

Ask HN: Best movie about work/business? - devmonk

What do you think is the best movie about work/business?<p>(imo it's "Gung Ho". It's motivational, funny, and educational. "Office Space" is awesome, though.)
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petercooper
_Pirates of Silicon Valley_ is set in offices and workplaces to a great extent
and covers the early life of Apple and Microsoft. I've watched it a few times
and always enjoyed it.

I also thought _Boiler Room_ was pretty good. Some interesting work pep talks
(one potentially being Ben Affleck's best scene ever), office scenes, sales
calls, and insights into how empty the lives of the traders/scammers were
outside of work.

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joe_bleau
If you liked the recruiter's scenes from BR (as did I), be sure and watch
Glengarry Glen Ross.

~~~
petercooper
Whoa, I will. I seriously wrote that movie off in the past just based on the
title, thought it was some Scottish "Braveheart" type movie..

~~~
joe_bleau
That's funny, as I also avoided it for years based on the title (and Alec
Baldwin's presence).

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hga
_The Wall Street Journal_ pointed out that _Ghostbusters_ is great for
entrepreneurs.

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omarchowdhury
Blow. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221027/>

It looks more into the underlying psychology behind why we pursue things,
though.

The movie does look into these topics, albeit not directly on the surface, I
am extrapolating from my own experience from viewing it:

\- How partnerships are formed and broken

\- Why we pursue money, and the costs associated with it (depending on the
path we take)

\- The fact that there are no set rules when it comes to business, you create
your path

\- It's not only what you know, but who you know

\- What happens when the haters be hatin' (Feds and Colombians in this case)
... on a more serious note, I'm saying that you will always have opposition
when you start creating ripples

\- All business is arbitrage

\- Don't keep all your eggs in one basket

\- Your organization may take shape like a house of cards: if one card (an
employee, a certain contact, an investor, a certain code, etc) is not taken
care of, it could topple the whole operation

\- If the house of cards does topple, you can pick up some cards for your next
venture

I can go on and on. It's a great movie, and it's on Netflix Instant. Watch it.

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mechanical_fish
Seems like a circular question. _Office Space_ is a movie about work because
it _specifically defines itself_ as a movie about work. But when I nominate
(as I now will) _Apocalypse Now_ as a great movie about the experience of
being a soldier in Vietnam, everybody will look at me funny. As if soldiers
weren't professionals being paid to go to work.

Of course, I might be wrong about _Apocalypse Now_ , as I've never actually
been an infantryman in the Vietnam War. I have been a science grad student,
however, and I can say without hesitation that _Real Genius_ is the
_Apocalypse Now_ of graduate school. Even the physically-impossible hacker
tall tales in that movie are note-perfect.

EDIT: More examples. _Adaptation_ is very much a movie about being a
professional screenwriter. And there are dozens of movies about being a
professional cop, musician, athlete, reporter, or artist.

~~~
mixu
And Swordfish is a great movie about being a hacker... specifically the common
recruiting process.

On a more serious note, I do agree with you. Some decent movies with a office
environment/work theme: Boiler Room (2000), Duplicity (2009), Glengarry Glen
Ross, Other People's Money (1991), Swimming with Sharks and Wall Street
(1987).

I've also enjoyed the dramatized real-life stories in Rogue Trader and
Barbarians at The Gate.

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angrycoder
Office Space for humor. Wall Street for drama.

~~~
glork
Seconded on both. I also enjoyed The Social Network.

On documentaries, I highly recommend Code Rush, a story of Netscape. It's
actually in full here (scroll down to The Film):
<http://clickmovement.org/coderush>

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rmason
It's a bit dated now but Startup.com: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/>
Pretty good documentary on what it was like to be inside a high flying late
nineties venture funded startup before the balloon burst

~~~
joshbert
Yeah, it was an interesting film. Specially insightful if you weren't around
the scene when the bubble burst, but want to know how things were like from an
insider's perspective.

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karanbhangui
the new Social Network movie is pretty damn good. Doesn't exactly focus on the
work side, but it has some good cues on business strategies and the social
side related to SV.

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aspir
"Extract" is a great manufacturing/blue collar work movie. It's also a Mike
Judge (Office Space) movie, so it is quite hilarious.

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ashleyreddy
Glengarry Glen Ross ABC Always Be Closing!

I'm dating my self here but Risky Business.

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Mz
I tend to be fond of movies based on true stories. For true stories about
people who set an impossible-sounding goal and accomplished it, I will
nominate "October Sky" and "Cool Runnings". Neither has an office setting. The
first is about a young man who did not want to end up a coal miner, like his
father. He and some friends began making rockets and managed to parley that
into college scholarships. IIRC, he ultimately ended up working for NASA. The
second is about the origin of the first Jamaican bobsled team (that went to
the Olympics).

Hopefully, people will see how this might be relevant to folks wanting to
found a new business. Office Space is a good movie but is now kind of
disturbing to me as someone who currently works in cubicleville. I think of it
as "dire warning" rather than "inspiration".

