30 Movies Featuring the Workplace, In Honor of Labor Day Weekend

Movie #25: Fashion Games – The Devil Wears Prada

Year – 2006

From the book of the same name, Anne Hathaway faces off against Meryl Streep (playing a character rumored to have been inspired by infamous editor Anna Wintour) in the story of a sweet, naive dreamer who lands her dream job, save for the boss from hell. In what is essentially a film you’d resort to watching on a long flight, Streep demonstrates that she can make lemonade out of the sourest of lemons. – DG

Movie #26: Workplace Screwball – His Girl Friday

Year – 1940

If you wondered why the characters in #21 (Hudsucker Proxy) talked the way they did look no further than His Girl Friday, quite possibly the greatest of all the “Screwball Comedies”. Cary Grant stars as a hard-boiled newspaper editor. Rosalind Russell plays his ex-wife and former star reporter. When she drops by to announce her impending nuptials, Grant decides to sabotage her plans by luring her back to cover one last story.

The film features witty, rapid-fire dialog. The actors talk over each other constantly. So much so that the filmmakers actually wrote their lines so certain portions of sentences were unnecessary. The audio on these superfluous parts would then be lowered so the audience could hear the parts of the other actor’s dialog that were…um, “fluous”? How about “important”? Let’s go with “important”.

Oh, and multi-track recording had not yet been invented. So there was a sound mixer on set to turn the microphones on and off as required for a scene; sometimes as many as 35 times. – TOK

Movie #27: Faking Your Way to the Top – Working Girl

Year – 1988

Directed by Mike Nichols, Working Girl tells the story of a small-town girl skipping a few rungs on the corporate ladder thanks to a skiing accident. Melanie Griffith humanizes a character that could have easily gone one-note, while Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford give fun, comedic performances outside of their usual wheel houses. – DG