Dir. Talia Shea Levin

Are you a millennial or older Gen Z who spent your childhood and teenage years watching weird horror shorts play on Adult Swim? Do you find yourself unwinding to 90’s commercial compilations on Youtube? Do you love pizza? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions Talia Shea Levin’s Make Me a Pizza is just what you’ve been missing.

The short centers on a woman living in a McMansion best suited for pornos, who is desperately trying to seduce the pizza man. While she discovers that sex isn’t a good payment for pizza, the delivery guy discovers there was even more to the creation than he could have ever dreamed. The two engage in some gooey cheesy body horror sex reminiscent of the shunting, until they are able to transcend humanity and meet the pizza god.

The short is gross, funny, and highly stylized. The set decoration is phenomenal; you really feel like you’ve been transported back to a time when the CRT TV ruled the land and VHS was king. Make Me a Pizza was filmed on Kodak Film, and boy does it show. Everything has a weird halo glow, like you’re watching something that was recorded on tape that has been played way too many times. The main character’s house is a late 90’s/early 2000’s Tuscan dream with high windows and earthy tones. The dialogue is hilarious and both actors are nailing the tone. Sophie Neff is phenomenal as the deranged pizza cultist who seems to live in a porno world, while Woody Coyote is a great foil as a not-so-clever pizza guy who just wants to get paid.

It is a great subversion of what we’ve come to expect in the media with men being sex pests. Or at least willing to accept whatever gets thrown their way. Make Me a Pizza also greets the viewer with a scathing critique of capitalism that I wasn’t expecting going in. Flashes of workers gathering ingredients are accompanied by a great speech from Coyote about how skipping out on paying a delivery driver ends up harming a lot more than just one person. While our main character stays in her 80’s vaseline lens covered mansion daydream, the delivery guy has to leave this otherworldly realm to go back to his beater car and deliver more pizzas.

Between the sets, the performances, and the special effects, everything comes together to make this a good cheesy time.