Take Out: Off the Books

The fact that Tsou was born and raised in Taiwan proved crucial for the film, in which the main characters largely speak Mandarin. It also granted the filmmakers access and a certain credibility with the undocumented Chinese immigrants they interviewed as part of their research. Another key resource was Peter Kwong’s incisive book Forbidden Workers (1998), which details the economic dynamics behind human smuggling from China’s Fujian Province. Kwong indicates that such trafficking had become a $4 billion industry at the time. And after these immigrants gain entry into the U.S., the exploitation doesn’t end. They often turn to loan sharks to repay the smugglers, or “snakeheads,” at exorbitant interest rates—something that, given the low-wage jobs typically available to these immigrants, can put them heavily in debt for years.

The plot of Take Out is relatively simple. Ming Ding works as a delivery person for a Chinese take-out restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The film begins when a couple of debt collectors search the crowded quarters of a cockroach-infested tenement in Chinatown (the indoor location used for this scene was an apartment where seven immigrants actually lived). Discovering Ming asleep, they confiscate the money he has hidden in a refrigerator that functions as a clothes closet. Since he has fallen behind on his payments, they deliver an ultimatum: Ming must pay them $800 that night—or else his debt will double. And to make sure he knows they mean business, the thugs strike him just below the shoulder blades with a hammer. This ticking-clock narrative device creates dramatic tension. Will Ming be able to scrape up enough money? The film follows him throughout the day as he tries to borrow cash and to make as much as he can through food deliveries.

Adding to the film’s gritty realism is the fact that Baker and Tsou were allowed to shoot in an actual Chinese restaurant during business hours. The production did not have to pay for the location, but it provided a number of other benefits as well. Baker, using a Sony DSR-PD150 camera, was able to film some of the customers there, as well as to record some of their voices offscreen. The biggest benefit, however, turned out to be that the filmmakers were able to cast the restaurant’s manager, Wang-Thye Lee, as Big Sister, who takes orders as the cashier. Her buoyant personality and casual banter with customers and staff help to create a believable sense of an operational business. “Ms. Lee,” as the filmmakers refer to her, also served as a consultant.

As we witness in the film, managing a bustling restaurant is a tough job. The customers can be very difficult and demanding of Big Sister. They want their orders prepared a certain way, quibble about prices, and generally give her a hard time. In one scene based on the filmmakers’ own observations, a customer dumps a large bag of coins on the counter to exchange for bills, much to the annoyance of Big Sister.

Shooting in a working restaurant also had its difficulties. Because the cooks were undocumented, they were fearful about appearing on camera. To avoid this problem, the three actors who play Young, Ma (Jeff Huang), and Wei (Justin Wan) dressed in clothes similar to the cooks’ in case one of them happened to appear within a shot, even though Baker, who operated the camera, always tried to frame the cooks below their necks. At times the restaurant became so busy that the filmmakers had to leave temporarily until business slowed down. Baker was able to shoot a lot of B-roll footage inside the restaurant before the start of production. The film carefully details the complexities of prepping the kitchen. We also watch various dishes being made and see how the woks and walls of the restaurant are scrubbed of grease with large steel-wire brushes at the end of the day. This is all depicted through fast-paced editing of closely framed shots.

Baker and Tsou’s realism is not “found” or “uncovered” but rather heavily constructed through quick cutting that fractures the filmic space yet nevertheless manages to convey a sense of reality. For practical reasons, Baker and Tsou were forced to employ creative geography in terms of their choice of locations. At the film’s opening, the real-life immigrants’ cramped uptown apartment appears to be in Chinatown, implied by a shot that shows the Manhattan Bridge in the background as Ming begins his long bicycle ride to the Upper West Side. The space of the sweatshop was also constructed via editing. Ming walks through crowded streets and up a flight of stairs in a building. He yells to someone through a metal-grated door. There are quick handheld shots of the inside of a sweatshop, followed by one of a young woman scurrying down the stairs to give him money. Despite their lack of spatio­temporal unity, these shots suggest that she must be a seamstress at one of the sewing machines (which wasn’t the case). Although Baker admits that he and Tsou “faked” reality, he nevertheless told an interviewer that it “may sound cocky, but I feel that some of our scenes come as close to a documentary feel as a fiction film can get.” True to their original intentions, Baker and Tsou do succeed admirably in creating a realistic portrait of the city during the course of a single day.

Take Out is edited in a very nonlinear fashion. Tsou and Baker continually intercut between the restaurant and Ming making deliveries. Just as the customers at the restaurant are often a test for Big Sister, we see that those at home (primarily cast from Craigslist and the Backstage website) can be equally challenging for Ming. The delivery customers’ treatment of Ming ranges from polite to indifferent to rude and abusive. One mocks and curses at him when he receives the wrong order, and sends it back. Upset at losing valuable time, Ming blames Wei for the mix-up, causing them to get into a shoving match. An earlier immigrant, Wei angrily suggests that Ming should go back to China. Their altercation leads to a revelation. The final image of the film is fraught with ambiguity. The camera focuses on Ming as he bikes home through Midtown Manhattan at night. He eventually pedals out of the frame as the focus shifts to the abstract neon lights of Times Square.