Documented Instance of Public Eating (DIPE)

“Documented Instance of Public Eating” (DIPE) appeared in the February 2011 New York (NY) Times, with the new term credited to film publicist Jeremy Walker. Walker had noticed that the media constantly reported gossip of where celebrities were dining—and what they were eating—so Walker developed a term for such news stories. The NY Times observed that a lot of the celebrities were reported to have been chowing down on comfort food.
 
DIPE shouldn’t be confused with “Dipe n’ Go,” a baby product where “dipe” means “diaper.”
 
       
Jeremy Walker + Associates, Inc.
Jeremy Walker
Jeremy Walker is veteran movie publicist with twenty years of experience who has created memorable campaigns for all kinds of movies. Until April 2008 Walker ran his own agency, Jeremy Walker + Associates; during that time he served as unit publicist for such films as Jason Reitman’s “Juno” and “Thank You for Smoking,” David Gordon Green’s “Snow Angels” and “Undertow,” and Mary Harron’s “American Psycho” and worked on countless release and film festival campaigns. The agency’s specialty was helping independent filmmakers prepare and position their work for the marketplace. Over the years he has represented such hot Sundance acquisitions as “Grace is Gone,” “Waitress,” “The Night Listener,” “Hustle & Flow,” “Open Water,” “Garden State” and “The Cooler” as they went on the market there.
 
Walker started the agency shortly after “The Blair Witch Project” became a phenomenon: he had seen the film before its Sundance premiere and pretty much worked on it, with Clein + Walker agency partner Harry Clein, to the exclusion of everything else, for the next year or so.
 
New York (NY) Times
For Actresses, Is a Big Appetite Part of the Show?
By JEFF GORDINIER
Published: February 15, 2011
(...)
Such passages are widespread enough in the pages of American periodicals that at least one longtime film publicist, Jeremy Walker, has coined a term of art for them: the documented instance of public eating, or DIPE. Consider, for example, Cate Blanchett impulse-ordering a side of Parmesan-fried zucchini at a restaurant in London and impishly telling a writer from Vogue that she doesn’t intend to share: “I think we’d each better get our own, or things could get ugly.”
 
NYTimes.com: Diner’s Journal
February 15, 2011, 10:11 pm
What Does a Cheeseburger Mean?
By JEFF GORDINIER
I have a confession to make. I, too, have done the DIPE.
 
DIPE is an acronym coined by Jeremy Walker , a Hollywood publicist who has, over the years, promoted such films as “American Psycho” and “Monster’s Ball.” It stands for “documented instance of public eating.”
 
In this week’s Dining section, we chronicle — and do some mild chin-scratching over — examples of the DIPE that we found in glossy magazines such as Esquire, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.
 
We had our suspicions. We did some flipping around. We noticed a pattern: It seems that when a writer from a magazine is dispatched to interview a famous actress or model, the writer will, with curious frequency, wind up riffing on what the actress likes to eat. And with curious frequency, the actress will talk about her fondness for comfort food.