The Annoying Dance of the Studio Goody Baskets

It’s another holiday season at the movie studios, which means another waltz of the corporate cookie baskets. And cheese ‘n’ cracker baskets, gourmet jam baskets, and muffins-the-size-of-one’s-head baskets. The fancy food is coming from vendors far and wide, in an effort to show their appreciation to the studio executives they’ve worked with through the year.

While some other industries may also get a hefty share of the festive baskets, the film and television industry is staggering under the weight of them. Some have set up special staffs just to handle the studio-bound orders, which can number in the thousands. FanciFull Baskets, for example, has a special Web site set up just for Sony Pictures.

All this largess creates a pressing consumer problem: The calories have to go somewhere. In Snookies Cookies’ most requested basket (selling for $48.95), there are 42 cookies, brownies and muffins to be consumed. Mrs. Beasley’s delivers (for $69.50) a basket stuffed with 66 mini-muffins. And FanciFull creates “the office party� (for $75) full of chocolates, cookies, nuts and the like. When asked what the calorie count in the portable party is, FanciFull president Wally August laughs. “About five zillion.�

“It’s ridiculous,� says Peter Martin, senior creative director of Johnson & Murphy Advertising, and formerly vice president of creative services for Buena Vista Television. He estimates he used to get an average yearly haul of about 18 baskets, including towers of chocolate, pyramids of fruit and cheese, bags of pistachios and coffee mugs full of sweets. “Most of it ends up staying at the office, or you’d become enormous by the end of the season.�

Joe Ames, manager of international marketing at Warner Bros. Consumer Products, who averages about a dozen baskets a season, usually scans them to see if anything would suit his girlfriend, “then the rest goes to the desk outside my office. The food disappears rather quickly--as everybody’s waistline expands.�

Mara Lopez, a post-production executive at DreamWorks TV, confesses what many won’t publicly admit to: “I take everything I don’t want and make a super-basket to give to someone else.� What goes around keeps going around. Why, it’s the new fruitcake! Her cupboard still holds cans of salmon mousse, various pates and a jar of Icelandic lumpfish caviar from three years ago. “I can’t bring myself to throw it out because it seems like it might be valuable to somebody.� Ames agrees that pate is an unpopular offering. “It smells kind of bad, people in the office wonder why you’re putting it out to eat. It never ends up making it to my house.�

What was Martin’s least favorite edible gift? “Those giant popcorn tins,� Martin says without hesitation. “People rummage their hands through there. That’s great during the holiday season, when everyone’s coming down with the flu already. It’s a giant petri dish.�

He recalls a popcorn bucket horror story from years ago when he was working at a local Fox station. “There was an executive who didn’t wash his hands after he went to the restroom. Knowing that, and seeing him come into the department and thrust his hand into the popcorn tin--,� Martin shudders. “To this day, I can’t eat out of those things.�

On to a happier topic: What does he think is the best food to receive in a corporate environment? Chocolate-covered espresso beans. “With all those holiday deadlines, they keep you going, going, going. Grab a handful in the morning, another at 10 a.m., some more at 4 p.m. when you’re starting to crash, then take a few for the ride home,� Martin suggests as a regimen. “It’s great! Of course, then you can’t go to sleep. They are truly addictive.� The possibly less addictive influx of wines and spirits is also welcome. Lopez, who doesn’t drink wine, says she has bottles to bring to parties forever. Martin still has four bottles of Dom Perignon that he has yet to open.

That’s the little secret of the corporate gift world: Once the bottle of Dom has been removed, those benefiting, or suffering, the most from all those delicacies are the assistants. But even those who appreciate all the pawning can grow weary of lugging the big Mylar-wrapped sugar comas home. They’re very heavy.

Do all of these refreshments help remember the vendor to the client during the year? “It’s a nicety, but as far as whether I’m more apt to work with them, probably not,� says Ames.

“After the seventh basket, they become meaningless,� says one exec who wanted to remain nameless because she doesn’t want to hurt Nos. 8 and up. Another anonymous studio employee finds the “total gluttony� disgusting, noting that no matter how much piles up in the kitchen, “the vultures come, and it all goes.� A lot of studio people didn’t want to go on record with their complaints about the overflow of forgettable food, partly not to appear ungrateful (or to be known for calling their co-workers scavenging birds), and partly--one can only guess--because they still like to get the goods.

So, to review: The slightly obscene flood of food isn’t really appreciated, in some cases it’s downright despised, it doesn’t influence those who do the hiring and buying, and after culling, most of it ends up in the hands of underpaid underlings. Everyone knows it, and nobody cares. It’s standard Hollywood: Stick with the formula, know your part. The vendors give, the executives sort, pawn and re-gift, the assistants lug and renew their gym memberships. And by the end of the year, everyone will know the muffin man a little bit too well. Let the waltz begin.

Lisa Rosen is a freelance writer who worked briefly at Buena Vista Television, where she was among the recipients of baskets passed on to staff by executives.