The crazy true story behind the ‘Cheddar Goblin’ in ‘Mandy’
The 2018 film Mandy was directed by Panos Cosmatos, produced by Elijah Wood, and stars Nicolas Cage alongside Andrea Riseborough. Cage plays a former alcoholic who must rescue his kidnapped girlfriend from a gang of cannibalistic bikers and a demonic religious cult.
Aside from the awesome style of the movie, Mandy drew note for one background scene in particular. The scene in question sees Cage watch an advert for a fictional brand of macaroni and cheese, with the Cheddar Goblin serving as its mascot. The advert has the Goblin come out from a bowl of cheesy pasta meal, grinning before vomiting the stuff all over a set of young children.
It’s a strange part of the movie, but one that lives up to its 1980s inspirations. The man behind the Cheddar Goblin is the practical effects master Shane Morton, who had previously worked on Too Many Cooks, creating Smarf the Cat.
Morton spoke to Inverse about Mandy, the Cheddar Goblin and the painstaking lengths the cast and crew of the film had to go to get the scene right. “It was a crazy shoot,” he said. “20 gallons of mac and cheese mixed with pineapple Faygo and lemon Jello. So it really kind of smelled like vomit.”
There was no way for the child actors to avoid being caught up in the foul mixture, or as Morton has it: “Those kids had to get puked on for like six hours straight.” Not the most desirable job in the film industry. Still, the scene was one of the most iconic in Mandy, and Morton went on to describe how it was influenced by television of the 1980s.
“I just wanted to be really ’80s,” he said. “That’s why he’s got a really bright paint job. The whole thing takes place in 1983, so everything had to be very specific. We were very careful about what the mac & cheese boxes looked like, how the children were dressed. We had to find the right kitchen.”
“People are saying the Cheddar Goblin is the greatest cinematic moment of 2018,” Morton continued. “It’s the thing that happens that changes the movie. There’s all this tension, and then it hits this button, and everyone laughs, and then the movie takes off. It’s crazy. It was a fun thing we did in two days, but it ended up really meaning a lot.”
Watch the ‘Cheddar Goblin’ advert from Mandy below.
