Sex & Food in Cinema Series
“You just take it one bite at a time...”
The vanishing dessert platter.
Set in Los Angeles during the pre-Twitter age when people still smoked in coffee houses and read the personal ads in the back pages of the LA Weekly. In this clip from the 1996 romantic comedy “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” (a modern romance remix on the imposter theme), Noelle (Uma Thurman), pretending to be veterinarian and pet show radio host Abby Barnes (Janeane Garofalo), tries but can’t resist a plate of assorted desserts fed to her forkful by scrumptious forkful by Brian, a handsome photographer played by Ben Chaplin who believes Noelle is Abby. A long, drawn out misunderstanding, ala Edmond Rostand’s 1897 “Cyrano de Bergerac” is afoot!
(Trivia: Garofalo dated Chaplin for a spell after the filming and an appearance by Jamie Fox, who plays Chaplin’s wingman — before that Oscar for “Ray” — is good for laughs.)
Clip notes
1. “The Vanishing Dessert Platter,”The Truth About Cats & Dogs, directed by Michael Lehman (1996; 20th Century Fox).
“The Truth About Cats & Dogs” (1996), Written by Audrey Wells
BRIAN: This stuff’s left over from a shoot that I did. I hope you like sweets ’cause that’s all there is.
NOELLE: (gasping) I don’t eat that stuff. I order it, but I can’t eat it.
BRIAN: Of course you can. You just take it one bite at a time and it all goes down.
NOELLE: No. No, really.
[Several bites later, an empty plate.]
NOELLE: No more?
[end scene]