Who Created Flamin Hot Cheetos? A New Movie Seeks Answers
The New York Times The film, now streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus, was adapted from a debunked memoir, but it does reveal how food brands want to be seen.
Like Oscar Isaac, I occasionally use chopsticks to eat hot Cheetos, a technique that keeps their red dust from sticking to my fingers. Its the neatest way to keep pace with a perfectly engineered snack, designed both to satisfy the desire for its pricklyheat and violentcrunch, its convincingtang and mellowsweetness, and to fuel an immediate need to revisit it.
There are films this year celebrating (and satirizing) the invention of all kinds of consumer products, including the BlackBerry, Air Jordans and Tetris, but I never imagined that this spicy little snack produced by a multinational corporation could be the hero of a late-capitalist uplift saga.
Flamin Hot, directed by Eva Longoria and streaming now on Hulu and Disney Plus, is a frothy, optimistic, very American film about Richard Montaez, a Mexican American kid from San Bernardino County who grows up to work at a Frito-Lay plant and dreams up a billion-dollar idea: Flamin Hot Cheetos.
