A Biopic About The Creation Of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Premiers At SXSW

To be completely honest, these are some pretty serious topics that need to be discussed in the food world. These snacks that that are just ingrained in our culture don’t have origin stories that get passed around at all. I certainly have no idea who the hell created the first Dunkaroo, Snickerdoodle or Honeybun (we all agree these are proper nouns, yeah?) but maybe more of us should. There’s decades of memories attached to each of these lunch time classics for people all over the world.

EATER Austin reports that we’ll be getting the backstory on one of our most beloved snacks: the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto. Set to premiere at SXSW from March 10 through Sunday March 19, the Eva Longoria-directed film, stars Jesse Garcia — known for his role in Quinceañera — playing the lead in the film about the Frito-Lay janitor Richard Montañez, who took inspiration from his Mexican American heritage to create Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

In Montañez’s memoir, he goes into detail on how he’d bring home plain, cheese-less Cheetos and add a spice mix inspired by the popular Mexican street food elote. And it’s no spoiler that his idea was scooped up at Frito-Lay and went into mass production, not only creating a timeless spicy chip but also an infinite amount of fingers and keyboards painted in dusty red crumbs.

The premiere date of the film hasn’t been made available yet. However, SXSW will be from Friday, March 10 through Sunday, March 19.