NFIB

Small Business on the Big Screen
03/ 29/ 2002

by Tom Ehrenfeld

Most Hollywood films treat small business with as much depth and insight as they reserve for pet psychologists. Small business owners are generally treated as stock figures, shallow caricatures whose sole function is to introduce a comic element or move the plot along. Work is generally seen (if at all) as one of two extremes: heroic characters are Big Business folks, a la Richard Gere in Pretty Woman or Mel Gibson in Ransom; or they are noble exploited underdogs like Sally Field in Norma Rae or Debra Winger in An Officer and A Gentleman. It's a rare movie that takes the world of small business seriously, and rarer still for a studio film to explore work with anything but contempt or naivete.

Certainly there are good reasons why Hollywood stories defy the world of work that most of us know. Films need conflict, action, clearly defined heroes and villains. Yet while most of us recognize these themes in our business, our plot points don't wrap up neatly in 90 minutes, nor can we score them with a dark theme from Bernard Hermann or a nifty pop song like "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."

That's why movies with an element of truth about the world of small business are about as common as a quality movie picking up an Oscar for best picture. Not impossible, but not frequent. The following list attempts to pick out the 10 best films about small business.

A few rules for this list: No films with boardroom scenes, which tempt ridicule. No murders (unless they're really necessary). I've also ruled out entire professions (owning a bookstore, crime) that are regularly depicted on film by folks who look nothing like their real world counterparts. Few real-life bookstore owners, for example, have the ditzy charm of Meg Ryan (even while their business is being taken over by a corporate conglomerate) in You've Got Mail.

The following movies all deal with the daily life of small business, the real drama that our work brings out in us. In these movies, work takes center stage, and the choices these characters make within their work lives reveal who they are. And, in my humble opinion, these movies are all great films.

The Top 10 Small Business Flicks

The Van is a loving and detailed look at how two friends create a small business out of thin air, and then live out a new life within the bounds of this venture. No other film so lovingly depicts the small details of doing business that mean so very much, or revels in the way that a small business completely overwhelms one's life. Two unemployed Dublin men launch Bimbo's Burgers, a humble fish-and-chips van, to regain their dignity and make a living--and then find that the control they've taken over in their lives gives way to the control that the van assumes over them. In everything from battles with health inspectors to home testing of the "chipper" batter, this film gets the spirit of small business.

Big Night captures the tension that so many small shop owners (especially restaurateurs) find between art and commerce. Two Italian brothers open the Paradise restaurant in 1950's New Jersey. Older brother Primo is a chef who's so devoted to his craft that he must be restrained from lecturing diners who insist on ordering the wrong starch with their entree. Younger brother Secondo is the front man trying to keep the restaurant afloat financially. This 1996 film aptly illustrates family business tensions, and the way a passion for food drives some entrepreneurs to launch ill-fated restaurants.

In the 1945 film noir classic Mildred Pierce, Joan Crawford plays an accidental entrepreneur, a woman whose string of successful restaurants seems to be an almost incidental result of her pure ambition to provide the world for her daughter. Okay, the plot centers around a murder, an implausible workplace type of event; yet her passion to succeed as a means of providing for her family and creating a station in life is entirely plausible. And isn't it nice to see a successful female entrepreneur thrive, even if, like Thelma and Louise, there seem to be final consequences to her strong choices?

"We are losing our battle with all that is personal and real about our business," says the title character in Cameron Crowe's 1996 Jerry Maguire, a wonderful film in which Tom Cruise plays a sports agent who quits his large sports agency to regain the poetry in his work by starting his own one-man agency. His struggles to balance his integrity with his startup's survival animate this engaging film. (Never mind that at the film's close Cruise's character seems on track towards recreating the values from which he fled.) This film still finds moral and spiritual drama in the efforts of two folks to align their personal and professional lives. And yes, it introduced the phrase we've all cited: "Show me the money." Better yet, Cameron Crowe is probably the only screenwriter ever to have created dramatic conflict surrounding the creation of a mission statement.

And who could ever pass on the 1957 Ernest Lehman & Clifford Odets-penned, Alexander Mackendrick-directed Sweet Smell of Success? Tony Curtis's savage, charming, utterly charismatic character Sydney Falco remains a publicist's (anti)hero today. His desperate efforts to build his struggling PR company are achingly familiar to anyone who's been frustrated to have their major client, customer and market (which are rolled up into one character, played by Burt Lancaster) dangle the big score before their eyes.

Last year's Woody Allen film, Small Time Crooks, showcases the role luck plays in any entrepreneurial success story, and how a quality product can overcome managerial failings. Allen plays Ray, an ex-con with a plan to rob a Manhattan bank by opening a cookie store next door and tunneling into the vault from the store's basement. The store starts as a cover, but the cookies baked by Ray's wife, Frenchy, become so popular, she turns into the next Mrs. Fields. They end up franchising the cookie stores and becoming wealthy legally, abandoning the bank-robbing plan. Although the movie simplifies what it takes to go from a single shop to a national empire, it shows how sometimes a great product can sell itself.

Just how far will you go to make your dream a reality? When does ambition cross over to become something much less noble? These are the questions put forth in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, a dark 1974 tale of a restless hustler, played with antsy perfection by Richard Dreyfuss, whose complete lack of scruples might confuse him with, well, your basic driven entrepreneur. He goes from one get-rich-quick scheme to the next, including setting up a company to film weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Based on the cult novel of the same name by Nick Hornby, High Fidelity celebrates employee bonding. John Cusack plays Rob Gordon, a Chicago record store owner and prime example of a entrepreneur turning a passion into a business. Gordon lives his work, to the point of making music tapes for friends and disc jockeying when not running the store. The film ultimately shows the importance of committing to a personal life as well as work.

In the tear-jerker Steel Magnolias, Dolly Parton's character owns Truvy's Beauty Parlor, where much of the movie's action takes place. It's refreshing to see a film that shows a business owner actually working. Styling hair in a small Louisiana town, Truvy's doesn't see much traffic beyond the five other heavy-weight stars of this film--characters played by Julia Roberts, Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis and Daryl Hannah--yet the film offers a comic depiction of a small town Main Street business.

The 1999 film The Muse, while primarily about a screenwriter played by Albert Brooks, has a nice subplot involving his character's wife, played by Andie MacDowell, who launches her own cookie baking business. We've included it here because of the movie's message about inspiration. In the movie, Sharon Stone plays the title character, a real-life Greek goddess with a track record of inspiring greatness. She encourages MacDowell to market her home-baked cookies, which end up being served in Los Angeles' hottest restaurants. Yet the film shows that none of us really need a muse, just confidence and pluck to follow our ambition.

BEST ENTREPRENEURIAL PARABLE

While The Music Man is not ostensibly about business, this movie speaks directly to the power of charismatic entrepreneurs. Professor Harold Hill is Steve Jobs, a man whose charm and energy thrill a community of followers who enlist so loyally to his vision that it materializes. The sheer force of his vision, his mission, his "think" system (do you think it's a coincidence that the motto of Tom Watson, one of this century's greatest entrepreneurs, was "Think"), not merely energizes the troops, it literally brings the vision to life. And even he, a man who can't read a note, ends up leading the band.

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This article originally appeared in the November/December 2001 issue of MyBusiness Magazine, NFIB's member magazine.

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