Why so much Chinese food?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Okay, this is definitively mundane and pointless. However, since my days on the SDMB are numbered (blame THE MAN), I feel strangely entitled or at least a little more emboldened that I would normally.

So, ever notice that when people are consuming Chinese food in the movies or on television, there seems to be like five large size containers for every 1 person at the table. When my friends and I order Chinese there are maybe five medium sized containers for six or seven people with leftovers. So what explains the boatload of Chinese food buffet that you so often see in the movies and on television?

Told you – mundane – pointless.

Jeff

2

I thought they bought different items for a buffet.

3

Hum…maybe its just a visual thing for film, or some reference to American over consumption…or maybe movie people just really like Chinese food. No idea.

4

Could be - just always seems like a ton of food. Now, on the other hand, pizza always seems to go further than it should on television and in the movies so go figure.
Jeff

5

Leftovers, for breakfast.

6

It’s because those little boxes look so good on film. They’re adorable.
The Chinese food I get over here comes in pseudo-Tupperware containers, in ugly pink and green plastic. Sure, they’re resealable, but they’re no fun! I keep ordering from new places, hoping to finally fall on one that uses cool boxes. No luck yet.

7

It’s the same reason the lead character always drives a '60’s convertible, and lives in an apartment far larger than anyone on their character’s salary could possibly afford. Because it looks better.

8

I believe it’s the sight of all those stand-up containers, hiding delicious goodies. As opposed to flat plates, with everything in view, which would be harder to film and not look like a topographical map. Also the novelty of seeing people use chopsticks. If you notice, those eating out of the origami containers ALWAYS use chopsticks.

“Where’s my Spicy Shredded Pork with Garlic Sauce???”

[band name?, I think not!]

9

Another possibility, but this is just a guess since the chinese take out places near me use divided foil plates with plastic covers.

However, in my divided foil plate, I usually get several items. But if these items were to come in little boxes, I expect they’d use a separate box for each. So I’d have one for the main dish, one for rice, one for egg rolls, and maybe another for soup? Or does soup go in a different type of container? In any case, I can see there being 2 or 4 cartons per person for that reason.

But I like the divided foil plates myself.

10

In my family, we tend to get an item for each person plus community dishes like ma po dao fu which I’m probably misspelling. We share everything, but you do end up with lots of yummy leftovers that way.

11

Our Chinese place uses the little boxes. For two people we get 4 boxes, plus another container with soup in it and a bag that has wonderful crab rangoon in it.

I like the little boxes.

12

It’s also easier continuity-wise. You have these boxes of food and everyone knows that the box means “Chinese food”, but of course you need the chopsticks for that one person who has never seen a movie before and needs the chopsticks to make the connection of “boxes of food” = “Chinese food” and you don’t have to worry about how much food is on each person’s plate from shot to shot. You just have to make sure no one gets duck sauce on the outside of one of the boxes. That would be a nightmare!

So the answer is: Continuity.

13

Continuity is part of it, but not all of it. Ditto for appearance on film: the prototypical Chinese food box is a piece of visual shorthand that instantly communicates what’s going on. If they had another type of takeout container, like those big styrofoam cups with the translucent plastic lid, the audience wouldn’t know immediately what they represented, and there’d be a moment of distraction while they worked out what they were looking at, during which time some dialogue or other information might be missed.

There’s another reason: The boxes are closed, so you don’t actually need to have food in them. For all the difference it makes, you can fill most of them with sand so they don’t move around, and have food in just one or two, whichever ones the characters are snagging their gyoza out of.

This is important for a couple of reasons. First, expense. Sure, a big Hollywood movie spends more in three months getting bottled water for its diva star than most of us spend on a brand-new car, so a few bucks for a spread of food isn’t going to break anybody. Some movies watch their pennies, though, which makes these takeout boxes a nice shortcut.

Beyond that, though, a two-page dialogue scene with four or five people around a table can take a whole day to shoot, or even longer if it’s a big Hollywood movie. You’ve got to get a master shot, or two masters if you’re getting coverage from a couple of angles. You’ve got to have closeups for every single important character at the table. You’ll have middle-ground shots, which include two people rather than a single closeup. And the director may want something a little fancy, like that shot in The Untouchables where the camera makes a slow circle completely around the table. Every single one of these shots must be lit and rehearsed, which takes a lot of time. Then you have multiple takes, which can be from three to fifty depending on the director, the complexity of the shot, and so on. In the end, this one- or two-minute scene can take eight to sixteen hours to put on film.

And in that time, the food is just going to be sitting there. If you’ve got strong lights (which is less common now, with faster film and digital alternatives), the food can start to go bad pretty quickly. (Cold foods melt fast and are substituted; mashed potatoes are used instead of ice cream, for example.) That’s especially true for something that takes more than one day to shoot. Even if it’s just six hours on the set, it’s still gonna start to smell.

So you minimize that by having just a couple of boxes of food, and you put a bunch more boxes with rocks or whatever in them, and voila, instant fake feast, in which you don’t have to spend a lot of money, you don’t worry about continuity, you don’t stink up the set, and you don’t ask the actors to eat food that’s been sitting and spoiling for a few hours.