# Accurate portrayals of your profession in fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 24, 2021, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871 "2021-11-24T12:14:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2021, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/41 "2021-11-26T22:24:58Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Do that, definitely. > > I’ve thought of writing a novel featuring an ananatomic/clinical pathologist, of whom there seems to be a complete dearth in fictional literature, TV and movies. My doc is drawn unwillingly into investigating a series of suspicious hospital deaths, crossing paths along the way with a sexy surgeon\*, obstructive administration and doubtful detectives. > > \*I didn’t say it was going to be completely realistic. Sue Grafton has you covered there, although the plot is somewhat different than those you describe. _“C” is for Corpse_ has just such a doctor as one of the main characters. Unfortunately, one of the scenes is quite unrealistic. The doctor in question has a pint sized container filled with all of the internal organs of a recently deceased person, all mixed together and seemingly being chopped up randomly. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2021, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/42 "2021-11-26T22:30:37Z")
My pathologist is of course the hero of the novel. > [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Unfortunately, one of the scenes is quite unrealistic. The doctor in question has a pint sized container filled with all of the internal organs of a recently deceased person, all mixed together and seemingly being chopped up randomly. Yes, you’d need at least a gallon-sized container for the liver alone. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/43 "2021-11-26T22:36:52Z")
I’ve always loved the movie **The Last Detail** , starring Jack Nicholson. To me, the portrayal of Navy enlisted life rang true, and Nicholson’s portrayal of a macho give-a-shit petty officer was right on. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2021, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/44 "2021-11-26T22:40:46Z")
> [@ASGuy](#): > > But the television show Lou Grant (1970-1977) did a good job of depicting what a newsroom looked like. So did Season 4 of **The Wire**. I’ve toured the NYT newsroom with a friend who is an editor there, and it looks just like that. > [@DCnDC](#): > > I realize nobody wants to watch somebody fumble around with a lock for 10 minutes, but in reality, lockpicking usually takes a while and your odds of success are 50/50 at best. No kidding. I went through locksmith school with the Department of State. Our teacher basically said “Don’t bother, unless you’re bored; drill it.” And that whole nonsense of listening to a combination lock in order to get the combo, especially on a lock of any sophistication is just downright impossible. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/45 "2021-11-27T00:35:18Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Unfortunately, _Office Space_ is at least as true as anything else as far as the experience of working in corporate IT goes. The down, er, right sizing interviews with the Bobs were painfully, although hilariously, accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/46 "2021-11-27T04:17:35Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > How about _Better Call Saul_ ? I hope you were joking. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Stephen Fry was in a program called _[Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(British_TV_series))_ , in which he was a small-town solicitor, and most of his practice seemed to involve civil law. I can see the opportunity for drama in being a small town solicitor because of the human interest stories. City law firm not so much, I’m afraid. ---
**Author:** ![psychobunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@psychobunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychobunny)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/47 "2021-11-27T04:33:20Z")
The pilot episode of St. Elsewhere was the most accurate depiction of internship I ever saw. Second was the pilot of ER, but the latter program became extremely unrealistic starting with the second episode. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/48 "2021-11-27T13:28:02Z")
As a game developer, most cinematic adaptations of my career are laughable at best- and usually fairly insulting. However, Mythic Quest is fairly accurate in its depiction, and at times hits way too close to home. Not too surprising, I guess, as Ubisoft is quite involved with the production. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/49 "2021-11-27T23:52:37Z")
I can think of a couple of fictional portrayals of management consultants: The TV show **House of Lies** on Showtime staring Don Cheadle, Kristen Bell, and Ben Schwartz. Based on a non-fiction book written by a Booz Allen alum, a lot of it rings true, but a lot of it is either highly sensationalized or exaggerated or downplays the more routine and mundane aspects of the job. As the series went on, it was less late nights in conference rooms planning presentations and more time spent on personal drama, No one wants to see a show about a bunch of nerds grinding through spreadsheets and Powerpoint decks until 1am. The Bob’s from **Office Space** are a lot closer to the reality. Lot of time spent in conference rooms meeting with clients and making staffing (or other business-related) suggestions. George Clooney’s character in **Up in the Air** also rang true on it’s portrayal of the typical consultant “road warrior” lifestyle. Ironically, it also ended up being unintentionally prescient in it’s portrayal of much of that lifestyle being replaced with remove teleconferencing (especially with COVID). ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/50 "2021-11-28T04:46:07Z")
_Office Space_ also captured the grim reality of waiting tables in a mid-level chain restaurant. I worked at California Pizza Kitchen for nearly a decade starting shortly after that movie came out; I also had friends working at Applebee’s, Cheesecake Factory, and Bennigan’s, and we could all quote it in its entirety. A few of the cooler managers got in on the joke, announcing the new “pieces of flair” we were going to have to wear to promote gift cards for the holiday season. Other managers were more like that annoying co-worker Brian–CPK liked to promote from within. I keep waiting for Law & Order to do a CPS spinoff. If they ever do, I’ll get back to you on how well they portray my current profession. I’m guessing it’ll be pretty accurate on the law itself, there will be an episode “ripped from the headlines” of every well-known recent news story (Gabriel Fernandez, Anthony Avalos, etc.), but every case will be a once-in-a-career-if-ever outlier. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/51 "2021-11-28T05:29:45Z")
Buck in the novel and movie _ **Fail Safe** _ is a fairly accurate portrayal of what it’s like to be a translator/interpreter of a foreign language. There’s one point in the book where he’s very careful to choose the appropriate word in Russian so as not to offend Khruschev during his hotline conversation with the American president. I very often have to be equally careful in my work, especially for clients like the ILO and UN. It should be noted that in both the book and the movie, Buck performs _consecutive_ rather than _simultaneous_ oral interpretation (though he’s capable of both). The latter is a highly specialized skill that requires intensive training at places like the US Army Language School in Monterey, CA. As an aside, Buck in the movie is played by a very young Larry “JR Ewing” Hagman. He pretty much steals the show from President Henry Fonda. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/52 "2021-11-28T06:46:14Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I’ve always loved the movie **The Last Detail** , starring Jack Nicholson. To me, the portrayal of Navy enlisted life rang true, and Nicholson’s portrayal of a macho give-a-shit petty officer was right on. Never partook, myself, neither have I seen _Annapolis_ nor _Crimson Tide_, but AIUI they’re generally well-recieved pictures, and was curious if you can vouch for that. I _did_ see _Das Boot_, which I found claustrophobically compelling. Felt quite nerve-rackingly drained at the end of that one. This is a good thing. Heh - I bet I dig _The Last Detail_ more than you - Hal Ashby is one of the gods. Hilarious when JN is yelling “HIT ME!!!” at the meek (and hilariously young-as-a-fawn-looking) Randy Quaid, who just can’t get himself to do so, of course then doubling JN’s frustration) ---
**Author:** ![Bayarea4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Bayarea4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bayarea4)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/53 "2021-11-28T07:33:25Z")
I worked as a TV broadcast technician, and one of the memorable scenes in “Broadcast News” always makes me laugh. An editor is frantically running up flights of stairs to deliver a taped story to the playback room in time to make its slot on the nightly news. This is treated as some type of crisis that has everyone in the control room sweating bullets. That would never happen in real life. First of all, it’s a common everyday occurrence for a news story to not be ready. It happens all the time. The producer will just skip over it, go to the next event on the rundown and insert the story later in the broadcast. Also, the scene shows the editor running up flights of stairs to get to the playback room. This is also unrealistic. At any broadcast news operation, seconds count. For this reason the edit rooms will be located near playback, not on separate floors. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/54 "2021-11-28T11:14:27Z")
If I can cite an incident from my misspent youth: I was working as a gofer for a big TV network back in the '80s. They were on location, not in a studio, so the editors and their machines were in one section of the hotel and the command post was in another. There was one segment that wasn’t ready for broadcast, and the temperamental anchor (I won’t name him here, since most Americans would know who I’m talking about) was waiting outside in the cold. He finally just said “I’m outta here!” and went back inside. The camera came on live a few seconds later and he was nowhere to be seen. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/55 "2021-11-28T12:38:16Z")
If there are any scientists about, how good is the film The Andromeda Strain in depicting how science works in such a situation? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/56 "2021-11-28T12:50:48Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The only time I watched a movie set in a prison and had the feeling that it bore some resemblance to what I did for a living was _Women of San Quentin_ , a made-for-tv movie from 1983. Did you watch American Me? A friend of mine who was a Mexican American in a California prison during the same timeframe as the movie said it was very accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/57 "2021-11-28T15:35:15Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > He finally just said “I’m outta here!” and went back inside. The camera came on live a few seconds later and he was nowhere to be seen. That happened on _The Mary Tyler Moore Show_ one time. Ted had an argument with Lou during a commercial break and to demonstrate what he thought was his power on the show, walked off the set. Lou told Gordy, the weatherman, to take over the news broadcast. When they went back on the air, Gordy said Ted had been called away and began doing the news. Ted, seeing this, went back to his seat and said he had gone to the bathroom. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/58 "2021-11-28T15:41:42Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Did you watch American Me? A friend of mine who was a Mexican American in a California prison during the same timeframe as the movie said it was very accurate. I haven’t seen it. But from the synopsis I just read, it sounds like it has a common problem with most of the movies and TV shows that are supposedly depicting prison life; they portray prisoners as having way more agency than they have in a real prison. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/59 "2021-11-28T17:32:36Z")
There aren’t that many Optical Engineers in the movies. As I pointed out in an article, Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chanery, Jr.) was an Optical Engineer in **The Wolfman**. In Curt Siodmak’s original script he wasn’t even a member of the family – he was just a guy brought in to install the telescope. As far as that goes, he seems to be accurate, although spying on ladies through their open upper story windows is awfully unprofessional (and definitely not PC for a hero these days). And most optical engineers don’t get bitten by werewolves and develop lycanthropy, but I don’t want to be dogmatic about this. Professor Metz in the James Bond movie **Diamonds are Forever** is “an expert in light refraction”, although that’s not quite what is required for building a weapons-grade laser. Metz is portrayed as helping the evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld because he hopes to bring about World Peace, which I would say was hopelessly and unbelievably naive. But, then again, there are definitely real-life cases of this, like Klaus Fuchs who leaked atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. It also bothered me that they had JImmy Dean (as Howard Hughes stand-in Willard Whyte) saying “The first laser was generated through a diamond…” Well, no. The first practical laser demonstrated used a ruby. But they’re both gem stones, so I guess Richard Maibaum figured he could get away with it. Besides, the needed a way to make diamonds into a high tech weapon, now that they threw out Fleming’s original story, and they were stuck with the title. As far as I know, the first laser generated using a diamond used point defects called “color centers” in the diamond. It was built by Larry de Shayzer and Stephen Rand at – appropriately enough – Hughes Labs in California. But it wouldn’t do much about destroying subs and missiles from orbit. It put out milliwatts of energy. They published in 1987, about 15 years after the movie came out. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871/60 "2021-11-28T18:46:18Z")
The movie version of Michael Crichton’s Congo also had diamonds being used (somehow) in weaponized lasers (though they never said that it was the active medium). The book was at least a little more plausible, in that it had diamonds (with just the right naturally-occurring impurities) being used as semiconductors in place of silicon (which was being researched by a defense contractor, presumably for use in weapons of some sort or other, but I guess they wanted to make the “used for weapons” more dramatic and obvious). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accurate-portrayals-of-your-profession-in-fiction/954871.md?page=4)