Yummy’s One, the movie pitch

“In a Shanghai noodle factory place where I once used to be no where doing nothing.”

                                                               -Traffic

                                                                 Last Exit

Yummy’s Chinese Cookery. Take-out place of my misspent youth.  If only my misspent adulthood were as sweet.

Soon, to be a movie.  Since it’s a natural for a series, I’ll call the first one, Yummy’s for Dummies.

Starring: Delivery boys on bikes: the Paul Revere’s of moo shu pork and chicken chow mein. Bookies who showed up every day for their money but never ordered anything. Assistant supermarket managers from across the street who are fairly boring.  

My two younger brothers have cameos. The three of us worked there, in the days before incestuous, paranoid nepotism clauses.

Pete, the owner who never outsourced a job outside the neighborhood.  Pete's wife, Gloria, who was always there, getting in the way on Friday nights when it got busy.

Take us to court, all us kids worked there 'off-the-books'. The statute of limitations has run out on the matter. Like Chinese food gets when you leave it in the cardboard container in the fridge.

When the actual movie will be shot I do not know.  Or, as Steve once said to a hungry customer calling in their orders over the phone when woman asked how long will it be?  The answer now, as then, is: “About six inches”.

She laughed.  Only then I got an inkling life was going to be fun.

But Yummy's also taught me that life was also a mixed bag:

When one outraged customer who charged into the take-out place one morning, held up a clear plastic sandwich bag and shouted out, “Look what was in my egg roll” was once told, “Hum”.

Inside the bag among a few shreds of Chinese cabbage – the remains of an egg roll from the night before – a Tipotilo cigar butt.  About 1/8 of an inch of cigar affixed to a white, nicotine-stained plastic piece that Chan would hold between his teeth as he shredded vegetables for the egg rolls.

This movie has everything:   

Chefs and sex.  Like when Paul delivered an order to Parker Towers apartments and never came back.  

Is it animated, ask studio exec?  No but…

It has a built-in, captive audience.  The hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not millions of still-to-this day residents and former residents of Queens, NY around the globe.  All the people who, for years, were snickered at for living in Queens.

What do you hear for music?   

Traffic.  Remember, In a Shanghai noodle factory. Oh. No? I continue...

 

It takes place when the Jets played in and won the Super Bowl.  A very busy day take-out, The streets were empty.

And, just think, if you could draw from the deliver boys who made more money on the game than on tips that day.

Maybe it will appeal to all Jet fans, of every era.  And what if we got Tim Tebow to give it a thumbs up, well, then we’d really have something.

"We?  Oh, you want part of the ticket sales?"

"I’m just the writer, a delivery boy."

I can see it now:“Two tickets to see Yummy’s.  Yes, in 3-D.”

The lights in the theatre dim so you can’t see what’s in the food.

We see a beige phone on an oily, white and tan, vertical stripe, wallpapered wall.  The phone rings two or three times, maybe ten or eleven.  Finally, someone picks up the phone...Hello Yummy's.