weirdly normal jobs in movies

[Moreau]

'ninja III: the domination' came up in another topic recently, so i thought i would check it out. pretty entertaining, but one of its curious little details is that the main character, christie, works as a telecomms engineer (with a sideline in aerobics). there's no reason for this, it's just what she does. it makes a nice change from the usual cop/private investigator/journalist/spy/egyptologist/assassin/cowboy/shaolin monk-type jobs that most characters in genre cinema seem to have.


anybody else got any favourite characters in bad movies with weirdly normal jobs (or any other trivial domestic detail)? or do you guys ignore these scenes and only pay attention when the alien invasions/beheadings/martial arts contests begin?

[Trevor]

or do you guys ignore these scenes and only pay attention when the alien invasions/beheadings/martial arts contests begin?

Well, I'm a film archivist, so that can pretty much be described as a weirdly nornal job. 

[Moreau]

and a "poo underpants inspector" as well, apparently.

what about characters who are supposed to have jobs, but weirdly never seem to do any work? like dr watson from the sherlock holmes stories.

[retrorussell]

Kirstie Alley (back when she wasn't fat) had a job that was never even described in Village Of The Damned (1995).  She was just some doctor that had a fetus in a jar.  The kids made her cut herself open.

[Moreau]

it's been a while since i saw that. isn't kirstie alley some kind of research doctor, working for the government? but you're right; it's kind of vague and irrelevant.

[AndyC]

I was just thinking the other side of that is the hyper-normal job, or maybe the everyman job is a better term. That would be just as cliched a list of jobs people are given to give them regular-guy status, usually something requiring minimal education, so people will underestimate their obvious intelligence. Construction worker, waitress, auto mechanic (of the greasemonkey variety), security guard, anything in retail, unemployed. These can be used in either a serious attempt to make a character people can relate to (maybe add a bit of class struggle to the story), or it can be deliberately ironic.

Funny, when I try to come up with somebody who doesn`t have an exciting job or a deliberately ordinary job, I`m coming up blank. It`s a good question - how many characters just have an average job for no particular reason other than realism?

I suppose the third option is the generic job - people who put on a shirt and tie in the morning and run out the door to do who-knows-what, talk about meetings, accounts, clients or what have you, but give no details. Quite a lot of those around.

[dean]

Ash in Army of Darkness working at S-mart. 

Shop smart, shop S-Mart!

[Moreau]

in the 1980 flash gordon, dale arden is a travel agent

[Flick James]

"Wierdly normal" is a bit of an oxymoron, isn't it?

However, this thread does give me an idea for a movie:

KILLER CLAIMS ADJUSTERS FROM OUTER SPACE

[zombie no.one]

Superman (journalist)

[Moreau]

one of the reasons 'repo man' (1984) is so great is that it takes a banal job and turns it into the basis of a crazy and compelling film.

[lester1/2jr]

I'm struggling to understand the concept of the thread 

[retrorussell]

it's been a while since i saw that. isn't kirstie alley some kind of research doctor, working for the government? but you're right; it's kind of vague and irrelevant.

Yeah, they never really specified... I still liked that film quite a bit though.

[joejoeherron]

In the "Death Wish" movies, Charles Bronson played a character who was an architect by day,vigilante by night.

[Moreau]

I'm struggling to understand the concept of the thread 

the 'weirdly normal jobs in movies' topic is like jazz: if you have to ask, you're never going to know.

i was talking to this woman at a party, turned out she was a ballet teacher. all i could think about was 'suspiria'; she terminated the conversation pretty quickly.