# Books or Films about Grad School **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 30, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034 "2010-08-30T19:21:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/1 "2010-08-30T19:21:25Z")
The only one I can think of right off is _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_, though \*The Paper Chase \*may count if you bring in law school; med school would probably be too much of a stretch. Given the types of people who go to grad school and the life drama that ensues there, I’d think grad school days would be rich fodder for fiction/fictionalized memoir. What am I missing? ---
**Author:** ![mcgato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac8455/32.png) [@mcgato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcgato)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/2 "2010-08-30T19:27:08Z")
Pretty sure that Real Genius with Val Kilmer was grad school. ---
**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:** [August 30, 2010, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/3 "2010-08-30T19:48:50Z")
**Creator** with Peter O’Toole, Vincent Spano, Mariel Hemingway, and Virginia Madsen is definitely set in grad school. It feels more like grad school than any other film I’ve seen. It’s also a witty effects-less science fiction film about cloning. And one of the few in which it’s recognized that it takes clones a long time to grow up. > **[Creator (film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creator_%28film%29)** > > Creator is a 1985 American comedy film directed by Ivan Passer, starring Peter O'Toole, Vincent Spano, Mariel Hemingway, and Virginia Madsen. It is based on the 1980 novel of the same title by Jeremy Leven, who also wrote the screenplay adaptation. > Dr. Harry Wolper is an eccentric medical professor teaching at a small Southern California college who is obsessed with making a clone of his wife Lucy who died in childbirth 30 years earlier. Harry hires Boris Lafkin, a struggling pre-med student as ... ---
**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:** [August 30, 2010, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/4 "2010-08-30T19:52:37Z")
The main character in _Proof_ (play and movie) is a grad student. For other media, there’s also the webcomic [Piled Higher and Deeper](http://www.phdcomics.com/) (also collected into books), which often leaves me wondering where the hidden cameras are with which Jorge Cham is videotaping my life. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/5 "2010-08-30T19:56:55Z")
> [@mcgato](#): > > Pretty sure that Real Genius with Val Kilmer was grad school. Nope, they were undergrads. If you recall, “Chris Knight” was worried about “graduating” not “defending his dissertation/thesis.” Oddly, the professors did not seem to have any grad students, only undergraduate assistants. [del]_The Paperchase_ is about Law School.[/del] never mind! ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/6 "2010-08-30T20:47:55Z")
Neal Stephenson’s book “The Big U” is at least partially about grad students, although in his usual style, it veers off into extreme weirdness pretty quickly. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/7 "2010-08-30T22:40:41Z")
The first of Robertson Davies’ “Cornish trilogy”-- The Rebel Angels-- takes place in that sort of setting. Very readable books. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/8 "2010-08-30T23:14:54Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > **Creator** with Peter O’Toole, Vincent Spano, Mariel Hemingway, and Virginia Madsen is definitely set in grad school. It feels more like grad school than any other film I’ve seen. Ditto. Also loved the soundtrack and the O’Toole-Hemingway romance. J.K. Toole’s _A Confederacy of Dunces_ (twice I’ve mentioned it today) has flashbacks to the protagonist’s time in graduate school in philosophy at LSU and throughout the book he has an ongoing relationship by letter with a grad school friend, plus there’s a sideplot involving a professor who’s still there and remembers them both with less than fond memories. Mrs. Garp in _The World According to Garp_ teaches in a graduate program (English IIRC). The movie version has a joke in which their son asks “what’s a gradual school?” and is told “It’s where you go after college until you gradually realize you don’t want to go to school anymore”. The forgettable movie _With Honors_ in which Brendan Fraser adopts lovable homeless guy Joe Pesci is about either graduate students or law students, can’t remember which. I believe it’s graduate school as Fraser is working on a master’s thesis for an arrogant stodgy old professor (Stock Academic Character #3) played by Gore Vidal. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/9 "2010-08-30T23:23:43Z")
While not really about grad school, [Igor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_%28film%29) can feel familiar to those in or recently out of grad school. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/10 "2010-08-30T23:30:07Z")
**A Beautiful Mind** is largely about grad school. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/11 "2010-08-30T23:45:27Z")
> [@StusBlues](#): > > Given the types of people who go to grad school and the life drama that ensues there, I’d think grad school days would be rich fodder for fiction/fictionalized memoir. What am I missing? Audience appeal. If the subject the characters are studying is an important part of the drama – and it **is,** to real-life grad students – then the scenario is too intellectual for most people – too intellectual for most intellectuals, in fact, if involves a grad program outside their own field of expertise. To make it accessible, you have to make it about a law school or med school, something that produces professionals whom the average person has to deal with, and who do things the average person understands at least in general principles. But they have to be the more dramatic kinds of professionals. Doctors, not dentists. Even doing it about MBA students would be a challenge – MBAs are pretty important in our society, but how many people deal with them directly, or understand what they do? Maybe you have to deal with accountants – but do you want to watch a movie about the educational experience that made your accountant the man he is today? Social workers. That’s a possibility. Maybe you could do something interesting about a social-work grad school, where the students have clinics where they actually practice helping disadvantaged people. But it could get pretty depressing. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/12 "2010-08-30T23:51:33Z")
Of course, Peter Parker was in grad school for much of his Spider-Man career, and they sometimes got some plot points out of it – but the comic was never **about** a grad student, it was about a superhero. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/13 "2010-08-31T00:42:52Z")
The movie _The Reader_, with Ralph Fiennes as a gloomy German lawyer, had an extended flashback about his days as an almost-as-gloomy German law student not too long after WWII. Don’t think they gave the name of the school. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/14 "2010-08-31T03:30:12Z")
[Gross Anatomy](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097458/) was a comedy about medical school. I only remember the movie since I was stuck at home for a couple of weeks during a semester break at college and must have watched this movie a dozen times. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/15 "2010-08-31T03:49:39Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > [Gross Anatomy](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097458/) was a comedy about medical school. > > I only remember the movie since I was stuck at home for a couple of weeks during a semester break at college and must have watched this movie a dozen times. Haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen [_Young Doctors in Love._](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084938/) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/16 "2010-08-31T04:36:13Z")
Gwyneth Paltrow plays an English Lit graduate student and researcher in the 2002 romance _Possession_. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/17 "2010-08-31T14:11:00Z")
Legally Blonde was about law school. Patch Adams was about medical school I think With Honors was undergrad at Harvard. It was supposed to be Brendon Frassier’s senior thesis according to Wikipedia. [quote=“BrainGlutton, post:11, topic:552034”] > [@StusBlues](#): > > Even doing it about MBA students would be a challenge – MBAs are pretty important in our society, but how many people deal with them directly, or understand what they do? Maybe you have to deal with accountants – but do you want to watch a movie about the educational experience that made your accountant the man he is today? Yeah, the actual study of business doesn’t exactly make compelling drama. Most business related movies tend to be abour corporate fraud. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/18 "2010-08-31T14:20:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > > [@StusBlues](#): > > > > Given the types of people who go to grad school and the life drama that ensues there, I’d think grad school days would be rich fodder for fiction/fictionalized memoir. What am I missing? > > Audience appeal. If the subject the characters are studying is an important part of the drama – and it **is,** to real-life grad students – then the scenario is too intellectual for most people – too intellectual for most intellectuals, in fact, if involves a grad program outside their own field of expertise. To make it accessible, you have to make it about a law school or med school, something that produces professionals whom the average person has to deal with, and who do things the average person understands at least in general principles. But they have to be the more dramatic kinds of professionals. Doctors, not dentists. Even doing it about MBA students would be a challenge – MBAs are pretty important in our society, but how many people deal with them directly, or understand what they do? Maybe you have to deal with accountants – but do you want to watch a movie about the educational experience that made your accountant the man he is today? > > Social workers. That’s a possibility. Maybe you could do something interesting about a social-work grad school, where the students have clinics where they actually practice helping disadvantaged people. But it could get pretty depressing. Good points. I thought of another one - \*The Addiction \*with Lili Taylor as a vampire philosophy grad student. I liked the film, but it’s depiction of grad school, with students taking survey courses and writing their dissertations at the same time, wasn’t realistic if you know anything about the process. That said, the film was probably above the heads of most viewers as it was. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/19 "2010-08-31T15:55:43Z")
[The Last Supper [1995]](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113613/) is a black comedy about five liberal grad students renting a house together in rural Iowa, who poison a number of conservative dinner guests whose views they disagree with. While it’s not about grad school per se (the film is set almost entirely on the grounds of the house, IIRC), there’s certain aspects of liberal-arts grad student life (and smug groupthink) which it basically _nails_. OTOH, you might have some difficulty buying into the concept of Cameron Diaz and Ron Eldard being grad students. 😉 ---
**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:** [August 31, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034/20 "2010-08-31T15:58:18Z")
It also features Ron Perlman in one of the few roles where his unique physiognomy isn’t critical to the role. The film lets him show that he can _act_, and has more than is needed for hanging exotic latex appliances on. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-or-films-about-grad-school/552034.md?page=2)