Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Universal Pictures
Throughout the history of cinema, movies have given us a number of gut-punching, delightful moments. Citizen Kane introduced us to depth of field, as well as an unforgettable use of the word “rosebud.” Rear Window and Psycho shocked us with new horror techniques from Hitchcock. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather welcomed us into a home of Italian-American mobsters, who drew blood as red as their spaghetti sauce. And now, 80 for Brady has put Sally Field in a hot wings competition with Guy Fieri, the mayor of Flavortown himself.
I have always wondered what the first audiences felt when they sat down to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, I don’t have to wonder. I have witnessed an equally fantastical moment in cinematic history, in a theater, surrounded by people laughing until droplets of sweat run down their foreheads—just like Sally Field in this scene. Film studies professors should be fawning over 80 for Brady, dialing up Paramount to get an exclusive copy so that they can show their students this clip of true, audacious cinema.
This is all gross hyperbole, yes, but I wasn’t expecting to be as absolutely floored by Fieri’s bit part in 80 for Brady as I actually was. The Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives host is a better actor than Tom Brady, that’s for sure. And his two main scenes—the aforementioned wings competition, and one in which Rita Moreno takes an edible and wanders into a poker game, where she hallucinates that everyone is Fieri—are a hot frisbee of fun.