Greta Lee Makes Six Cocktails Inspired by Her Six Favorite Movies

Hi, Vogue, I m Greta Lee.

Today I m making six cocktails

inspired by my six favorite movies

with the help of my dear friend Don Lee, who is a,

what do you call yourself these days?

Bar consultant.

Oh, I was gonna say mixologist.

Bar consultant.

So here we go.

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So the first drink that I m gonna make

is a Bokbunja Yuja Sour.

And it s inspired by one of my favorite movies of all time,

Memories of Murder by the incredible director,

Bong Joon Ho.

We were thinking about the color, that red dress

with white collar that they used to lure the killer.

One of the key ingredients to this

is something called Bokbunja,

and this is this Blackberry liqueur.

Actually, Don, come here, you re the expert.

Help me with this.

So this, it has some special powers, right?

From what I understand.

According to Wikipedia, it enhances male sexual stamina.

Okay, so use accordingly, right?

Okay, so I m gonna use the old school version.

Here s a more new school version.

It kind of feels like a cough syrup.

Here s this Yuja.

So when was the first time you saw this movie?

I unfortunately didn t see it until after Parasite,

I was a late comer to the movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember the first time I saw it,

it was really validating to me

in terms of like genre bending and Korean cinema.

It s something that I don t feel like we have as much

here in the West.

And as soon as I saw that movie, I felt understood,

which made me, I don t know what that says about me,

cause it is about a murder.

So Don and I first met, when was that?

Like 20 years ago at Sombar.

[Don] At Sombar, yeah.

And I remember you teaching me this then.

Flip it around.

So let s see if I can do this.

Oh, see, I m already wrong.

Oh no.

[Don] And then you really go for it. Yeah, aim it forward.

How am I doing?

[Don] Doing great!

Okay!

It s good enough.

Okay, garnish or no garnish?

No garnish, keep it simple.

Ooh, badass. So I see what you did here.

This red color, red dress.

[Don] Yep, the Bokbunja gives you that color

and that kind of attractiveness,

your eye turns to it in that same way.

In that movie, the red dress is the focal point.

Exactly.

As soon as that comes on screen,

all eyes are on that dress.

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[Greta] This is the yellow chartreuse Last Word,

inspired by Chungking Express.

Don I m gonna have you stick with me here,

cause I have to take advantage

of your encyclopedic knowledge,

which brings us to our next cocktail.

The last word, right?

It s a little bit of a variation of last word.

Yeah.

So traditionally it would be made with green chartreuse,

we re gonna do it with yellow chartreuse.

[Greta] And there s a reason why,

it matches the color of Faye Wong s shirt in the movie.

This is the easiest cocktail.

Everything is one, one, one.

Really, that s it.

Just one ounce of gin?

One gin, yeah. I don t know about that.

Chartreuse is just as strong as the gin.

All right, next we have the lemon juice

that s gonna go in here.

Yep.

[Greta] I remember seeing Faye Wong and Tony Leung

and completely falling in love with both of them,

but especially Faye.

And I just love how this movie is also genre bending

and it captures that essence of romantic longing,

and loneliness, and chance encounters.

It s so good.

It s so, so great.

Okay, so what s the next thing we do?

Maraschino liqueur.

All right, that goes in there.

Stretch out.

Stretch out. A little bit before I.

There you go.

[drink rattles]

Ooh, that looks so good.

The Chartreuse is really delicate.

It s not overpowering.

I guess you can say it s genre bending.

It s a combination of all of these different elements,

One-to-one-to-ones.

Maybe we can say romance, comedy, and drama.

I feel weird drinking alone.

Do you want one too?

I m okay.

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[Greta] So my next film is Romeo and Juliet

by Baz Luhrmann.

I was 13 or 14 when this movie came out,

and it was really life changing for me at the time.

Baz Luhrmann is one of those directors.

Aesthetically, I think he might be unmatched.

Leonard DiCaprio, Hawaiian shirt.

[Greta] Heard of him, yeah.

[Don] You think Shakespeare and it s gonna be stodgy,

and old, and it s a play.

And this was such an exciting modern version, right?

And so let s do a modern version of tiki.

A painkiller is a traditional tiki drink

that would be rum, pineapple, coconut, orange.

So we re gonna use a little bit

of over proofed Jamaican rum.

So just a little bit of this one.

This is half an ounce.

Half an, oh, oop!

Healthy half ounce.

That s gonna be a healthy half ounce.

Ooh, me and rum too.

We are not good friends.

Dangerous.

So instead of pineapple juice,

we ll be doing pineapple rum.

This is actually distilled and infused with pineapple.

Gorgeous.

And instead of just coconut,

we re gonna do caramelized sweetened condensed coconut milk.

And we re gonna do acid orange juice.

You added a little citric acid to the orange,

so it has that burn of a lemon.

Is that it?

That s it.

I thought that was gonna be a lot harder.

I m gonna give this one a shake,

because that caramelized cocoa,

I m worried that it s not gonna multiply enough.

[Greta] Thank you, thank you.

You can rest on this one.

Watch how it s really done.

Look at that form.

And we re doing this in a rocks glass.

[Don] Yep.

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I m drunk, I m drunk.

Yeah.

This is.

You doubled the rum.

Okay, okay, okay.

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Okay, so I m really excited about this one.

We re making a Venetian Spritz

inspired by the movie Summertime

starring Katherine Hepburn.

I find her performance in this film

so unbelievably inspiring.

I think Katherine Hepburn was 47,

maybe even 48 when she made this movie.

She is just stunningly beautiful, womanly,

her maturity, her life experience, all of it.

And I just, I love the film,

and the fashion is unbelievable.

A lot of beautiful suiting, suit, skirt sets,

and her hair was fab.

Her makeup was extremely minimalist, super inspiring.

We re gonna go classic spritz style,

so much like an Aperol spritz,

we re gonna go three parts of the sparkling wine,

two parts of the bitter element,

and just a splash of the soda.

So three, two, one.

I did a pretty good job with that, right?

Yeah, next time we re gonna have you saber it.

Oh.

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Is that about a three?

Maybe a little more.

Good enough.

Okay, good enough.

I love this attitude. We can always add more.

Good enough.

Yes.

Okay, I love Cynar.

This is made from artichokes, right?

Yeah, artichokes.

Yeah, so last step. Just a splash on top, one.

Splash, one.

Good enough.

Let s give this one a garnish. An orange.

Yeah.

Love it.

Here we go.

Okay, cheers.

Oh, that s so good.

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Our next drink is the Ramos gin fizz

inspired by the movie Magnolia.

[Don] Specifically that opening shot of Tom Cruise.

[Greta] Yes.

[Don] That harsh lighting.

We re talking black leather vest.

We re talking respect the [beeps].

Yes we are, here we go.

I m talking a lot about my teen angst here,

but this movie captured so much

of that existential loneliness.

It really had a big impact on me as a young artist.

You feel like you ve entered the mind of PTA.

So here we go, here s this drink.

Egg white.

Now if you don t wanna do this, is there a substitute?

[both laugh]

We re gonna try that again.

Take two.

No pressure or anything.

God.

Okay, so I am doing this

and then we re gonna rock it this way.

You re done.

Come on.

Good job.

Next we re gonna do the heavy cream.

Heavy cream, one ounce.

Just to make it easy, cause the egg white was already hard,

We have the simple syrup, lemon and lime

all together for you.

[Greta] Oh, thank you, and then?

Two ounce of gin.

So this one, we want it to be like,

almost like whipped cream.

And so we re gonna cheat.

Yeah, how do we make that happen?

And we re gonna use the spring off of the strainer.

We re gonna put that in.

That can t be the official tool.

Seriously?

Call this the dry shake.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, add some ice. Okay, and then you go again.

I m gonna go again.

And you tell me when you re ready for this.

Yeah, you do that, and I ll just keep holding this.

[Don laughs]

You re good.

Okay.

So let s use the bubble to make the foam.

Oh.

By pouring into here,

and by pouring slowly, we ve now turned all those bubbles

into the head.

Okay.

We re gonna let that cream rise to the top.

And this is a definitely stop and notice me

kind of a drink, just like Tom Cruise s character.

I ve recently heard that he pitched that monologue

to PTA himself.

It wasn t something that was pre-written.

And he invited him over to his house

and set up mood lighting, did the whole thing

to pitch him the idea for this monologue.

Oh my gosh.

This might be my favorite one.

It s a sleeper.

Whoa.

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So our last cocktail we re doing is Sazerac,

and this one is inspired by my new movie

called Late Fame that s coming out soon.

It s starring Willem Defoe and I.

I wanted to create a cocktail with you

that would be inspired by the character I play,

Gloria Gardner.

She s my homage to women of the past.

Women like Isabella Rossellini, Sally Bowles.

This is the only one I haven t seen,

because it s not out yet.

Yeah. But I did see that clip

where your character meets the Ed character

and she comes into the room and just takes command

of everybody and is definitely the alpha.

And so I think I d go kind of like old fashioned.

But let s go further back

to that New Orleans tradition of a cognac old fashioned.

Okay.

Of a Sazerac.

Two ounces.

Two all the way.

There you go.

And it s gonna be a quarter ounce of syrup.

And we went with Demarara.

Any brown sugar syrup works.

Then two dashes.

Of Peychaud s bitters.

One.

The classic, oh, give it a healthy dash.

Two.

Yeah.

Should I do one more just cause that was kind of light.

There you go.

This is absinthe that we ll add to the glass.

This is our key ingredient.

Spritz the absinthe into the glass.

I m just kidding.

How many?

Just one?

One, two, three

One, oh, two.

What would Gloria do?

She d probably just open this bottle just and drink it.

There you go.

Absence really is about that aroma.

It really, it s such a strong flavor.

Let s give it a little lemon on top too.

Oh, okay, okay.

[Don] We ll layer lemon oil.

And then do you do this?

You could do that.

Easy, you can do this too.

All right, here we go.

Oh my gosh, that s really good.

Not a chill drink, but appropriate for Gloria.

Thanks so much for watching Vogue.

We hope that you guys try these cocktails at home

and that you check out some of the movies

that we were discussing.

And thank you Don, for being here, and for your expertise.

Thanks for having me.

Bye.

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