "Nah. You maybe deserved a small tart but not a whole pie. At worst, a twinkie or a cupcake."
He thought for a second and asked, "Did the whole crew vote me this?"
I said, "No. And it wasn't me or any of the writers. But don't ask me who did."
"I won't," he said as he got up. "But I know what I've got to do." He started heading back out to the stage despite his dancer friend urging him to remain seated and let the swelling in his eye go down. She and I both followed him out there…and I wasn't sure what he was going to do. He couldn't very well start punching out everyone who had a reason to be mad at him.
He walked back out to the exact spot where the "hit" had been made and he called out for everyone's attention. Crew members were striking the set and moving scenery away but everyone stopped. And when he had near-silence, he announced — in a pretty loud voice because the microphones had all been shut down — "I want you to all hear the card that came with the pie." There was a little gift tag on the pie box and he pulled it out of his shirt pocket and read, "Thanks for a great season and for being a tremendous asshole!" He said that last word with a laugh and then said, "I'm sorry, everyone." The whole crew applauded him.
They might have applauded more if they'd seen what the card actually said. It said, "Thanks for a great season and for being a great sport!" It was the guy's best moment on that show…but you know what? I still think it was a crappy thing to do to someone.
Tomorrow in this space, I'll tell you the right way to make and throw a pie…and most important, when.
