PALM SPRINGS SHORTFEST 2024 REVIEW! With the look and style of a vintage adult movie, director/writer Talia Shea Levin’s insanely wacky short film Make Me a Pizza, co-written by male lead actor Woody Coyote, is both hilarious and skillfully crafted. I never thought that I would be into a movie about two people trying to appease a pizza god while becoming one as a pizza themselves, but here we are.
The film opens up with an enticing slow-mo shot of some super cheesy pizza, accompanied by some smooth jazz to set the mood for seduction. A bored and h***y housewife, played by Sophie Neff, orders some pizza. She comes out in a nightgown and seductively tells the strait-laced pizza boy (which feels funny to say because he’s a grown man) with a thick mustache, played by Woody Coyote, that she doesn’t have any money, but she can make it up in other ways. It has all of the makings of a retro porn flick, but then things get weird, and I mean really weird.
“…look and style of a vintage adult movie…”
The pizza boy explains that he needs actual money to pay for the pizza. The film goes into a really funny montage about every worker who had a hand in making that pizza, from the guy tossing the dough to another one cutting the pepperoni down to the people who grew wheat, picked the tomatoes, and then packaged them. We see old-timey black-and-white stock footage of hundreds of workers in a factory and child labor while the pizza boy goes on about it.
The housewife asks the man if he can show her how to be a pizza, which finally lights a fire under his passion. Cue the cheesy adult movie music while things get hot and heavy. The audience then sees pizza strategically placed over privates during the lovemaking, and it is laugh-out-loud funny while at the same time showing skillful direction from Talia Shea Levin. We also see delicious full pizza shots interspersed between the action, culminating in an extra cheesy, greasy, sticky, all-over money shot.
This movie is like if Weird Al Yankovic suddenly went dirty, and I’m here for it. Comedy is not easy, especially when it is done in a short time span. The stars, writers, director, and crew pulled it off as beautifully as a scrumptious pizza pie. Sophie Neff is fantastic at alternating between sexy and silly, while Woody Coyote does the same thing by being serious and then switching to straight-faced absurdity.
Make Me a Pizza screened at the 2024 Palm Springs Shortfest.