A few weeks ago, at the Taste of Chicago, there was an exhibit that was part of the “Big Cheese” mobile marketing tour for Ratatouille. This would have been right before or just after the movie opened in theaters. There were three distinct parts of the event: 1) The screening room, showing a five or six minute scene from the movie, introduced by director Brad Bird; 2) The stage where they did a little cooking demonstration and 3) A big inflatable wedge of cheese kids could climb up and then slide down. In addition there were some kiosks where you could demo the Ratatouille video game.
It was a very cool event. On the two days I walked by there seemed to be plenty of people going in and out of the screening room, a long line for the wedge slide and a good amount of people watching the cooking show. The people running the event were also handing out paper chef’s hats with the movie’s logo and a couple folks were out and about taking pictures. While I was promised I’d have this in a couple of days, it actually took about a month for the picture to arrive. The background is real but the framing images were added later.
Chris Thilk 