Fountain of Truth
by Miles Klee
Earlier this year, as writer-director Ryan Coogler did the awards season media circuit on behalf of his acclaimed film Sinners, he delivered a remark that is bound to leave a mark on pop culture more lasting than anything that happened at the Oscars (where he would win his first, for Best Original Screenplay). In a conversation about moviegoing habits on the podcast Good Hang with Amy Poehler, Coogler acknowledged that he was not much of a soda drinker. “But, like, when they started to let you mix and match the drinks, I got involved with that,” he added.
This inspired phrasing made for a viral soundbite and scores of headlines proclaiming Coogler’s love for the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine, the touch screen soda fountain launched in 2009, now a common feature in both movie theaters and bougie office breakrooms. (Though my last two workplaces had one, I now make do with a communal refrigerator stocked with cans of some generic zero-sugar brand of soda.) The Freestyle features 165 different Coca-Cola products, many of these being variations on the primary flavors: to your Coke, Diet Coke, or Coke Zero, for instance, you can add an accent of cherry, vanilla, orange, lemon, raspberry, or lime.
Coogler is a talented and original artist, and I’d be only too glad for most Hollywood interviews to delve into the subject of soda theory. But—and this is assuming he was referring to the Freestyle, and not just the license to experiment that comes with self-service at any ordinary soda fountain—I can’t accept his preference. I believed, throughout many years of complaining to friends and family, that the Freestyle machine has been, at best, indifferently tolerated by the public.
You’re telling me some people like it?
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