Gifs via Summit Entertainment.

La La Land is a movie carried by talented actors doing their best with what they were given. One of the things they were given was this hideous souffle-cake chimera which Ryan Gosling believably portrays as food.

What is it? A grotesquely constructed egg and green souffle made of 100 eggs? A moldy yellow cake? Round flat bread? A tall pizza? 1,000 crepes stacked on top of one another? What fucking food fucking looks like this?


My colleague Rich, who made the gif and watched the dinner scene with me looking over his shoulder, noticed that the culinary Frankenstein is at no point referenced or eaten—Mia and Sebastian (Emma Stone and Gosling) eat a dinner of what looks to be “chicken in a pot,” make a toast “to Boise!,” get into a forced fight about careerism and what it means it “make it” (Mia thinks being in a popular jazz band fronted by John Legend isn’t making it), and then she storms out. He is flustered, forgets about this thing, and rushes to get it out of the oven. But he is too late—it has been burnt beyond recognition.

So, Rich concludes, and I second, “It looks like he cooked a two-tier cake for dessert and ruined it.” Am I to believe that in his best case scenario he was going to ice the cake after their dinner? That Mia was going to wait for it to cool off, for Sebastian to oafily ice some icing on? And then they were going to slice slices of it and enjoy it? My main question is: has Damien Chazelle ever met a real young adult?


Thank you to emailer Nick, who asked, “WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT IT?? american sniper (rightfully) gets shit for the plastic baby, but this gets a pass??”