Voted to be CinemaBlend’s favorite movie of 2024 (and my personal favorite of last year as well), writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance is a body horror masterpiece that is chock full of absolutely disgusting sequences – but it’s impressive that arguably the grossest of all is the scene where Dennis Quaid’s Harvey is in a restaurant scarfing down shrimp. The way that the camera gets all up in his mouth as he chows down instantly turns your stomach. As sick as it is to see on screen, however, the actor had a blast filming it and enjoying a nice seafood meal.
This morning, Dennis Quaid was featured on Today talking about a bunch of his upcoming projects, but the interviewer made time in the conversation to specifically ask about his work on The Substance and the infamous shrimp eating scene. According to Quaid, he knew exactly how great the moment in the film would be as he was shooting it, and he was very happy to keep eating the sauce-covered crustaceans take after take:
I knew it was a legend even while I was doing it. I think it was three, it’s gone to like five pounds of shrimp that I ate. I don’t know for sure, but I did consume all of them – except the ones that were on my face. But I had a lot of fun doing that. Great director, so much fun to work with.
For my money, there are few “how the sausage gets made” aspects of Hollywood that are as gross as the spit bucket: a friend to actors who don’t want to make themselves sick performing take after take and angle after angle of a scene where their character is eating. That being said, I feel like Dennis Quaid throwing five pounds of shrimp in the making of The Substance may actually be even grosser.
I like eating shrimp, but there is definitely a point where too much is too much. That’s apparently not a point of view that is shared by the star of Frequency and Far From Heaven. In his words,
Well, it was like going to Capt. Benny’s, you know what I mean? Just give me a tub.
I can understand if some of you are feeling some rumble in your guts after reading this, but I will say this: I will definitely think about Dennis Quaid eating three to five pounds of shrimp the next time that I watch The Substance, and I have a feeling that it will only enhance my appreciation for the nastiness of the moment in the extremely gnarly film.
If you’re feeling up to testing my hypothesis yourself, the Oscar-winning film for Best Makeup and Hairstyling is available to stream right now – all you need is a Mubi add-on subscription on Amazon Prime Video (which is available with a seven-day free trial). For all of you physical media fans, The Substance is also available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray.