9 to 5 1980

 I remember the first time I watched this film in a film appreciation class in probably 1993 when I  was going to community college.  Then I saw it again a few years later when I transferred up state to a university for a Social Work class as a successful example of a corporation in America. 

The idea of the film came from Jane Fonda who portrays Judy Bernly. An old friend of hers started a business in Boston made up of women office workers called '9 to 5' .Fonda did a lot of research for the film once it was green lit. She focused her research on women who had begun to work late in life due to divorce or being widowed. She worked closely with the screenwriter/ director eventually coming to the conclusion that a script needed to be written that shows 'you can run an office without a boss, but you can't run an office without secretaries!' 

My favorite scene in the film came after the hospital visit and focuses mainly on Lily Tomlin's character Violet Newstead. they've just noticed that the body they stole from the hospital wasn't their boss Franklin Hart. They've just come up with a new idea to get rid of the body when a motorcycle cop tries to to pull them over. When the cop pulls them over, they are extremely nervous and Violet is still wearing the white hospital coat. She manages to talk her way out of allowing the cop to look in the trunk by speeding off to the hospital convincing the cop that the Doralee and Judy are poisioned.

 

Some interesting things I found out about this film while writing. The Consolidated offices were located at the corner of West 6th Street and South Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles. However, the opening sequence with Parton's tune 9 to5 was filmed in downtown San Francisco, including the famous Market Street clock. Dolly Parton eventually came up with the beat of the tune by the clicking of her lovely long acrylic nails together on the typewriter as she was working on set. Because the movie had a late December start date, it missed being nominated for most of the awards shows.  However, Dolly cashed in big in 1981 and 1982's Grammy's which won Country Song of the Year and Female Country Vocal of the Year. 

Erin Brockovich 2000

This is truly one of my favorite films with Julia Roberts. Probably because she isn't playing her normal 'sweetheart' of a character. Its what made her a great actress and won herself the Oscar for the biographical true story of the single mother turned legal clerk Erin Brockovich. 

 Erin Brockovich is an out of work, single mother in her thirties that gets in a car accident on the way home from a job interview. She decides to sue the man that hit her and her lawyer, Ed Masry expects to win. Erin's emotional outburst in court looses the case. She continues to try and look for a job and Ed Masry stops taking her calls. Then we come to one of my favorite scenes in which she just shows up at her lawyers office and convinces Ed Masry to hire her as a law clerk.

 

 He gives her a new case to start a file on and she reads it and has trouble understanding it so she goes and contacts the plaintiff directly to ask why there are medical bills in a real estate pro bono case. She finds out the local gas & electric company paid for the doctor's  bills. Which is very generous of them considering the wife has been getting noncancerous tumors and her husband has Hodgkin's lymphoma. Why would they pay, wonders Erin. "Because of the chromium" says Mrs. Jensen. So Erin starts learning all she can about chromium. She speaks to a toxicologist at a college and he tells her there are different types of chromium. But the most dangerous in hexavalent chromium which is carcinogenic. It is used by utility companies to clean the pistons.  Erin starts wondering if this is what is making the Jensen's sick. As she continues to do research, more neighbors of the Jensens start coming to Erin to tell them about how they've been sick too. With the combined gas and electric company in town that only offered to buy their houses initially while paying for their doctor visits while they consider their offer, the sick neighbors of the Jensens start piling up and it looks like it could turn into a major class action law suit. Ed Masry starts looking to other law firms to help with the cost of the law suit. But the small town neighborhood doesn't like the stuffy, flashy people that come walking in to talk to them. They like Erin because she understands them because she knows what its like to be down on your luck. 

With as many plaintiffs that are involved it the lawsuit, the new lawyer decides that they best way to get all these people the money they need quickly, a binding arbitration is the fastest way to get them the most money quickly. This is in which the judge takes the case from the jury's hands and gives a final judgement in which there is no overturning. It requires an agreement that must be made among most if not all of the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs of the town of Hinkley are still leery of the new lawyers so Ed and Erin have to sell the entire town on the idea of the binding arbitration. They get most of the signatures they need in one night after a town hall meeting on the lawsuit. They have to go door-to-door to get the rest. At this time Erin meets Charles Embry who used to work at the gas and electric company with his cousin. The company asked him to shred a bunch of documents. "But as it turns out, I wasn't a very good employee." says Embry and produces a document that shows that the groundwater has been contaminated since 1966 and the corporate office in San Francisco was aware of it. 

Pacific Gas & Electric ended up paying a settlement amount of $333 million dollars to the townspeople of Hinkley, California in 1996.  

 

The Devil Wears Prada 2006

 This evening after eating dinner with my husband and 19 year old daughter and watched a little television with them after I decided to watch a film that I planned to review afterwards. I chose a film that I knew my daughter would have no choice but listen to as she did the dishes instead of her normal belting out whatever music she decides to listen to on her SHOKZ headphones attached to her Spotify account or YouTube. I chose the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada. At least, I knew I'd be safe until Andy has her makeover by Nigel with all the outfits being displayed with Madonna's Vogue playing in the background. And its perfect anyways because I enjoy the film very much because it comes from a book by Lauren Weisberger, who was once a personal assistant for the legendary editor of Vogue Anna Wintour. It is said that the character of Miranda Priestly is based on Anna Wintour.

  There was a certain amount of apprehension upon taking on a task of putting the legendary Vogue editor in a negative light. The script was revised several times for toning down Miranda's meanness and then back again for genuineness. Once Meryl Streep agreed to play Miranda, it was decided to keep Miranda true to her original character from the book.  

  And yes, that is a grey Prada handbag that Meryl insisted on using as an introduction to her character being truly the devil that wears Prada. In some respects, Meryl has said that she didn't enjoy playing someone so superior, but that doesn't mean she didn't take her job seriously. One particular scene she spent a great amount of time on was 'the cerulean sweater speech'. Meryl wanted to make the point that the scene isn't about being mean to Anne Hathaway's character Andy Sachs, it's about teaching Andy about the trickle down effect of marketing and fashion as a business. Andy in her naivete, just thinks that Miranda is being mean on purpose.  But later realizes that Miranda is exactly the most responsible person in fashion today and respects her as such, although she knows she could never make the decisions that Miranda makes daily. 

   You know, while researching this film I found one of those articles that points out what you might've missed in a film. I found a point that I wanted to share. Because I a huge fan of the written word, the part in the film when Andy has to get a copy of the unpublished manuscript of the seventh Harry Potter book for Miranda's girls headed up to grandma's house on the train latter on in the day. Just how plausible is this? Well, Joanne Rowling's final book in the Harry Potter series was very well guarded, indeed. Barnes & Noble had the books guarded in a warehouse in an undisclosed location under 24/7 human guard. In England, the pallets the boxes of the books were placed on had alarms and the trucks transporting the books had satellite tracking systems. Despite all this,  a copy did make it onto the internet four days before it's scheduled release date. So I guess it is possible.