# things movies get wrong about your industry **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 18, 2009, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181 "2009-06-18T15:31:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Emily\_Litella](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emily_litella/32/3370_2.png) [@Emily\_Litella](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emily_Litella)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/21 "2009-06-18T18:08:08Z")
I work for a printing company. The scene in “Catch Me If You Can” when DiCaprio is in France and printing fake checks on a big old Heildeburg press; when Tom Hanks shows up to arrest him he stops the press and a storm of checks go flying all over the place. The truth is that the checks would have been printed on large sheets of paper and would have been cut down to the size of checks on a separate cutting machine. ---
**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:** [June 18, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/22 "2009-06-18T18:12:13Z")
I’m an video game artist, so in addition to **Miller** ’s comment on _Grandma’s Boy_, I can only add [this.](http://mediacast.sun.com/users/CMelissinos/media/BeAGameDesigner.mpg) The sad thing is that’s a commercial for an actual college where they supposedly teach actual game development. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/23 "2009-06-18T18:16:08Z")
I’m in software, and used to work for a beltway bandit (defense contractor). The pentagon is not sexy in the least on the inside. It looks like any other depressing civil sector office building on the inside, but with fewer windows. Like others have said, I don’t know where to begin on the portrayal of software development in movies. I’ll throw out that nobody hacks into any system by successfully guessing passwords - going through names of the boss’ pets, children, etc. One thing I’m surprised they get so wrong in Hollywood is Nielsen ratings portrayed on tv. Producers of shows know while a show is airing that ‘the numbers are through the roof!’ And numbers vary from commercial break to commercial break. That’s such lazy writing. ---
**Author:** ![mj\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@mj\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mj_2)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/24 "2009-06-18T18:22:04Z")
I’m positive there are no less than three characters from Office Space that work in my building. So, sure there are things wrong even with that movie, but the characters are dead on. ---
**Author:** ![TheFaerie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@TheFaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheFaerie)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/25 "2009-06-18T18:30:55Z")
> [@Emily\_Litella](#): > > I work for a printing company. The scene in “Catch Me If You Can” when DiCaprio is in France and printing fake checks on a big old Heildeburg press; when Tom Hanks shows up to arrest him he stops the press and a storm of checks go flying all over the place. The truth is that the checks would have been printed on large sheets of paper and would have been cut down to the size of checks on a separate cutting machine. Also in that movie the 50’s era airport has edge-lit LED exit signs. Good movie, though. Fun. ---
**Author:** ![ArrMatey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrmatey/32/3522_2.png) [@ArrMatey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArrMatey)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/26 "2009-06-18T18:33:41Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Two things about that: you never find “all” the bugs, for the simple reason that you don’t know a bug exists until you find it. Secondly, if all the bugs you found fit in a hardcopy that small, you haven’t finished testing the UI, let alone the entire game. > > The movie also featured the main character creating his own video game for the XBox at home in his spare time. He’s a forty year old loser who lives with his grandmother, but he can drop the $10,000+ dollars for an XBox developer kit? Seems unlikely. Agreed on the first part. Only did QA once, but the idea of finding ‘all’ the bugs is friggin’ impossible. And finding them all at once? Means your job would last a day, because, hey, they wouldn’t need you any more, right? On the second part I disagree… Of course, I worked for one of the most lax video game production houses in the world, but occasionally devs would bring home one of the dev kits for a weekend or whatever to hammer stuff out with it. Only when the project was near completetion was there real accountability for where they went (granted, as I said, lax company, and also one that folded immediately after the game I worked on went gold.) ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/27 "2009-06-18T18:39:52Z")
I am in the military (was Army, now Air Force). It would take waaaay to long to list everything. ---
**Author:** ![johnspartan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@johnspartan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnspartan)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/28 "2009-06-18T18:59:21Z")
> [@bup](#): > > I’m in software, and used to work for a beltway bandit (defense contractor). > > The pentagon is not sexy in the least on the inside. It looks like any other depressing civil sector office building on the inside, but with fewer windows. > > Like others have said, I don’t know where to begin on the portrayal of software development in movies. I’ll throw out that nobody hacks into any system by successfully guessing passwords - going through names of the boss’ pets, children, etc. > > One thing I’m surprised they get so wrong in Hollywood is Nielsen ratings portrayed on tv. Producers of shows know while a show is airing that ‘the numbers are through the roof!’ And numbers vary from commercial break to commercial break. That’s such lazy writing. Congressional offices too. The House and Senate office buildings IRL look like they’re about ready to fall in on themselves… a hurricane could go through Foggy Bottom and do $10 million in _improvement_. But they ones on TV and in movies are always huge, multi-room affairs that are well-lit with spotless walls and inexplicable views. ---
**Author:** ![Black\_Sunshine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ce73a5/32.png) [@Black\_Sunshine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Black_Sunshine)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/29 "2009-06-18T19:14:54Z")
Occasionally, I do some legal work. I love in crime dramas where one of the lawyers will be reviewing the case file, and there are a stack of file folders maybe 6 inches high. Last case I worked on, we had 15 of those big boxes that paper comes in. ---
**Author:** ![SanibelMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/30 "2009-06-18T19:15:24Z")
I’m in newspapers, and I don’t think any show or movie has ever gotten the concept of a “deadline” correctly. In _All the President’s Men,_ after Bernstein calls John Mitchell late at night and he utters the famous line, “You tell your publisher, Katie Graham, she’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat ringer if that’s published,” Woodward and Bernstein are shown in an empty newsroom, asking Ben Bradlee if they should run it. There should be 20 people waiting with bated breath for Bradlee to say, “Run that, baby!”, because it’s freaking midnight and the paper was supposed to be on the press 2 hours ago! Even _State of Play_ had this problem at the end. You just don’t wait around for a reporter to write a story at 11:30 at night and send it straight to the press. You’d better let someone on the copy desk look at it, unless you don’t mind risking a libel suit or a spelling mistake that destroys the credibility of the whole piece. And a designer has to flow the story onto the page and find a way to make it fit, and so on… Not to mention that the color deadline for most papers is way earlier than 11:30. Even on “Lou Grant,” I was never sure what time the deadline was. Some days they were trying to put the paper to bed at 6 o’clock, other episodes had them writing until late into the night. And one episode had Lou calling at 4:30 in the morning about a graf dropped from a story, and there was actually someone in the building to answer the phone? Not to mention that the newsroom set was sized more appropriately for a college newspaper than a major metro daily. (And yes, I understand the budget restraints of creating a set for a TV drama.) ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/31 "2009-06-18T19:17:51Z")
> [@johnspartan](#): > > I always cringe when someone says “I’m going to take this to the press”, and invariably the press leaps at whatever their story is, and of course moves _en masse_. That certainly bothers me. Even more annoying is that movie journalists are usually extremely open about their biases when they’re not on the job, and when they’re on the job, they just advance the plot and don’t speak or write the way anybody with journalism experience actually writes. ---
**Author:** ![TheFaerie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@TheFaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheFaerie)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/32 "2009-06-18T19:22:11Z")
Oh yeah, and ductwork that is large enough and strong enough to hold a person. Either inside or outside. No freaking way. Not an a standard office building anyway. Or pretty much any other situation I can come up with that doesn’t involve some sort of highly specialized application. And don’t get me started on showing people knitting or quilting. 90% of the time it’s wrong. Wrong so often that when it’s shown correctly, I am shocked and surprised. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/33 "2009-06-18T19:27:52Z")
Space Industry. You’ve probably memorized those complaints. Physics just doesn’t work that way. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/34 "2009-06-18T19:28:34Z")
> [@SanibelMan](#): > > I’m in newspapers, and I don’t think any show or movie has ever gotten the concept of a “deadline” correctly. > > In _All the President’s Men,_ after Bernstein calls John Mitchell late at night and he utters the famous line, “You tell your publisher, Katie Graham, she’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat ringer if that’s published,” Woodward and Bernstein are shown in an empty newsroom, asking Ben Bradlee if they should run it. There should be 20 people waiting with bated breath for Bradlee to say, “Run that, baby!”, because it’s freaking midnight and the paper was supposed to be on the press 2 hours ago! > > Even _State of Play_ had this problem at the end. You just don’t wait around for a reporter to write a story at 11:30 at night and send it straight to the press. You’d better let someone on the copy desk look at it, unless you don’t mind risking a libel suit or a spelling mistake that destroys the credibility of the whole piece. And a designer has to flow the story onto the page and find a way to make it fit, and so on… Not to mention that the color deadline for most papers is way earlier than 11:30. > > Even on “Lou Grant,” I was never sure what time the deadline was. Some days they were trying to put the paper to bed at 6 o’clock, other episodes had them writing until late into the night. And one episode had Lou calling at 4:30 in the morning about a graf dropped from a story, and there was actually someone in the building to answer the phone? Not to mention that the newsroom set was sized more appropriately for a college newspaper than a major metro daily. (And yes, I understand the budget restraints of creating a set for a TV drama.) ITA with the above – but I know you know that some major papers have, or did have, more than one edition. It might not be entirely realistic, but it could be argued that the movie/TV journalists were working at odd hours because they needed to get their story in the afternoon edition. You put the paper to bed at night, but you are still working on stories. The paper I used to work at \*would \*have had somebody in the newsroom at 4:30 a.m. Not any more.☹ ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/35 "2009-06-18T19:30:51Z")
> [@Lightnin](#): > > I’m an video game artist, so in addition to **Miller** ’s comment on _Grandma’s Boy_, I can only add [this.](http://mediacast.sun.com/users/CMelissinos/media/BeAGameDesigner.mpg) > > The sad thing is that’s a commercial for an actual college where they supposedly teach actual game development. To be fair, when I was doing game QA, playing the game itself constituted at least 5% of my worktime. For certain values of “playing” anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/36 "2009-06-18T19:34:23Z")
Movies and TV rarely get binoculars, telescopes, or optical & digital imaging right. They always have some kind of magical property that let’s you zoom in without resolution loss, shaking, or the telescope manages to perfectly tracking a moving meteor or UFO. Spies have little compact binoculars that get views full-size Zeiss optics would be envious of. ---
**Author:** ![BKReporter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@BKReporter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BKReporter)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/37 "2009-06-18T19:34:54Z")
What bothers me about newspaper movies is when reporters get romantically entangled with sources. Not that this doesn’t ever happen, but when it does, the reporter usually excuses themselves from covering that person or any organization they may be deeply involved with. So Lois Lane covering Superman would be very much frowned upon. She could probably get by doing some sort of first person account the first time he saved her life, and maybe some sort of follow up interview. But anything beyond that would probably be seen as a conflict of interest. And reporters adopting assumed identities or otherwise tricking sources into giving them information without telling them who they really are or who they work for (this happened in “27 Dresses”). This is a big no-no. Again, not to say that it doesn’t happen, but when it does you have to secure permission from the higher ups (and not just immediate editor, I’m talking corporate level here) and prove that 1) that this is a story of great importance and 2) there is absolutely no other way to get the information you need. TV news magazines have some leeway when it comes to stunts like this (think Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator”), but, for better or worse, the newspaper world will only rarely give reporters the freedoms to pursue such a project. Also I have the usual gripes about twenty-something reporters having big apartments and living beyong their means. Most print reporters are lucky to make 40k starting out (30k if they’re working outside a large market). I found, surprisingly, that “Marley and Me” actually got a lot of things right. A young reporter working at a mid-size paper, like Owen Wilson’s character in the movie, would probably have a small house in a somewhat dubious neighborhood and be driving a beater - other words living a lower middle class lifestyle. The thing that bothered about the movie though was when he mentions to his boss that he’s thinking leaving, and the boss immediately offers to double his pay. Now the film takes place in the '90s, when the newspaper industry was in much better financial shape than it is today, but I can’t imagine any editor making an offer like this, without, at the very least, consulting with the higher ups. And said reporter would be lucky, really lucky, to be getting even a 10 percent raise. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/38 "2009-06-18T19:37:25Z")
Writers on TV and movies are never shown writing (I like the fact that _Castle_ shows it occasionally). All writers are portrayed as being at the Stephen King level – massively popular best selling authors making millions – where many usually on scrape by. Shows tend to use the plot of a big name author stealing the work of an unknown, something that never happens.\* Finally, when the show a manuscript it’s usually way too thin – a book these days would take up almost a ream of paper printed out. \*Well, once in the 25 years I’ve been in the business, and the writer who did it wasn’t particularly well known. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/39 "2009-06-18T19:40:04Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > - Teachers are not sexually attracted to students and students are not sexually attracted to teachers. Members of either group would flee from any possibility of a liaison. You’re fooling yourself. In my high school experience, a teacher only had to be very mildly attractive for half the student body to be absolutely gaga over him or her. And I don’t know any high school teachers but most of the college instructors I know admit to being twitterpated by the 18 to 20 year olds occasionally, so it’s not a stretch to imagine 16 to 18 year olds turning the heads of high school faculty. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181/40 "2009-06-18T19:45:20Z")
U.S. college life is generally portrayed as being one big co-ed dorm kegger blowout. Either that or everyone is really erudite, gifted, and attending a tiny, private university and living a life of the mind. The professors dress up in suits with patches on the elbows and have huge offices that look like libraries. ``` Here's what I've seen of colleges over the past 20-plus years, as both a student and a professor: Most of us can't afford to attend a private university, and if you want to teach at one, you usually need a Ph.D. These universities are not all located in the eastern states, either. Many of us go to community colleges before transferring to a state university. Many people work in CCs as well. Since the majority of us commute, there is no need for a dorm. The offices are pretty much utilitarian, though wall and desk decorations are certainly allowed. Most professors are part-time and do not have offices, however. They are paid hourly and spend a lot of time running around from one campus to another trying to cobble together a living. Obnoxious behavior among some younger students is commonplace, not so much from alcohol but from immaturity, laziness, and a sense of entitlement. There are also middle-aged and older people in college for various reasons. They never seem to show up onscreen, though. ``` [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-movies-get-wrong-about-your-industry/500181.md?page=3)