January 27, 2010 | Lists
As the graph above illustrates, things can be easily organized into pie charts, and just the thought of a bit of pecan pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side is delicious. Also, if the world Hollywood presents accurately reflected our world, all amoral rich people would be one chance encounter with a charismatic pauper away from a life-changing shift in values, and the workforce would be divided roughly according to the graph above.
A Hollywood world come to life in this way would be anarchic, with the average citizen being hung from the lampposts as high-powered lawyers would go after the civil liberty abuses and backroom beatdowns that are the specialty of jaded cops, the two canceling each other out in terms of benefit to society. On the bright side, society’s collapse would be well documented by intrepid reporters and everybody would be looking fabulous thanks to the input of the unusually large number of folks involved in the fashion industry. As it rains fire outside, passionate inner city teachers would be inspiring their young charges to abandon a life of perpetual felony crime by introducing them to the collected works of Judy Blume.
There are obvious reasons why Hollywood films tend to focus on some jobs more than others. Movies are an escape mechanism for many people, so it would be difficult to drum up much box office by offering female viewers the Roto Rooter man to fantasize about. Likewise, it would be tough to construct a viable narrative around a telemarketer selling memberships to the meat of the month club.
As writers, a hugely overrepresented profession (most bafflingly portrayed in the Murder She Wrote series in which writer = harbinger of death), we thought we’d remedy this vocational discrepancy by highlighting professions that are unlikely to receive much screen time at an Imax theatre near you anytime soon in this our list of the Top 10 Jobs Never Seen in Movies.
10. Archaeologist of really tedious, perpetually unfruitful digs: Movies tend to distort the profession of archaeologist and make it seem more glamorous than it really is. Instead of a swashbuckler rescuing ancient treasures from snake-pits, we’d like to see an archaeologist who digs tediously for months on end to unearth, say, one shoe horn from the Bronze Age every 11 years. Again, in keeping with this cinema verite approach, the archaeologists should not be played by actors fulfilling the screen portion of their good looking pop idol contract, but rather the type of personal-care avoiding sloppy intellectual whose own ears are a few missed cleanings away from being dig-worthy.
9. Auctioneer: The auction is a convenient device for screenwriters to ratchet up the tension during the course of a movie, particularly a spy caper, and establish that the main characters are beyond-all-dreams-of-the-audience rich, but auctioneers are never main characters, and usually do not get more than a cursory bit of dialogue, “Sold, to the gentleman in the velvet tuxedo, who has attached a bomb to the hero of this film and locked him in a seemingly impenetrable cellar in this very building.”
8. Welder: A welder’s work is evident throughout every movie ever made. Buildings, bridges, two sheets of metal stuck together for no good reason as part of a decorative set piece, these are all products of the welder’s craft, and yet Hollywood has yet to set aside a budget of, say, 100 million dollars to feature one as a protagonist in a blockbuster feature film. The only tribute thus far, has been the Machinist, who was not exactly a credit to the profession, leaving associates with one less arm with which to wave at a parade.
7. Entertainment Coordinator for Luxury Cruise Line: Passengers, disillusioned with attempts to organize a karaoke night based on a back catalog of Eagles songs, (mostly unavailable due to copyright restrictions), kidnap the entertainment coordinator for a luxury cruise line and convince him to go ashore and avail himself of cocaine and Malaysian prostitutes—but the clincher is, he’s gay (earlier attempts to organize a Sound of Music pantomime tip off passengers under the age of 57 and much of the audience).
6. Roofer: For a culture that worships criminals, there are shockingly few movies featuring roofers in the lead role…Nail Gun Massacre is as close as we’ve seen, followed by Witness, which while featuring Harrison Ford erecting an Amish home, places him on the wrong side of the police line-up divide to be considered an accurate representation of the roofing profession.
5. Key Grip: There are countless movies about journalists, copywriters, editors, and novelists, mainly because that’s the background of most screenwriters, who tend to follow the ‘write what you know’ and ‘someone in a romantic comedy will walk into a post and another will pretend sing-along to Motown with a hairbrush’ ethos. But what about key grips? They are right out there with the gaffers among the heroes of film who never get any screen time. Plot suggestion: Rigging technician alters an otherwise dependably dull European film when a bout of vertigo leads to an unintended third camera angle.
4. Human Test Subject for New Diarrhea Medication: Countless movies have relied on the premise of humans being used as test subjects for various nefarious products, which generally result in Homo sapiens being transformed into rapacious apes. Here, test subject is transformed into a rapacious avoider of solid foods.
3. Professional Badminton Player: On the gridiron, a heroic last-second touchdown will bring a tear to the eye of the dad who momentarily regrets beating his son to make sure he didn’t quit the team. On the diamond, there is the singles hitter who suddenly, (without ingesting a regimen of pills that made Mark McGwire look like he wore a parka under his uniform), goes yard for the kid with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Up until this point, the definitive badminton movie has yet to be brought to the big-screen. Plot synopsis: Professional badminton player bemoans the lack of adulation, groupies, media coverage and respect accorded to his sport and begins a slow, steady descent into alcoholism. Includes at least one sad, poignant and yet unintentionally funny reference to a shuttlecock.
2. Antique Dealer: An antique dealer finds a rare Victorian mahogany drop front desk with lions and goes on a killing spree.
1. ASL Teacher: First movie in the history of modern cinema where English subtitles are required for an English film as American Sign Language Teacher inspires a group of misfit, deaf (def!) ghetto kids to fulfill their dreams (dreams shown in conspicuously silent flashbacks)
Honorable Mentions:
Cheese Shop Proprietor: People meet and fall in love at local Fromagerie, as samples are given away by good-hearted proprietor/matchmaker. Man’s love for Swiss Gruyère leads him into the arms of a lady friend, who leaves him after being prescribed cholesterol lowering medication.
Nutritionist: The health professions are well represented in cinema, be they psychiatrists who propel the protagonist through mind-numbing flashbacks or young doctors stuck in traffic alongside a woman who is about to give birth in a taxi, but what about those folks whose homilies about the importance of fish oils go unheeded in the mass media? Nutritionist romances a shut-in neighbor by saving them from a bout of Osteomalacia by opening a curtain and exposing them to vitamin D. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER!
Other Posts You May Enjoy:
Welder: Flashdance. Roofer: Still Crazy. Busted.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by thesharkguys: Top 10 Jobs Never Seen in Movies http://bit.ly/d4m4sF via @AddToAny…
Totally busted: there are plenty of movies featuring ASL and instructors. http://www.johnlubotsky.com/deafcinema/
There are movies with ASL,and with teachers, but not ASL Teachers (teachers who teach ASL – American Sign Language). Don’t confuse that with any ol’ movie that shows sign language.
Thank you for your input.
Don’t forget the one about the home stager who hooks up with a forklift operator, who then meet an orthopedic surgeon and his wife, an adjunct professor in the Department of Slavic Studies at Yale.
Busted.
Nice list. But I guaran-fucking-tee that there’s an anime or manga about badminton players.
While I have seen quite a few Antiques Dealers portrayed on film, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one who wasn’t one of the following:
a panty sniffing freakshow
a small time forger/crook
a gay guy who still lives with his mother
Don’t forget an immortal that gets stronger by chopping off other immortal’s heads
Christ, you’re a fucking moron. One of the biggest movies of the early 1980′s was Flashdance whose main character was … … wait for it… a WELDER. Seriously, just how fucking hard is it to do even the most basic research? Even though you were obviously born at least 10 years after the movie came out, that’s no fucking excuse.
Retard.
Alex was a Dancer who just happened to do some welding to pay the bills. The movie itself was focused more on her being a dancer than being a welder, hence it being called Flashdance, not Flashwelding.
Do you actually watch movies?
Too bad engineer didn’t make either list. The closest thing we’ve got is MacGyver and that crazy guy in ‘Contact’.
Tony Stark
Apollo 13. From the Earth to the Moon. At least Aero E’s are well represented.
Hugh Grant’s character in Mickey Blue Eyes is an auctioneer.
Here is a New Zealand short film about an amateur Badminton player trying to go pro. Complete with crude shuttlecock references.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY1WIhG7rWU
welder – flashdance; sign language – children of a lesser god
there’s a jack lemmon movie where he pretends to work for a cruise line…and Indiana Jones is the most famous of archeologists….weren’t the two in Jurassic Park also of that occupation? you may need to expand your movie repertoire.
The category was “Archaeologist of really tedious, perpetually unfruitful digs” and Indiana Jones was specifically alluded to. Neither Jones’s nor the Jurassic Park paleontologists’ efforts could qualify in any universe as “unfruitful.”
Welder = Flashdance
Pretty sure “Cheese Shop Proprietor” has officially been owned forever and ever by Monty Python.
Agreed Brian! However, it wasn’t a very good cheese shop, was it? I also believe that the Pythons have forever owned/ruined the occupation of chocolatier as well.
Ever see the 1973 movie called “From Beyond the Grave”? It has an antique dealer.
“Only You” (1994) had a roofer (Larry), true, in a supporting role, but it did include a number of scenes of him actually at work.
The protagonist in flashdance is a welder who wants to be a dancer!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashdance
Wasn’t whatshername in “Flashdance” a welder? She
certainly did the trade proud.
I disagree: there are tons of movies about lying con-artist quacks like “nutritionists”. Movies about real, honest, accredited professionals like registered dietitians, on the other hand…
We need more Dolph Lundgren movies.
Jennifer Beals worked as a welder in flash dance.
A cheese proprieter = the male lead in the “backup plan”. He made his own cheese, they even had sex in the barn where the cheese was made.
And it may not be a movie, but the “Ghost Wisperer” (even though absolute rubbish) had a lead who was an antique dealer…
Everything else was dead on!
Amanda Peet’s character in Something’s Gotta Give was an auctioneer.
The film Tzameti’s main character worked on roofs if I remember correctly.
Sam Neill and Laura Dern were archeologists in Jurassic Park; the boring kind
Archaeologist of really tedious, perpetually unfruitful digs: Alien vs. Predator
Auctioneer: Mickey Blue Eyes
wrong on number two: there was for 4-5 seasons a very fine series called Lovejoy (with Ian MacShane) which dealt with antique dealers, forgers etc.
Don’t forget that welders were also represented in “Flashdance”.
Bruce Willis’ wife in The Sixth Sense is an antique dealer…and the list goes on…
‘Spy’ was left off of the original, typical movie occupations graphic.
Isn’t the lead in Del Toro’s Cronos a antiques dealer?
The cruise ship entertainment director in “Juggernaut” was a very prominent role.
Alex, the lead in Flashdance, was a welder when she wasn’t doing the dance thing.
I am an assistant manager of a ticketing office (we sell tickets to concerts — but we are not a TICKETMASTER – just a local Performing Arts Center). I’ve seen movies where characters work as ushers at the movies and/or theatres but never ticket sellers. However, I’ve thought about it before and the job is rather boring (or at least, not something you’d want to watch a movie about) so I can’t really blame any one.
I believe Annie Sullivan was an ASL Teacher in The Miracle Worker.
For the Deafblind, yes, but she did teach ASL to Helen Keller.
WELDER: Josh Brolin, No Country for Old Men.
Uhhhh, Jennifer Beals was a welder in Flashdance. So…there!
There was a movie in which an auctioneer was one of the main characters – “The Red Violin”, and the character was played by Samuel L. Jackson.
6. Roofer: Would aluminum siding salesmen in Tin Men cover that?
How about an much maligned career like a heating-air conditioning repairman? I haven’t even seen a movie with one in it.
Think about it: “The Man Who Blew Hot Air”.
The best way to cause controversy is to make a list. Best, worst, Top 10, or Bottom 10, will bring out the controversy. And your list is no different. Most on your list has been disproven.
Ben, you are a tedious bore and I hope you get choked up on crumbs.
Overall, this is a fun list. Screw the bloody PEDANTS!
Jurassic park, enough said