MetaChat - Do the movies get your profession right?

Six Feet Under is fairly accurate, I'm sorry to say.

posted by ColdChef 30 May | 22:16

Hmmm, what movies are there about unemployment?

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 30 May | 22:23

yeah, my husband laughs at all the submarine movies. I can't watch them with him because he nitpicks them to death.

There really aren't any movies about urban planning or cartography that I'm aware of. I can't imagine zoning maps would translate to EXCITING!DRAMATIC!ACTION!

posted by desjardins 30 May | 22:25

The list of all the inaccuracies in The China Syndrome would be longer the script itself. Hell, I could write half a book on just the security faults.

posted by Ardiril 30 May | 22:28

Nobody ever makes movies about flower clerks.

But they should.

posted by bunnyfire 30 May | 22:31

No one has ever written a program that allows you to sit at a computer and type HACK GOVERNMENT DATABASE and get back an actual hacked government database.

Not to mention that hooking up a Barbie doll to your computer and putting a bra on your head will not produce a hot Englishwoman with magical powers.

These are egregious examples, but shockingly rarely, even in this day and age, do movies and TV shows understand how software really works, even superficially.

posted by middleclasstool 30 May | 22:34

Nobody ever makes movies about flower clerks.

There´s one.

posted by concrete 30 May | 22:40

The last movie I saw that involved TV news (and my company by name) was hilariously wrong in that there were like four people doing a job that we would have had at least twenty folks doing. (Not counting the cameramen/women)

That's usually the biggest error I see in movies about TV news. They have two people doing the job of twenty, and they make decisions on the fly that would actually take a lot longer. They usually get the technology right, since anybody in the film world probably knows their way around edit systems and whatnot.

This is an excellent question.

posted by BoringPostcards 30 May | 22:45

Nobody ever makes movies about flower clerks. Wasn't there some romantic comedy set in a flower shop? I see Meg Ryan...

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 30 May | 22:51

What middleclasstool said about computers.

My previous profession was housepainter and you don't see that in movies too much to you do on HGTV they always paint wrong. They paint so badly that I would have rippped the roller out of someone's hands and kicked them off the job if I saw that on a job site that I was running. You always see them rolling walls in six different directions and holding the roller frame by hand. Gah, drives me crazy.

posted by octothorpe 30 May | 22:57

*feeeeed meeeee*

*looks around shop, wondering which plant to name Seymour....*

posted by bunnyfire 30 May | 23:01

There aren't a lot of librarians in popular media, and, when one does appear, the profession doesn't usually make up much of the plot. Like desjardins says, it's hard to find filmic gold in updating MARC records and ordering books and scheduling storytimes.

posted by box 30 May | 23:16

As an example, here what Hollywood thinks a remote trailer (a portable control room, usually set up for big events where the network doesn't have a bureau, or they need to be on-site) looks like:

≡ Click to see image ≡

Here's what a real remote trailer looks like:

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by BoringPostcards 30 May | 23:21

Well, I did play "Mana Mana" with the speakers on, but that's it, I swear.

posted by lysdexic 30 May | 23:23

I'm an artist and writer so, no, never, ever, ever, never, no not once, no.

However, Artist Biopic Night is a cherished tradition. Everyone has to down an entire glass of gin when It All Goes Horrible Wrong! or They Go Too Far!

Ah

goodtimes.

posted by The Whelk 30 May | 23:39

Oh, and my Bf the science dude says, no..never..."sigh."

He liked Primer only cause it got the kind of suburban blandness surrounding High-Tech and impassioned nerd-savants, um, he says.

posted by The Whelk 30 May | 23:41

Not to mention that hooking up a Barbie doll to your computer and putting a bra on your head will not produce a hot Englishwoman with magical powers.

..

...But it should.

posted by The Whelk 30 May | 23:43

Nope.

posted by crush-onastick 30 May | 23:44

Wall Street was mostly a joke. American Psycho did a great job portraying the personality of most smooth-talking banker, but it wisely avoided much mention of the actual work (for one thing, no one ever says they're "handling the Fisher account").

posted by mullacc 31 May | 00:15

Hollywood always somehow manages to leave out all the endless, decadent debauchery that comes with the territory of being a book editor. Bastards.

posted by scody 31 May | 00:17

for one thing, no one ever says they're "handling the Fisher account"

mullacc, do you think that's a holdover from Bewitched?

posted by BoringPostcards 31 May | 01:20

Remember Robin Williams as an English teacher, I think in Good Morning Vietnam? Painful and embarrassing. They are not a group of dancing monkeys here for your entertainment, teacher. Icky.

posted by Meatbomb 31 May | 03:47

As the owner of a successful and perfectly safe theme park populated by dinosaurs recreated from fossilized DNA, I too am disappointed with how my profession is depicted in film.

posted by chrismear 31 May | 03:49

for one thing, no one ever says they're "handling the Fisher account"

mullacc, do you think that's a holdover from Bewitched?

The husband in Bewitched is in advertising, right? I think Hollywood just took a phrase from one industry and applied it across the board. Investment banking is very transactional--a banker would say "I'm working on a Time Warner deal" or "I'm doing a bond offering for GE." The phrase "account" seems to me to imply some sort of ongoing engagement, like a law firm or ad agency hired on retainer (though I think that's something of a relic for advertising). Bankers almost never work on retainer.

posted by mullacc 31 May | 03:59

nope, ecologists are almost never featured in movies.

posted by special-k 31 May | 04:00

I don't think movie people are even aware that grad students exist at all. As to what I study, then I guess they would think it's something like the lecture Tom Hanks gives at the beginning of The Da Vinci Code.

posted by Daniel Charms 31 May | 06:05

Watching medical shows cracks me up for several reasons:

1. When drawing blood, you do not hold the needle like a harpoon and stab it into the patient's arm at a 90 degree angle. Unless you want to impale their tendon, that is.

2. On House they always seem to get culture results in less than 4 hours. Even the most high-tech methods take time. Which leads us to...

3. All lab tests can be done in a matter of minutes to hours, regardless of how exotic or rare the test or disease is. Lemme tell you something, there are tests that no matter how big the lab is, you are going to have to send to another lab for testing. The Mayo clinic does a lot of testing that can only be done at the Mayo clinic lab. Send out tests take a minimum of 24hrs, and it's usually more like 2-5 days. So if your doctor thinks you have Neuromyelitis Optic or Sensorineural Autoimmune Deafness, you are going to have to wait.

posted by evilcupcakes 31 May | 06:56

Saving Grace is also about a florist.

I'm pretty sure nobody's ever made a movie about a Project Manager, though. If they have, I wouldn't want to watch it.

posted by SpiffyRob 31 May | 08:54

Scientists?

The scene which brings me constant hilarity is in Medicine Man (I have no idea why I was watching it), where Sean Connery is carrying a *portable* HPLC and grinds up some sort of flora, feeds it into the machine and reads the resultant chromatogram which magically tells him which active compounds are in the plant. Heh.

posted by gaspode 31 May | 09:39

(Especially because I was a graduate student when I watched it, doing a lot of HPLC. If only it were that easy, I'd have graduated in 2 years.)

posted by gaspode 31 May | 09:39

The last non-library job I had was in a used record store. And that, my friends, is a profession that Hollywood mostly, more or less, by and large, insert additional qualifier, gets right.

Is that first still from Vantage Point, BP? Now I will no longer be able to say 'Sure, it was a piece of crap, but at least the remote trailer was accurate.'

posted by box 31 May | 09:54

HAHAHAHA no, I only wish our displays were that fancy.

Can't vouch for historical stuff like Apollo 13, as I wasn't around in those days. I hear they messed up the placement of some of the consoles though.

posted by casarkos 31 May | 10:50

About Schmidt is a pretty good capture of an actuary. I'm not an actuary, but I work with some. Maybe an actuary would differ with my opinion.

posted by rainbaby 31 May | 11:53

A strangely accurate film about librarians. I have not turned a critical eye to any films about my current career in small-scale agriculture. Firefly did accurately depict the summer I spent as an intern on the crew of a space-pirate ship.

posted by stet 31 May | 12:06

I've never seen a movie that shows any aspect of my specific job, but anytime they show anyone doing anything with graphics software it's always wrong. The general fallacy is that you can take an image with no apparent detail and sharpen it till the license plate number magically appears.

posted by doctor_negative 31 May | 12:10

Firefly did accurately depict the summer I spent as an intern on the crew of a space-pirate ship.

absolutely awesome comment.

posted by desjardins 31 May | 12:51

Museums get treated sort of close to what they are. There's often a scruffy, wacky anthropologist or professor type; or a high-strung and over-intellectual art curator; or a pedantic tour guide. They are exaggerated types but not too far from reality. Museums are generally presented as better funded and more highly organized than they actually are.

posted by Miko 31 May | 13:32

Is that first still from Vantage Point, BP?

Yep.

posted by BoringPostcards 31 May | 13:33

I think Mickey Rourke pretty well nailed it, actually.

posted by Triode 31 May | 13:53

Actually I remembered one. Enemy of the state. The ornithologist who checks the camera trap finds the incriminating evidence and gets killed. Totally inaccurate. We rarely find stuff like that.

Just the occassional missing backpacker or pack.

posted by special-k 31 May | 14:59

Clerks and Clerks 2 got retail right and that is my profession.

posted by jonmc 31 May | 16:21

Including the donkey show?

posted by SpiffyRob 31 May | 16:41

Yes.

posted by jonmc 31 May | 17:09

Remind me to either visit you at work sometime or never visit you at work either. I'm not sure which.

posted by SpiffyRob 31 May | 18:18

And by either, I mean ever.

posted by SpiffyRob 31 May | 18:19

Blind people are almost never portrayed accurately in movies or anywhere else. In Places in the Heart, for example, John Malkovich sort of gets around by waving his hands in a tremor-like fashion in front of him, which doesn't happen in real life. He also is very un-sure-footed and stumbles around much more than a real blind person would, after the stated period of time.

posted by Melismata 31 May | 20:00

oh sure, my life is just like Party Girl.

posted by jessamyn 31 May | 20:38

Well, of course the librarians have an annotated filmography.

I always thought this summed up my workplace pretty well.
youtube

posted by saucysault 01 June | 00:27

Mrs. Beese is a social worker who has worked on hospital psychiatric ward. One thing in The Devil's Advocate made her howl with disbelief: When a patient buys time to complete a suicide attempt by barricading their door from the inside. For that very reason, patients' doors always open outwards.

posted by Joe Beese 01 June | 09:07

oh sure, my life is just like Party Girl.

Well, you do chastise your paraprofessionals (sub-professionals) for exceeding their station on a regular basis, right?

posted by stet 01 June | 10:14

Bon Jovi played a house painter in Moonlight and Valentino.

Didn't Campbell Scott play an urban planner in Singles?

posted by kirkaracha 01 June | 11:17

My life is about as much like Party Girl as it is like Black Mask.

posted by box 01 June | 11:58

ColdChef - when I was sitting in the funeral home's office, planning my dad's funeral, ALL I could think about was Six Feet Under. I was half expecting three squabbling adult siblings to come walking around the corner.

posted by pinky.p 01 June | 14:01

Well, you do chastise your paraprofessionals (sub-professionals) for exceeding their station on a regular basis, right?

Oh no, I meant I have sex in the library and wear fabulous clothes.

My sister works in the MA State Crime lab and I swear she should have a blog about how NOT like CSI it is, and yet it's super fascinating at the same time. She got to buy an Ultra Spermfinder!

posted by jessamyn 01 June | 17:21

30 May 2009