Everyone loves a delicious slice of hot pizza. And how can you not be romantic about the cinema? If you don’t like either, please leave, you may stop reading now. For those who remain, our most cherished friends, continue to hear our fresh take on the top ten films and scenes we love the most, with our favorite movie star of them all: Pizza.
10: ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
It’s not every day you order a pizza and get a surprise little alien friend show up in your backyard. Director Steven Spielberg was in his bag that day. Our favorite scene occurred when Elliot, his brother, and friends order pizza with “plenty of sausage, pepperoni and everything but the little fishies.”
Elliot is tasked with grabbing the ‘za from the delivery driver outside. As he makes his way back into the house, he hears a crash from the backyard. As he investigates, Elliot freaks out and gets scared when ET throws a baseball at his feet from the small toolshed. During his run back into the house to tell everyone what he saw, he mistakenly stomps on the freshly delivered and glorious pizza. Not what you want to hear during a game of Dungeons & Dragons, or ever for that matter.
At least we can watch this 1982 classic from the safety of our couches with our beloved pizza and have no fear of green men showing up. At least… we hope! We’d be cool if it’s ET.
9: Home Alone
Kevin! Does it get any more memorable than the scene with the pizza delivery guy from Little Nero’s knocking over that statue at the McCallister home and getting an ear full from that black and white movie as he’s told to “put it on the doorstep and get the hell out of here?” Or maybe you prefer the earlier family dinner scene where the entire extended McCallister clan gathers before their big trip with the greatest holiday get-together meal of them all: pizza. Easy on the Pepsi, Fuller.
The hilarity of these scenes never ages. Each generation since the early 90s still finds this moment in cinema history to be one of the best of all time. We want to watch Kevin take in those juicy aromas and pizza flavors every Christmas when we watch the film. And we want to go eat some delicious pizza now ourselves so for now, leave us alone and “keep the change ya filthy animal.”
8: Back to the Future 2
How about pizza… from the future? Well, kind of. Marty McFly is gray and old. He’s sitting around his dinner table waiting for the feast to begin. His mom opens a pop-tart sized bag revealing a baby-sized pizza. She then does some magic with a futuristic Hydrator appliance: Mom McFly puts the tiny pizza inside and waits a few seconds. What comes out is a delicious monstrosity of pepperoni, cheese, and green onions. Ding! It’s ready. Imagine if this magic device was real! We can only envision how many families would be hydrating their pizzas for nearly every meal. Perhaps there would even be pizza hydrating cooking shows. Can’t wait for the future!
7: Talladega Nights
If you're not first, you’re last. That’s the code NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby lives by, and it’s our code for racing to the oven to grab our pizza as we watch this classic comedy. Bobby, played by Will Ferrell, is demoralized as he has fallen out of professional racing and must take a job as a pizza delivery driver. Even worse, he’s getting heckled by a bunch of kids who look like rejected cast members from Saved by the Bell. Man’s just trying to do his job, no disrespect to Kelly Kapowski.
Ricky hops into his delivery car and immediately hits a shopping cart. This earns him a ticket from a police officer and as Bobby bails on the bad scene, the officer walks directly in front of him and gets run over by Ricky! We swear this movie is a comedy.
6: Iron Man
He’s usually busy saving the world from bombs and homemade explosive devices, but a man still must eat! And eating Tony Stark can do, especially if it’s pizza. This scene features Obie, Miss Potts, and Tony Stark discussing business matters: Tony’s company has dropped enormous stock value, but you can’t really tell if he cares much. Why? He’s got delicious pizza to munch on. At the end of the scene Obie nabs the box from Tony and offers him just one piece… Oh well, he’s Tony Stark and he’s worth billions. He can buy as much pizza as his little Arc Reactor desires.
4 & 5: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Part One & Two
Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo: Classical Renaissance artists, or totally bodacious and radical purveyors of all things pizza? How can we not mention our favorite heroes in a half-shell? These mutant teenage ninjas from the sewers of New York City LOVE a good cheese pizza: they basically eat pizza in every scene from the first two films (Total classics BTW). And if they aren’t eating pizza, they’re talking about pizza. And if they’re not talking about it, they’re dreaming about it and if… oh, you get the idea. Just don’t even think about adding anchovies. Without the aid of some hot cheesy slices of pizza, the dudes wouldn’t be able to take on the likes of Shredder or Vanilla Ice. Cowabunga!
3: Toy Story
To infinity… and Pizza Planet! Toy Story is about toys coming to life when we, their clueless owners, leave the room, and who can forget the pizza scene in the first film of this series when Woody and Buzz snuck out of the safety of Andy’s house and hopped inside an old, decrepit Toyota delivery truck, carried off to the infamous Pizza Planet?
And don’t forget to take Buzz’s advice: You’re safer in the cockpit than in the cargo bay. Just ask Sheriff Woody, who got smashed with a toolbox on his way to Pizza Planet.
2: Miss Congeniality
Guess you’ll be needing some more pizza, like Sandra Bullock suggests in this movie with a pizza scene that burns in the memory for all time. The ladies in this scene are counting every calorie in prep for their big beauty contest, but now, a night of pizza, beer, and friends is in direct order.
During this scene from the 2000 film, co-starring William Shatner, the ladies really let their hair down standing around a table talking about their deepest thoughts over their food and drinks. Bullock is about to show one of the gals some defensive moves to ward off predators, but her friend has had one too many drinks and falls over and passes out.
Our question: Does Sandra Bullock ever age?
1: Dog Day Afternoon
Let’s go back to 1975, when Dog Day Afternoon came to the silver screen. During what turns out to be a long, drawn out heist, even a bank robber like Sonny (played by a hungry young Al Pacino) needs to order in for his hostages. As Sonny tensely orders several pizzas, a growing mob of onlookers and angry police officers surround the scene, just waiting for one false move to take him out, and we ain’t talking about to a nice pizza restaurant with extra breadsticks.
Sonny greets the happy-go-lucky pizza delivery driver at the bank door and hands him a wad of cash. Then he steps out to the street and throws even more handfuls of money at the excited mob and cranky police force who have had it up to here with this meatball.
Sonny’s arms are now full of pizza boxes, so he asks the delivery driver to open the bank doors for him. And he does! The driver throws an arm on the bank robber almost to congratulate him and shouts to the TV cameras “I’m a ******* star!” Sorry for the fresh language.
What can we say, pizza just brings everyone together! We didn’t happen to catch the rest of this film, and we presume they all just ate their pizza and things died down. So, what are we watching next?
