I’m going to have some time to watch a bunch of movies in the near future and I’d like to compile a playlist of movies that are about characters who lose their shit and/or give an epic FU speech when leaving a job.
Suggestions in the vein of Falling Down, Office Space, etc. please!
Lost In America
Network, although Howard Beale’s original threat to commit suicide on air actually gets his bosses to rehire him after his ratings spike.
Take This Job And Shove It immediately springs to mind.
I have always wanted to quit a job this way
Fight Club qualifies
While subsequent events have made it a bit creepy, Kevin Spacey quitting his job in American Beauty would fit.
Jerry Maguire had a good quitting scene.
If getting fired counts, there were a bunch of reactions to getting laid off in Up in the Air.
You don’t know it’s about quitting his job in style until the end but The In-Laws is an elaborate scheme of Peter Falk’s character to retire with an extra $10 million.
Half Baked a fun movie for lots of reasons but I still think about the quitting scene whenever I want to leave a job.
Damn it. That’s what I get for not clicking random youtube links at work.
Bill Murray quits his job as a cab driver (in fairly dramatic fashion) at the beginning of Stripes, which leads to him and Harold Ramis joining the Army.
Wanted has a pretty great “quitting my job” scene.
You’ll never look at keyboards the same way again
FWIW, IMDb has a pretty powerful keyword search:
(For the record, I discovered the “quitting-a-job” keyword after looking to see what descriptors applied to The Blues Brothers, namely: this scene.)
That search seems busted to me. It has La La Land as the 7th best quitting a job movie and I don’t even remember a scene where one of the main characters quit their job. Maybe the dude quit the bar?
Mary Poppins is there at 3 and its been years since I’ve seen it but does Mr. Banks quit his job at the end? Otherwise I can’t think of any quitting possibilities in the story I remember.
Not best, most popular. The default results order seems to be based on IMDb popularity. You can change it to date, title, etc.
And I meant to say, it’s only a starting point. Those keywords are assigned by idiots no smarter than me. I say that because I provide some IMDb content from time to time.
Quibble, but as I remember (and I just searched to confirm), the main, well, “protagonist” former defense worker (played by Michael Douglas) had been laid off (and his wife had left) before he got stuck in the traffic jam which then led to his eventful trek across Los Angeles…
The Social Network’s big crescendo is basically a executive firing/fuck you speech.
The Wolf of Wall Street has some pretty crazy firing scenes if I remember it right, but I can’t remember if any of the leads go through one off the top of my head.
It’s probably not the catharsis you’re looking for, but The Devil Wears Prada has a quitting scene as it’s finale. Good Will Hunting sorta does too.
Yep. It’s also one of my favorite movies, ever.
Another one, although it’s a little obscure. Big Trouble, which starred Tim Allen (and a bunch of other people) and was based on a novel by Dave Barry, the humor writer. It had the bad luck to be scheduled for release right after September 11, 2001 but that had to be postponed as the plot involves an atomic bomb on a (small) commercial airliner. Anyhow, Tim Allen’s character (who was basically a stand-in for Dave Barry) quits his job at a newspaper in dramatic fashion.
I like the movie quite a bit.