Eating Chinese food straight from the carton?

A quote in Dennis Hamill's column in today's New York Daily News, in which he recalls memorable celebrity interviews from the past, caught my notice:

TOM HANKS answered the door to his trailer on W. 43rd St. on the set of "You've Got Mail" wearing a soiled undershirt and eating Chinese food out of a carton.

The notion of eating Chinese food straight from the carton is obviously one of great import to some; there was a recent long discussion thread on Chowhound.com about the practice. Some opined that it was it was something that only happened in the movies; some thought it was just a New York thing; and still others, not New Yorkers, claimed to have done it themselves. In support of the movie-thing theory, there is a whole web page devoted to the subject of eating Chinese food (and ice cream) from the container in movies. I'm not calling those Chowhounds who claimed to do it themselves liars; we are impressionable creatures, after all, and sometimes life imitates art. One of the featured movie occurrences of the practice on the above-referenced web site involved... Tom Hanks.