As sipped on screen: Whisky at the movies

As sipped on screen: Whisky at the movies

From Hollywood to the small screen, whisky is enjoying more airtime than ever. But how it is portrayed is not always an accurate representation. Grab the popcorn, sit back, and relax, as we explore the spirit’s new-found main-character energy

 

Opening photo credit: Bill Murray as Bob Harris, promoting Suntory in Lost in Translation

© Alamy Stock Photo © AJ Pics

Whisky & Culture | 04 Feb 2025 | Issue 204 | By Kristiane Sherry

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It is one of the most iconic depictions of whisky in 21st-century cinema. Bill Murray as Bob Harris, an American actor whose star is very much on the wane. Tuxedo. Tumbler in hand. “For relaxing times, make it Suntory times.” He repeatedly struggles to muster the brand-approved blend of pleasure and enthusiasm in his delivery.

 

Whisky here, as indeed in every moment it is featured on screen, adds an unspoken quality to the story. Lost in Translation, Harris’ mid-life-crisis tale, directed by Sofia Coppola, was released in 2003. Then, the world was only just waking up to Japanese whisky. At the time the script was written, there was no way it would have been held up internationally as the exactingly made, deliciously complex spirit it is today. Instead, the connotations would have been dowdy, staid, boring — a lesser sibling to single malt Scotch. In that era, the somewhat meta scenario of an actor being cast in a whisky advert within a movie captures the character’s fears around ageing and fading into irrelevance.

 

The whims and worries of the A-list might not have changed that much in a quarter of a century, but whisky’s fortunes certainly have. “It’s flipped on its head,” notes James Pickering, screenwriter, producer, and lecturer at MetFilm School, which has six campuses in the UK, and one in Berlin. He cites everything from Drake’s Virginia Black whiskey to Metallica’s Blackened bottling, as well as the spirit’s role in the James Bond movie Skyfall (2012), and the Kingsman franchise as proof of a renewed ‘cool’. Everyone from the characters Ron Swanson in TV’s Parks & Recreation, and Don Draper in Mad Men, to Beth Dutton in Yellowstone, and Bradley Jackson in The Morning Show are pouring themselves measures. And they are definitely not doing so in a my-career-is-crumbling-and-I-can’t-deal-with-it kind of a way.

 

Today, whisky isn’t just a ‘cool’ thing for a character to drink. It’s a useful tool for communicating their nuances to an audience too. This is largely thanks to the shifting perceptions of the spirit and its wider democratisation in culture. “To put a glass of whisky in a female character’s hand is natural and believable, I don’t have to explain it as something different and special,” says Troy Bolotnick, writer, and co-founder and CEO at Filmland Spirits, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, and which blends and bottles in Kentucky. “Ten, 15 years ago, it would have been like ‘what woman drinks whisky? It isn’t real’.”

 

That said, preconceptions about who a whisky drinker is and why they are drinking do prevail — both on and off screen. This creates a challenge. As societal perceptions shift, writing does too. Writers need to move with their audiences. It is as true for whisky as anything else. Most of us drinkers know that whisky is for everyone. But segments of wider society still think it is for boardrooms, that it can never be mixed, and that adding water to it is sacrilegious. 

 

While whisky is showing up with increasing regularity on screen, writing whisky in this strange halfway place is perhaps trickier than ever.

Michael Holstein; Holstein at work, with rapper Pusha T © Mesmeric Media

The first step when writing a character is to conjure up every single thing about a person — from who their parents are and where they went to school, to how they vote and what they sip. For Pickering, it is crucial; the first things he considers are their food-and-drink preferences. A single malt sipped over 45 minutes on the back porch tells you something different about a character than someone taking a shot of a blend. “It’s their social status, what stage of life they’re at, the things they are going through,” he says. “Those kinds of details might not make it into a character bio, but it’s important that the writer knows that because it will start to bleed into the screenplay.”

 

The tension comes when the writer and audience — some could be really into whisky, others may never have tasted it — hold different preconceptions. “There is something of a reliance on a connotation with a specific drink,” Pickering continues. More than anything else, a character’s relationship with whisky needs to
be believable. In a time when there is a collective call for better and wider representation in whisky, it can be frustrating when it does not play out in a script.

 

Bolotnik talks about “writing-school clichés” that definitely help to outline why there is that sense of friction. “It’s not about what’s possible, it’s about what’s probable,” he says. “I’d be writing with partners, and at some point we get into one of those little arguments. ‘I can write this because this is possible. This happened to me once, OK?’.” He uses a frivolous example of a frisbee flying back round and hitting the thrower on the head. “It doesn’t feel real or believable unless it’s a magic frisbee or it’s got a computer chip in it,” he says. The storyline has to be likely. If an audience does not think a woman in an evening gown and heels can drink whisky — even though it’s “perfectly natural”, he says — it won’t land.

 

Thankfully, though, writers often see flipping long-held preconceptions as deeply satisfying. One of those is Michael Holstein, co-founder and executive producer at Mesmeric Media, who has written for shows such as The Wire. “I do think a woman who knows her single malts, or a character who may not seem tough ordering whisky neat, is more powerful than, for example, Tony Soprano [The Sopranos] or John Dutton [Yellowstone] doing a shot or sipping a bourbon.” He thinks that, in the US at least, the fascination for bourbon — driven in part by its depiction in TV shows — is moving the needle when it comes to how the average person perceives whisky. “Audience views are evolving,” he says. “Whisky has become more ubiquitous, making it easier to associate with all types of characters.”

A scene from Mad Men © Alamy Stock Photo © Pictorial Press

It is not just what whisky says about a character — it is what it in itself has come to represent that is playing into its portrayal. Pickering thinks whisky broadly symbolises two things, for men on screen, at least. (For women, it is completely different — largely because there’s not such a long scriptwriting history of what sipping a whisky symbolises for them.) He thinks whisky is either a friend — think: film noir detectives sipping their way through a challenging case before that a-ha moment — or as a status symbol. The Dalmore 62 Years Old shown in spy action comedy Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) is a case in point. What an audience thinks about whisky does not just tell them about a person, the spirit takes on a character of its own in influencing a scene, too. One area in which writers are having fun dismantling these narratives is by naming specific brands. He gives the example of J&B Rare, the blended Scotch with the highly recognisable label, which shows up a lot in giallo Italian horror-thriller movies. “The guys that drank it were still in nice suits. They were strongmen, male characters. But they drank whisky that was attainable.” Contrast the six-figure sums traded for the Dalmore 62 Years Old compared with the £22 or so that J&B is priced at. It is interesting to consider how the hyper-masculinity of these characters is in no way diminished by the price tag. The biggest flex on age and gender? Dame Judi Dench sipping the Macallan as M in Skyfall.

 

He draws on another example that illustrates both the point above, and that audience perceptions have shifted over time: 1999’s American Pie. Eighteen-year-old Finch’s ‘Mrs Robinson’ moment is sealed when he agrees to drink an 18-year-old (subtle…) single malt Scotch with Stiffler’s mom, played by the iconic Jennifer Coolidge. He eschews the beer and communal punch that his friends are drinking — and it is a statement moment. “He’s using it as a status thing,” Pickering elaborates. “He drinks a classy drink, a single malt. He’s trying to impress an older woman. I just find it a funny example of how whisky is a very deliberate choice.”

 

The question we get to then is whether writers have a responsibility to challenge or educate when they are creating characters and scenes, on any topic, not just how whisky is portrayed when it comes to, say, gender or class. “It depends on the medium and type of film,” muses Bolotnick. “Writers have a responsibility to entertain first, right?” From his perspective, it is possible to enlighten or even educate while that happens. He uses Ted Lasso as an example: “one of my favourite TV shows of all time. It makes you giggle and laugh, and you just want to hang out with these people all the time. And then it makes you cry and learn, or whatever. And whisky is highly featured.”

 

While he does not use the word ‘responsibility’, Holstein clearly feels it is important that modern depictions of whisky are more inclusive and diverse. That has to do with where it is consumed, too. “It is increasingly shown as part of everyday life — shared in casual social settings or family gatherings — reflecting the spirit’s growing accessibility.” 

 

It is interesting to think about how culture has the power to shape views. Consider how David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II shifted the conversation about plastic pollution. “Narratives that highlight diverse contributions to whisky production — like the history of women and African Americans in distilling — help break down the traditional, exclusive image of whisky, making it feel more inclusive,” Bolotnick continues. “So, societal shifts and representation in the media work hand in hand to reshape whisky’s identity.”

 

It is fascinating to analyse what whisky represents on screen today, and how it has changed in a relatively short time. From Lost in Translation to Ted Lasso, the spirit helps drive rich narratives and character stories. But perhaps the biggest story of all is how shifting whisky perceptions are changing its own fortunes. And maybe that is the most compelling redemption arc of all.  

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