Author: Bob Westal

This will be the last of my liquid salutes to the films of this year’s TCM Fest. Sorry to spoil your day. Anyhow, 1978’s “Animal House” is one TCMFest film that pretty much forces me to base a drink on it. After all, give or take a little marijuana, the movie is driven by beer, cheap whiskey, and horrifically misdirected testosterone. Directed by John Landis and scripted by comedy demi-gods Doug Kenney and Harold Ramis, this seminal tale of (relatively) virtuous scummy frat boys versus evil well-groomed frat boys in the early 1960s, starred tragic SNL legend John Belushi and a cast mostly comprised…

I feel pretty sure that Cognac must have been consumed by more than one character during the course of “When You Read this Letter,” and that’s good enough reason to build a cocktail around a little known, but actually kind of outstanding, melodrama directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. A household name to film snobs and regarded as a key forerunner of the French New Wave, Melville borrowed the name of the author of “Moby Dick” and “Billy Budd” as a literal nom de guerre when he was fighting in the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II and kept the name for…

1957’s “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” is, along with the James Bond flicks, one of the movies that severely warped me at a very early age. It used to show pretty regularly on the afternoon movie program of my local CBS affiliate during my latchkey childhood, and feels as if I saw it at least fifteen times on old time low-def pan-and-scanned TV before finally checking out it’s brilliant widescreen compositions on the silver screen, probably more than once at the New Beverly in the 1980s and ’90s.  My Turner Classic Film Festival viewing was likely my first this century,…

Early on in 1952’s “Park Row,” a sturdy young woman bartender (Tina Pine) rattles off a lengthy list of mixed beverages that delighted my classic cocktail obsessed heart. Mind you, this is not Brooklyn or Culver City today, but Manhattan in the 1880s and “decent” women were not to be found in bars, no matter how good the drinks were! That’s not the subject of the movie, however. Sam Fuller’s 1952 love letter to a free and mostly honest, but far from saintly, press is far more concerned with issues of truth, justice, and the American way than gustatory pleasure.…

You’ve never heard of silent film actress Pépa Bonafé and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m more of a talkies guy and I’m arguably somewhat overly US-centric in my perspective, but I know my Mary Pickfords from my Dorothy Gishes and my Jeanne Moreaus from my Simone Signorets, and I’m completely unfamiliar with Mme. Bonafé and her entire filmography. I imagine 1910’s “Shylock” had something to do with “The Merchant of Venice.” Anyhow, a cocktail by any name will still get  you tipsy, and this week’s drink was found by me mainly because I’m digging the combination of Cognac/brandy and vodka…

I get to write a simpler, if not shorter, post because, gosh darnit, the only thing I know about my newest entry is that I stumbled over it at Liquor.com. I also found another mixed drink with pretty much the same name, and I found another one with similar ingredients, but I have found neither hide nor hair of this Ascot Cocktail’s provenance. I suppose it could be named after the English racetrack or the old timey frou-frou tie one calls a cravat. That’s fine. In terms of flavor, however, I’d match the Ascot against many a venerable classic beverage. This…

I’ve been carefully avoiding the Lemon Drop for years, but a week or so back some of my favorite cousins requested I make it for them as a pre-Seder aperitif. It was with a sense of condescending noblesse oblige that I nobly obliged them by following a recipe that was kind of sweet by cocktailian standards and contained a cocktail snob’s least preferred base spirit. It was…pretty okay and a fine gateway cocktail for the uninitiated. So, you vodka swilling vulgarians, here’s the Lemon Drop at last. Just please, please, please don’t call it a Lemon Drop Martini! The Lemon Drop 1…

Before sitting down to work on this post, I had wrongly assumed that I’d already covered the Gibson here at DOTW. It really is a legit cocktail classic with it’s share of cultural heft and several creation myths. I guess I’ve only mentioned it in passing because, for all intents and purposes, it’s really just a martini. The only difference is that the Gibson comes with a pickled onion, instead of an olive or a lemon twist. As for this week’s variation, the better known Dirty Martini has always been, as you’d expect, a relatively disreputable though often tasty blacksheep brother of the original, using…

Today is Good Friday, tonight is the first night of Passover, Sunday is Easter, and today’s drink…has nothing to do with that, It’s not even kosher for Passover. Oh well. A couple of weeks ago, when I did bother to acknowledge St. Patrick’s Day (priorities!) I stole today’s drink and repackaged it as The Quiet Man’s Kick, merely  swapping one type of whiskey for another. Since the original drink is a classic in its own right — little known here in the Southwest but reportedly very popular in NYC, I thought I should give it its due. First published in a…

You probably know this already, but it’s kind of difficult for Los Angeles to hit the sweet spot when it comes to our highly desirable, yet frequently deadly, climate. In late July or early August, our famous and often excessive dry heat kicks in for real, and we’re engulfed in flames and terrified of a drought that’s going to turn Southern California into a humongous set for the next Mad Max movie. Then we get some rain and on come the flash floods and the mud slides. As I write this, our recent cold snap (hey, it feels cold to…