“Rich dramatic territory to explore…”

It’s my job to be cleaning up this mess
And that’s enough reason to go for me
It’s My Job
Mac McAnally

A couple weeks ago I touched on Mark Boal’s Oscar-nominated script for The Hurt Locker which deals with a group of guys whose job is on a bomb squad during the war in Iraq. It was a fresh angle to cover dramatically.  The Messenger is another Oscar-nominated script that also finds a fresh angle to the war, that of the officers who must report the death of a soldier to the next of kin.

“We quickly learned, by all accounts of the officers we spoke to and read about, that casualty notification is one of the most difficult jobs in the military—more difficult, some of them argued, than going into combat. This makes for rich dramatic territory to explore. If there’s one thing I know as a writer, it’s that you can always tell a story about someone doing a job. It can be a job with built-in conflict and high stakes (that’s why movies and shows about cops, doctors and lawyers keep getting made); it can be a prosaic job, seen in unique ways (taxi driver, mailman, gigolo); and if the job is unusual, thankless and dangerous—delivering death notices, firing other people, defusing bombs—one can immediately engage the audience’s curiosity and dread.”
Alessandro Camon (co-screenwriter of The Messenger)
MovieMaker magazine
February 3. 2010

What are some of your favorite movies that show work in a unique way?

Scott W. Smith