Pajiba

That photo up there? If the next shot in the sequence is those two kissing, then I'm watching.

What the hell is a stager?

Can you really call a profession in a movie ridiculous if the entire premise of the movie is about THAT profession? eg; crime scene cleanup?

I'm pretty sure "Collector of Hobbies" is not a professional, salary-earning occupation. The others on the list are, however unlikely.

I haven't seen The Brothers Bloom, but wasn't Rachel Weisz simply ridiculously wealthy? I'd like that profession, please.

Hey Dustin,

Thank you for this list. One, because romantic comedy jobs are completely insane half of the time. One day they're just gonna make a girl a "fairy princess" and I'll be stoked that they stopped the charade. Oh wait, they did that one with Amy Adams, too. She sang and it was cute. Patrick Dempsey had chest hair, which surprised me.

Number two reason? Because I've got a frickin' word or two to say about Uma Thurman. Some how, my brain allowed me to choose to watch The Accidental Husband with my mom because we tend to enjoy making fun of bad rom-coms together. And some how I got it into my brain that with Colin Firth and Uma freakin' Thurman on the cast, it couldn't be that bad. The rage and frustration I felt after that dumb ass movie is immeasurable. Hahahaha Thurman likes things organized and no willy-nilly type love! Hahahaha a 12-year-old hacks into the New York state records to legally marry Thurman to the Dean Morgan because he's a big fat cry baby because his girlfriend of 5 months decided not to marry him!!! HAHAHA Firth eats chocolate, even though he's not supposed to! HAHAHA Thurman gets drunk and Dean Morgan takes her to bed with him and makes her think they've banged!! HAHAHAHA Dean Morgan starts stalking her and decides he's fallen for her after an impromptu song at a cake tasting shop and having her pass-out in front of him (which, incidentally, he met his last girlfriend while she was passed out from a DEADLY FUCKING FIRE)!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA LOVE IS FUNNY SOMETIMES BECAUSE IT'S UNPREDICTABLE YOU GUYS! HAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAA Katelyn's brains have been demolished!!

It's friggin' comedy.

I don't care how tall Uma is, if I see her I'm kicking her in the teeth. Then once in the ass for My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

Technically, Rachel Weisz's character in The Brothers Bloom was an heiress. Plus, counting that and Sunshine Cleaning as romantic comedies is a HUUUUUUUGE stretch.

DarthCorleone, Frank Zappa used to write greeting cards, and he was a god.

What about George Clooney in "Up In the Air." I am a part-time career transition outreach consultant myself and I never met anyone in this business who looks like him (mostly women) and there is nothing comedic about telling people we'll help you with your resume, but you know, there's no jobs out there right now.

Of course I work at home, so no frequent flyer miles either, but I got Mr Smith to entertain me and that's just fine.

gp- Me too. At least I did that last time I saw it, back in the 90s.

I will say this much. Will Shortz is a GOD. He is the only person so amazing at creating puzzles that his uni (Indiana I think) created a major in puzzling just for him. He was that good.
So when I saw that they had the audacity to cast Sandra Bullock as a puzzler, that hurt. Girl may be a good rom-com pro but you can see in her eyes there's no deductive reasoning there. It was more believable that they cast her as a physician in the Lake House thingy.

For some reason, I read the headline and thought it would be the 10 most preposterous professions as in "avowals, declarations" that kind of thing. I was really looking forward to this. Because there's some pretty stupid ones, starting with "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

You can imagine how let down I was when I found out it's just about their jobs.

gp- Me too. At least I did that last time I saw it, back in the 90s.

I still love The Truth about Cats and Dogs. One of the few rom-coms I really laugh at.

i didn't realize that sunshine cleaning was a romantic comedy. or the brothers bloom, for that matter.

Figgy:

I haven't seen the movie but I have a friend who actually is a stager. If a magazine is shooting a spread about someone in their home, she comes in and makes the scene look really appealing. She's the one who puts the lovely fruit in the bowl and the interesting coffee table books on the coffee table and moves lamps around, etc. She also does this for commercials and some movies. She's actually quite a talented artist but this is how she pays the mortgage.

PaddyDog: I have a friend who does that for a living as well. She prefers "production designer" or "set stylist" depending on the job, but it's pretty much the same thing.

Dustin is funny. But 'Sunshine Cleaning' was based on a real-life NPR story. Dig it:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101794925

ZombieNurse I apologize.

How bout the porn actor stand in's in 'Love Actually.'

Rhyme, you have to pick one. These are the rules you get when you provide a snarky comeback for my near mental breakdown.

These are the horrors of Would You Rather.

And Tracer, be advised, he's making those brownies with the same hands touching your feet and that nasty, nasty rom-com DVD.

I really wish someone in a movie was a "chick sexer." It sounds so much more exciting than it really is. Basically, you spend all day sticking your finger up baby chickens to determine if they are male or female and then sort them.

Rhyme we've never snuggled so we've never technically stopped fighting. Real arguments are never decided unless there's snuggling.

That's why I was never allowed back in a debate class. Apparently things like "sexual harassment" can negatively impact your GPA.

Besides, you still need to pick one. You can't cop out of a would you rather. AT&T Luke Wilson or Rainn and Ex-Girlfriend. Personally, I'd take Rainn Wilson.

Robert >> Agreed. I think that combined with the staple best friends and the cliche wunderkind little sister are what hold the movie back from greatness for me - basically all the stuff that keeps the movie from being grounded and seethes "studio interference."

@ Kayanne: Would I get to periodically wash my feet?

MyySharona - Me too. And about 3/4 of them would take place in an airport.

@Tracer During the week you get to shower once a day. No feet cleaning in between, but then again all your doing is watching that video as he's rubbing your feet. After the Luke Wilson soiree you can take the longest shower you need to wash away the shame. And tears.

I think this is the point where I realize that the weirdness of this "WYR?" has gotten way out of control. But I can't back down. Nobody adds pithy comments to my breakdowns without me seeing the end of it!

Hey, don't knock Sunshine Cleaning! That was such a gem from last year, it's hard to truly find anything that wrong with a movie that deals with cleaning up one's life along with a crime scene.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but Adams doesn't actually end up with anyone, so is it fair to call it a romantic comedy profession?

no seriously what is a stager?

Is Sunshine Cleaning really a rom-com? Because it was kinda depressing if so.

Also, I work in publishing. Has my life ever been like a romantic comedy? No. I feel cheated.

I figure that the prevalence of movie characters with advertising & publishing careers is just a product of Hollywood writing in aggregate; the average rom-com writer will know only so much about a variety of 9-5 jobs, & one can write advertising & publishing without doing much research. Derivatives trading, biodiesel plant engineering, Jo-Ann Fabrics retail management...these require research.

The career dilemma in 500 Days Of Summer definitely gave me the squiggly guts. Dude had a cool job in a cool-looking office, but oh! it's so fake & miserable, I'll never be an architect. And "architect" was just so broadly written...man, that movie is irritating.

Sunshine Cleaning? Rom-com? huh??

Who was the romantic interest in that movie? I just have no idea what you're talking about.

Like others I really take issue with the notion of classifying Sunshine Cleaning as a romantic comedy or anything closely resembling. Because it seems to me the whole premise of the movie was the antidote to that kind of storytelling. One of my favorite aspects of the film was just how peripheral men were to the growth of the female characters in the movie. Instead of playing up a romance with the cleaning store owner, or even the affair with the cop, these storylines remained relatively distant from the true trajectories and internal kind of growth of the female characters. It wasn't that men were absent (or overly put down) it was that they were tangential. To me it was a welcome and refreshing change from the typical hollywood love/man saves girl kind of story.