At Sundance this year, a bizarre film called Ghost Story premiered to mixed reviews. The film stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, and Rooney is the widow being haunted (??) by her late husband’s ghost, played by a sheet-covered Casey Affleck. It’s not supposed to be a scary movie. It’s supposed to be, like, a ghost drama? Like, a ghost character study? Here’s the trailer:

So… it’s not for me. I know it’s not supposed to be scary, but even ghost character studies will probably freak me out. Still, I read several articles about the film after its Sundance premiere, and all of the articles mentioned one particular scene where Mara’s character is numb with grief after her husband’s funeral, and she sits down and eats a pie in one sitting. Apparently, that scene is, like, Rooney’s best work as an actress. Critics were going wild about how she eats a whole pie in one sitting, in one take. And here’s how you know it was an Oscar-worthy pie-eating: apparently, Rooney had never even eaten a piece of pie before! So she says. She and Casey Affleck chatted with the LA Times about the movie, pie-eating and more. Some highlights:

Rooney on the secrecy of making the film: “I’m inherently a secretive person. It’s just fun and exciting to do something in secret. And also, there’s no pressure, there aren’t these weird expectations, it really felt like making something for ourselves.”

Affleck on how his scenes under a sheet are some of his favorites as an actor: “And I’m not saying that facetiously. I just loved, I don’t know, not being seen. More than anything it was a kind of humbling reminder of how much the director is doing for the actor and how much the other person in the scene is doing for the actor. It works so well because of Rooney and David [Lowrey, the director]. The two things I’m looking forward to having been under the sheet is all of the reviews that say that it is my most expressive and best performance, I am counting on those coming out. And I can’t wait, I want to see the YouTube version of this movie where someone dubs in all the dialogue for the ghost.”

Rooney on her pie-eating long take: “It was certainly something that popped out at me when I read it, that was one of the things I was really excited to do. So it doesn’t surprise me that it’s something that jumps out of the movie. It was such a unique way of showing grief, we’ve never seen anything like that before. And I’d actually never had pie before, that was my first and last pie.”

How had she never eaten any pie before? “I just don’t really have a sweet tooth and I was a really, really strange, geeky child. Something about pie always grossed me out and I just never tried it before. And this came along and I tried making them switch it to something else, but David really wanted it to be pie, so we did pie.”

[From The LA Times]

I’m not really a pie person either, but I have eaten pieces of pie before!! Like, if you give me a choice between a piece of pie or a cookie or a brownie, I’m going with the cookie or the brownie every day of the week. But how bizarre is this? “I was a really, really strange, geeky child” – as an excuse for never eating a piece of pie before the age of 31. Strange geeky kids eat pie too, Rooney!! Then again, who am I to judge? I have weird things about certain foods too. The smell of melting cheese makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve only eaten lamb when it’s mixed with other meats in a meatloaf. The texture of shrimp is gross to me. Are any or all of those things more or less weird than a 31-year-old American woman never having tried a piece of pie?

“Pie?”
“I don’t know her.”

Photos courtesy of Getty, WENN.