Pizza Biz: Great pizza moments in cinematic history
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze opens with a helicopter shot, floating into New York City. The Big Apple. The center of the world. The World Trade Center towers still loom large as symbols of American exceptionalism.
But this was 1991—pre-Giuliani, pre-Disneyfied Times Square. New York, for all intents and purposes, was still a very dangerous place. In March 1991, Simon Hoggart described the city’s residents in the New York Observer as such.
‘To have to admit that you have never been robbed, or burgled, or held at knife point is to admit a special kind of failure. What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you even worth mugging?’
Yet, for all the foreboding and sinister elements, we cut to street-level and see a city bustling with humanity. A bouncy 90s rap beat underscores the sounds of cars honking and food vendors hocking their wares. A distant voice yells Pizza!
Now we’re in the horse-drawn carriage district of Manhattan, where the camera follows a tourist carted around by a horse taxi until the shot lands on two people—a top-hatted carriage driver and a plainclothes schlub—both digging into giant slices of cheese pizza. After taking a bite, they both nod. An agreeable mouthful, indeed.
This is the power of pizza: erasing class and political divides. The great equalizer.
We get a shot of two Wall Street types out on a date. From out of nowhere, they pull out slices. Truly nothing more romantic.
Two cops chow down as their perp eyes their pizzas with mournful regret. Freedom, as depicted, is a slice of za.
Over and over, we’re treated to shots of people eating the same large slices of cheese pizza, which now as I’m older, look disgusting. The cheese pulls like rubber, and people eat it with maniacal glee. The pale cheese evokes memories of bland elementary school lunches, and we can all remember what those slices tasted like, right? But back when I first saw Secret of the Ooze, there was nothing I wanted more than house down one of those slices.
And perhaps that’s why this is what I immediately think of when I think of food scenes. It’s not that the pizza in The Secret of the Ooze makes us want to eat it (unless you’re 9)—it’s a reminder of the joy that comes from feeling safe in a community.
It’s not the turtles who save the city, it’s the pizza