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The 2019 film Buffaloed is the story of Peg Dahl (Zoey Deutch, “Zombieland 2”), a young Jordan Belfort-type that grows sick of the poverty she’s raised in by her single mother (Judy Greer, “Halloween” 2018) with older JJ (Noah Reid, “Schitt’s Creek”) in Buffalo, NY.
This leads to an escalating series of scams and hustles, landing her in and out of jail. Like the aforementioned Belfort, Peg’s mission is to make as much money as possible without any consideration for morality or legality of her scams.
The movie is enjoyable if rarely laugh out loud funny, and Zoey Deutch continues to be a national treasure (fun fact, she is daughter the daughter of Lea Thompsan, aka Marty McFly’s mom in “Back to the Future, and Howard Deutch aka famous director of “Pretty in Pink” and many others. I guess that makes her a nepo-baby which is less fun, but she’s still great.)
This is also one of those movies where the town is as much a character as the humans. Every thing about the film evokes a specific time and place. I don’t think they ever say what year it is, but the film plays like a period film set in the late 90s or early 00s. And the place is, of course, the titular Buffalo, NY.
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Genesee Beer in Buffaloed (2019 film)
Genesee beer is apparently such a staple to Buffalo culture that there are tours exploring it’s history in the city.
JJ (Noah Reid), Peg Dahl (Zoey Deutch), Graham (Jermaine Fowler) and countless extras all drink Genesee Beer in Buffaloed.
Graham (Peg’s love interest/former coworker) get closer to one another drinking Genesee beer and Noah Reid’s JJ character is rarely seen not drinking Genesee beer (or ‘Genny’ as he and presumably most Buffalonians refer to the beer).
At one point, the films main human villain (behind poverty and law enforcement) offer cases of Genny as an incentive for his team to increase their debt collection numbers (this apparently is as good a motivator as, you know, cash is.)
Random cans of Genny are even used as random set decoration in some scenes.
Crown Royal Canadian Whisky in Buffaloed (2019 film)
I couldn’t find much if Crown Royal is actually widely popular in Buffalo (let me know in the comments if you’ve heard this before), but it’s very popular amongst the characters in Buffaloed. “Shots of Crown all around” is how the characters celebrate.
In the picture above Rhonda (Jayne Eastwood, “Dawn of the Dead” 2004), is being gifted a Crown and whisky glass gift set and she is *beyond* thrilled.
To be fair, I also love these gift boxes. I used to live next to a discount liquor store that always had a shelf of these promotional set and they were often cheaper than buying the bottle alone. Man, I miss that store.
Name Brand Alcohol (as opposed to fake movie-prop brands)
Peg’s brother JJ owns a bar and spends a lot of his scenes there. The noticeable thing about his back bar is that those are actual brands and bottles. You can clearly see bottles of Jameson Irish Whisky, Kahlua, Jagermeister, Goldschläger, Crown Royal (of course), Southern Comfort Smirnoff Vodka and many others.
Granted, a lot of these brands are Diageo brands, or at least were Diageo brands when the movie was filmed. This would make sense if the film managed to get some of that sweet sweet product placement money since Crown Royal was going to feature so prominently in the film.
However, not all these brands are from a single alcohol distributor and there’s even varying levels of alcohol in the bottles which is not usually the case for sponsored products seen in film. This suggest that they may have actually filmed in a real-life bar that had actual stock. Or the set-dresser was just super committed to their job.
Unidentified Booze in a Decanter
The last bit of drinking comes from Graham’s office decanter. I’m guessing it is some sort of whiskey, possibly Crown Royal. But the appeal to Peg is clear. Drinking from a fancy decanter is far from her impoverished background and represents some luxury. Although affordable and nice decanters are available.
She later uses that same whiskey as an accelerant to commit a whole bunch more crime when she burns about a billion dollars worth of debt of people she previously saw as marks to con.
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