This is an interesting question to a lot of people since as a lot of folks should know by now a movie isn’t over and done with in one take, as different shots are needed, sometimes a scene doesn’t feel right, and if it’s a food scene that requires the actors to eat you can imagine that a person might get extremely full at one point. There are ways around this however as the Bird Bite method is one that’s mentioned and it requires only taking small bites of whatever is in front of a person, though of course even this can become taxing after so many takes. After that is the Bucket method, which is just what it sounds like, spitting the food into a bucket. It’s a bit vulgar and incredibly wasteful, but it is bound to save an actor’s stomach and keep them just hungry enough to keep going. The other methods, the Purge, is the least appealing of the bunch since letting go of what’s in your stomach after eating is never a pleasant experience unless one has the flu and the relief that comes from it is a blessing not long after. But for take after take to finally purge everything in your stomach, that sounds like a lot of hard work that people might not wish to go through. Some actors have still taken to this method either by choice or because they had no other option after eating something they didn’t care for.
When looking at some of the things that actors eat in movies and TV it’s kind of eye-opening to think of how much really gets wasted in getting that final shot that will the make the scene look right. For instance, just looking at the image above from Splash, imagine how many lobsters it might have taken to make this work. Of course if you check with Mental Floss, the fact that Daryl Hannah is a vegan kind of made it necessary to come up with something that wasn’t lobster but looked like it, so she was actually chomping on some type of vegetable matter that had been made to look like lobster meat. All the same though, she likely had to do it a few times, so it’s interesting to wonder whether she used the bucket method or not since she looks like she was chowing down in a big way during the scene. But with other eating scenes one can easily think that a lot of people did the bird bite method since it’s been seen that a lot of folks in movies aren’t really digging in and are only picking at their food for various reasons. Those that do dig in are likely using the bucket method since unfortunately the purge method could come with a few complications thanks to the abundance of stomach acid that might start coming up on a regular basis. There are likely ways to do this that are less harmful, but typically food isn’t supposed to come back up unless the body indicates that there’s an issue in the stomach that demands regurgitation.
The bucket method definitely sounds like one of the best largely because disgusting and wasteful as it can be and likely is, it does offer the actors an easier out for getting rid of food that they really don’t want to eat or might not want to eat since they’ll get stuffed too quickly. Some actors are pretty open when it comes to relaying which foods they don’t like and it’s likely that the director does pay attention at times. If you look at a lot of movies there are quite a few that don’t even deal with food save for show and the implication that it might be eaten. Then there’s the idea that during a meal people might be chewing on absolutely nothing and are basically playacting as well as they can. The act of actually eating food on a set is something that a lot of people don’t give a great deal of though, but it is an interesting subject since one has to wonder just where all the food goes after it’s been showcased. Some of the food items are merely props made to look as real as possible, while it’s a hope that the food that’s not used might actually be given to the cast and crew later on or perhaps sent to others that could possibly benefit. Apart from that it’s a subject that doesn’t come up a lot since eating in the movies isn’t always a big deal.
Questions like this do raise a lot of interest with some folks though since it’s something we don’t talk about enough and a hint of realism that people might like to see in the movies from time to time.
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