You may remember this from the film? In Jamaica though it was too humid so the matches wouldn’t light – in true Hollywood style we had a guy behind the scenes with a hairdryer keeping the matches dry so we could pull off that trick for the film. I would light up a match on the book of matches, leaving it attached and then slide the matches down the bar to the person with the cigarette. This trick was great because it would make me so many tips back in the day. When someone pulled out a cigarette at the bar I had this basket full of match books next to the register. I used to do this trick when I worked in the bar (bearing in mind this was when you used to be able to smoke in a bar). Jamaica was really great but challenging as well. So I gave them the video of the Bartending Olympics contest from a few weeks before and I got the gig! Before I knew it I was being flown out to all these places, spending 1 month filming in New York, another month filming in Toronto and another month filming in Jamaica – it wasn’t a dream come true, it was beyond my wildest dreams! So I made the ladies their drink in my normal way, throwing in a bit of flair and next thing I know one of the ladies is telling me she works for Disney Studios and is actually looking for someone to train Bryan Brown and Tom Cruise for an upcoming film. It would always go down a treat and they always seemed to like it! This can happen a lot when working behind the bar so I gave them my usual answer which was, ‘I’ll make you a drink, if you don’t like it, I’ll buy it’. I approached them to ask them what they wanted to drink as normal and they replied that they didn’t know what they wanted. Before you know it some of the other bartenders who I worked with started having a go and TGI Fridays decided to take it up a notch and hosted the first flair bartending competition I knew of at that time, the Bartending Olympics.Īnyway, I happened to win the contest and then a few weeks later a couple of young ladies walked into the bar. I was making work fun for myself and as it happens it was making it fun for the guests as well, I noticed that what I was doing was catching their eye. I started by messing around with glasses and shakers at home, flipping them whilst standing on the couch so I didn’t break anything or cause too much damage, eventually I took it into the bar as I got better and started doing it with bottles and other stuff. I was getting a little tired of saying the same things over and over again when people came in so I thought I would try something new! I was working in TGI Fridays in Los Angeles and I was new there, so I was getting all the jobs no one wants to do and the boring stuff. “The funny thing is I started flair purely out of boredom one day. Recently we had the pleasure of talking with the Grandfather of Flair himself, the man behind everything you see in the movie Cocktail, and thought to be original creator of flair bartending – John Bandy: How did you start flair bartending? And how did it lead to your role in the film Cocktail?
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