--- title: 10 Memorable Movie Breakfast Scenes description: To mark National Pancake Day, TIME takes a look back at our favorite morning meals from the movies canonical: https://time.com/archive/7119927/griddle-me-this-10-memorable-movie-breakfast-scenes/ author: Gary Susman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-02-05T13:00:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T05:49:56.191Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Griddle Me This: 10 Memorable Movie Breakfast Scenes og:description: To mark National Pancake Day, TIME takes a look back at some memorable morning meals from the movies og:url: https://time.com/archive/7119927/griddle-me-this-10-memorable-movie-breakfast-scenes/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b2a65d3925a2a9f/698a8f2ecabb1d400fe59d9d/groundhog_day_02.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Populist: Groundhog Day og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Griddle Me This: 10 Memorable Movie Breakfast Scenes twitter:description: To mark National Pancake Day, TIME takes a look back at some memorable morning meals from the movies twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b2a65d3925a2a9f/698a8f2ecabb1d400fe59d9d/groundhog_day_02.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Griddle Me This: 10 Memorable Movie Breakfast Scenes > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Gary Susman](https://time.com/author/gary-susman/) Feb 5, 2013 1:00 PM UTC  Columbia Pictures Corporation by [Gary Susman](https://time.com/author/gary-susman/) Feb 5, 2013 1:00 PM UTC To mark National Pancake Day, TIME takes a look back at our favorite morning meals from the movies ## The Breakfast Club 
February 5 is National Pancake Day, a celebration of flapjacks and philanthropy at your local IHOP, where they’ll serve you a free short stack of buttermilk pancakes in hopes of securing your donation to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Thinking about pancakes—besides giving us a warm, syrupy smile—brought up memories of some of our favorite breakfast scenes in movies.



You may think of breakfast as a leisurely meal you eat in your pajamas, or as something you gulp down absent-mindedly on your way out the door, but on film, breakfast takes on a much more dramatic flavor. Here, then, are 10 movie breakfasts worth toasting. niennunb ## Falling Down 
In a counterpart to Five Easy Pieces (ahead), Michael Douglas' vain attempt to order breakfast in a fast-food restaurant that just shifted to lunch three minutes ago is another episode of an anti-hero rebelling against arbitrary authority. But unlike Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea, a contemporary man reacting against a world mired in the past, Douglas’ nameless drone is a man of the past (a white male with a 1950s crew cut and a defense-industry career) who’s been left behind in a fast-moving world of ethnic and gender diversity, a world that moves fast and stops serving breakfast at 11:30\. Of course, the Douglas character’s ballistic response, part of a day-long rampage against modernity, is a behavioral and legal no-no, but in Joel Schumacher’s provocative, button-pushing movie, his Whammyburger flip-out is awfully cathartic. Even if you’re not an older white guy left confused by modern life, you’ve still probably felt the urge to go postal in a fast-food joint that won’t actually let you have it your way. niennunb ## Breakfast at Tiffany’s 
Of course, they don’t actually serve breakfast at Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly is forced to bring her own—a Danish and coffee, eaten out of a paper bag—while she gazes longingly in the jeweler’s window at a world of luxury and wealth that seem so close but forever out of reach. She’s still dressed to the nines from the night before, in that famous black Givenchy gown and silk gloves, as she steps out of a taxi at dawn to nibble on pastry while window shopping on a deserted Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.



It’s one of the most iconic opening sequences in film, and while some accounts of the shoot say the scene was fraught with difficulties (hordes of looky-loos clamoring for a glimpse of the star, her revulsion toward Danishes, an electrical accident that zapped a crew member), director Blake Edwards claimed that the scene was easy to shoot, with the usually busy street clearing up as cameras rolled. “It was as if God said, ‘I’m going to give you a break now, but for the rest of your career you're going to have to live off this one,’” he recalled. According to his widow, Julie Andrews, Edwards claimed he got the scene in one take. niennunb ## The Public Enemy 
In one of the most famous breakfast-table arguments in screen history, rising gangster Tom Powers (James Cagney) listens to his girlfriend Kitty (Mae Clarke) gripe once too often and (in a shot that shocked audiences more than the film’s frequent gun violence) silences her by shoving half a grapefruit into her face. The scene is credited with making Cagney a star. Clarke’s expression of surprise was thought to be genuine, the result of a Cagney ad lib, but Clarke said later that she and Cagney had discussed what he was going to do and that her only surprise came later when director William Wellman kept the scene in the movie instead of leaving it on the gag reel. Wellman claimed he was inspired by his recurring urge to do the same to his own wife, an urge he rid himself of cathartically by having Cagney do it on screen. Cagney claimed Clarke’s own husband also enjoyed the scene, buying a ticket and timing his entrance to the theater to coincide with the scene, then leaving as soon as it was over. niennunb ## Uncle Buck 
The ability to put a nourishing breakfast on the table is often, in movies, the ultimate proof of domestic worthiness. Think of Katharine Hepburn’s hilariously inept effort to prove she’s a regular gal by cooking breakfast for Spencer Tracy at the end of Woman of the Year (1942). Or think of the two contrasting French toast breakfasts Dustin Hoffman cooks for his son in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), one noisy and inept (at the beginning of his tenure as the child’s sole caretaker), one silent and efficient (months later, when father and son have established a routine). Or think of chirpy 1950s TV housewife Joan Allen casually stacking enough pancakes to feed an army on her family’s breakfast table in Pleasantville (1998). But the simplest, most graphic example is John Candy as the title character in Uncle Buck. A ne’er-do-well entrusted with the care of his young nieces and nephew (yep, that’s a pre-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin), Buck proves his breakfast bona-fides by making a stack of pancakes so enormous that each one needs a snow shovel for a spatula. Hilarious, blunt, and to the point. niennunb ## Groundhog Day 
Trapped in his existential time loop, Bill Murray’s Phil Connors keeps living the same day over and over and learning the wrong lessons (until he learns the right ones), but at least while he’s stuck in Punxsutawney, he gets to enjoy a virtually unlimited number of diner breakfasts. In fact, in one memorable breakfast, he seems to enjoy the whole menu at once, piling his table high with pancakes and pastries. After all, as he tells a disgusted Rita (Andie MacDowell), he doesn’t have to worry about cholesterol, love handles, or even flossing. Shoving an entire pastry into his mouth at once, leaving a fair amount of frosting on the corner of his mouth, he offers one of the most revolting yet hilarious displays of gluttony since John Belushi’s epic voyage through the cafeteria line in Animal House. Still, as Murray eventually learns, not even grand-scale gluttony is all that satisfying; after all, tomorrow, you’ll still be hungry all over again. niennunb ## Five Easy Pieces 
One of those movies about the 1960s that’s not actually about the 1960s (see also Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, Vanishing Point, and Two-Lane Blacktop), Five Easy Pieces offers an anti-hero for the times in Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea. He’s apolitical, but he won’t be bound by rules, man—and whatever the establishment is for, he’s against it. (Call his philosophy Groucho Marxism.)



In the movie’s most celebrated scene (and one of the most celebrated in Nicholson’s 55-year Hollywood career), Bobby fights the unthinking arbitrariness of authority in the form of a diner waitress who is unable to think outside the box. Trying in vain to order a side of toast with his omelette—a breakfast combo not on the menu—Bobby creatively orders a chicken salad sandwich and asks the waitress to hold the chicken salad. Specifically, to hold the chicken salad “between your knees.” It’s a line whose mixture of irreverence, contempt, rebelliousness, and yes, salaciousness defined what made Nicholson a star. Of course, it also left Bobby hungry and unsatisfied. niennunb ## Moonstruck 
As seems fitting for a movie about Italian-Americans, much of Moonstruck takes place while characters are eating, and eating well. There’s a memorable breakfast early in the film—Olympia Dukakis cooks for daughter Cher a meal of an egg fried atop a slice of bread with a yolk-sized hole cut out, topped with roasted red pepper strips—during which Cher announces her engagement to milquetoast Danny Aiello. The movie ends with an even bigger breakfast scene—served up with a simple oatmeal—in which Cher announces to her family that she's thrown her fiancé over for his hot-tempered, bread-baking brother (Nicolas Cage). During the same meal, Dukakis confronts husband Vincent Gardenia over his infidelity. Everyone has it out, resolves their issues, affirms the primacy of family and marital love, and lives happily ever after—not to mention sated with stick-to-your-ribs comfort food. niennunb ## Pee-wee’s Big Adventure 
Seems like every inventor wants to create a Rube Goldberg device that will prepare an elaborate breakfast for you (or at least for your dog) by the time you sit down to eat. In the movies, most of these devices go hilariously awry (see: Wallace & Gromit, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Back to the Future). But in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, the machine works pretty well. Aside from some pancakes stuck on the ceiling, it delivers a picture-perfect stack of flapjacks, fried eggs, bacon strips, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and toast to Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens)—as well as dry dog food in the bowl of his dog, Speck. But Pee-wee’s inventiveness doesn't end there; nor does his appetite.



His breakfast is incomplete without making his pancake stack into a face (with the eggs for eyes, the bacon strips for the lips) that Pee-wee can converse with, in Mr. T's voice, as the breakfast itself asks for a breakfast of Mr. T cereal. In retrospect, it’s clear that the creativity and resourcefulness on display aren’t just Reubens’ but Tim Burton’s. Making his first feature, the director (accompanied, for the first of many times, by the manic music of Danny Elfman) showed off his penchant for pop weirdness and subversive fun. niennunb ## Pulp Fiction 
Quentin Tarantino finds a lot of drama in breakfast, whether it’s the gang of thieves discussing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” over a pre-heist meal in Reservoir Dogs (1992) or Pulp Fiction’s Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) bursting in on Brett (Frank Whaley) and his pals as they eat a fateful morning meal of Big Kahuna burgers and Sprite. But the most dramatic breakfast in Tarantino-world is the diner meal that opens and closes Pulp Fiction.



It begins with a typical Jules and Vincent philosophical discussion about the differences between dogs and pigs (prompted by the side of bacon accompanying Vincent’s short stack of pancakes), progresses to matters more deeply theological, and concludes with Jules beginning his quest for redemption by defusing the restaurant robbery by Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honeybunny (Amanda Plummer). Redemption is the movie’s grand theme, and there’s an implicit link between it and the characters' breakfast choices. Those who eat fatty fried meats, like Brett and Vincent, are doomed, while Jules, who eschews pork, still has a shot at a future. niennunb ## Big Night 
Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott co-directed this celebration of family, food, and top-notch indie-film acting. After the boisterous banquet that makes up the bulk of the film, the morning-after comedown is somber, dramatic, ambivalent, poignant, and marvelous. Facing the imminent closure of the gourmet Italian restaurant that was their dream, immigrant brothers Tucci and Tony Shalhoub share one last meal with their waiter (Marc Anthony). In a nearly silent final scene, shot as one unbroken, five-minute take, Tucci expertly cooks a frittata in the restaurant kitchen, divides it three ways, and sits down to eat. Soon his brother joins him, the waiter slips out, and the brothers are left to dine alone together, each with his arm around the other. It’s perhaps the ultimate testament to the value of a good breakfast—as comfort food, physical nourishment, quality family time, and Proustian emblem, a reminder of countless identical breakfasts past and a hopeful harbinger of countless identical breakfasts yet to come. niennunb ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119927/griddle-me-this-10-memorable-movie-breakfast-scenes/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119927/griddle-me-this-10-memorable-movie-breakfast-scenes/"},"headline":"Griddle Me This: 10 Memorable Movie Breakfast Scenes","datePublished":"2013-02-05T13:00:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T05:49:56.191Z","description":"To mark National Pancake Day, TIME takes a look back at our favorite morning meals from the movies","url":"https://time.com/archive/7119927/griddle-me-this-10-memorable-movie-breakfast-scenes/","keywords":["Marvel"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b2a65d3925a2a9f/698a8f2ecabb1d400fe59d9d/groundhog_day_02.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Gary Susman","url":"https://time.com/author/gary-susman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b2a65d3925a2a9f/698a8f2ecabb1d400fe59d9d/groundhog_day_02.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Populist: Groundhog Day","caption":"","creditText":"Columbia Pictures Corporation","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119927/griddle-me-this-10-memorable-movie-breakfast-scenes/","name":"Griddle Me This: 10 Memorable Movie Breakfast Scenes"}}]}] ```