FANTASY FEAST
Culinary comedy pays homage to cockamamie cooking competitions
THE new film “Cook Off!” — a mockumentary, starring Melissa McCarthy, about a wild and crazy baking competition — is rooted in reality.
“The film is based on a memoir that I wrote [‘The Grrl Genius Guide to Life’] in which I shamefully admit that I became part of the cooking competition world,” writer and co-director Cathryn Michon tells The Post.
“I competed for five years in the live salad-making competition in the Santa Barbara County Fair [in California]. And I wanted to win, but I kept coming in third.”
Finally, like chef Emeril Lagasse, Michon realized she had to kick it up a notch: “I put on a bikini and set a salad on fire. And then I won.”
Here’s how the real world of cooking contests inspired her movie, out Friday.
THE PEOPLE
While competing in and researching national competitions, Michon noticed recurring trends — many involving families.
“These sort of family dynasties form,” she says. “At the most famous competitions, like the Pillsbury Bake-Off or the Southern Living Cook-Off, there are a bunch of them. It becomes like a legacy thing.”
In the film, Michon and Wendi McLendon-Covey play siblings. “We’re sisters competing against each other,” she says. “We refer to ourselves as the Venus and Serena Williams of the cook-off.”
THE WACKY FOOD
“Everybody’s gotta have a gimmick,” says Michon of the crazy edibles at cook-offs.
“My mother was a big fan of Nora Ephron, who very famously wrote about the Pillsbury Bake-Off in the 1970s and — I am not making this [name] up — the prizewinning ‘Tunnel of Fudge’ Bundt cake.”
Michon’s packed her film full of strange concoctions, such as “the multilayered rainbow anti-oxidant delight.” And then she had her actors, both the stars and supporting players, actually cook it.
“All of the recipes from the film are real,” Michon says. “It’s real food.”
THE INTENSITY
As Michon points out, some competitions — including the Pillsbury Bake-Off of years past — offered six-figure prizes, as does her fictional Van Rookle Farms Million Dollar Cook-Off.
Unsurprisingly, with so much at stake, there’s been talk of “backstabbing, cheating and rivalries,” she says. “There have been rumors of scandals at different competitions. None proved, but many whispered about.”
To further ratchet up the tension, Michon also borrowed from the reality-TV cooking shows she loves: “I like the idea of eliminating people. The tragedy and the drama of that.”
She says it’s devastating when a beloved character gets the ax in the movie. “The idea that someone gets disqualified or cut from a competition,” she adds, “is great drama.”