If Hollywood were real life, there would only be three professions: cops, doctors and lawyers. And what a sad world it would be.What other occupation would you like you see more of on film?
Panelist: Tennessee Jed
Recognizing insurance men won't fly, I'll go with firefighters.
Panelist: ScottDS
It might sound corny, especially coming from someone with a retail / clerical / film background, but I'd like to see more blue-collar jobs on film. Just today, I was watching an episode of Modern Marvels and they were talking about how olive loaf is made. When was the last time you saw a movie where the lead character did anything like that? (Okay, maybe not that!)
Panelist: AndrewPrice
I guess "pirate" isn't a genuine profession, so I'm going with teachers... or stockbrokers. Tomato... tomaHto.
Panelist: BevfromNYC
Bloggers! There needs to be a “blogger” comedy on television!
Panelist: T-Rav
Truth be told, I don't have a huge problem with the over-representation of those occupations. The studios do have to pick (supposedly) action-packed jobs to keep audiences interested, and those are easier than others. To go along similar lines, though, there haven't been a lot of good movies featuring firefighters in recent years (Ladder 49 being a notable exception), and we could use more of those.
Comments? Thoughts?
85 comments:
You forgot writers. Everyone in film who isn't one of the three aforementioned professions is a writer of some sort. I think salespeople would be interesting to focus on. I don't mean store clerks, but real front-line pavement-pounders who live and die by their commission.
way to go T-Rav!!! This is probably the strangest question I've encountered in this series. Rav is right, though. The tendency is to use lawyers, doctors, soldiers and cops because there is so much drama in those. Andrew - having just seen The Bucaneer, it does remind me that besides Johnny Depp and Keith Richards, we haven't seen pirates for a while.
Jed -
I was the one who suggested the question to Andrew. :-) I guess I had just seen a few films in a row with cops, doctors, and lawyers, and I must've thought to myself, "Isn't there anything else?!" I don't have a problem per se with this, but there's an entire world out there with cool jobs that never get any attention.
I do remember watching a Woody Allen movie and thinking, "Gee, can't one of his lead characters work at a deli or in retail or something?" But that's not Woody's wheelhouse.
tryanmax -
Interesting thoughts about salespeople. I guess it all goes back to what kind of story would feature characters like that.
On the other hand, different writers have different methods: one might come up with a plot and then figure out who the characters would be; others would think of an interesting character and then try to develop a plot around him/her.
Great minds think alike, huh Jed? ;-)
Seriously though, this is one of those limitations I think Hollywood is just going to have to work within. It is a business, after all, and if you get more mileage out of those occupations, then so be it. There are, of course, some occasional exceptions--mostly on television, though.
T-Rav -
I couldn't remember when I answered Jed's comment but you know where I got the idea for this question: from reading the synopses of all the new fall TV shows: how many doctor/cop/lawyer shows can we possibly have? Thankfully, there's greater variety in TV so it's not too bad.
(Though the reality shows are starting to spawn their own imitators... how many Swamp Loggers-type shows do we need?) :-)
Scott - I absolutely feel your pain on the topic (so to speak,) and don't disagree. But as Rav pointed out, we can at least understand why it is the way it is. I vaguely remember an old comedy album from Shelly Berman or possibly Bob Newhart (that's right he started out as a night club comedian) The skit was about pitching ideas for t.v. series and there was a line about Joe Smith, frontier C.P.A. There was another great skit about Mrs. Smith's storm door and airline company.
I'd love to see a film about the death of jornalism and how group think and liberalism destroyed a once noble profession. It could be pitched to the Weinstein boys. Maybe a Breitbart bio-pic.
Who are we going to cast as Andrew and Hawk in the first feature film about bloggers. I really wanna go with Jimmy Stewart for hawk except . . . well . . . you know. :)
The problem for H'wood - with jobs that are NOT lawyers/doctors/detectives is that they would really have to know THOSE jobs inside and out. I think there's a certain "fudge factor," you have, when portraying a profession most people don't engage in.
When you get to jobs, most people do for a living, if you don't get the details right - you've probably lost your audience.
Jed -
Didn't we have an open thread a year or two ago where we all suggested who should play us in Commentarama: The Movie? :-)
Kenn - you are probably right. Mad Men is a great example. They do go overboard on the male sexist pig thing, but are quite good at capturing the advertising game as it existed back then. Lots and lots of ass kissing ;)
Scott - yeah, I kind of vaguely remember that. Pretty funny, too.
Kenn -
Aside from the details and the "fudge factor," most actors aren't well-suited to play just any role (cough, Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist, cough). :-)
What??? You're saying Denise Richards isn't what most nuclear physicists are like??? Who knew? Seriously, not only do the cop shows pre-liferate on t.v., I'm sick of the 30 something actress in the pastel tank top, black blazer, and skinny jeans beating up 6'4" thugs. In it's own way, it make the old William Castle movies look realistic.
Have to say, one of my favorite films is "Office Space." What could be less interesting than a dead end office job, with a lousy boss - right? Actually - THAT was what was interesting - when you get the details right.
There's an old axiom in writing - write what you know. Problem is - most don't know much beyond the world of entertainment. So, maybe the new axiom should be: Write what you know - and if you don't know - write abut a doctor/lawyer/detective. :)
OK, I know this is going to sound weird. But I've spent most of my non-legal career in labor relations, and stories about HR (Personnel) managers and clerks could be very interesting. Until you've worked with these people, you have no idea of the drama and comedy that goes on in those offices as a result of the daily lives of the employees (my experience is largely with large retail operations).
Kenn - "Office Space" was an absolute riot. It didn't matter what the business of the company was, the focus of the humor was on corporate and office culture itself. Having worked for a Fortune 500 corporation, many of the jokes really bhit home. Having been in insurance, there are a lot of potentially interesting stories, but most of them actually bleed over into courtroom drama. Some of the early Grisham stories loved to use a stereotype of evil insurance companies screwing their policyholders (see the incredibles.) Then again, I remember a wonderful episode of L.A. Law where Jimmy Smits went up against a famous plaintiff's attourney who was a dward and nicknamed "Mighty Mouse." Smits was defending the insurance company for a blanket manufacturer. It was a fascinating example of what I delt with, but again, as it played out in court.
actually, it is not all that weird, Hawk. In a sense, the stories would not be about the HR person per se, but as a gateway to a wealth of diverse people, problems and stories.
Morning everyone! Sorry I'm late. Great answers. I particularly like "Bloggers." There should be a show about bloggers who solve crimes in their spare time! ;)
tryanmax, There are indeed a plethora of shows about writers. I think writers are easy to use because of the lack of structure in their lives. They are basically unemployed when you need that, they have an excuse ("research") to go anywhere, and you can give them any level of skill you want by pretending they wrote about whatever the issue is. That's all a bit of a cop-out.
Jed, I can always go for more stories about pirates! But for whatever reason, we don't see those used a lot -- especially in comedy.
Andrew -
Now that I think of it, there kinda sorta was a show like that a while ago, though it dealt with paranormal activity, not traditional crime.
Scott, I was your question, and it's a good one. Because while we certainly can find examples of stories about people in other professions, they aren't very common. And while I understand the need for drama or whatever, I think these are way overdone. Great stories come from making hard choices and making them work. There aren't enough hard choices being made in Hollywood these days.
By the way, the film I kept thinking about when I was answering this question was a forgotten little film called Men at Work with Charlie Sheen as a garbage man who ends up in the middle of a crime. It was a serviceable comedy which I thought made a great point that you really could do a story about any profession.
T-Rav, I think the system is failing however. You see that in the falling ratings year after year. And none of these generic shows ever end up a true hit. Basically, it's like a steakhouse deciding to serve McDonald's burgers -- you can get away with it for a while, but you will eventually kill your business. And with people like DirecTV and Netflix and others now making original content, look for the networks to eventually start changing.
In fact, look at how creative the non-networks have been: zombies, 1930s mobsters, fantasy world, race track, mobster related to Sweden, westerns, etc.
Compare that to the networks: cop show, lawyer show, doctor show, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Jed, That would be an interesting film to write. I think that one thing conservatives need to do is to start looking at ideas like that and writing them. Right now too often, when conservatives make films they do things that are too straight-up factual. They don't seem to have learned yet to expand into drama or even areas where they should be making a huge impact like science fiction.
I was talking to a friend about Atlas Shrugged last night and it really struck me that rather than trying to make the book (which would be a very hard book to bring to the screen), they should have simply taking the generic story itself and made a science fiction film out of it or a political thriller. I know why they tried to "make the book" but I think conservatives need to start offering more originality.
Jed and Scott, I've decided that I want to be played by Icecube. ;)
Kenn, I think that's absolutely true. Right now, cops and lawyers and doctors have a history in Hollywood. A whole bunch of stereotypes have been created and fake easy-to-reproduce drama has been developed. So it's very easy for Hollywood to go to that well because most people outside of those professions accept what they see on television as real because they've seen it so many times before.
If Hollywood started a show about butchers or garbage men, it wouldn't have that "stock drama" to fall back upon and it would need to create some. And in the process of doing that, it would stumble over the fact that people have a pretty good sense of what those professions entail. So it would be harder to wedge in the kinds of drama Hollywood wants and still be believable.
That said, they could easily achieve that by broadening the types of people they let into the club as writers.
Scott and Jed, I don't think that was a great James Bond to begin with, but adding Denise Richards (who I don't think can even read) as a nuclear scientist completely took me out of the film. I kept thinking back to an X-Files episode with "Dr. Bambi," which was really funny.
Kenn, When I look back at the great sitcoms, it's an incredibly varied group which includes almost none of the generic setups they are using today: WKRP (Newsradio), MASH, Cheers, SOAP, etc. They came from a variety of fields and locations... not a dysfunctional family or five nihilist friends living in NYC. Films are similar. When you start looking at the great ones, you just don't find cop shows, doctor shows, and family dramas.
Lawhawk, I could totally imagine how that would work. I've run across some of the issues those people deal with and it would be either very dramatic or extremely hilarious.
Andrew - Here's my plot. A group of semi-anonymous "Bloggers" who investigate global government conspiracies and cover-ups while being chased by black helicopters and evil cabal of rogue G-men. "24" meets "X-Files" with a little "Max Headroom" tossed in for good measure...
Kenn and Jed, Office Space was hilarious. I absolutely captured the lunacy and perversity of the corporate environment... "I'm gonna need your TPS report." LOL! And I've met every single one of those people in real life.
Scott, I never watched that actually. I'll tell you what though, I think the idea of a ghost hunters sit-com is WAY overdue at this point. Not something as wild as Ghostbusters, but more like the sci-fi show only staffed by idiots.
Bev, That would actually work -- either as a drama/action show OR as a comedy. I think it would great as a comedy.
Andrew -
I've never seen Men at Work... so they end up involved in a crime... does the fact that Sheen's a garbage man come in handy at any point in the movie, or could they have made his occupation be anything? I guess my thinking is, if you're going to make a character be X, it better come in handy later.
How about a film where a totally incompetent, yet clean and articulate (insert favored minority) is ill prepared to take over the reins of power in the most powerful nation on the planet?
He could have a cabal of shady, evil-sounding handlers (Axlerod; Soros; the "Ballerina", etc.,)who dictate his every move. They run roughshod over their "enemies" and instill a bunch of non-elected beaurocrats who wield influence and power unheard of .
Complete with 30-something "activists" who kick 60 year old man-ass without breaking a sweat in front of the cameras, bombs-in-their-eyes aging radicals, and even throw in a couple cute kids to divert everyone's attention away from the havoc that is being wreaked all around them.
I think it would be a smash hit! People would flock to to it like sheep to the slaughter.
(Nah......would never work....much too unbelievable)
Scott, The garbage man thing is not a pretext for entering into a regular crime film. The film really is about Sheen and Estevez being jerk garbage men throughout the film and how their days keep intersecting with the crime. It's full of strange characters and funny situations.
Men At Work.
It's a very standard comedy from the era. You won't laugh yourself silly, but it's entertaining to watch them go through the film.
Here's the trailer: LINK
Patriot, LOL! I can't imagine what you what are talking about!
If Hollywood were unbiased, you would see something exactly like that by now. But they aren't unbiased and their desire to "speak truth to power" really only applies to one kind of power.
Heck, where is Oliver Stone? After "W" shouldn't he be preparing a film titled "B.O."?
Okay then let's write a script! We should start our own TV cable station - "CommentaramaFilms Presents..."
CommentaramaCable! LOL! That would be neat. One of us needs to win the lottery so we can do that. :)
Andrew, I think a ghost hunters comedy would be funniest if it stayed reality-based and featured a group of very likeable and earnest "paranormal experts" who never actually find anything. Of course, they always feel like they are on the verge of their big break, but the comedy could spring from their perpetual optimism in the face of routine failure. Thematically, that would be very American and I would expect such a show to resonate well with audiences.
Patriot - The hook could be that "the totally incompetent, yet clean and articulate (insert favored minority)" person does not KNOW that he/she is "totally incompetent, yet clean and articulate (insert favored minority)".
It would make a great comedy, if it weren't so tragically true.
I could almost see it being populated by a group similar to the group in The Big Bang Theory only without the insulting tropes. I think TBBT is evidence that liberalism is running out of acceptable targets to make fun of.
I think "Bloggers" should be turned into a fast-paced action flick, wherein Andrew has a lot of fight scenes with his mortal enemy, Mr. Rick Santorum. And then he has to recruit the rest of us to help take out Rick and his evil sidekick, George Lucas. It could work--or at least, it would be very cathartic.
I just finished watching the one and only season of an FX series called "Terriers" with Donal Logue as a private investigator.
I'd like to see that more (from Thin Man to San Spade, etc.)private detectives in movies (a return to I guess). PIs are better able to skirt the law and it doesn't bother me so much. Instead of seeing cops skirt the law (noble cause corruption is seemingly the only way cops can solve crimes in the movies) which raises troubling moral problems with the end product "justice".
I don't think that focusing on one profession in particular is necessary, but we need more films from a Hitchcockian POV... the everyman thrown into extraordinary circumstances -- playing the hero.
tryanmax, I think they would absolutely have to be earnest, and I think finding nothing would be essential too -- though I would probably write it in a way that they keep missing things.
T-Rav, Ricky S and George L could be the super villians who are battling with the bloggers. Lucas in particular. . . sitting in his volcano lair, sending out lawyers to destroy old copies of Star Wars. :)
Floyd - See that's "Blogger - The Movie"!! Everymen and -women thrown into the extraordinary circumstance of having to fight against the evil cabal of rogue G-Men and global government conspiracies!
Floyd, Cops breaking the law to solve crimes is definitely a morally problematic idea, but Hollywood likes it because they want their heroes to be extraordinary and because it's easy fake-drama "will he break a rule or not..."
Hollywood seems to have gotten away from "everyman" idea and instead gone to the "lazy whiner" as a hero. I guess that's a reflection of how Hollywood sees us.
With a tip of the hat to the Ranger Up clothing line staff for the verbiage, any character who's unapologetically American and not mentally unhinged.
Eric, Yeah, those are pretty rare.
I enjoyed Men at Work, and have seen it a few times. It does re-surface on t.v. fairly often. I think while it could have been a different occupation, it did come in handy a few times. I think it was before Weekend at Bernie's but can't remember. I do remember that it featured a first feature film appearance by the actress who later played Jack Bauer's wife in the first season of 24. She later had a recurring guest role on the Mentalist.
Andrew, et al -
Just a little bit of everything...
The point I was trying to make with Men at Work was, should a character's job be relevant to the larger plot? Take the Spielberg version of War of the Worlds. Tom Cruise plays a NJ dock worker, but it has nothing to do with anything once the aliens invade. They could've given him a different occupation that might've come in handy later but then it would be a different movie.
I would also love to see more private detectives on film. We talked about this before: detectives on TV today have all sorts of gimmicks (paranormal this, forensic that, etc.), so the question is: are audiences too sophisticated for old-fashioned gumshoe tales, or are not sophisticated enough, so we need our mysteries laced with autopsies and CGI?
(I usually don't come off this jaded!)
And while I don't exactly wear my patriotism on my sleeve, I just checked out the Ranger Up website... cool stuff! I may have to buy one of those Teddy Roosevelt shirts one day. :-)
Jed, I enjoyed it as well, though I haven't seen it years. That was back when Sheen still seemed like a normal guy who could make interesting and entertaining films.
Jed, that would be Leslie Hope. (I know this because 24 was awesome.)
Scott, Since we're talking about shows about various professions, it is relevant. But in most cases it is not, as the occupation is generally just treated as character background. But that's not what we're talking about.
And in Men At Work, it was relevant because it was a film about garbage men. In other words, it turns your formula on its head: in War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise could have been given any profession and it wouldn't have changed the film -- you just couldn't change Cruise. But in Men At Work, you can't change the profession because that's the nature of the film, but you could have changed the actors.
T-Rav, 24 may have been awesome, but it can't hold a candle to BLOGGER... a CommentaramaFilms Production!
Here's another idea for "Blogger: The Movie." In a future post-apocalyptic society where Internet service is spotty at best, teens have to compete in fight-to-the-death reality-showesque matches, the winner receiving completely dependable access to Facebook and Twitter and all the blogs for life. I predict a blockbuster hit, as long as someone doesn't do something similar first....oh.
T-Rav, Nope, that sounds completely original. ;)
Andrew - I'm not sure I completely agree with your comment about Men at Work. Maybe we are just looking at it from different angles. To me, it was very much a story of "everyman (or men)" getting caught up in a larger story. In this case, we had a villain who was involved dumping toxic waste in a land fill. The brothers Estevez got sucked in through Ms. Hope (in a quasi-parody of "rear Window.") The garbage man job does come in handy though since the nefarious deed involves a land fill . . . perfect for garbage men. The film, in some ways, reminded me of the Dragnet re-make. In that case, the hero is involved because he is a cop. In our film, they become involved through happenstance, and their occupation does come in handy given the nature of the crime.
Jed, You are correct and perhaps I was unclear. The story is about two average garbage men who are doing their job when they get involved in the crime.
When I say it is vital to the story that they are garbage men, I'm comparing this to something like say North by Northwest where Cary Grant is an advertising man, but it means nothing at all to the story -- it's just character background. He doesn't go to his office, doesn't get involved with the story because of a client, and doesn't even use advertising-exec skills.
By comparison, in Men at Work, the story diverges from them just collecting garbage, BUT much of the story involves them doing their jobs, driving around in their truck, competing with other garbage men, running into the crime because of things discover doing their jobs, and then using "their work skills" to solve the crime.
That's what I meant -- that the film is premised on them being garbage men, rather than it being a crime story with two guys who just happen to be garbage men but could be anything.
I'm confused. Is BLOGGERS a series or a movie? Or is it one of those made-for-TV movies that's a sleeper pilot? And can I be the character that spouts off streams of nonsense techspeak and magically makes the internet do impossible things?
tryanmax, you can be the token Nebraskan. Every production has one (I think).
Tryanmax - It is a made-for-TV series/movie sleeper pilot (frankly, it's whatever they pay the really big bucks for...). And, of course there would be a part for a crank...er...character who spouts off streams of nonsense! [See if you were a troll-like liberal, I could insert - And you'd be perfect for the part right here, but you are not...pity]
Bev, Good approach -- whatever makes us the most money!
T-Rav, Are you sure there's always a token Nebraskan? I thought it was a token Minnesotan?
tryanmax, You can be the head spouter. :)
I found the old "Cast yourself!" thread from 2009.
Enjoy!
P.S. I miss some of the old commenters like LoneWolfArcher and WriterX.
Scott, Yep, I remember that! Good times.
Cops, doctors and lawyers?
Funny I make it a point to avoid those kinds of shows. At least those that are based on our contemporary period. I even found X-Files to be a snooze fest.
You forgot special forces, aka nondescript army guys. Who are not trained in proper military etiquette, but are impervious to explosions(no matter how close, even nuclear) and all types of weapons fire.
Here is another one, divorced housewives with children. Hollywood does so much of that it may as well be a profession. Especially in latter Disney films.
Max, Very true. How often have we seen generic military guys with some vague special forces designation or past who have zero military professionalism but somehow can't be killed?
And yeah, divorced housewives with kids seem to be the bread and butter of chick flicks.
Andrew it isn't just chick flicks. It was(perhaps still is) a joke that Disney couldn't make a film without some sort of broken family depicted(even the animated films). So it's well beyond chick chick flicks.
Max, That's true. We've actually discussed the Disney issue before: LINK.
It does seem to be the favorite version of the Hollywood family.
There need to be more secretaries, admins, office managers. And not just as the supporting roles or getting coffee (I don't even know how to make coffee).
And with the introduction of GCB, surely church office folks deserve some time! You'd be shocked by how much we know, what we get asked, who we deal with! :)
I just read through the old "cast yourself" post. I must have missed that back in '09, and that made me sad. But "Commentarama: The Movie" still has legs...
(and I choose Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman as me)
rlaWTX, "Commentarama: The Movie" has legs! LOL! All we need now is a Hollywood studio!
That was a fun thread. Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman! Good choice.
Somehow, I can't imagine Hollywood handling a church-based show very well. It would probably be a series of diatribes against the characters and their organization.
Church-based... I would recommend The Apostle from a movie perspective...
For TV? I'd avoid it like the plague. The ABC show GCB... Kristen Chenoweth -- who claims to be a believer (and I don't doubt her there) also claims that Texas based Evangelicals are her peeps. From what I've seen of the show (as a Texan and evagelical I was somewhat curious) let's just say Kristen has been spending a lot of time in New York City on Broadway and in California on movies and TV.
Floyd, The little bit of GCB I've seen has struck me as condescending at best.
In terms of being a believer, I take all of that with a huge grain of salt. For one thing, just because someone is a believer doesn't mean they are truly supportive. For another, this is how Hollywood PR works -- they claim to love something just as they are slandering it. They do it with religion, the military, books they make into films, etc. It's about saying what they need to say pull people in. So I never take anything they say at face value.
Although there have been a lot of Soldiers in films, I'd like to see a more accurate portrait than what we've been seeing lately.
Outlaw, That would be nice, but that's another profession where Hollywood prefers the fantasy because they seem to think it's just too hard to be accurate even though there are millions of people who can help them get it right.
Blue-collar works best in sitcoms or dreary dramas about the declining standards of living in the Rust Belt.
I was talking to a friend about Atlas Shrugged last night and it really struck me that rather than trying to make the book (which would be a very hard book to bring to the screen), they should have simply taking the generic story itself and made a science fiction film out of it or a political thriller. I know why they tried to "make the book" but I think conservatives need to start offering more originality.
---------------------------------
Sacketts vs. the EPA? . . .
Kit, I don't know enough about the case to know if there's anything interesting there as far as films go. Probably not. EPA litigation is duller than dirt.
Blue-collar works for the Rust Belt shows.
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