One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer: Lou Waxman Goes Drinking at the Movies

August 20, 2026

As you know, Lou does not watch movies, but he is a big consumer of movie podcast content and by that Lou means primarily The Rewatchables and The Big Picture on The Ringer Podcast Network. Lou heard scuttlebutt that the 2000 Mega-Movie Draft on The Big Picture was off the hook, so Lou gave it a listen. The most shocking element of the podcast for most people is when Mallory Rubin lets fly that she gave blow jobs in her basement while Snatch was playing.

Lou did not find this confession shocking at all. This wasstandard operating procedure in high school. The blow jobs were a given. Mallory has Snatch as the backdrop, but you can pick the film to match your own experience. The Hitcher. Risky Business. River’s Edge. The Reanimator. All those movies fit Lou’s youth, but what was more on point was the importance of the basement. Lou’s basement in high school was so crucial that he included it in his high school yearbook memories for senior year.

As an old crusty book collector, basements are the worst placeson earth. If you are a book collector and you have absolutely anything in your basement, you are a complete novice and a moron. All the horror stories involving the destruction of books happen in the basement. Mold, insects, floods. You name it, the basement is where books go to die. But as a teenager, the basement is where you lived your best life.

So much so that in the summers during college when Lou was at home on break and living with his parents and his two brothers, there was a waiting list for access to the basement. The basement was like a five-star Michelin restaurant. It was nearly impossible to get in. There was always someone down there. It got to the point where we blocked off time in the basement in hourly increments. Lou would be down there with his babe and then right when things were getting hot and heavy there would be a knock on the door. Time was up. So, we would get dressed and do the walk of shame up the steps and get into the car and drive to the darkest corner of the nearest hotel parking lot and continue making out. It sucked.

This begs the question: Why didn’t we just get a room in a hotel? To be completely honest, we were not that smart. It was a revolutionary idea. During Lou’s senior year of high school, one of Lou’s friends got the bright idea of getting a hotel room for the weekend for him and his girlfriend and throwing some parties. Beer on ice in the bathtub. Everyone piled on the beds. Fun all around. Nobody in Lou’s circle did this on the regular. The only time you got a hotel room was prom night, which Lou was never going to attend. Prom was for losers. Winners drank beer alone in the basement watching Emmanuelle movies on VHS while his classmates got real life ass. In some respects, Lou is still winning. Has Lou ever mentioned that in his twenties several people thought he looked like Charlie Sheen? Now, Lou looks like Brendan Fraser in The Whale. Sad.

Back to The Big Picture. Mallory Rubin’s confession of high school hijinks was not the most shocking part of that podcast by far. No, the shit went down during a discussion of The Perfect Storm. Lou barely remembers this movie but apparently there is a scene where Diane Lane is looking out upon the stormy horizon drinking a beer. It is suggested by The Ringer staff that it is a PBR. Chris Ryan, a true bro and a legend, says it must have been a Narragansett. Sean Fennessey, a pretty boy and a dork, not a nerd, nerds are cool, says that Narragansett wasn’t around then. Of course, Narragansett has been around since the 19th Century. Sean has no idea what the fuck he is talking about.

This exchange shocked Lou more than any blow job reveries and it got Lou to thinking about what are the greatest beer drinking moments in film history. There are tons and tons of scenes of smoking and drinking in the movies, but when you really go down the rabbit hole there are precious few scenes of drinking a particular brand of beer for sale in your liquor store.

Think about it. Most drinking in the movies is wine and spirits. From Casablanca to Sideways, they get all the love. Beer is somewhat under-represented. What jumps to mind? Stephen King movies for sure. It could be argued that The Shining is all about alcoholism and Jack Nicholson kills for a beer. The only good scene in The Shawshank Redemption involved the boys drinking beer on the roof after a job well done. This makes sense. At one point, Stephen King was drinking a case of beer every day. The man knows his beer. What we don’t know is the brand. In Shawshank, it is prop beer.

This is the case in almost all beer drinking scenes in film and television. In Cheers, Norm is not a Bud Heavy guy and Cliffdoes not drink Miller High Life. In Barfly and Trees Lounge, two of the great drinking movies of all time, nobody is partial to a brand of beer. The verb matters, to drink, not the noun, as in what brand they are drinking. In most scenes, they drink props. In Animal House, when the frat goes to the roadhouse, they order seven Carlings, but they get prop beers instead. In National Lampoon’s Vacation, when Clark and Rusty share a boy-becomes-man moment, they drink a prop.

Lou had a moment like this with his stepfather. When Lou was in Little League, his stepfather bought him a pouch of Red Man. Lou had been begging to step up from Big League Chew for months. Lou wanted to be a big leaguer. If you remember, baseball players used to chew tobacco like real men instead of spitting sunflower seeds. It could be argued that baseball went downhill not with the Steroid Era, but when tobacco was banned. Lou took his pouch of Red Man and put in a wad of George Brett proportions and promptly threw up about five minutes later. Lou never chewed tobacco again. Lou’s stepfather knew what he was doing. The same result did not occur when he bought Lou his first porn mag. You win some you lose some.

If a brand is indicated in many cases it is a fictional brand. The McKenzie brothers and Homer Simpson are some of the most famous beer drinkers in the world. In Strange Brew, they drink beer from Elsinore Brewing. Homer drinks Duff. In Laverne &Shirley, they work at Shotz Brewing. Tarantino created Old Chattanooga Beer for his universe. So, in essence, nobody in movies and television drinks for real. That is why Rust Cole drinking Lone Star pounders is so good. Lone Star is non-negotiable. This highlights that Rust Cole is obsessive and dedicated. Lou has to admit that he thought the Lone Star scenes were some of the coolest shit he had ever seen. This also happens to be the last time Lou watched television.

To be honest, for Lou, there are only three iconic beer drinking scenes in movies depicting an actual real-life brand of beer. Let’s just get Reality Bites out of the way. If you are making a movie based on the nobility of not selling out, you cannot, you fucking cannot, finance your movie with product placements. Disgusting display. Additionally, as a Pennsylvania dude, Lou cannot get behind Rolling Rock. The beer is Yuengling and will always be Yuengling. And not Yuengling Lager. Yuengling Porter and Lord Chesterfield Ale. Preferably mixed together with the porter in a goblet with a chaser of a bottle of Chesterfield at the Northeast Taproom. The Classic. Legendhad it that the Taproom sold so much Classic that Yuengling started brewing their own black and tan. Lou drink a shit ton of it that is for sure. Nobody in Lou’s circle would be caught dead drinking Rolling Rock. It tasted like nickels. And nickels taste like dick. Lou swears this is quote from somewhere. Damn if he knows where.

A guy Lou knew was dating Pete Coors’s daughter in college. Pete visited the college on homecoming or some shit. This was a big deal. Not because Pete brewed Coors. Coors was crap. The excitement stemmed from the fact that Pete was going to taste a real beer. That beer was Yuengling Porter. Out of a keg. A keg that was acquired with great difficulty and expense. So, the moment of truth arrives and a Solo cup of Yuengling Porter is brought before Pete with great pomp and circumstance. He takes a sip and the motherfucker says the immortal line: “I guess we have no competition from these guys.” One of my friends from high school who was there had to be held back from kicking Pete’s ass. What a douche!! The dude had no taste. Ethan Hawke, Winona Ryder, and crew also have no taste. It is no doubt iconic beer drinking in a movie, but they were supposed to speak for and about Lou. This movie was made for Lou’s generation and with the Rolling Rock they just lost Lou. Lou could not see where they were coming from. It would have been better if they drank Coors Banquet. More on Coors in a second.

Uncle Eddie in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation gets an honorable mention for drinking Meister Brau. Nobody fucking drinks Meister Brau. This shit is beyond trash. Eddie is beyond trash. Only the guys at National Lampoon could have made this joke. Beer humor is the best. And this is a great example of it.

Third place involves Coors. Now you might think this must be Smokey & the Bandit. Coors drives the entire plot. They are bootlegging Coors from Texas to Georgia for Big and Little Enos to have big shindig at a car race. Say what you will but Smokey & the Bandit is a documentary. This type of shit actually happened. Bootlegging Coors was a thing. Coors was not pasteurized and contained no preservatives. As a result, Coors was banned in several states, basically any state east of the Mississippi due to the perceived health dangers of shipping it. As with most things, if you can’t get it then you want it and it becomes great. Coors is good for sure, but not great. Tell that to Paul Newman. Like many celebrities, Newman probably got his assistant to make back-alley deals with the Bandit and Snowman for Coors.

Well, sorry to break it to you, but if Lou remembers correctly nobody drinks Coors in the movie. They talk about it a lot. They move it in forklifts. It is the movie’s reason for being, but they do not drink it. That said, Marion Cobretti in Cobradoesn’t talk much and when he does he mumbles, but he famously chugs a Coors during a supermarket shootout at the beginning of the movie. Cobretti is not what is called a rounded character, but chugging a Coors speaks volumes, so he does not have to explain himself. Cobretti is cool under pressure. Shootouts like this are his idea of a good time, like a backyard cookout where you, well, drink Coors. For those cynics who say this is just product placement, fuck you. If this is product placement, then Joyce Hyser’s boobs in Just One of the Guys aregratuitous nudity. As Lou has painstakingly detailed, those boobs are essential. A deux ex machina maybe. If you are too dumb to know what that is, then you are too dumb to fully appreciate Hyser’s rack.

In second place is Frank Booth drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. This is the art house version of Cobretti drinking Coors. Just like PBR is on a higher plane than Coors. Frank’s fanatical dedication to his brand is proof that he is certifiably insane. This is one of the rare cases when drinking a particular beer is pivotal in character development. “Fuck that Pabst’s Blue Ribbon” is one of the iconic lines in film history. You know at that moment that Frank is an unhinged dude.

The number one beer drinking scene of all time gets us back to Sean Fennessey completely dropping the ball on Narragansett. How could he not remember the beer drinking in Jaws? If you use AI to gather iconic beer drinking scenes in film history, it will come up with the “Show Me the Way to Go Home” scene on the Orca before the Indianapolis speech. They are not even drinking beer in this scene. AI sucks.

Quint drinks Narragansett when they are trolling in the open water. One of the funniest scenes in the movie, Quint chugs a Gansett and crushes the can and then Hooper chugs his coffee and crushes his Styrofoam cup. Classic stuff. This is the class warfare between Quint and Hooper all over again. Another example of Hooper’s city hands and Quint’s working-class hero bullshit. The ultimate in a beer brand developing a character. A great example of beer humor as well, but also beer tragedy. Quint has foam on his mouth which foreshadows the blood spurting out of his mouth when he is eaten by the shark in almost the exact same location on the boat. This scene has become central to the marketing of Narragansett to this day. It is as iconic as it gets.

Sean should know all this, but he is not a Respect the Man, Crush the Can type of guy. He is an Aperol spritz at Sunday brunch type of guy. Lou, what the fuck are you talking about? Is there a point to all this? Come on, you should all know that this is a review of George Thorogood’s debut album, which features, “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” as track three on side one. Good old George even name-checks a beer. His friend Weiser. Not Lou’s beverage of choice but give George a little credit for sticking by his brand. Plus, he drinks alone. A pro move. Unlike Lou. Lou is an amateur. The topic of beer tends to loosen his tongue. Give him a wide berth, he’ll talk your ear off. A pitcher of beer is worth a thousand words. Or well over two thousand as the case may be.