spaghetti on a tennis racket!
am i the only one thinking this is pretty unhygenic?
shareI agree. It's a funny concept, though!
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MovieChat Forums > The Apartment (1960) Discussion > spaghetti on a tennis racket!
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I get it was meant to be funny but I found that pretty disgusting. It probably wouldn't be too practical to do that either. Spaghetti is too thin and the wholes in a racket are too far apart, so a lot of the spaghetti could simply fall through.
shareIf I recall, Baxter, when he drained the spaghetti, did so through the tennis racket and over the sink. That way, the hot water would go into the sink. He then, with the tennis racket, placed the spaghetti onto a big serving plate. It seemed as if Baxter had the technique down so he obviously made himself spaghetti meals that way before.
am i the only one thinking this is pretty unhygenic?
Not if the racket was never used for anything BUT spaghetti and cleaned after each use.
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It also didn't make sense: when he finds the single strand and twirls it around his finger, that was a week later. I don't think it would still be soft.
shareAlways loved tennis racket part of flick. Jack is such a fun actor!
shareCatgut* is still used as a high-performance string in tennis racquets, although it had more popularity in the past.
*Catgut (Cattle-gut) is a type of cord that is prepared from the natural fiber found in the walls of animal intestines, usually sheep or goat intestines are used, but it is occasionally made from the intestines of cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys.
when he finds the single strand and twirls it around his finger, that was a week later. I don't think it would still be soft.
Yep, I noticed that right away. It would have been just as hard and brittle as when it came out of the box, albeit not as straight.
Personally the hygiene aspect doesn't bother me. But tennis rackets back then were wood. I had a couple in the '60s and they warped with no help from spaghetti.
Question: Just before he places the spaghetti on the serving plate, he rinses the spaghetti under the kitchen sink tap. Why?
shareRinsing the spaghetti with cold water stops it from cooking and gets rid of the starchy film on the pasta. Some people do this, while others think that it's a bad idea.
shareIt's consistent with, and helps to flesh out the character:
- Tennis at the time was regarded as more of an "upper crust" sport than it is now. Owning a tennis racket was an aspirational thing to do for a guy in Baxter's position: similar to the "Junior Executive" model bowler hat that he's a bit afraid to wear.
- On the other hand, though he owns a tennis racket, he apparently isn't using it to play tennis. If he were, he wouldn't be wrecking it by using it as a spaghetti strainer. He got it thinking it would be an entrée to the world as an executive, but he's never actually joined a tennis club, nor been asked to play by anyone.
- As a misguided, socially-ambitious schlub, he found the tennis racket to be a higher priority than something useful, but prosaically domestic, like a colander.