Top 10 Gum-Related Movies of All Time
Gum. What is it?
The Prophet Seinfeld offers us very little guidance:
“It’s not a liquid, it’s not a solid, it’s not a food. What is it? It isn’t really anything, you know?” (VII.10)
So why then does it play such a big role in our lives? And in our movies?
Perhaps it is because it offers an outlet for nervous energy, a kind of oral foot-tapping. Perhaps it is the cake-and-eat-it prospect of a sweet, inexpensive, long-lasting, low-calorie alternative to snacking that is more socially acceptable in places like cockpits and crime scenes. Perhaps the punishment-laden stigma from our school years has made it into a spearmint-flavored forbidden fruit.
We may not be able to directly intuit the social origins of this viscous fascination, but we can use movies as mirrors to see deeper within ourselves, and our mouths.
Here are ten movies which feature gum and/or gum chewing in some notable way, ranked by the Flickchart global rankings.
#10: Volcano
- Global ranking: 6987
- Wins 20% of matchups
- 6487 users have ranked it 41592 times
- 1 users have it at #1
- 19 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Character
L.A. MTA Chairman Stan Olber picked the wrong week to stop smoking. Again.
The simple act of watching a man pop a Nicorette speaks volumes about what he thinks about himself, as well as the future. As he discusses repair plans over schematics, we watch his jaw work with the rhythm of his thinking. We get to see that he’s the kind of person that only chews for a little bit, then sticks his gum under the table, next to the stalactite remains of past mornings just like this.
John Carroll Lynch‘s under-applauded performance in this (frankly) disposable role is given nuance and contour by this semi-edible prop. In a single scene, we feel that we know this man, without having to endure a “backstory” or watching him pet a fucking dog. The gum makes him human, and that is why our heart breaks in the third act.
#9: The Prophecy
- Global ranking: 2615
- Wins 41% of matchups
- 1465 users have ranked it 13645 times
- 0 users have it at #1
- 14 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Character
Despite being in the most water-thin apocalypse film imaginable, it was seeing Detective Dagget crouch next to the body in the first crime scene, chewing away, that first awakened this writer’s love of gum on celluloid.
The movie is nothing. The character is nothing. Even the overall gesture is nothing; we’ve seen trillions of detectives crouch next to corpses. But the fact that he was chewing gum somehow makes this tableau active and organic, a scene taking place inside of a fully functioning world, in a way that would have been impossible (on this budget) if his jaws were still.
We should take a moment to recognize that a not-insignificant part of the reason that the gum is so effective here is because it is behind the tawny cheeks of Mr. Elias Koteas; that’s right, Casey Jones himself. He is one of my favorite character actors in Hollywood, always bringing a juicy Greek intensity to the laziest-written of parts. He looks like a guy who would chew gum at a crime scene, and he knows it too, and that’s why he sells it.
#8: L.A. Story
- Global ranking: 1679
- Wins 42% of matchups
- 2425 users have ranked it 22289 times
- 1 users have it at #1
- 24 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Character
We have here, sadly, one of the few decent examples of a female character chewing gum on film. To make matters worse, initially, it seems to be a cheap sexualizing device; an attempt to turn young “SanDeE*” into that perfect young, hot, oral-fixated high school bobby-soxer that not even Steve Martin was able to bang in high school because she never existed.
But again, in the hands of a craft-conscious actor like Sarah Jessica Parker, we see the gum function as a barometer of character. We see the youthful ideal that our hero has been seeking personified, younger in years, surely, and with the requisite energy to burn, but also embodying the 90s archetype of the sexually empowered female who is free to entertain her labial (from the Latin labri “lip-oriented'”) tastes and energies as she sees fit. The constant moist movement and smacking of her lips is the west coast synth-tom drumbeat of her sub-generation, to which our hero’s self-doubt and white hair forbid access.
#7: The Rocketeer
- Global ranking: 1646
- Wins 41% of matchups
- 6092 users have ranked it 54019 times
- 2 users have it at #1
- 72 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Character/Plot/Chekhov
When pilots and other hotshots chew gum, we see manifested another one of Seinfeld’s observations about gum: for some reason, it makes you look aloof and unimpressed. For many, that’s enough reason right there to grab a stick: if you look bored, it implies an incredibly high threshold for excitement, which must mean you are a very interesting person indeed, and perhaps might be good at intercourse.
So it is completely in character for our hero Cliff, thrill-seeking test pilot, future superhero, and amazing-hair-haver, to be a rampant gum chewer.
In addition, we have a “Chekhov’s Gum” situation. Cliff’s first scene shows his ritual of sticking his wad on the tail of his plane and shows how much Alan Arkin hates it. In other words, they make a big goddamn deal about the gum, just establishing the hell out of it, so that later when Arkin uses it to plug a crucial fuel leak in the jet pack, the irony creates a “moment” where before there was none. All due to the gum.
#6: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
- Global ranking: 1334
- Wins 38% of matchups
- 70433 users have ranked it 456412 times
- 278 users have it at #1
- 5916 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Character/Bit
Here we have another unique usage of gum: as a prop in a comedy bit. Ace uses compulsive amounts of chewing gum as the final component of a lengthy purification sequence following his realization that he has mistakenly kissed a man.
The movie invokes two main gum-related tropes which in this context generate comedy in their juxtaposition: 1) that gum “freshens” the mouth, which Ace feels (in his 90s-acceptable level of homophobia) that he needs to do to an excessive degree; and 2) the common good-citizen habit of spitting the gum out into the wrapper before disposal, which despite his upset state Ace still endeavors to do, unmindful of the fact that it is a pound and a half of gum he disgorges onto the three-inch piece of foil.
The gum mainly functions as a chance to showcase Jim Carrey‘s incredible above-the-neck comic abilities. It is like tossing a pair of dime store handcuffs to Houdini.
#5: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
- Global ranking: 872
- Wins 46% of matchups
- 21539 users have ranked it 177301 times
- 16 users have it at #1
- 450 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Plot
A fairly undramatic yet plot-crucial use of chewing gum. The time machine’s primary antenna is damaged during the escape from 15th century England, and so our heroes induce twenty-three-hundred-years-worth of kidnapped historical figures to chew enough gum long enough so as to amalgamate a sucrose-based epoxy that can withstand the ambient radiation of the Circuits of Time.
The scene mainly functions as a non-sequitur act break, and as the first of many collisions between these eminent personages and the brightly colored banality of late 1980s America. It is also possible that screenwriter Chris Matheson had some insatiable need to see Abraham Lincoln chew gum. The result was undoubtedly much hairier and disgusting than he envisioned.
#4: Apollo 13
- Global ranking: 350
- Wins 51% of matchups
- 62999 users have ranked it 489092 times
- 352 users have it at #1
- 7734 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Character/Moment
As astronaut Fred Haise is being packaged into his spacesuit, his handlers point out to him that he is still chewing his gum. (See discussion above re: hotshots). He sheepishly tries to extract the gum with his hands but then realizes his digits are encased in Nixon-era life support hardware. A technician (credited only as “White Room Tech”) holds out his own hand for him to spit the gum into.
Now he really is sheepish. The Paxton Smile-Pout thanks White Room Tech, and we are given the treat of watching a fully grown man spit chewed, wet gum out into the hand of another fully grown man.
Is this simply a dose of Ron Howard‘s trademark corn syrup? Sure it is. But this moment also serves to demonstrate how much the astronauts depend on these support men and women on the ground. Fred Haise hasn’t even left the ground yet and he is already incapable of an eight-year-old’s level of self-sufficiency. He is helpless and vulnerable beyond what we can fathom, which makes him, and all other astronauts, fictional or otherwise, a completely new breed of hero.
#3: In the Heat of the Night
- Global ranking: 310
- Wins 49% of matchups
- 3093 users have ranked it 42222 times
- 3 users have it at #1
- 50 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Character
Of all the movies on this list, this film contains the most effective use of chewing gum as a character-building tool. Sheriff Gillespie is an engine of pissed off cracker justice and his gum causes his jaws to work like pistons in every scene. Because of the gum, we can track his idle, his revs, and once, only once, a stall, during which our breaths stop as he absorbs his surprise…and then he starts chewing again and then we can breathe.
Rod Steiger is a master of owning a role, and even when he hangs part of his performance on a gimmick like he does here, his use is so effective, so complete, and so fearless that he pushes us past the threshold of “gimmick hack” and deep into the fields of mastercraft. The gum drives his performance, allowing the rest of his massive body to be utterly motionless, and the result is still a thrumming, dynamic presence in the film’s small spaces and tight shots. Place just above that churning jaw two burning hell’s-light eyes and you have literally your only hope of keeping pace with Sidney Poitier.
#2: Glengarry Glen Ross
- Global ranking: 286
- Wins 53% of matchups
- 6727 users have ranked it 85608 times
- 17 users have it at #1
- 236 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Character
It was difficult to pick a single Al Pacino chewing gum performance. The man truly has an understanding of how it can bring grounded, natural dynamicism to a character. He’s a gum virtuoso: Heat, The Insider, Donnie Brasco, Dick Tracy (ok, that was walnuts, but the principle is the same).
That said, this particular talent is best showcased in this film because the film consists of big talking and small gestures. The camera creeps in along every line of the actors’ bodies and faces; the sound seems captured with the microscopic fidelity of a documentary about insects. Mamet’s dialog may be exploding and ricocheting off the walls, but when Ricky Roma unwraps a stick of Wrigley as he’s waiting for his phone to be reconnected, we see so much.
We see a man with energy to burn. We see a man who gets paid money to keep his mouth moving. We see a phone and desk jockey who is actually, in his mind (and ours), the ultimate evolution of the “hotshot”. His kind has transcended the need to actually risk their lives.
Except that Roma’s disdain of normal life must be carefully cultivated; he will lose his power over you, and your money, if he for one moment seems to be impressed by you. Thus, the gum is both a shield against normal emotions and a costume fragment from masculinity’s past. Magnificent.
#1: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Global ranking: 17
- Wins 65% of matchups
- 50539 users have ranked it 526970 times
- 485 users have it at #1
- 7783 users have it in their top 20
- Gum usage: Plot/Character/Moment
And finally, at the end of this list, we find ourselves at the end of the world. An easily hose-off-able receptacle for those we don’t trust with a full share of humanity. Nothing is normal, and maybe the patients have learned to adjust, but McMurphy arrives with his own rulebook and a much lower tolerance for impingement on his sovereignty.
But The Man (in this case a woman) keeps taking bits of him and his life away until eventually he’s left sitting on double-deck to ride the lightning. He is desperate for human contact, but the man-mountain sitting next to him has given every indication that he is incapable of normal communication.
So what does McMurphy do when he needs to be a human being under the most dire and constrained of circumstances?
“Juicy Fruit.”
This moment – this teeth-rotting artificial-space-fruit-flavored moment – gives McMurphy the strength to keep being human.
That, my friends, is the cinematic power of gum.
There’s a noticeable scene in Carrie where a character is chomping away on gum.
Yes, exactly! More! More!
Great list! There’s also Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where dear old Violet Beauregard, competitive gum chewer, has a rather memorable run-in with the prototype gum that holds a whole meal. “By gum, it’s gum!” You may recall that this works out very poorly for her, resulting in a trip to the juicing room. (Rest in peace, Gene Wilder.)
An amazingly obvious omission. Would perhaps take the record for the most pieces of gum on the screen at one time. Nice!
More!