Louie Mantia, Jr.Mar 6

Two TV / movie tropes I’m kinda curious about:
1. Have you ever been—or seen someone—who left behind an entire plate of food at a restaurant because you forgot an appointment or something?
2. Have you ever been—or seen someone—who ordered “a beer” or “a whiskey” at a bar without further interaction?

For this post, I’m just asking if you’ve witnessed either in real life.

Show threadLouie Mantia, Jr.
As a followup—
I know the latter saves runtime, but the former I can’t figure out the purpose during shooting. Is it because filmmakers don’t want to deal with continuity issues when shooting takes? It’s easier to leave a full plate during a shoot rather than stage various levels of meal completion? Is that reality reflected in how they always write it in that the character leaves without eating it? Or is that just coincidence?
Mar 6 at 9:54pmWeb
Show threadCory BirdsongMar 6
@louie continuity seems like a good guess. if you have access to Nebula, Patrick Willems has a making-of video about his short film The Dinner Plan, which itself is a real fun watch. It’s centered around a meal with 7-8 participants, and he talked about the lengths the crew had to go to in order to maintain continuity on that many plates since the amount of food that each character had eaten was central to the plot.
Show threadClaude M. SchraderMar 7
@louie I heard at some point that people on sitcoms are always eating Chinese food out of the carton for continuity reasons, so that would make sense here too?
Show threadLouie Mantia, Jr.Mar 7
@cschrader Right. A little while ago I scrubbed through the first six Star Wars movies and noticed similar stuff— you barely see food. The bowls are deeper or the food is almost generic shapes that you can’t ever distinguish what it is, which made me think that must be part of it!