How a 1965 comedy spent $12 million to stage the greatest pie fight ever
In short: Blake Edwards' The Great Race was the most expensive comedy of its time, featuring a legendary four-minute pie fight that cost $200,000 to film. Using 4,000 pastries, the production became a logistical nightmare that left the set smelling of rotting food and pushed its stars to their physical limits.
Released in 1965, The Great Race was director Blake Edwards' ambitious attempt to create the funniest comedy ever. Inspired by the 1908 New York to Paris automobile race, the film pitted the heroic Great Leslie against the villainous Professor Fate. Despite a massive $12 million budget—equivalent to $92 million today—the film was a commercial failure that struggled to balance slapstick humor with a coherent narrative.
The production is best remembered for its climactic pie fight, which required five days of shooting and 4,000 pies. Edwards insisted on building tension by keeping his hero, dressed in white, pristine until the final moment. However, the reality of filming was far from funny. The pie residue spoiled over a weekend, creating a stench so severe the set required professional cleaning. Actors faced genuine danger, with Natalie Wood briefly choking on filling and Jack Lemmon comparing the impact of a pie to being hit by a ton of cement.
Critics were largely unimpressed, noting that the film lacked the pacing and soul of the silent-era slapstick it sought to emulate. Leonard Maltin famously compared it to the 1927 Laurel and Hardy short The Battle of the Century, arguing that the modern attempt suffered from an incomplete understanding of the genre. While the film won an Academy Award for Best Sound Effects, it remains a polarizing relic of 1960s Hollywood excess, remembered more for its behind-the-scenes chaos than its comedic success.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Great Race
- Also: Wikidata — The Great Race · CC0
- Also: Wikidata — The Great Race · CC0
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