By George & Josh Bate
Twenty one years ago, one of the craziest news headlines of all time spread like wildfire across television news and newspapers. A woman dining at a Wendy’s in San Jose, California claimed that she found a human finger in her bowl of chili. How did the finger get there? Whose finger was it? Who would ever want to eat fast food chili again? These are just some of the questions that spawned from a scandal that cost Wendy’s more than $30 million in lost revenue.
But everything changed a few weeks later when the woman was arrested following the police’s discovery that she had falsified the entire controversy. The woman had placed a severed finger in her Wendy’s chili as a means to extort the company out of money, a criminal act that led to a charge of attempted grand theft and subsequent imprisonment.
The new crime-tinged black comedy Chili Finger uses the hoax of the severed finger from 2005 as the foundation for a frivolous and, at times, quite dark film inspired by Coen Brothers’ classics like Fargo and Blood Simple.
From directing duo Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad, Chili Finger follows Jessica (Judy Greer) and Ron (Sean Astin), a couple struggling with their finances whose daughter has recently left the family home for college. While eating at Ron’s favorite fast food restaurant Blake Juniors, Jessica discovers a severed human finger in her bowl of chili and proceeds to blackmail Blake Junior himself (John Goodman), the founder of the regionally successful fast food chain, for $100,000. As Jessica tries to navigate unfamiliar criminal behavior, Blake Junior deploys his ex-marine buddy Dave (Bryan Cranston) to investigate the truth behind the chili finger.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to interview co-director Edd Benda, co-director and writer Stephen Helstad, and star Judy Greer on the red carpet of the film at this year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival. The trio discussed how their movie is distinctly American, how they meticulously crafted one of the year’s most enthralling scenes, Bryan Cranston’s scene-stealing turn, and more.
Filmed in central Illinois and with a plot depicting a mother struggling with her daughter going off to college and revolving around the kind of fast food joint all Americans will be familiar with, Chili Finger reflects a way of life people in the U.S. will immediately recognize. But, for as resonant as Benda and Helstad’s new film may be to American audiences, the filmmaking duo prioritized story over commentary. “Being honest to the characters first and story first [was most important,” said Helstad. “Never a question like, ‘Oh, how can we comment on broader sociopolitical, socioeconomic circumstances in America?’ It’s, ‘How do you tell an engaging story and just a story.’”
To tell an engaging story, the directing duo primarily drew from their experiences of living in the U.S., while acknowledging that the plot and characters feel distinctly American. “I think in a funny way we just made it very true to our own lived experience,” Benda discussed. “It’s a story about an empty nested mother and dealing with some very specific emotional grief reactions to that. A lot of the lived-in Americana just stems from that affordability. Fast food is a very American thing. Talking about generational transfer of a restaurant franchise. We wandered into these things, at times intentionally, but I think even more so just being true to our lived experience.”
Grounding the film with an authentic and approachable performance is Judy Greer. The actress known for her roles in 13 Going on 30, Halloween (2018), and Jurassic World rose to prominence for her vast array of supporting roles, but Chili Finger positions the Detroit native as a cunning protagonist with real agency, even though she may appear unassuming at first. “It’s really fun to be in a lot of scenes in a movie,” joked Greer. “Sometimes, I have to do so much work on my own, because I’m not in so much. So I have to do a lot of pretending about things that happen that we don’t actually shoot in a movie. In this, it’s all pretty much there. I get to do everything and it helps too because it builds the story even though we don’t shoot in order. There was so much great stuff on the page that I didn’t really have to do too much magic. It was all there.”
Greer’s character Jessica Lipki kicks the film’s narrative into gear when a seemingly innocuous trip to her husband’s favorite fast food restaurant culminates in her discovering a severed human finger in her chili. Greer touched on what it was like to film the pivotal scene in which she accidentally takes a mouthful of a finger. “That was gross actually,” Greer said. “I didn’t think the finger and the chili would gross me out as much as it actually did on set.” Greer added that she was able to take some mementos home from set, “I do have a couple little souvenir fingers.”
The discovery of the severed finger leads into the film’s best scene, a meticulously scripted, performed, and framed negotiation sequence between Greer’s Jessica (alongside her husband Ron, played by Sean Astin) and Madeline Wise’s Blake Jr. II, the daughter of John Goodman’s CEO character.
Helstad discussed how the nerves he and Benda experienced surrounding such an important scene eventually evolved into them feeling like audience members as they watched the actors perform the material. “That was our third day [or] second day filming,” Helstad explained. “I think I was very nervous about that, because, one, it’s a very long scene. How do you sustain the tension and momentum and continue to build on it? But it was also Madeline Wise’s first day on set. And we had never worked with Maddie before. It was like seven or eight pages of dialogue that she had. So there were a lot of nerves going into that scene. But then, once we started, to a certain degree, we were like audience members to just sit there and watch these actors play off one another and [their] facial expressions and how they’re manipulating and doing this behind the scenes. It was very fun to watch.”
Such a critical scene was made all the more difficult to film as it started to rain heavily when Benda and Helstad flipped the filming around for coverage. “So a quick little tidbit for fans is that behind Madeline Wise, playing Blake Jr. II,” Benda explained, “There’s this big cheeseburger poster that our production designer Chris Bellman and our set decorator Ellie Langshaw had such insight to be like, ‘You’re going to want posters on standby.’ Because, sure enough, it’s pouring rain behind that window. And so, to match coverage, it was a combination of practical and post effects to make it work. The team saw our vision, saw a huge storm cloud, and then saw it away.”
The brilliant negotiation scene perfectly encapsulates the tone of Chili Finger, which finds our characters, in world, experience distress and hardship, while the audience is provided opportunities to laugh at the dark comedy of an increasingly unhinged situation. Greer noted that, although the film’s tone leans into the humor of a wild situation, she aimed to play her character as authentically as possible and left the handling of the tone to her directors. “My job on set is to just play the truth of the scene and then I let the guys or girl, in this case the guys, my directors, adjust the tone,” Greer remarked. “But a lot of tone gets decided in the editing room and so I really like to give my characters a lot of respect and I want them to shine and I want them to be able to tell a real story and not just kind of comment on [something]. So that’s why I try not too much to think, ‘Oh this is a comedy, so I have to do this scene really funny.’ Then I think you get into some tricky territory.”
My job on set is to just play the truth of the scene and then I let the guys or girl, in this case the guys, my directors, adjust the tone. But a lot of tone gets decided in the editing room and so I really like to give my characters a lot of respect and I want them to shine and I want them to be able to tell a real story and not just kind of comment on. So that’s why I try not too much to think, ‘Oh this is a comedy, so I have to do this scene really funny.’ Then I think you get into some tricky territory.”
In blackmailing Blake Juniors after finding the finger in her chili, Greer and Astin’s characters find themselves in the crosshairs of Dave, a former marine played by Bryan Cranston. Arguably the standout of the film, Cranston plays a character who, on the surface, appears rather dopey and aloof, but, over time, shows that he poses a formidable threat to the Lipkis. “Bryan came with a lot of really great ideas and a very clear vision of the character,” Helstad described. “He really wanted to lean into the fact that Dave presents himself as aloof to start. And he wanted to embrace that part of the character, because he loved how it then turns. Wait, this guy actually is observant and he is picking up on what’s going on. There’s more than meets the eye.”
Benda elaborated that they and Cranston drew inspiration from the original Columbo series. In the show, Peter Falk often played the part of a doofus, before ultimately figuring everything out with remarkable insightfulness.
Taking the barebones of a crazy true story and making a Fargo-inspired crime-tinged black comedy out of it, directors Ed Benda and Stephen Helstad and star Judy Greer create a winding, ever-escalating film destined to entertain fans of the Coen Brothers and make you think twice before ordering chili next time you’re at a fast food joint.
Check out our interviews with Chili Finger star Judy Greer and directors Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad below….
