Query: Food in Hollywood and East Asian Film?-- multiple responses

From: Brian C Johnson <[email protected]>

In the film "Good Fences" starring Danny Glover and Whoopi Goldberg there
is an interesting recurrent discussion about the role of family dinner,
particularly for the traditional holiday meals. Might be worth
investigating.

Brian Johnson
Indiana University of PA
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From: <[email protected]>

*****
From: A. Bowdoin Van Riper <[email protected]>

A few scenes come to mind (though I'm not sure they're what you want):

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 or 1962): Both, as I remember include scenes
that contrast the rotten meat and weevil-ridden bread the sailors are
served aboard ship with the roast pig and tropical fruit that are showered
on them by the Tahitians.  Bligh may be shown forcing them to eat food that
(implicitly) a more humane captain would have declared unfit and thrown
over the side

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938): The feast at Robin's camp in Sherwood
Forest  . . . the (other) feast at Nottingham Castle . . . Friar Tuck's
defense of his turkey leg.

Oklahoma (1955): The box social, and the auction of the picnic baskets . .
. the auctioneer's jokes at the expense of Ado Annie's (apparently
terrible) cooking . . . food as a proxy for romantic attraction, with Curly
(Gordon McRae) and Jud (Rod Steiger) getting into a bidding war over
Laurey's picnic basket.

Lady & The Tramp (1955): spaghetti . . . meatballs . . . moonlight . . .
love.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954): The contrast between what the
brothers cook for themselves and what Milly (the eldest brother's wife)
cooks for them (discussed, and shown in glorious Technicolor) is a key part
of the film's commentary on the "civilizing" effect of women on men.

Spencer Tracy invites Katharine Hepburn to lunch in The Desk Set (1957) so
they can talk  . . . she's envisioning a Manhattan restaurant, but he shows
up with two sandwiches and two cardboard cups of coffee from the deli
across the street, which he suggests they eat on the roof garden of her
office building.  In November.  This is the first indication that, although
a genius, he's socially clueless.

Harry (Brad Dexter) thoroughly enjoying the elaborate meal that the
peasants have prepared for him and his fellow gunslingers -- enumerating,
with relish, the dishes he's been offered -- in The Magnificent Seven
(1960) . . . until Chris (Yul Brynner) points out to him that the peasants
are going hungry themselves in order to make the feast possible (at which
point the film cuts to a scene of them inviting the peasants to share the
feast).

Steve McQueen and James Garner using the food from Red Cross parcels to
make moonshine in order to celebrate the 4th of July in The Great Escape
(1960) . . . and Garner using chocolate (an unattainable luxury in wartime
Germany) in an attempt to bribe one of the guards -- whose voice and body
language make his desire for it evident.

Virtually all of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1970), but especially
the scene with Violet Beauregard rapturously describing the experience of
chewing Wonka's experimental three-course-meal-in-a-stick-
of-gum . . .

The campfire scene in Blazing Saddles (1974) . . . in which (whatever else
can be said of it), the fact that everyone involved is having beans for
dinner is certainly relevant.

The sheriff's wife and son in the hospital after the kid's encounter with
the shark in "Jaws" (1975) . . . she asks if there's anything she can bring
him to help him feel better, and he asks for ice cream.  What flavor, she
asks?  He says: "Coffee."  She repeats the word "coffee" with such obvious
relish that it's clear the ice cream has become -- to her -- a symbol of
her love for the kid, and that if she has to have it airlifted in, she will.

Tom Hanks taking Daryl Hannah out to dinner in "Splash" (1980 or so) . . .
the scene's played for laughs, in that Hannah (being a mermaid) eats her
lobster shell and all, but my now-hazy memory of the setup is that he takes
her to the restaurant and orders lobster because he wants to impress her
with high-end food.

Belushi and Aykroyd ordering lunch in Aretha Franklin's diner in "The Blues
Brothers" (1980) . . . the point of the scene being that their orders are
so distinctively weird (Belushi: two whole fried chickens and a small Coke;
Aykroyd: dry white toast) that Franklin's husband/cook, an ex-member of
their band, instantly knows it's them.

Hope this helps . . .

Bow