filming about infrastructure >>>> dancing about architecture. what are some other examples?
With President Obama’s signature now on the $787-billion stimulus package, it's time for the design and construction community to dig in to those shovel-ready projects and help pull the nation’s economy out of its current freefall. Sure, fulfilling this mission of national mercy will require engineers and contractors to overcome more than a few formidable obstacles, not to mention the doubts of naysayers who harbor unrealistic expectations about how quickly the results will come about. But if they do manage to help the stimulus package deliver on its many promises, it will be a pretty heroic feat. Something even worth making a movie about?
Don’t bet on it. Judging by some Internet Movie Database searches, Hollywood rarely draws its heroes from world of infrastructure. It’s more likely to focus on architects, as evidenced by Gary Cooper in the 1949 dramatization of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno (1974). Even airport managers had their day in the sun (eventually) with Burt Lancaster tackling a 707-load of catastrophes in the original Airport (1970).
For road and bridge contractors, World War II seems to have been the high-water mark of Tinseltown tributes with Alaska Highway (1943), and The Fighting Seabees (1944) with John Wayne. (Who wouldn’t love to see a 2009 equivalent of the film’s bold newspaper headline: “Wedge Donavan Is Hiring!”).
There was also 1941’s Steel Against the Sky, which IMDB describes as “a story involving action, adventure, romance, crime and comedy (and lots of stock footage) against the background of large-scale bridge building.” We’re all probably better off forgetting 1974’s Killdozer, which interestingly is also set in World War II.
Infrastructure engineers have probably fared the worst in feature films. Alec Guinness proved to be one heck of a project manager in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), but for the wrong reasons. The plot of a British engineer working on a railroad bridge in an exotic locale resurfaced in 1996’s The Ghost and the Darkness, which was more about the two lions menacing his workers and the egotistical hunter (Michael Douglas) hired to solve the problem.
And what is it about water systems and movie plots? The murder mystery in Chinatown (1974) involves some shady dealings with the Los Angeles water system, while the dam engineer in The Emerald Forest (1985) spends the movie trying to recover his kidnapped son from a primitive South American tribe.
What will it take to improve the industry’s cinematic image? Drawing on this year’s list of Academy Award candidates, an unassuming engineer could become a game show phenomenon thanks to her past project experiences a’la Slumdog Millionaire. Or, the remarkably youthful-looking title character in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could amaze owners with his wisdom about the intricacies of structural systems and project delivery methods.
Let’s hope some clever screenwriters will wake up to what they’re missing and give infrastructure professionals their cinematic due. Just as All the President’s Men inspired a generation of investigative reporters, a dynamic movie showcasing the skills and expertise of engineers and contractors could go along way with attracting more young people to the profession.
Sure, we may have to put up with having star’s technical acumen and management prowess are complemented by some super powers (aside from bringing the project in on time and under budget), or a plot that involves a bizarre murder, international intrigue, and marauding aliens. But in Hollywood, you’ve got to start someplace.
― NYSE:JAH (get bent), Monday, 16 March 2009 13:34 (sixteen years ago)