2021
For some reason, I started thinking about the “soul pizza” moment in A Nightmare On Elm Street, Part Four: The Dream Master. Alice is sitting in a diner and Freddy sidles up to her and begins his gimmicky schtick–I actually love this surreal, schlocky music video of a film but Freddy has become an insufferable cartoon at this point– and there’s this whole thing with a meatball pizza. The meatballs are the screaming faces of Alice’s dead friends, and Freddy spears one of the little shrieking heads with his razor finger, pops it in his mouth, begins to chew, and just goes to town on it while Alice watches in horror.
My sister and I rewatched it last night, but I am afraid that by the time this scene rolls around I might have had a few too many margaritas and I don’t even remember watching it. Which is really dumb, because this 20 seconds was the whole reason I talked her into watching this film with me!
I’m always filing away food and meals from books and movies in my mental recipe folder, and I suppose because I have been thinking about attempting to make a sourdough pizza dough, this particular scene was on my mind. I didn’t want to recreate it, exactly. I mean…it’s pretty gross. And the details of those tiny faces would be complicated to execute.
…Pun intended, always!
So instead, we’ll just say that this very normal pizza that I made is, at best, loosely inspired by that scene? I used Joshua Weissman’s sourdough pizza recipe for the dough and the sauce, and it’s lightly topped with a blend of fresh parmesan and mozzarella, and tiny “meat” balls made from Impossible meat. I seasoned them with onion, garlic, and soy sauce, which is what seasoned the filling in one of Maangchi’s recipes, and I liked it so much, I just use it every time I have to add flavoring to a ground beef-like thing.
It turned out pretty well! We don’t have a pizza stone, so we baked a few versions of this in a large cast-iron skillet. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.
So, I found out that they made a sort of novelty toy version of this pizza, with its own take-out box! I can’t imagine who would have wanted one of these things, but who am I to judge. I also see where, if one was so inclined, one could buy what I believe is the actual pizza prop used in the movie. Again…who would want this? I cannot guess as to those reasons, but suppose I do think it’s an awfully cool thing that it exists.