'Bars with Cake' director, stylist made pastries cinematic

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Director Trish Sie said her movie adaptation of Sitting in Bars with Cake, on Prime Video on Friday, had to feature cakes other than author Audrey Shulman documented. In the film and book, a baker brings cake to bars, hoping to meet a romantic partner.

Sie said Shulman showed her pictures of the cakes she brought to bars and wrote about. The director said she concluded the cakes would have to be more lavish to engage viewers at home.

"They didn't make you want to drop everything, run over and grab that cake," Sie told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. "Of course, we weren't there to smell them."

To make up for the inability to recreate the fragrance of cake, Sie doubled down on the visual aesthetics.

"We had to communicate visually what these cakes meant and what they tasted like to the people who were in the room," Sie said.

Shulman adapted her own book, but named the main character Jane (Yara Shahidi). The production also enlisted food stylist Megan Potthoff to prepare cinematic cakes.

Potthoff agreed with Sie that the film required different cakes than the book.

"We just needed to make it sing in the way it looked visually," Potthoff said.

Potthoff said Shulman provided new cakes for each bar in the script.

For example, Sitting in Bars filmed one scene at the Redwood Bar & Grill in Los Angeles, a pirate-themed venue to which Jane brings a pirate cake. That cake had a close call as one of the only two picture-ready cakes fell on the floor during a take.

"It just flopped down," Sie said. "This beautiful cake with treasure chest and gold coins and everything just faceplanted down. We only had one more, so after that we were really careful."

Though the ingredients in Shulman's real-life cakes were varied, Potthoff stuck with Swiss meringue buttercream for most. The cakes had to be edible on camera and last under hot lights.

"It was the best way to control the consistency of the frosting," Potthoff said.

Sie said she had experience filming food for commercials, though never pastries or cakes. Sie also directed the feature films Step Up: All In, Pitch Perfect 3 and The Sleepover.

"You have to make sure you keep it cold, especially when you're shooting in the summer in Los Angeles," Sie said. "We had some cakes start to melt in these hot warm bars and sets."

Potthoff, who also styles food for MasterChef, said she prepared five versions for any cake actors ate in the film. Four were kept refrigerated until the cake was sliced in a take.

"We had a backup refrigerator that traveled with us," Potthoff said. "So we always had the backup cakes staying cold, and we could swap them out as needed."

Shulman also added more than just new cakes to the story. Jane's roommate, Corinne (Odessa A'zion), is diagnosed with a brain tumor while the duo embarks on the Bars with Cake experiment.

This is based on Shulman's real-life friend she lost to cancer, and to whom the movie is dedicated. She left that out of the book, but the film's producers encouraged her to include this true story.

"The book is just stories of being single in your 20s in Los Angeles and having a gimmick to meet people in bars, which is a great story," Sie said. "But this is more than that."

The development of the movie's plot also entails Jane bringing cakes to the hospital at which Corinne is undergoing treatment. This allowed Potthoff to add even more cakes to the film.

"The pumpkin pie cake at the hospital was definitely a highlight," Potthoff said. "I did actually put pumpkin and spices in it. It did taste like a pumpkin pie cake with a nice lattice pie crust right on top."

The experiment, which Shulman dubbed "cake-barring," was a success in that she socialized quite a bit. However, Sie said Shulman has now moved beyond cake barring.

"She is now happily married to someone she did not meet cake-barring, but she does credit that approach for giving her the confidence to actually have a boyfriend and get married," Sie said. "Now she has a baby."