The Wing or the Thigh?
Short description
Charles Duchemin is the publisher of an influential French restaurant guide, and he takes his work seriously enough to visit establishments in disguise so that he can judge them as an ordinary customer would. His authority makes restaurants eager to appear in his pages, but his professional pride puts him on a collision course with Jacques Tricatel, a businessman whose chain serves industrially produced food. Duchemin's other problem is closer to home: his son Gérard has no interest in taking over the guide and would rather perform as a circus clown.
Claude Zidi directed and co-wrote the film with Michel Fabre, and it was produced by Christian Fechner for Les Films Christian Fechner together with TOBIS Film. It came out in 1976, between Zidi's Rookies Go to War and Animal. Louis de Funès plays Charles, with Coluche as Gérard, Julien Guiomar as Tricatel, Ann Zacharias, Raymond Bussières and Philippe Bouvard among the large cast and crew. The production had a budget of 23 million US dollars. On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.2 out of 10 from around 14,000 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 7.2 from roughly 990 votes, which suggests a durable reputation rather than a recent surge of attention.
What's left behind the scenes
- Scenes at the food production factory were filmed at the "Aire de Nemours" facility, located south of Paris.
- The "Dushmen" restaurant guide is a nod to "Michelin" – the famous restaurant rating.
- Pierre Richard was considered for the role of Gérard Duschemin, but ultimately Coluche replaced him at short notice, as Richard was already committed to another film ("The Wing or the Thigh").
- The Tricatel bureau is located in La Défense – a modern business district in the western part of Paris.
- The creation of the character Tricatel, played by Julien Guiomar, was inspired by the French industrialist Jacques Borel – the "Napoleon of fast-food snacks", who in the 1970s in France embodied unhealthy food. Following the example of Jacques Borel, Jacques Tricatel is depicted as a pragmatic and somewhat coarse man.
- In 1975, after a heart attack, Louis de Funès stopped making films. With "L'aile ou la cuisse" (Wing or the Thigh), he returned to the film industry.
- In the display case of Russian books, featuring a guidebook by Dushmen, are books that have nothing to do with cooking – books on Russian phonetics and grammar, an animal registry, and among them is noticeable the cover of Emelyan Yaroslavsky’s “Bible for Believers and Non-Believers.”
- Filming took place from May 24 to August 16, 1976.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
