I’ve dreamt of something like this for a long long while, watching movies like You Can’t Take It With You, Key Largo, The Apartment, The Big Lebowski and so many others thinking, “hey, there’s really a set of drinks that could be themed around this…” Well, they’ve gone and done it, and a month from now you can find yourself in New Orleans enjoying just that very thing:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:
Ann Tuennerman; 504-343-4285; ann@talesofthecocktail.com
Debbie Rizzo; 617-233-8024; darizzo@gmail.com

COCKTAIL FILM FEST CELEBRATES SIPPING IN CINEMA WITH THREE SCREENINGS AT W NEW ORLEANS HOTEL

Host Cheryl Charming presents movies and themed cocktails and food March 21 – 22.

NEW ORLEANS – (January 18, 2008) –
Tales of the Cocktail and the W New Orleans invite movie buffs and libation lovers to indulge in two evenings of celebrating cocktail in film. Cheryl Charming, cocktail writer and founder of MissCharming.com, plays hostess for the screenings of Casablanca, Guys and Dolls, and The Seven Year Itch, on the evenings of Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22, at the W, located at 333 Poydras St. in downtown New Orleans.

“Cocktail scenes in film have been around since the invention of cinema,” said Ann Tuennerman, founder of Tales of the Cocktail. “Our film fest looks at the specific cocktails and spirits served in great films and offers guests an opportunity to learn more about these drinks and of course taste and enjoy them in the sophisticated atmosphere of the W.”

The Film Fest schedule is as follows:
Friday, March 21, 8 p.m., Casablanca
Saturday, March 22, 5 p.m., The Seven Year Itch
Saturday, March 22, 8 p.m., Guys and Dolls

Tickets are $25 per film, per person, and include drinks, cocktail food and snacks. A weekend package that includes all three films is $65 per person, which saves $10. For tickets, visit www.TalesoftheCocktail.com or call 504-377-7935 beginning March 1, 2008. The W New Orleans is featuring a special rate of $129 a night for Cocktail Film Fest goers. Visit W Hotels New Orleans for more information.

Themed food and drink by Zoë will coordinate with each film. During Casablanca, guests will enjoy French 75’s, Champagne Cocktails, Champagne, Brandy, Grand Marnier and Moroccan themed food. As The Seven Year Itch is screened, potato chips (dip ‘em bubbly if one cares to), popcorn, retro candy, Martinis, Tom Collins’, Scotch, Whiskey Sours and Gin and Tonics will be served. On Saturday, during the Guys and Dolls screening, guests can taste TV dinners, wedding cake, Mojitos, Cuba Libres, Milk Punch and Mexican Beer.

Lay this on top of the fact that my wife is a professional foodie and we are absolutely going to make it. Errrrr… or not. Easter Sunday as well as my daughter’s 7th birthday are on the 23rd¹ and it’s a ten-hour drive from here to the Big Easy…but hell, I’ll try and make it to Casablanca at the very least. This is a great opportunity at a great price to spend time with three of the great things in life; drink, food, well-made movies, and people that enjoy the same² . Don’t miss it.

Press Release: Cocktailnerd's Head Explodes is a post from: cocktailnerd

1. hence my head fucking exploding
2. I leave it to you to pick three out of four for yourself

So, I present to you, To Have or Have Not, a movie that discovered Lauren Bacall at 19 (!) and brought she and Humphrey Bogart together during and after the filming of it (he would divorce his wife soon after and marry Bacall, much his junior) and is essentially a poor man’s Casablanca. Not to say it isn’t a great film, but beside Casablanca it falls well short; though Bacall and Bogart’s chemistry is mesmerizing. In this case, a bottle of whisky is used to underline the burgeoning tension in their relationship, and the exchange of the bottle between them, after she’s swindled it from an unsuspecting French Naval officer, underlines how they are vying for both information about each other as well as control over the dynamic between them. After he’s left her at the bar with the naval officer we get this:

She’s brought a bottle of whisky (or rum, he uses water with it, but because they’re in Martinique it may well be rum) and she goads him about her behavior at the bar though he denies it bothered him. Finally, once he makes them both drinks and he asks her about her ’story’, because she took a slap in the face from the Vichy gestapo without flinching, she gets upset and leaves; him, literally, holding the bottle.

It takes him all of about five seconds to beeline for her room across the hall – wouldn’t you? -where, once again, the bottle is treated as currency; neither of them willing to commit to its ownership but both using it as impetus to see more of and learn more about one another. 

Soft mood music begins playing as he knocks on her door and she, distraught and upset about his challenging her to expose herself, invites him in. The bottle continues to be used as an excuse to connect with each other as he says, ‘You left this.’

The discussion continues to escalate their emotional gamesmanship and she begins to divulge details about her life, how she brought the bottle to Bogart’s character to embarrass him, and her possibly sordid past. Finally, after the climax of the scene, captured in the image at the top of this post, he leaves, her looking forlorn and lost, and once again, looking to use the booze as a pretense to join him.

‘There’s that bottle again,’ Harry says when he finds her at his door again, mentioning what a ‘problem’ the bottle is becoming. However, the third time is the charm as in this exchange and ‘gifting’ of the bottle between them the interaction culminates in their first kiss as the critical moment in the film arrives; when Harry decides to help the French Resistance and, in the process, Bacall’s character ‘Slim’. The tension released, the bottle disposed of in their thoughts, and Slim remarking that they must simply try the kissing again (but next time with Harry shaved), she leaves Harry’s room with the immortal line:

Slim: You know how to whistle, don’t you Steve? You just put your lips together and…blow.

So, you’ll have to pardon this lengthy and self-indulgent post all in the name of my recognizing more and more how drinking is used in classic films as a stand-in for emotional development, again, as shorthand for social dynamics and character depth or dimensions (see: Bogart’s soliloquy in Casablanca, ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the world…’ with his lonely drink in hand). Mind you, not a drop of alcohol is actually consumed in the scenes I’ve outlined, but it’s an ever-present calling card to the universal appeal of alcohol in its ability to bring people together and be used as a catalyst to connect strangers. Whereas, with the mores of today’s cinema, as I’ve mentioned, it’s almost exclusively portrayed as a self-destructive element or to quickly, and lazily, outline a characters’ major character flaws. In To Have or Have Not it’s treated as a great companion to an affair of the heart, and I couldn’t agree more. Cheers, Harry and Slim.

And just so you don’t go away empty-handed, here’s a cocktail developed in the name of Humphrey Bogart called the ‘Bogey Cocktail’.

Bogey¹

• 1 oz gin
• 1 oz dry vermouth
• 1/4 oz Bourbon
• 1/4oz Pernod
• 1 dash lemon juice

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled then strain into a cocktail glass.

A minor variation can be found here. And as the man himself said, ‘I should never have switched to martinis.’

On a side note, Jay at Oh Gosh! did a nice (and much more concise) piece on drinking and classic films with Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. Check it out here, good stuff.

Drinking in Film: 'To Have and Have Not' is a post from: cocktailnerd

1. from Stan Jones’ Jones’ Complete Bar Guide