The Greatest Movies About Work

it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after launch too. I'd say in a given week, I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real actual work. The thing is, Bob, It's not that I'm lazy, It's that I just don't care. Welcome to game Plan. I'm Sam Grobart, a writer at Bloomberg Business Week Magazine, and I'm Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter at Bloomberg WHEG cover the workplace.

That clip you just heard, if it wasn't already familiar, is from the movie Office Space, which is universally acknowledged to be perhaps the greatest single piece of art ever

created on the subject of the workplace. In the clip that we just heard, we have an incredibly candid and frank conversation between an underachieving employee and the consultants who have been brought in to examine just who should stay and who should go this week on our show, because the last week and probably the last year and a half for many of you, has been exhausting, and the news has been relentless, so much news, we decided that

going into Thanksgiving, this episode would be about something later, and we're going to do our show about movies that portrait working life in a way that we think is very accurate. It's Becca and Sam at the movies. So we've picked some clips from movies that we feel really get at some universal truths about life at work, and we're gonna listen to them and then we're going to talk about them a little bit. Becca, do you want

to go first? Sure? So my first clip is from The Devil Wears Product, which is a classic film about a woman working for what is supposed to be Vogue magazine. In this clip, it's Andy, the main character's first day at work, and she encounters her coworker, who is also an assistant for the editor in chief of this Vogue like magazine, who is played by the amazing Meryl Street.

I picked this clip because in it you see how quickly everyone settles into the hierarchies of an office, and things that from an outsider would seem completely unimportant are very important to somebody trying to hold onto their tiny little bit of power. I hope you know that this is a very difficult too, which you are totally run and if you mess up, my head is on a chopping blog. Okay, first of all, you and I answered the phone. The phone must be answered every single time

it rings. Find what here, Andrea Andrew? You want chained to that desk? Well? What if I need to what? No. One time an assistant left the desk because she sliced her hand open with a letter of and Mirandom missed large Field just before he boarded a seventeen hour flight to Australia. She now works at TV Guide. Remember you and I have totally different jobs. I mean, you get

coffee when you run errands. Yet I'm in charge of her schedule, her appointments, and her expenses, and most importantly I get to go with her to Paris for a fashion week and before Yeah, so w the whole movie is really great about showing office life, and I don't think that's just true for media companies, since we work at media company. I think that this woman is low

on the totem pole. And you remember when you're fresh out of college and you think you know everything and you come in and you do not expect to be slapped in the face by this organization where people have power and jobs and want to show you how much power they have. I often refer to these people, and I'm sure many others as well do as tiny emperors, like you know, their their kingdom is basically their desk, but they do have maybe control over one infinitiesmally small thing,

and they will then lord it over you. And The other aspect of this that I think that clip really demonstrates quite well is the notion of hazing almost in a new job that you're coming in as a young person. It doesn't matter if you're smart, it doesn't matter if you actually know what you're doing. They're just gonna make your life kind of miserable because someone made their life miserable, and that's just the tradition. Emily Blunt is really great in that role, and I just love how she says

our jobs are different. Mine is more important than yours. But if you really listen to the words she's saying, she does scheduling instead of getting coffee. It's arbitrary. It's completely arbitrary. And I like how throughout the movie they do become closer as they work more together. Those two characters, I will say, to the credit of the movie, they do round out Emily Blunt's character to be an actual human being and not just a caricature of this kind.

And they do that with all the characters in the movie in facting even Meryl Streep's character. Yeah, and like you said, starting a new job, when I've started new jobs, or when new people come in two new jobs, you immediately do have this kind of like animal kingdom reaction to them. You're like sizing them up and trying to see if they're going to be a threat to you. And you also need to show them that you could be a threat to them. That's right, that's right, which

is really much air and cool. Oh it's the best.

Let's move on to our next clip. What do you got? Okay, So I have picked a clip from one of my favorite favorite movies of all time A movie called Broadcast News, which stars Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and the always always amazing Albert Brooks, and a lot of people know this movie is being sort of a love triangle set at a network news operation in d C. But the clip that I want you to listen to is actually the undercurrent of the whole movie, which is that there are

all these layoffs about to happen, and then they do happen, and in a movie that's supposed to be considered a romantic comedy, it actually does as good a job as I've ever seen as what an office looks like the day that people lose their jobs. He'll just be a minute. I hate this so much. You know, I'm just old enough to be flattered by the term early retirement. That's wonderful. What a lovely line. Now, if there's anything I can do for you, but I suddenly hope you'll die soon, Tom,

this is a severe cutback town. Twenty seven people in this bureau alone, including technical personnel. We're going to reorganize. At the same time, we're going to drop you out of Washington and assign you to look I mean, obviously

the clip has some humor in there. There's the great line I'll hope you'll die soon, which is probably something we've all wished we could see more fantasy than reality, it's true, but then it does have a lot of actual reality in it in terms of just the dislocating feeling that that day takes on, and you know, you're just being surrounded by people who a terrible thing has just happened to them, but other people are still there.

It's a weird mix. Yeah, it's this general mood that is is somber, but also people saying like, oh, let's get drunk, or you don't really know how to feel the shock, right, it's all happening at once. Layoffs generally are a surprise, and perhaps that's for the best as far as morale is concerned, but when that band aid is ripped off, it can be exceedingly painful, and I just think this movie does a really good job of

showing that. I think a lot of movies treat the workplace as a very background subject, like you often don't even know what they do for a living, or if they do. It's just sort of like I'm an architect, Fine, you know, but this really actually gives you an up close portrayal of that environment. Yeah, and I like how it treated layoffs, like you said, in a very realistic way. I'm trying to think of other movies that have done the layoff scene and everything's really chaotic and people just

runaway and steal things and then the buildings empty. And that may have been true for kind of historic layoffs on Wall Street and things like that, but this was kind of like the general run of the mill or restructuring, getting rid of some people, cutting costs layoff. The only other thing I would say about this is that it also shows how people drop the veil, if you will,

or the mask that they wear at work. I mean, I think everybody has a certain way that they are in the office that's different than probably how they are at home or with their friends. And it might be just a minor distinction. But you see people here they're crying, you know, and you see people here who are very upset, and we normally don't see that kind of raw emotion in the workplace. That's never really considered welcome, But on

these days those rules seem to be suspended. The next clip that I picked is from the movie nine to five, which is a great, great, great movie. It's from over years ago and it feels really radical even today. I'm so glad you picked this. It's so great. And in the scene that I chose, Dolly Parton's character is having a fantasy about how she would treat her boss if she could, her boss, who sexually harasses her on a regular basis borning. Hold it, just hold her right there?

Something wrong? No, no, that wasn't wrong. I just want to check your bad turn around for secon. Oh, well, you got a nice glass, friend, but you know you are to get your pants cut a little tighter. You need to bring them up just a little in the crotch. I mean, you got a nice package, you might as well show it off. Mr Rhodes, come over here. I want you to take a memo. Oh, by the way, I got a surprise for you here, Mr Rhodes, I

am a married man. Forget about your wife, friend. I mean, you may be hers in the evening, but you're my boy from nine to five. Here. I wanted to show you what I got for you. Isn't that pretty? Yes, it's pretty, and it's very pretty, But you shouldn't be buying gifts for me. Mrs Rhodes, Okay, let me put it on here. Yeah, that wasn't so bad worthy. I love your hair, it's so sexy. Why don't we go

from the couch and I'll go off the door Mrs Rhodes. Oh, let's be really frank and we need got to be a little more cool if you want to keep this job. I'm not the kind of point. It's one little kid. I love this scene because it's so absurd, but it's only absurd because we're hearing it come from a woman almost earlier in the movie. Her boss does these kinds of things to her all the time, and we treated as tragic but kind of in that oh yeah, that

happens way. I think almost every line she says is something that he has already said to her and that we have heard him say, right, And then it's the inversion that we all go what yeah. So in this movie, they work at a company called Consolidated Companies. It's all

about working in a generic office in the eighties. It's so great, and it's about these three women who are treated in sexist ways in very different ways, And the best thing about the movie is that Towards the end, they take over the office and implement all these changes that even now would be considered not usual, like paid family leave and daycare and equal pay. It will never happen. And then the boss comes back and he says, no,

I'm gonna get rid of all these changes. You can't do that, and his higher up comes and says, actually, everyone's been so productive, you should keep all these changes, except for equal pay, which is the punch line, but not really a punch line anymore, but still twenty five years later. But it's such a great movie. It's so funny, and I think it's a little feminist manifesto and the theme song is fantastic and very good to do at karaoke.

Oh yeah, I'm gonna get that in there. All happens when the power and potential of every employee and leader in your workforce is released, and corn Ferry can get you there by aligning your people to your strategy, attracting, developing, engaging, and rewarding them to reach new heights. With corn Ferry, you get a partner who truly understands people, leadership, and the new landscape of work, a partner who is going to take your Business Up. Learn more at corn Ferry

dot com slash up. All right, what's your your last clip? My last clip is from the classic film The Apartment starring Jack Lemon and Shirley McClain, largely considered to be one of the great comedies of the modern era. The clip I selected deals with the jargon that comes out of that very technocratic culture. And the thing I want you to listen to is how the suffix wise, like appointment wise or employee wise, is starting to be thrown around the office. And it's this kind of jargon that

people like to use to feel knowledgeable and special. And then what you start to see is that other people who are maybe lower down on the totem pole start to use it as well as a means to sort of gain entry into that rarefied echelon. Wise and Billy wise, we are eighteen percent ahead of last year October wise. Excuse me, hi plenty seven, Please carefully, you're carrying precious cargo. I've been wise seven. I realized it was public, but

I am in the top ten efficiency wise. And this maybe the day you're beginning to sound like Mr kurkul Be already again. This is a movie that is known for its sort of romantic qualities, but if you look not very far past it, it really gets into the world of work at this very male dominated, very sort

of corporate culture time. And it's a shame in this case that we're actually doing a podcast, I feel, because visually it's just like a sea of cubicles and you don't even like they don't even end, it just keeps going forever. I've never seen this movie. What struck me about the clip was how much people bought into the jargon so quickly they're speaking it like it doesn't sound completely ridiculous, which is exactly what happens with the jargon.

And the thing the movie shows is because our hero protagonist C. C. Baxter, is a young man trying to move his way up within the company, he takes on the speech patterns of his bosses. So speech becomes sort of a key into a hopefully a world that you want to be a part of, or almost like currency that you can use to show like, oh, yeah, I'm I'm with the higher ups here. I know how they speak.

So you mentioned that we couldn't see the movies, but one thing just watching all these clips as we were preparing for the show, was that how the aesthetics of the office really haven't changed that much. So you have a movie from the sixties, The Apartment, which is from the early eighties, and then Office Space, which I think was and I mean, except for the production quality, they could all be the era. It's cubical after cubical after cubical, planned, cubicles,

office workers. A lot of these same themes come up in all the movies. The only one that looks slightly more modern is The Devil Wares Proud Of But that's because they're out of Fashion magazine, and in fact, fashion magazine offices tend to be kind of very slick and cool and everything else. I do think that movies sometimes really overdo it on workplaces. So they go find like an amazingly cool looking place and they fill it with awesome furniture, and it's like that would never happen. It

would be a much cheaper arrangement. They kind of slap some stuff together because that just makes more sense financially. Yeah, I'm thinking of that movie The Intern, which came up when we were thinking of our clips. Yes, also with a Hathaway, Yes, and Hathaway is just a lot of movies. I watched Famous America Sweetheart. I have not seen The Intern unfortunately I saw it, fell asleep during it. But the office was striking to me. It's supposed to be a startup office, and it kind of looks like a

mock up of a startup office. It's really nice, right, they overdo it. It's like apartments on TV shows. Yeah, exactly, like Carrie Bradshaw and Sex in the City, although there was a recent article talking about how that's changed a little bit, Like if you look at the house and Insecure it is it looks like where they would live. Okay, good, good for a TV Yeah, TV's catching on. Yeah. So, speaking of TV, we're going to focus on that for

our half Baked Takes, Happy Fake Takes. So, Becca, do you have any partially formed ideas about television and its portrayal of the workplace. Here's my thought about people working and television shows. I remember any time I was watching a television show and my dad would walk into the room, he would say, what do these people do for a living? I think, to somehow, I don't know, delegitimize whatever I

was watching. Now, because of that, I'm quite a tune to what people do for a living on television shows and how often that they do it during shows, and it's actually more than you would think. For example, I'm watching rewatching Gilmore Girls to get ready for the new Netflix Gilmore Girls, and Laura, I'm one of the main characters, works in an inn, right, She's often in the inn

taking calls, like organizing things. She works. She works. No that her job makes up a considerable portion of that show, and I think that was rare at the time. I think it's gotten more common now. Anyway, what's yours? Okay, I'm going to make a recommendation which is semi work related. This is a little bit of a reach, but what the hell? Okay, So my exactly, exactly, my half baked take is a television recommendation something I really enjoy doing.

Um it is about a workplace, just probably one that none of us have ever seen the inner workings of. And that show is The Crown, which is currently available for streaming on Netflix, and it is a fictionalized but semi historically accurate portrayal of Queen Elizabeth the Second And it starts when she was just a princess and you follow her all the way through, and so there's lots

of stories being told. There are big political things happening, there are personal relationships, but you also just get a sense of how Buckingham Palace like functions, and how the office of the Queen functions and who are all of these different people. So it's a pretty extraordinary look inside

something that you know, I knew nothing about. I was gonna make some joke about like being a queen not being a real job, but real question, the staff of Buckingham Palace, that's a job, right, those are fine for that, oh, I mean and like some people who have those jobs are like very high in the social stratosphere of England. So it's it's not, you know, it's like it's a fancy job. It's not even like you would have to be have gone to university. You would have had being

a janitor at Buckingham Palace. You also have to have gone to Oxford, is what I'm I'm hearing. I'm gonna go with that. I'm gonna say that's totally true. Becca, Okay, I should watch The Crown. You should watch The Crown. It is a really great show. Clarifoy as Elizabeth is a wonder. It's really quite amazing and this has been half baked takes, half baked takes. Well, this has been a really fun show, a departure from our usual fair. I hope that you all had fun. Thanks for listening

to Game Plan. I'm Sam Grobart. If you want to find me on Twitter, look me up at Sam Grobart and I'm Rebecca Greenfield. You can find me on Twitter at rs Greenfield. And if you like what you're hearing, please rate and review our podcast on iTunes. This show has been produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Henrickson. The Head of podcast is Alec McCabe. Happy Thanksgiving, See you next week. Get the most from your people and send your business soaring with corn Ferry. From executive search to

talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and succession planning. Corn Ferry knows up is more than a direction, It's your future. Learn more at corn ferry dot com. Slash Up Busie on our show, Busie on our show, Game Plan, Game Plan Big on our show. I'm Sam. I'm Sam. I'm Sam Grobar. This seeg on our show this week on our show game Plan, game Plan. This seeg on our show this week on our show, I'm Rebecca Greenfield, about all we want to do. Yeah,