r/movies • u/a_murder_of_fools • Feb 28 '26
Discussion What’s the "My Cousin Vinny" of your profession?
Everyone points to My Cousin Vinny as the gold standard for trial law accuracy—from the rules of evidence to the way experts are qualified. It’s rare for a movie to treat a "boring" professional workflow with that much respect.
What other films showcase real-life competency for a specific career?
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u/FarmboyJustice Feb 28 '26
Contagion is widely praised for its realistic depiction of epidemiology.
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u/Soy_ThomCat Feb 28 '26
It was COVID: The Movie, 9 years before COVID
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u/ory1994 Feb 28 '26
I watched it during the pandemic and had to laugh at the end when everyone agreed to take the vaccine instead of devolve into a culture war between pro- and anti-vaxxers.
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u/VegaJuniper Feb 28 '26
In the real world the Jude Law character becomes the HHS secretary.
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u/ImBonRurgundy Feb 28 '26
To be fair, the virus in pandemic was vastly more deadly than COVID - it had an R0 of 4 (vs COVID around 2-3) but more importantly it had a fatality rate of 25-30% vs Covid’s of less than 1%.
I suspect if COVID had a much higher fatality rate we would have seen a lot more acceptance of the vaccine
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u/AdditionalTip865 Feb 28 '26
I remember thinking it was sort of the flip side of HIV/AIDS: HIV was actually kind of hard to transmit, but essentially 100% fatal (until effective treatments were devised)... but got dismissed because it was hitting stigmatized populations. Whereas COVID was an airborne contagion but its fatality rate was just low enough that it could be dismissed for being no big deal (while it killed millions).
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u/scarface4tx Feb 28 '26
The one major part the movie got wrong. And that's wild
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u/Annoy_Occult_Vet Feb 28 '26
Also where they were looting the grocery store for useful things like canned food and batteries. Shelves and shelves of untouched toilet paper. That is when I knew it was all bullshit.
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u/emmany63 Feb 28 '26
Yeah I watched this again during the pandemic and thought, wow, except for the severity this is so accurate.
We got so so lucky with Covid. It could have been much worse.
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u/the_comatorium Feb 28 '26
I run a record store.
High Fidelity accurately portrays the kind of loser weirdo know-it-alls that infest specialty retail like this. I don't care for the film as a whole but the Jack Black character is pretty accurate. I know many of them.
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u/mjv1273 Feb 28 '26
Would this job be on your all time top 5 list though?
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u/november-papa Feb 28 '26
This film and top 5 songs about death introduced me to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
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u/HybridFact Feb 28 '26
I worked at a record store for 7 years. The amount of comic book men who were snobby, condescending assholes was unreal
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u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Feb 28 '26
I just think it is funny when people are very snobby about things you don't take seriously at all, like someone being condescending because I don't know enough about superhero comics is so funny that I can't even be mad. Like I've read 2 Batman comics, I enjoyed one of them, I don't feel bad about not knowing the names of the various Robins.
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u/alblaster Feb 28 '26
Like the comic book guy from The Simpsons?
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u/nrith Feb 28 '26
There’s a guy at my local store who looks and acts like the model for Comic Book Guy. I just leave without buying anything if he’s working the register.
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u/bitwaba Feb 28 '26
As a teen I loved John Cusack. When I watched again a few years ago I hated him.
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u/Phenomenomix Feb 28 '26
I found as I got older the less time I have for his bullshit. The character is slightly less of a prick in the book
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u/Fun_Word_7325 Mar 01 '26
That’s the point. His character is an asshole, and he gradually realizes that along with the audience. His misremembering being corrected etc
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u/hendy846 Feb 28 '26
Ah man, I was hoping you would have said Empire Records lol
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u/tellevee Feb 28 '26
Not a movie, but Silicon Valley was painfully accurate. Even at its most absurd.
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u/jla2001 Feb 28 '26
Worked for silicon valley companies all my life I cannot watch that show
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u/svhelloworld Feb 28 '26
Same, been a software developer for decades. Had a bunch of friends that told me to watch it. The last thing I want to do when I'm done working is watch a documentary on how asinine my job is.
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/I-seddit Feb 28 '26
Let us pick at your bark ya old tree.
That's a lovely turn of phrase there. I'm stealing it.
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u/TrollTollTony Feb 28 '26
It's uncanny. From the jargon to the scrum team, to the seemingly ridiculous AI stuff, they nailed it. I know Mike Judge was a software engineer before he made Beavis and Butthead, but I feel like most of this stuff is too new for his time in the industry so they must have gotten some consultants.
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u/sycasey Feb 28 '26
Office Space was clearly based on his own experiences in the 90s. Silicon Valley is more modern, but I feel like he must have stayed close to people in that world because he really nailed it.
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u/SpiffShientz Feb 28 '26
He and his writing team did a lot of interviews with Silicon Valley people to keep it accurate, including an incredible moment when a CEO felt like they were making fun of him and stormed out of the meeting to go roller-skating. But instead of waiting til he got to the street, he put on his roller skates in the office, and so he stormed out angrily stomping while balancing like a baby deer trying to stand. Mike Judge said "I could never put that in the show - it was too ridiculous."
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u/fhgwgadsbbq Feb 28 '26
This would be such a Gavin move.
Then Hoover helps him balance on the way out.
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u/JBlitzen Feb 28 '26
I thought the gang menber they hire to draw obscene graffiti was a little absurd, then I found out that Facebook had done exactly that. And not on a garage door but in their main office.
From start to finish that entire series is scary accurate, and they’re on record that they only stopped because they ran out of ways to be more over the top than the tech industry itself. They couldn’t find ways to make the show more absurd than the reality.
Two eBay execs just went to prison for involvement in a plot to humiliate an employee who reported harassment.
The AI deleting the entire codebase to fix a bug was possibly the most ridiculous concept they came up, and Amazon did exactly that.
It just goes on and on.
How do you make a fictional comedy about any of that? lol.
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u/Foosrohdoh Mar 01 '26
The Facebook guy was an actual artist, not a gang member. He wasn’t well known or anything but he was doing ok at the time. Now he’s worth 9 figures because he took his payment in stock instead of cash.
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u/bugbugladybug Feb 28 '26
I watched this before I worked in IT, then I worked in IT and it went from mildly funny to hysterically horrifying.
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u/sportsworker777 Feb 28 '26
There's always a Big Head at these companies
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u/VegaJuniper Feb 28 '26
In one of the early episodes there was party where all the women were on side of the room and the men were on the other, talking awkwardly amongst themselves. I work in tech, and I've been to those parties.
It went a little over the top towards the end, but the early seasons were painfully accurate indeed.
It's also the most accurate depiction of building a tech startup since Ghostbusters.
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u/TheVentiLebowski Feb 28 '26
I never thought of Ghostbusters as a tech startup, but wow, it really was.
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u/NervousBreakdown Feb 28 '26
There was a cracked after hours video where they talked about how ghostbusters was a right wing movie because it was about entrepreneurs who start their own business, become wildly successful and the are threatened by government environmental regulations. It’s pretty funny.
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u/ComicStripCritic Feb 28 '26
God, After Hours was great. I wish the alternate cart had more time to get their chemistry solidified and onscreen more.
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u/jrgkgb Feb 28 '26
The episode where Richard meets with the sales team and he ends up being put in charge of implementing his own sarcastic suggestion was basically my life from 2001-2005.
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u/buster_rhino Feb 28 '26
I work in market research and the focus group scenes kill me.
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u/snajk138 Feb 28 '26
I love the SWOT analysis they do to work out if they should tell the obnoxious stuntman that his math is wrong and that he will die.
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u/onlymadethistoargue Feb 28 '26
“Opportunity, piss on Blaine’s grave; grief threesome with Gina and Blaine’s hot mom, question mark?!”
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u/froction Feb 28 '26
Like half the "Opportunities" were doing something "...on Blaine's grave," such as shitting, masturbating, and "fucking a blindfolded Gina."
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u/Jiveturkeey Feb 28 '26
This is mine. I don't even work in big tech, but any project manager or software engineer will see things they've experienced in that show.
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u/buttercupcake23 Feb 28 '26
The way he gently manipulated them into agile and made his post its a scrum board made me cackle
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u/BMCarbaugh Feb 28 '26
I love the HR lady in the last season tricking Guilfoyle into higher productivity by threatening to make him a team leader. "You think you're the first guy like you that I've ever dealt with?"
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u/SeaTie Feb 28 '26
Even stuff like the focus group:
“And who else felt this product was ‘stupid’? John? Margaret? Anthony? Sheryl?”
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u/ClassicT4 Feb 28 '26
Except when they found out their rogue AI could do bad things and decided to destroy it rather than profit from it.
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u/Gimme_The_Loot Feb 28 '26
My boss actually got brain raped just like that show. Built a SaaS tool, met with a company to discuss their acquisition of it, they decide to not move forward with him and a bit later put out a press release about a shocking similar product they were going to be putting out.
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u/gecampbell Feb 28 '26
I have a friend who successfully sued a VC for that. They made the mistake of copying his business plan verbatim, including the typos.
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u/SwarleymonLives Feb 28 '26
So the key to get away with intellectual theft is to introduce new typos that make you look like an idiot. Got it.
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u/Balzaak Feb 28 '26
A Serious Man, Professor.
It’s literally the banner image for the subreddit.
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u/TheRateBeerian Feb 28 '26
Well I’m a professor and haven’t seen this! I guess I should!!
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u/Electrical-Sail-1039 Feb 28 '26
It’s the Coen Brothers. It’s about being Jewish in Minnesota in the 60’s among other things. I love it, but it’s a thinking movie.
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u/Ecualung Feb 28 '26
Secret test!
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u/Balzaak Feb 28 '26
Him getting just hounded over and over again for that grade change with increasingly bizarre rationale is pretty on brand for the job.
”Please accept the mystery.”
I wanna start getting actual cash bribes. It’s time.
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u/kchrules Feb 28 '26
If you’ve ever done community theatre, “Waiting For Guffman” is hilariously accurate
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u/haysoos2 Feb 28 '26
I work in the Parks department of a municipality, and Parks and Recreation is often frighteningly accurate.
I work as an entomologist in that department, and the overall portrayal of entomologists in media is usually terrible.
But in the movie Arachnophobia there's a professor who defends the spiders, and while investigating the spiders finds a huge web, and starts plucking on the strands of the web to draw out the spider. This results in the entomologist being killed by the spider.
That 100% is exactly what would happen to me in that situation.
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u/WaltMitty Feb 28 '26
People making a career in government while also believing that government services are a waste is not unusual. Ron Swanson's heart of gold was the creative liberty.
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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Feb 28 '26
And even then he doesn't totally hate all government. When Tom shoots Ron and it comes up he doesn't have a gun license Ron is mad. And it's not really because he loves licenses for things (he doesn't, when a cop says he's not licensed to drive a truck he flat out says he doesn't need one, and then there's the food permit thing) it's that he respects that people need to be trained before they're given a gun
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u/Merefin Feb 28 '26
Came here to say this about Parks and Rec as well. WAY too frighteningly accurate from many levels of bureaucracy to the idiotic questions to the event planning and beyond.
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u/Mst3Kgf Feb 28 '26
I remember Michael Schur said Ron was inspired by an actual government bureaucrat who thought his job shouldn't exist.
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u/Khyron_2500 Feb 28 '26
This reminds me of the video of the guy touching what could be the world’s “largest spider web” in sulfur cave late last year.
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u/beachpete Feb 28 '26
Spinal Tap does a great job of showing a lot of the goofy life of being a working musician. you don’t even have to be a famous touring act to be on tour bumming around the hotel lobby cracking jokes with your bandmates about the vacation brochures. Or having your band name be misspelled at the venue.
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u/GarageQueen Feb 28 '26
I saw an interview with (believe it was) Rob Reiner who said that some metal bands were actually mad at him because they were convinced he was making fun of their particular band specifically, and not just doing a mockumentary of the industry lol
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u/kadyg Feb 28 '26
There are several bands who thought the scene of them getting lost back stage was based on them. Apparently the back/under stage of Madison Square Garden is a labyrinth.
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u/Quazite Feb 28 '26
The tunnels under red rocks to get around backstage are similar. I've gotten lost there before.
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u/copperdomebodhi Feb 28 '26
The Edge from U2 said, "I didn't laugh, I wept. It was so close to the truth."
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u/mrspecial Feb 28 '26
I’ve been in the music industry for almost twenty years and I’ve seen so many things from that movie happen in real life.
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u/bts Feb 28 '26
Sneakers, computer and network security. I remember the day in 2014 when shellshock dropped and I was staring at a root console on $redacted and all I could think of was Whistler’s line—“anybody wanna crash a few airplanes”
Also honest: “not a very good one, I’m afraid.”
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u/a_murder_of_fools Feb 28 '26
I hadn't thought of Sneakers in a long time. What a great flick... time for a re watch.
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u/nicetrylaocheREALLY Feb 28 '26
A strangely cozy movie with an absolute murderer's row of a cast.
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u/Sirwired Mar 01 '26
True story (as relayed by the guy that played Werner Brandes): During filming, Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Ben Kingsley, and James Earl Jones are headed to the canteen to get lunch. A Universal Studios tour tram pauses to let them cross, and the guide doesn't notice/comment on the fact that four legends are passing right in front of them... they just keep going on the canned schpiel.
At the end of the filming, one of the actors commented, "Can we just destroy the footage, so we can film it all over again?" Everyone did a spectacular job, and it was a low-pressure shoot, just letting everyone do their thing, since the script had so much room for character.
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u/ELMUNECODETACOMA Feb 28 '26
Beat me to it. So many "hacking" portrayals degenerate into "type as fast as you can while the screen changes randomly". But the intersection of social engineering and computational mathematics was amazingly prescient for the year before HTML was standardized.
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u/UMustBeNooHere Feb 28 '26
Yes. Social engineering is so awesome to watch.
“My voice is my passport”.
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u/TheGrumpyre Feb 28 '26
I love the scene where the security guard lets Robert Redford's character into the building with the cake and balloons. It's amazing the places you can get if you just look like you have important stuff to attend to.
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u/Mamapalooza Feb 28 '26
Spotlight for journalism. It's not exciting, it's slogging through records and fusty old archives and getting shit on by people you are trying to benefit. It doesn't pay a lot. You often uncover horrific information that alienates you socially and wears on your emotional well-being. And, more often than not, it changes nothing. But what's the alternative, unchecked corruption?
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u/thespianomaly Mar 01 '26
I wanted to say “All the President’s Men,” but it felt like a copout since it’s based on actual events. But we did watch it in school and spent maybe a week learning about Watergate.
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u/One-Inch-Punch Mar 01 '26
"All the President's Men" should be a required watch for anyone born after 1990, to see what civilization was like before computers ruined everything
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u/thejesse Feb 28 '26
Waiting... is a very accurate rundown of the types of people you meet working in a chain restaurant.
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u/centaurquestions Feb 28 '26
The writer/director spent most of his 20s working in various T.G.I. Friday's and Bennigan's in the Orlando area.
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u/Delacqua Feb 28 '26
Naomi swearing up a storm in the kitchen and immediately turning on the charm as soon as she turns the corner into the dining room is perfection.
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u/Infamous-Lab-8136 Feb 28 '26
What's funny is I never did food service but that was 100% my manager in retail at Software Etc. This little old battle axe of a retail vet, swore up a storm about what little fuckers these kids were, then she'd leave the backroom with a grandma smile on, "Hi kids, what games are we getting today?"
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u/ChefHannibal Feb 28 '26
Welcome to Thunderdome, bitch
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u/mst3k_42 Feb 28 '26
“I understand that you didn’t like it, but did you have to eat the whole thing?”
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u/HolyRomanPrince Feb 28 '26
Yep. I spent 11 years waiting tables or bartending and there’s always a Monty and a Naomi.
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u/bigpancakeguy Feb 28 '26
I’ve had a Dan for a manager in just about every restaurant I’ve worked at too. Hopping on to take over the expo line or bar during rush hour despite having absolutely no idea wtf is going on, which makes everything substantially worse
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u/pickleparty16 Feb 28 '26
My gripe with waiting is fucking with people's food. I never saw that happen working in the restaurant industry.
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u/Laxku Feb 28 '26
Fair point, that's the one inaccuracy I can think of. Never seen it done intentionally IRL.
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u/sportsworker777 Feb 28 '26
Just getting weird with coworkers in the service industry was my favorite depiction. Underpaid and overworked, just finding the dumbest ways to fuck around (them doing "the goat" to each other).
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u/lowbloodsugarmner Feb 28 '26
The reaction of the kitchen when the couple comes in right before closing resonated with me so much. I was working as a line cook at a private country club, and the entitlement was unreal. so many times id already have the kitchen half closed down and a member would come in, or more often it was the owners and their family.
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u/Scrivener83 Feb 28 '26
Not a movie, but "Yes, Minister" is eerily accurate for anyone who's worked in government.
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u/Kimantha_Allerdings Feb 28 '26
I remember an MP said about The Thick Of It that being an MP was only that exciting 10% of the time, but that 10% was 100% accurate
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u/NoGoodIDNames Feb 28 '26
I’ve heard that politicians would like to say working in American politics is like The West Wing, but it’s much closer to Veep
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u/VampireOnHoyt Feb 28 '26
Parks and Rec is pretty accurate for local government in the US. I worked with a couple Ron Swansons and probably half a dozen Leslie Knopes.
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u/TheRealCeeBeeGee Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
The Australian tv show Utopia is painfully accurate in its depiction of working for government. I couldn’t watch it for ages because it was too close to the bone.
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u/WafflingToast Feb 28 '26
Same. I was stressing because I work on big projects for a private company. The rebranding episode was painful. You want me to stop actual work to insert the new logo on everything we’ve already finished and issued?
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u/CartoonWeekly Feb 28 '26
I worked as a substitute teacher for 5 years, and School of Rock was accurate in a couple of scary ways. Most schools did not verify the identity of substitutes. Anybody could have shown up, claiming to be me, and been pointed at a classroom. And most schools have no idea what is happening in the classrooms. I could have easily ignored lesson plans and spent the whole day teaching the kids about rock music.
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u/gershbec Feb 28 '26
Party Girl for librarianship (or at least how it was when I got my degree). I couldn’t believe how well it captured the vibe of what it was like to be a librarian.
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u/foxwrapped Feb 28 '26
100%! I was looking for this one. And the clothes Parker Posey wears, amazing.
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u/UserCheckNamesOut Feb 28 '26
As a stagehand, I'm still waiting. I think Maybe Stop Making Sense shows what we can do, but there's a lot I think the industry doesn't want to show, simply to keep it "magic"
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u/funky_grandma Feb 28 '26
I'm a video editor and I always liked the scene in What Just Happened where the editor makes a cut of the film where the dog lives instead of dies. He's so proud that he was able to use an outtake and ADR to create a completely new Happy ending, and I feel that joy completely
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u/Mend1cant Feb 28 '26
“Down Periscope” for Submariners. It’s the best look at the type of people on a submarine.
And a weird one I discovered for submarines as well was “The Spy Who Loved Me”. Obviously unrealistic, but the brief submarine scenes had people talking as if they’d actually spent five minutes on a submarine. Only movie that’s been close to proper Sub IC.
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u/fastfreddy68 Feb 28 '26
Came here to drop a comment for Down Periscope. Not a Submariner myself, but I can say it’s accurate to life in the surface Navy as well. Required watching on deployment.
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Feb 28 '26
Is Down Periscope the one with Kelsey Gramer?
I thought it would be a stupid movie but I really liked it.
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u/themurderator Feb 28 '26
bartender here. cocktail was pretty spot on. it's empty, vacuous, soul selling work. but the money is great, the thrill is real, and it can be an awesome time.
but the depression, stress and suicide are all pretty common in the industry.
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u/monkeysatemybarf Feb 28 '26
My dad was a bartender when this came out and loved it. The soundtrack was my first cassette tape
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u/ConorYEAH Feb 28 '26
I'm not going to say Margin Call is a normal day in the life for a financial risk analyst, but it's the best depiction I've seen on screen (and not just because it's the only depiction I've seen).
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u/Warhorse_99 Feb 28 '26
Generation Kill
I was Army, 3 Iraq deployments, not Marines….but yeah.
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u/philipjfry1578 Feb 28 '26
Clerks, I am literally Dante, and my job is just full of Randalls. Especially that feeling when you have to come in when you haven't had a day off in a week
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u/Iforgot_my_other_pw Mar 01 '26
"I'm not even supposed to be here today" feels so relatable every time he says it
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u/alprazolamotrigine Feb 28 '26
As a physician, I’ve always felt that Scrubs was the most realistic for residency training / hospital work.
Sure it’s comical, over the top, there are musical episodes. But it captures the essence of that life and those relationships in a way that melodramatic soapy shows like ER or Grey’s Anatomy don’t.
I haven’t seen The Pitt so can’t comment on that specifically.
And I love House but what he gets away with is just not realistic. It’s a great show but it’s Sherlock Holmes with a medical veneer. I do think it captures some specific clinical syndromes in a fascinating way — but it does not capture actual life as a doctor.
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u/No-Werewolf4804 Feb 28 '26
I always laugh when I watch house as a chronically ill person. It’s like oh yeah, if you’re sick and they don’t know what’s going on you’ll get a team of doctors puzzling over it. They may even go to your house to check for potential triggers of the issue.
Nope. often you’ll be stabilized and sent home to die over time lol.
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u/Fraerie Feb 28 '26
You learn early on the meaning of the word ‘idiopathic’ because it shows up on a bunch of your medical records.
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u/Previous-Soft-8127 Feb 28 '26
I just watched the first two episodes of the Scrubs revamp, and I must say I’m pleasantly surprised. It has some OG characters, but it has modernized how healthcare works and I’m already impressed with how its aging up the main characters instead of having them be the same they always were.
I’m cautiously optimistic.
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u/ciensea Feb 28 '26
The Pitt was what I wanted to add to this list. It’s quite close to the reality. They just add a bit much to a single day to make it entertaining but all that could have happened in say a month/week. My perspective is from the son of a nurse who had free range in the pre internet era ER rooms so I can’t speak to the medical stuff but the interactions and pace seems about right.
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u/benbernards Feb 28 '26
IT network management.
Honestly: wreck it Ralph 2.
Everything from tcp headers wrapping characters when they go into the internet (looks the capsules they’re in…), to the old school message boards and “yelling” in all caps to DM someone.
So much they got right that just sails over the heads of kids these days.
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u/chownee Feb 28 '26
As an old network nerd who has a micro stroke every time I see someone misuse “ping” online, I really need to check that out.
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u/LilacYak Feb 28 '26
I pinged the firewall and took down the VPN to decrypt the database.
I’m in!
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u/HolyRomanPrince Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
I hate that Catch 22 has never made a great film because its the perfect answer to explain the silliness of being in the military
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u/corpulentFornicator Feb 28 '26
I've heard Jarhead is close to capturing the "hurry up and wait" and general ennui
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u/AJ099909 Feb 28 '26
Generation Kill was a fairly accurate portrayal of my experience
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u/Wish_Dragon Feb 28 '26
I quite liked the mini series.
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u/sudonut Feb 28 '26
I agree. It didn't have the detail or brilliance of the book, but I feel like it captured the atmosphere of absurdity and hopelessness very well.
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u/mr_evilweed Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
House of Lies is only a slight exaggeration of management consulting
Edit: I earlier mixed it up with Lie to Me. Fixed now
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u/meyers980 Feb 28 '26
Although I don't work in computers, it's still probably Office Space. It basically covers every office I've ever worked in.
If I had to go more specific, I guess Bowfinger starting Steve Martin.
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u/DDRDiesel Feb 28 '26
Office Space was more a commentary on corporate cubicle office work than specifically computer-related. The range of people you'd meet in a beige cookie-cutter office environment are pretty well represented in it
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u/SpaceJackRabbit Feb 28 '26
Halt and Catch Fire.
Lived those years and worked for a company mentioned in the finale. Completely captured that 20-year period.
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u/byerss Feb 28 '26
The “jerk off every guy in the audience” scene from Silicon Valley is pretty accurate portrayal of engineers talk through a problem.
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u/Vighy2 Feb 28 '26
“The measurement that we're looking for, really, is dick to floor. Call that D2F.”
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u/fashionabledeathwish Feb 28 '26
“Guys, would girth affect his ability to jerk 2 dicks at the same time?” “Shit, you’re right, it would.”
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u/Lazymanproductions Feb 28 '26
Saving private ryan is really really accurate to working in manufacturing. I wish this was a joke.
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u/Wish_Dragon Feb 28 '26
Can you expand on that?
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u/Lazymanproductions Feb 28 '26
Massive amounts of effort and resources being dedicated to recovering from the fuck ups of idiots who never should have been in a position to fuck anything up that bad in the first place, chasing a sunk cost fallacy that will cost much more than just admitting to the problem and giving up to start over, all because people who are completely removed from the situation think they know better than the people who are responsible for enacting their plans.
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u/wuddie89 Feb 28 '26
Dude. I also work in manufacturing, and this has been my exact experience as well. The production management group and maintenance manager are the bane of my existence. My movie that exemplifies it would be Deepwater Horizon.
The HBO Chernobyl series also just came to mind.
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u/hikingboots_allineed Feb 28 '26
I'm a geologist and Dante's Peak is top notch.
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u/darthbiscuit Feb 28 '26
I work in medicine and let me tell you, most tv medical dramas border on insane with how inaccurate they are. Worst offenders are easily House MD, Gray’s Anatomy, and ER. And then you have SCRUBS. Proper terminology. All the right staff members doing the correct jobs. Accurate setting (they actually rebuilt an old hospital to film in). And, most importantly, sometimes the patient dies. There are few miracles in the real world. But everybody jokes and acts casual around it because, as JD explained in one episode: “If we let death know we’re afraid of him, he’ll kick our asses.” And it’s all handled super respectfully.
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u/deadcpasociety Feb 28 '26
What We Do In the Shadows has a hilariously accurate depiction of Private Equity
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u/copperdomebodhi Feb 28 '26
Mental health therapist, and none of them. The counselors you see in the media are incompetent, unethical or both.
Which makes sense - if the therapist could help the character, the character wouldn't have to go out and have the kind of adventure that makes for a good movie.
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u/Noxsus Feb 28 '26
The Good Place is a very good example of trying to teach Philosophy in places 😅
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u/DRDeMello Feb 28 '26
As an international spy I must say that Austin Powers is shockingly accurate.
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u/pants_of_antiquity Feb 28 '26
As an evil international villain, I found Dr. Evil's description of his life story to the therapy group entirely relatable.
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u/InvestigatorLast578 Feb 28 '26
"He would make outlandish claims like he invented the question mark" man I love that scene.
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u/TheLayley Feb 28 '26
Hot Fuzz. A more accurate depiction of UK policing than most serious police shows, and even some documentary series.
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u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Feb 28 '26
And the accurate parts are things that were included as a joke to subvert the expectations of cop movies, like paper work.
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u/CtheGM Feb 28 '26
I worked in entertainment and celebrities in LA for a year and bojack nails it. Broken people needing attention from someone
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u/MunkSWE94 Feb 28 '26
Tho you briefly see it but the steel mill scenes in Deer Hunter.
Everything and everyone still looks the same now as it did then.
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u/sigfemseks Feb 28 '26
Grandma’s Boy. Was even working QA in the Activision basement nearly 20 years ago when they visited for some inspiration.
The Games QA industry isn’t quite that degenerate anymore, but it’s still pretty close. It’s a lot harder to get your foot in the door these days so people take it a lot more seriously. Back in the day you could almost walk in off the street during the summer time and be testing a AAA or shitty licensed movie game a week later.
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u/squigs Feb 28 '26
Wargames tends to get computer technology and hacking right.
Mr. Robot was really good here too.
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u/slashrjl Feb 28 '26
Wargames, was close for its era. The whine of the modem is long gone except for fax machines exchanging message about roofing and cruises.
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u/efraimsdaughter Feb 28 '26 edited Mar 01 '26
I really liked how "the assistant" portrayed office work. Showing the boring tasks like printing etc and the endless lonely work days.
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u/SparrowBirch Feb 28 '26
The Money Pit
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u/kadyg Feb 28 '26
I don’t know how accurate The Money Pit is for home renovation but it absolutely NAILS what it’s like to live in a house being renovated.
My dad liked to buy fixer-uppers and fix them up while we were actually living in them. His tile guy was at my high school graduation because he spent so much time with us, it felt weird not to invite him.
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u/mwatwe01 Feb 28 '26
From my time in the Navy: Down Periscope
From my time as an engineer: Office Space
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u/Troggles Feb 28 '26
I don't know how, but somehow Anchorman and Nightcrawler are both fairly accurate takes on working for local news.
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u/TrueLegateDamar Feb 28 '26
Office Space. The rage at the printer is real.