My job is pretty unique so there's nothing I could really compare it with except, perhaps, for Judge Judy.

I don't think a tv show about indexers would be very compelling.

And any tv show or movie that I've seen involving scientists is always ridiculous.

Sometimes at work, in our spare time, we work a little on a little thing called Proofreading: The Opera!

Night in the Museum was practically a documentary, it was so lifelike. Almost as realistic as American Treasure. Wow, those American Treasure movies sure are accurate! Certainly every document conservation lab I've ever seen in a museum has got at least three or four electric eyes of death and armed guards and stuff. Well they need them what with the ancient curses and the statues coming to life and we won't even talk about just how difficult it is to keep a mummy in his own damn sarcophagus on Halloween.

I'm pretty sure there have been movies about the legal biz, and am wondering if there's ever been one about the publishing world. Hmmm...

When I said about "your job," I meant the industry or field. :) There's never been a movie specifically about video editors, either.

Actually the lack of accurate depictions is one of the reasons I wanted, for a while, to write a series of detective novels set in museums. Death at the Gala was the first one: each volunteer from the women's auxiliary planning the party dies slowly in inventive ways. The whole staff had suggestions for that one. Hee. Seriously, I've always thought a museum would be a great background for a sitcom or a movie; they attract interesting people and the surroundings are amazing but it's never been done to the best of my knowledge. Movies tend to think that museums are either bastions of high tech security - um, no, museums are eternally cash strapped and they mostly run to a bank of video monitors from the mid 80s as a security system - or they're dusty holes where nobody knows what's going on. Also um, no, any accredited museum knows exactly where anything in the collection is at any given moment.

Re: mummies: My favorite memory from working at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore was a tour I was giving to some first graders. We got to the mummy and this one boy says "Is that a REAL mummy?" which is a commonly asked question, but when I said, "Yes," he blurted out "How did you catch him?"

I don't work in the legal biz, BP, although I am a lawyer. I suppose Office Space might equate best to my working environment, we are all cubicle monkeys, even the most high-up.

mgl covered all the territory I was going to cover! One of the profs in my Museum Studies program actually teaches a course called "Museums in the Movies," where she studies how movie depictions of museums create the popular impression of what museums do and what they're like. Short version: they don't do too good a job.

I LOVE the idea about the series of detective novels or shows in museums. That's a natural!

Movies tend to think that museums are either bastions of high tech security

This cracks me up! In jewel-heist types of scenes where people are rapelling through the roof in the exact location where the laser beams don't cross, so they can escape the automatic metal gates dropping to bar their egress...well, in real life, they don't have to work quite that hard. Also, knocking out a guard and stealing his uniform doesn't really let you breeze through all the manned checkpoints. The security staff know each other, for heaven's sake, and their job is generally so dull that they certainly know it when somebody new starts. Fresh meat!

Also, Ross on Friends was singularly unconvincing as a paleontologist.

Office Space? The Dilbert cartoon?

There is no need for technical writers in the movies/TV universe. Either computers are completely obtuse, complex and impenetrable things, or they're totally facile ("This is a UNIX system, I know this!"). You hit machines to make them work, or you say, "Enhance!" Never does anyone consult a manual or documentation.

I suppose I could be a character on The I.T. Crowd, though in my fantasy universe where the show is as funny and realistic as I thought it would be (from the hype) before I first watched it. I'd be the guy who doesn't know a lot of the techier stuff but who gets the jokes and makes a few of his own. As I've said time and time again, I'm sort of an ambassador for geek culture, bringing it/explaining it to normals. I'd be kind of like the guy who gets it (unlike Jen) but who can also talk to the rest of the people at the company (unlike Moss/Roy). As such, I'd only be a recurring character, because I'd violate the premise that causes most of the absurdity in the show (ignorance).

Safety and health professionals tend to be wet blankets, and with a lot of movies, if there is a safety person in the backstory, the plot would not be as exciting.

Office Space.

Also, Ross on Friends was singularly unconvincing as a paleontologist.
Hee! Laura Dern in Jurassic Park was my favorite, because everybody knows that there are so very many glamorous 20-something paleontologists with tenure and money and vast international reputations. And Nicolas Cage's conservator girlfriend in American Treasure? Oh yeah, all the conservators I know totally can afford designer clothes and huge, elegantly appointed downtown DC lofts to live in when they're not in their giant, designer offices.

Real museum life? If you have an office (my curatorial assistant friend used to wax mournful about his "starter desk - baby's first desk" that was crammed into a corner of the library) you're probably sharing it. It's about 8 feet square and packed to the gills. Your computer was donated: it's 11 years old and makes strange humming noises while it spends 30 minutes booting up. There's one administrative assistant for each department if that and she actually works for the department head. Due to budget cuts, they've taken the water cooler away again. On weekends, you bartend at parties for donors and you're glad, because it's a) free wine and b) you can eat today! Museum staff, like mice, live on cheese and crackers. Then after the donors leave you're there until midnight, cleaning up. Ah the glamor of museum life. I miss it.

mgl, what was that movie set in a museum about some monster that was killing people in the museum? The climax of the movie was a big party, a charity benefit or something, in the dinosaur exhibit.

In the legal biz here, and live in a courthouse/courtroom atmosphere. The best movie about trials I've ever seen, though it is very over the top in many ways, is actually a comedy -- My Cousin Vinny.

It's surprising how wrong TV and movies get trials and courtrooms, considering how very many shows and films on the subject there are.

About Schmidt is a pretty beleivable and interesting portrait of an actuary. I'm not an actuary but work with some.

Camp really gets many things right about theatre, even though it's a comedy. The Dresser is the iconic theatre movie. I bet if you asked theatre people what their favorite theatre movie is, that would be the top answer.

My soft spot is for Waiting for Guffman, though.

The IT industry in general is pretty terribly represented in film and teevee. I'm usually pretty happy when they get ANY aspect of technology right! I can't recall the last time I tried to hack into anything....

oh hahaha LOL I just got done with a snarky IM rant to Work Spouse about the trials of chasing down an original artwork file for a banner project because Boss (awesome as he is) somehow seems to think Microsoft Paint has a magical "ENHANCE!!" feature because Software Is Magical!!!111 and O HAI HEREZ DIS BITZY 100-PIXEL JPG FROM [COMPANY REDACTED'S] LETTERHEAD DAT SHUD WURK KTHXBAI!

HAHAHAHAhahahahahaha *sob...sob...keyboardface...*

No, really there is no effective media representation of how work, er... works at this place, it's kind of too complex for that. We are a bunch of nerds who make bulk chemicals for the pharma industry. So far at least we haven't had any post-apocalyptic protagonists or cyborgs climbing up the ladders on our tank farm... yet. Well, a hot air balloon nearly landed on the top of our main pipe rack / solvent highway a couple years ago, and that could have been... exciting.

Me, I herd documents thru cyberspace all day so maybe I'm like the Gene Autry of records management, only instead of pretty sunsets I have Wired Magazine to lookat when I get bored. Oh yeah and then sometimes the scientists will get bored and go make dry ice bombs in the warehouse, which brings that whole lightbulb-smashing-on-the-dock scene from 40-Year-Old Virgin to mind.

Senyar, I have no idea but I definitely want to see it.

The closest thing to my industry that has any merit is Apollo 13.

I work in a field that is routinely, perpetually, endemically and unfailingly made to look about a thousand times more interesting and sexy than it actually is on a daily basis, so: no. All movies about my line of work (and there have been, in various ways, many hundreds) get it wrong. The TV shows are worse.

My boss thinks reality shows are tacky, so you will never see her or me (in the background, because I'm not glamorous enough) on an episode of "Selling New York" or the upcoming New York City edition of "Million Dollar Listing."

I keep wanting to see Glengarry Glen Ross.

lots of different medical shows show surgeons as quite a bit faster than reality and way more sexy & dramatic.


The grinding reality of the hours & stress simply don't make those relationship moments possible. And sharing coffee or a lunchbreak with people on the same firm?? Utterly impossible, Grey's Anatomy trainees have way too much free time.

The reality is if you know an operation well enough to do it really fast you're probably bored. Holding a retractor or suctioning during a 6 hour breast reconstruction is deathly boring. Teaching by humiliation is the exception (here in the UK) rather than the rule, and many of the conditions, diagnosis and test results take way, way longer to come back than dramtic licence allows so they all have to be speeded up. A bit like the results in CSI which causes such unrealistic expectations and that's happened in surgery also.

Although no longer clinically active I inspect training programmes and the old adage is still true. A good surgeon goes in quickly and gets the job done. A great surgeon knows when not to go in and still gets the job done.

Patient expectations have risen as a result of movies & programmes and also internet. It's a real downer when you can't do a House on unexplained abdo pain with NAD test results.

I'm procrastinating, haven't been back to bunnies in so long but I'm just about to put a report in an online portfolio that will end a trainee's career and I'm feeling low about it.

mgl, what was that movie set in a museum about some monster that was killing people in the museum?

Found it, mgl! It's The Relic. Terrible movie. Thank you, intarwebs